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S.O.S from Dar Es Salaam!

From a reliable source

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/57619

‘Six villagers were shot, two fatally, by security guards at the North Mara Gold Mine in Tarime district. The incident happened this afternoon in circumstances that remain unclear. It brings to 11 the number of villagers who have been shot dead at the Mine since July 2005. No one has ever been held accountable for these deaths and no investigations ever carried out. Meantime over forty villagers and hundreds of livestock are reported dead after drinking water from River Thigithe that flows through the Mine. The allegations of deadly poisons causing deaths have largely been conformed by official delegations that have visited the areas this week.’
July 8, 2009

‘Six villagers were shot, two fatally, by security guards at the North Mara Gold Mine in Tarime district. The incident happened this afternoon in circumstances that remain unclear. It brings to 11 the number of villagers who have been shot dead at the Mine since July 2005. No one has ever been held accountable for these deaths and no investigations ever carried out. Meantime over forty villagers and hundreds of livestock are reported dead after drinking water from River Thigithe that flows through the Mine. The allegations of deadly poisons causing deaths have largely been conformed by official delegations that have visited the areas this week.’

North Mara Gold Mine is owned by Barrick Gold, the Canadian multinational giant. Barrick has come under serious attack by NGOs, religious leaders and other civil society activists. A study done by Martin Curtis (a respected British historian) and Tundu Lissu (a long-time Tanzanian activist), which was commissioned by the Christian Council of Tanzania, Tanzania Episcopal Conference and Baraza Kuu la Waislamu Tanzania, showed gross abuses committed by mining multinationals, the leading one being Barrick. The Report was released last year.

After summarising the main findings of the Curtis-Lissu Study, the religious leaders posed the following question in their Foreword:

The situation challenges each one of us and raises a simple question: What would I like to see others do when I am oppressed, I am beaten, I am chased from my property, I am harassed, my environment is polluted, my dignity is made to be of nothing, my children are dying because of my poverty and my rights are violated? As religious leaders we each of us found the same answer. We will need them to shout of our oppression, to stand for our rights, to be our advocates, to intervene on our suffering and restore our dignity. (Martin Curtis and Tundu Lissu: A Godlen Opportunity? How Tanzania is Failing to Benefit from Gold Mining, 2nd Edition, October, 2008, p.6)

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2009-07-09

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2009-07-10

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The 'change we need'? Obama in Ghana

Charles Abugre

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57585

cc Soldiers Media CenterAs US President Barack Obama heads to Accra, Ghana, this week, Charles Abugre hopes a new 'wind for change' is blowing. Coming from a 'son of Africa' held with pride and esteem by Africans across the continent, Obama's speech will have major influence on the way the world regards Africa. For all the anticipated talk about 'good governance' and 'democracy', Abugre stresses, the US president should first acknowledge his country's historical role in undermining African countries' stability and progress. If Obama is to spark a new beginning in US–Africa relations based on genuinely mutual interests and respect, he must actively allay fears around US militarisation and seek to review US economic relations with the continent. Through building trust and commending Ghana's democratic successes, who better, asks Abugre, to understand the wind of change than Barack Obama?

That there is a carnival spirit in Accra, Ghana, ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to this small West African country is to be expected. I recall the excitement on the streets of Accra in October 1994, when Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam led 2,000 blacks from America to Accra for the Nation of Islam's first International Saviours’ Day. Crowds poured out on the streets to greet them. He came to preach awakening and redemption. In March 1998, amidst low approval ratings and sex scandals, the Clintons took Accra by storm. Bill Clinton was mobbed – much like a rock star – and later draped in colourful Ghanaian kente. He preached hope for Africa, offered aid but also apologised for America's standing by as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. A decade later, President George W. Bush, suffering the lowest approval rating of any US president and the villain of an illegal and murderous war in Iraq, rolled into town. He was received as a hero, a saviour of Africa from diseases. He danced and was fettered. He preached freedom and democracy and promised to increase aid for HIV/AIDS and malaria, whilst denying an aggressive American agenda to militarise the continent in order to secure strategic access to petroleum resources.

So what is new about Obama’s visit? The trip to Ghana will be his second trip to Africa in a month, only seven months into his presidency. He went first to Cairo, Egypt, early in June. This is a record and signifies that Africa is more than of passing interest. Second, there has never been an American president with roots in Africa, making his visit something of a homecoming, whether he sees it that way or not. Being a 'son of Africa' carries more meaning to Africans – not least pride, dignity and hope – than anything he might say or do. Yet the significance of what he says about Africa on this trip will carry significantly more meaning for this same reason. Third, Obama means more to the world than a mere US politician. He has become a brand, for which, like all brands, there is a massive contestation of the values and meanings underpinning it. He means hope, a 'wind of change', the triumph of common humanity, equality of peoples and cultures and many more. But he also means pragmatism, a manifestation of American power, responsibility and interests.

President Obama is scheduled to make a major speech in Ghana. He will address Africans through a Ghanaian audience. What he says will influence the way the world sees Africa and Africa’s place in the world. What he says will reveal his attitude towards a continent much preached to and done to, and whose history is often discarded. He will address the Ghanaian parliament and by extension African lawmakers. He will visit the slaveholding castles in the west of Ghana, and by that act, reach out to the history of slavery, the civil rights movement and the history of colonisation that followed slavery.

What will be a good speech for Africa which breaks from the paternalism of his predecessors and yet lays grounds for America’s better interests based on Africa’s progress? First, there should be an acknowledgement of history – how the current is shaped by the past. His Cairo speech, believed to be directed largely at the 'Muslim' world, is an excellent parallel. There he acknowledged that today’s realities are rooted in centuries of coexistence as well as in conflicts and wars. A new beginning will need to acknowledge this history and be built on mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual listening. He talked about what Islamic culture had given to the world – timeless poetry, cherished music, elegant calligraphy, for example. He talked about the unbreakable bond with Israel because it is based on cultural and historical ties. He acknowledged America’s wrongs against Iran, especially the role the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) played in the overthrow of a democratically elected government.

The parallels with Africa are stark. Nowhere else can one better acknowledge humanity’s collective debt in relation to culture, music and calligraphy (at least in the case of Ethiopia), multiculturalism and the history of the coexistence of diverse cultures than Africa. If anyone will acknowledge what Africa offers to the rest of the world other than mineral resources, it has to be a 'son of Africa'. It will be good to hear that Africa doesn’t only export poverty and conflict. There is much more in the history between Africa and America to make the bonds 'unbreakable'.

Obama’s visit to Ghana coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founding father Kwame Nkrumah. He will be arriving at an airport built by Nkrumah, speaking in a parliament building constructed by Nkrumah and enjoying electricity which is the product of Nkrumah’s investments. All these projects were once touted in the West as 'white elephants', including the expansion of the port, harbours and trunk roads. He will be speaking to an educated elite, most of whom will have had their foundations in Nkrumah’s relentless investments in education. When he lauds Ghana’s relative peace, he will be minded to note that this has its roots in the pursuit of equitable development strategies of the 1960s that have spread opportunities to all ethnic groups. That the state means something to Ghanaians – well worth risking to promote democratic governance – is rooted in a culture of essential service provisioning by the state, began in the 1960s.

When Obama reflects on these he may be minded to apologise for the CIA’s role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Kwame Nkrumah to satisfy Cold War strategic interests. In doing so, he may also be minded to extend this apology for the role the CIA played in Patrice Lumumba's removal from power and the resulting mess that is today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Military coups in Africa – the biggest threat to democracy and good governance – were introduced by the CIA and other Western intelligence. Not to acknowledge that in a speech focused on good governance is to trivialise Africa’s history of struggle for democracy. A good son of Africa couldn’t possibly do that.

In his focus on good governance, President Obama may be minded to note that the experience that Africans have of the military is not of protectors but of instruments of destructive interests – whether these are domestic or foreign. Militarisation portends interference in democratic processes. The experience of foreign military build-ups portend external intervention to prop up dictators, or mess up the electoral process, for the protection of strategic foreign interests. If Obama is serious about democratic and accountable governance taking root in Africa, he will be minded to dispel the fear (and the rumour) that the United States is actively militarising the Gulf of Guinea through increased in the activities of US naval forces. He should signal loud and clear that he respects the African Union’s reluctance to extend the US military footprint in Africa, whether by providing landing facilities or hosting an AFRICOM (United States African Command) facility. He should dispel the rumour circulating in Ghana, when he speaks to the Ghanaian parliament, to the effect that Ghana’s former president John Kufuor had done a deal allowing US forces on Ghanaian soil.

Democracy and good governance are hard to sustain in a peaceful atmosphere when the mass of the population do not have an education and jobs – the latter being a source of taxation to sustain the institutions of democracy. When public institutions are funded either by foreign aid or indirectly by foreign companies, rather than the tax system, government accountability tends to de facto be externally focused. Not all types of jobs are conducive to democracy. Jobs that are concentrated in rural primary production tend not to produce the critical mass of activism and awareness necessary to hold governments to account, compared with jobs in manufacturing and value-added services. The value-added production of goods and services as well as taxation, in my view, are the most potent instruments for democratisation. This is the sense in which one cannot separate the economy from democracy.

Obama's speech could helpfully draw on these parallels. More than that, he can do something about it in two main ways: by extending his crusade against tax-dodging in Africa and reviewing current US economic relations with Africa. The issue of taxation applies to the capacity to collect tax, the sharing of natural-resource rents between Africans and foreign mining companies – many of which are American or trade on US stock markets – and tax-dodging through the use of tax havens. It will be wonderful if Obama were to call upon the Newmonts of this world and other multinational companies to publish their accounts on a country-by-country basis, including the profits they make and how the profit is shared or reinvested. It will be sufficient even to note the harmful nature of tax-dodging by multinational companies. Similarly, it will be helpful if Obama were to state that in accordance with the UN Convention on Corruption, the United States will prosecute American or African companies or individuals operating in American markets who are suspected of bribery, tax-evasion or aggressive tax-avoidance. This will send a wonderful deterrence signal. Addressing the tax problem can put no less than US$50 billion into the African economy annually.

An associated issue of resource outflow is the renewed debt problem. The limited debt relief delivered by the multilateral debt relief initiative has been all but reversed by the combined effects of the food and financial crisis. Two things need to happen. Obama should support the UN's call for a debt servicing moratorium using the US bankruptcy legislation as a guide. This is only fair and will signify that Obama is listening to the UN when it comes to economic matters. Secondly, there is a crying need for a structural solution. This should be in the form of an independent debt-arbitration panel operating under the auspices of the UN to mediate between debtors and creditors, rather the current system in which debtors are totally at the mercy of creditors. This is not only fair, but it is also necessary for a stable international system benefitting rich and poor alike.

In relation to value-added production, Obama is already one step in the right direction by pushing for agricultural productivity to be up on the international agenda. But first a few cautions. A focus on agricultural productivity should not become a cover for foreign private companies to grab land or impose expensive, input-intensive methods in the name of modernisation. The issue of land-grabbing is particularly worrying. A recent study by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) of five African countries, including Ghana, showed that 2.5 million hectares of land of sizes exceeding 1,000 hectares has been acquired, all in the name of promoting foreign direct investment. Single acquisitions have been as large as 450,000 hectares (Madagascar) and 400,000 (Ghana), most of which has been directed at biofuel production. Total investment commitments for land acquisitions of over 1,000 hectares exceed US$1 billion to date. The myth that Africa is a continent of abundant land with no claimants is dangerous for both future peace and social equity.

On a more positive note, Obama has an opportunity in the form of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Millennium Challenge fund to demonstrate his support for a focus on productivity. To do so however will require a radical review of both instruments. As they currently stand, they achieve the opposite goals. The eligibility criteria discourages and undermines Africa’s capacity to produce by imposing US intellectual property, imposing privatisation and insisting as a precondition that governments are not directly engaged in economic activities. It also discourages them from using industrial policies to move out of commodity dependence and by using technical assistance as a means to cajole governments to implement trade liberalisation policies which directly undermine the goal of diversifying their economies. The view that liberalisation-at-all-costs is good for the economy has now been shown to be false. This is even more so with African countries. If Obama really does mean to promote value-added production in Africa he should indicate that the era of the extremes of economic ideology is over, that Africans are unlikely to ever break out of primary commodity production and joblessness without an active but balanced role of the state in investments, manufacturing and in enhancing their share of the value chain.

Such a strategy already exists in Africa. In 2004, the African Union, the African Ministers of Industry, and NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) adopted an African Productivity Capacity Initiative (ACPI) aimed precisely at a wise use of industrial policy and public–private investments aimed at value-added production. Such a strategy cannot succeed without targeted and time-bound infant industry protection, including more pragmatic use of trade policy. Obama should indicate support for such approaches and align his strategy for agriculture with this African-driven initiative. Such a support, even with modest financial means, will be invaluable politically and in terms of policy space. He should indicate to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank that the neoliberal development model they work with is rendered out-of-date by the global poverty, financial and trading crisis.

Obama must continue to emphasise the personal responsibility of African leaders and African people. He should ask them to do more with what they have, mobilise more resources from within, stamp out corruption and live less lavishly. He should commend Professor John Atta Mills for the small size of his motorcade and for not moving into the ridiculously luxurious new presidential palace built with huge loans (as people hungered). He should remind African and all other parliamentarians that they do not have a right to a standard of living several times the average of their populations. He should discourage African politicians from being businessmen – a clear root to conflicts of interest and corruption. He should remind them that the only way to measure their worth to their citizens is the extent to which citizens have jobs and access to healthcare, education, water and personal protection.

Above all he should remind himself and us all that the wind of change that began in Accra in 1957 and swept across the African continent only to be suppressed for several decades may well be on the rise again. Who better to understand this than Barrack Hussein Obama.

* Charles Abugre is the head of global policy and advocacy at Christian Aid.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

When does a 'subject' become a 'citizen'?

Chambi Chachage

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57595

cc BaigalChambi Chachage explores when and how ‘subjects' become ‘citizens’, in the second part of a series of three articles exploring the idea of dual citizenship with reference to Tanzania. The making of ‘modern’ as opposed to ‘traditional’ citizenship in colonial Africa was primarily based on race, writes Chachage, with race as the criterion for determining social, political and economic status.Later, black nationalists used the 'language of an inclusive Tanganyikan citizenship based on human rights rather than racial privileges', but it was Nyerere's 1964 policy that came to define 'what it means to be a citizen, rather than a subject, in post-colonial Tanganyika', says Chachage.

The making of ‘modern’ as opposed to ‘traditional’ citizenship in colonial Africa was primarily based on race. It should be noted that colonialism was a product, or rather a by-product, of the discourse of scientific racism that had roots in earlier Euro-American thoughts and which became a bedfellow with the ideology of capitalism/imperialism. In line with patriarchy they created a discourse, or rather a myth, of ‘virgin’/‘fertile’ land for colonial conquest/settlement.

The tragedy of Sarah Baartman, for instance scandalously illustrates the development of these racial and colonial notions and how they generally turned the African/black into a subject, that is, made him/her uncitizen. Her story epitomised what happened within the context of British early colonialism in Africa. It thus set the stage for segregation and subjection of Africans.

As Mamdani aptly noted in 1996 in Citizens and Subjects: Decentralised Despotism and the Legacy of Late Capitalism, segregation was not a South African invention but, rather, it was an idealised form of rule that the British Colonial Office dubbed ‘indirect rule.’ It was the Briton Lord Lugard who pioneered indirect rule in Uganda and Nigeria three decades before Jan C. Smuts applied it in South Africa. As a pioneer of a form of indirect rule that Mamdani refers to as 'decentralised despotism', the British theorised the colonial state as more of a cultural one than a territorial construct. This shift from a focus at the repudiation of the customary to confirmation of tradition and from civilizing/rejuvenating to conserving/preserving colonised society began in India. By the time Britain came to Africa with its wealth of experience in colonising India it was ready to complete this shift to prevent what it had to cure in its then ‘precious colony’ of India.

Thus in order to prevent the dissolution of society in colonial Africa, which would render it virtually uncontrollable, the British focused on the customary as both a binding and dividing legal and cultural construct. It was binding in the sense that it held together members of a given ‘tribe’ by subjecting them to certain form of authority that made it easy to contain them. Yet it was dividing in the sense that it separated a number of invented ‘tribes’ by subjecting them to their respective authorities that made it easy to divide and rule them.

These authorities came to be known as Native Authorities and the law that they used came to be known as Customary Laws. But their jurisdiction only applied to those categories of (African) natives and (African) strangers-cum-natives. As Mamdani correctly stated in 1998, they could not apply to those who did not have a ‘customary’ home, that is, an ‘ethnic’, ‘tribal’ or ‘native’ home in Africa. In other words, since those categories of (Euro-American) settler and (Asiatic/Arab) settler were defined in racial rather than ethnic terms, they could not have a respective Native Authority and its associated Customary Law. The policy and legal implications of these dichotomies is thus sharply captured:

‘The colonial state divided the population into two: races and ethnicities. Each lived in a different legal universe. Races were governed through civil law. They were considered as members, actually or potentially, of civil society. Civil society excluded ethnicities. If we understand civil society not as an idealised prescription but as a historical construct, we will recognise that the original sin of civil society under colonialism was racism. Ethnicities were governed through customary laws. While civil law spoke the language of rights, customary law spoke the language of tradition, of authenticity. These were different languages with different effects, even opposite effects. The language of rights bounded law. It claimed to set limits to power. For civic power was to be exercised within the rule of law, and had to observe the sanctity of the domain of rights. The language of custom, in contrast, did not circumscribe power, for custom was enforced. The language of custom enabled power instead of checking it by drawing boundaries around it. In such an arrangement, no rule of law was possible.’

It is not surprising, then, that in the case of colonial Tanganyika, as elsewhere in colonial Africa, race – and thus racism – was the primary criterion for determining social, political and economic status. Before independence, as the author of Who are Indigenous Tanzanians? Competing Conception of Tanzanian Citizenship in the Business Community, Bruce Hailman, correctly noted in 1998, Tanganyika was segregated into three distinct racial groups.

The first group, which was primarily Euro-American, enjoyed full privileges of British citizenship. Most Asians comprised the second group and were treated as second-class citizens i.e. British-protected persons. The last group, the natives or Africans (read blacks), were more subjects than citizens. Needless to say, this preferential treatment fermented resentment. To put it crudely, it ignited racial struggle. Even the social-cum-political organisations were coloured by race. There was an African Association and an Asian Association.

However, in the 1950s, as Chachage S.L. Chachage noted in 1986 in his unpublished PhD dissertation entitled Socialists Ideology and the Reality of Tanzania, it became clear to the African/black nationalists who were fighting for independence that Euro-Americans and Asians had a major role to play in making Tanganyika have political stability based on a rapidly expanding economy. Tellingly, their agitation for uhuru was not couched in the language of customs or tradition. Rather, it spoke the language of civics and rights. Thus the last years of the 1950s, Chachage further notes, witnessed the attack by Nyerere and his fellow nationalists on racialism in its scientific guise and other forms.

In the language of an inclusive Tanganyikan citizenship based on human rights rather than racial privileges they urged immigrants of other nationalities – whether (Asiatic/Arab) settlers or (Euro-American) settlers – to regard themselves as Tanganyikans. To that end in the 1958 campaigns for the general elections non-Africans were even invited to address meetings of Tanzania African National Union (TANU) supporters even though TANU’s membership was by then restricted to Africans. In his address to the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in September 1959, the chairperson of TANU, Julius K. Nyerere, thus pragmatically affirmed his stance on equal rights of all citizens regardless of race:

‘Here we are, building up sympathy of the outside world on the theme of human rights. We are telling the world that we are fighting for our rights as human beings. We gained the sympathy of friends all over the world – in Asia, in Europe, in America – people who recognise the justice of our demands for human rights… Are we going to turn round then, tomorrow after we have achieved independence and say, ‘To hell with all this nonsense abut human rights; we were only using that as a tactic to harness the sympathy of the naive’? Human nature is sometimes depraved I know but I don’t believe it is depraved to that extent. I don’t believe that the leaders of the people are going to behave as hypocrites to gain their ends, and turn round and do exactly the things which they have been fighting against. I say again to my friends the non-Africans in East Africa, that when we say we want to establish the rights of individuals in our countries, irrespective of race, we mean it.’

What Nyerere and his fellow African nationalists were articulating was not a form of racial blindness. Rather, it was an tacit acknowledgement that through the Lugardian doctrine of divide and rule, Africans had been constructed as an assortment of ethnicities which, although collectively seen as ‘black’ and thus the quintessential opposite of the ‘white’ race, had not fully enjoyed the privileges then associated with a racial identity. In other words, theirs was a call to be admitted into the concert of humanity and comity of nations which was then defined racially. In this regard it makes a lot of sense to conceptualise their nationalism in Mamdanian phraseology as ‘a struggle of natives to be recognised as a transethnic identity, as a race, as ‘Africans,’ and thus – as a race – to gain admission to the world of rights, to civil society, which was a short form for civilized society’.

Interestingly, as Chachage noted in his PhD, by 1959, through a newspaper then known as the Tanganyika Standard, some non-Africans were calling on TANU to open its membership to them. It was accordingly opened in 1960 whereby two Asians and one European were named to its new executive committee as a parliamentary party. When that new legislative council met for the first time in October of the same year after Tanganyika was granted ‘responsible government’, it had 81 members. Out of these 52 were Africans, 16 Europeans, 11 Asians, one Arab and one Goan. The racial struggle did not disappear even though, according to a researcher, to ‘many observers, racialism had practically vanished from the political scene by 1959; and the tendency was to regard everybody as a Tanganyikan, as a result of which Asians did not see any necessity for minority privileges politically’. In fact as Chachage himself notes, that legislative council was divided on the issue of Africanisation. The then chief minister’s ‘address in reply’ to the issue of the ‘Africanisation of the civil service’ on 19 October 1960 reveals how the issue of race elicited deep-seated racial sentiments.

Nyerere – as documented in his 1966 Freedom and Unity – who happened to be that chief minister – started by stating that it is important for them to know what that government meant by Africanisation, a statement that implied there was no consensus on its definition. Then he abruptly switched to the discourse of the settler and native. ‘Tanganyika is an African country’, he affirmed, and went on to claim that ‘though there are communities of other races settled here, some of whose members certainly have a legitimate claim and a genuine claim to be regarded as ‘Tanganyikans’, the vast preponderance of the population of Tanganyika is indigenous African’. What followed is the following natively/racially charged statement that captured his message, which he admitted was little alarming and hoped it won’t sound alarming to many people:

‘It is therefore naturally the intention of the government that, in the long term, and I want to emphasise the phrase ‘in the long term’, the composition of the civil service should broadly reflect the racial pattern of the territory’s population as a whole and thus the great preponderance of posts should be held by indigenous Africans. Indeed, anything else would be artificial and unhealthy…’

Even though Nyerere loaded his address with normalising nativist terms such ‘naturally’ and ‘indigenous’ it seems he did so to placate the champions of indigenisation/nativism, which is why he reiterated that ‘in the long term’ disclaimer. That pacifying emphasis must have been a way of addressing the so-called nationalists on the back benches who questioned the pace of Africanisation at the time. According to Chachage, TANU had earlier promised to carry out a programme of Africanisation as quickly as possible. However, the time that legislative council convened, it was voiced that TANU believed in localisation rather than Africanisation only, whereby the former was defined on the basis of preference for local people of any race as opposed to the latter that was defined strictly on the basis of preference to local people who were Africans/blacks. In Mamdanian terms, the champions of Africanisation were simply stating that the local people of other races – particularly those categories that are referred in this essay as (Euro-American) settler and (Asiatic/Arab) settler – are neither ‘native’ nor ‘native settler.’

This pressure for Africanisation which, according to Chachage’s PhD, began as far back as 1958 during the TANU conference that grappled with the controversial issue of racial parity in the election. The divisive deliberation resulted in the formation of the splinter group then known the African National Congress (ANC). Tellingly, the motto of that group was ‘Africa for Africans’. Of course by that phrase they meant ‘Africa for blacks’ for to them there was no ‘Asiatic/Arabic African’ or ‘Euro-American African.’ Another racial issue that furthered differences in that ‘maiden’ council is that of introducing school integration in order to abolish the separate school system. Thus the 1960 council set the precedence for racial struggle in future council sessions.

On 18 October 1961, just before Tanganyika became ‘completely independent’, the division on the race question was so deep to the extent that the Citizenship Bill was considerably opposed in the National Assembly in a language heavily laden with anti-Commonwealth and racialist/nativist sentiments. The then Prime Minister, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, spoke emotionally against racialism and opponents who sought to base citizenship on colour rather than loyalty to our then country of Tanganyika. He warned that 'because of the situation we have inherited in this country, where economic classes are also identical with race, that we live on dynamite, that it might explode any day, unless we do something about it’. The following brief from Chachage’s PhD sums up the terms of that legislative debate:

‘The government had proposed that citizenship be granted automatically to any adult person who was born in Tanganyika, and any born of one or both parents neither of whom was born in Tanganyika was to be given two years to decide if he or she wished to become a Tanganyika citizen. The system of dual citizenship was to be ended. The opposition wanted to withhold citizenship from all non-Africans; even if their parents were Tanganyika – born they wanted them to apply on individual basis for citizenship. The opposition was profoundly suspicious of Europeans and Asians.’

The government proposal passed. Africanisation continued in government terms. However, paradoxically, on 7 January 1964, just three month before the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Nyerere, then the President of Tanganyika, issued a policy circular (also reproduced in 1966 in Freedom and Unity) which significantly departed from what was agreed in 1961. After noting that the two years period of grace for those who had to renounce citizenship of another nation in order to become sole citizens of Tanganyika had ended, and that since 9 December 1963 Tanganyikans had known exactly who are the citizens of that country by right of birth, he went on to reiterate that our most important basic principle as a nation has been our appeal to the morality of human equality regardless of colour, race, or country of origin. Then tactically acknowledging that Africanisation was a necessary compromise to this principle, he thus declared the end of the discourse of citizenship based on the dichotomy of the settler vis-à-vis the native:

‘Two years ago we introduced a form of racial discrimination into the civil service. For both recruitment and promotion we gave Tanganyika citizens of African descent priority over other Tanganyikan citizens. There were good reasons for this action then, which we fully explained. It was necessary to counteract the effects of past discrimination against citizens of African descent so that our civil service could develop a ‘local look’, and there was also an unavoidable uncertainty about which people of non-African descent were really committed to Tanganyika. The time for this compromise with principles has now past. The reasons which were valid in 1961 are not valid in 1964. Most of all, there is no longer any doubt about who is a citizen of the Republic of Tanganyika. It is natural that we should distinguish between those who are, and those who are not, citizens of our country. But it would be quite wrong for us to continue to discriminate between Tanganyika citizens on any grounds other than those of character, and ability to do specific tasks. We cannot allow the growth of first and second class citizenship. Each Tanganyikan citizen must accept all the duties, and receive all the rights, which our citizenship implies. All must be governed by the same laws, must receive the same respect from his fellows, and have the same opportunities to earn a living and to serve the nation of which he is a member. Anything other than this would now mean intolerable hypocrisy. The distinction between citizens of African descent and citizens of Non-African descent must now be ended…The only distinction which can in future be accepted is that between citizens and non-citizens…This action is not taken ‘for the sake of people with brown or white skin,’ but for Tanganyika. It is essential in order that every citizen of our country – whether at home or abroad – can hold his head high without hypocrisy, or attempts at ‘explanations’

On paper this policy is what came to define what it means to be a citizen, rather than a subject, in post-colonial Tanganyika and subsequently in Tanzania for in a significant way this policy was extended to the 1964 Union for the key issues regarding citizenship were thus included in the Article of Union between the Republic of Tanganyika and the Republic of Zanzibar: ‘(VI) There shall be reserved to the Parliament and Executive of the United Republic the following matters … (f) Citizenship. (g) Immigration…’ In theory therefore the then colonial subject had thus become a post-colonial citizen. But in practice did every Tanzanian become a (full) citizen?

Among other incidents, the case of the Appellate Court’s upholding a ruling in favour of the eviction of the Maasai in Mkomazi Game Reserve on the ground that ‘white’ investors came there before them and that of upholding a ruling in favour of the alienation of the Barbaig’s land in Mulbadaw Village on the grounds that they could not prove that they were natives shows how the incomplete reform of the dual/bifurcated state characterised by the ‘customary law/native space’ vis-à-vis the ‘civil law/civic space’ systemise the denial of the privileges of citizenship.

* Read the first article in this series: When do ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’?
* This article is based on a paper titled When Does a Native or Settler Become a Dual Citizen? presented at the 3rd European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) held at Leipzig, Germany (4 - 7 June 2009)
* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist & policy analyst, based in Dares-Salaam, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Pan-Africanism: I am dreaming of course

An Interview with Bereket Habte Selassie

Issa Shivji and Bereket Habte Selassie

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57614

cc WikimediaIssa Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, interviews Bereket Habte Selassie, an observer and participant in African politics for almost five decades. From the first All Africa People’s Conference in 1958, to the ‘doubt’ and ‘desperation’ of the current African reality, Selassie provides a thoughtful perspective on the history Pan-Africanism, as well as advice for the future of the African Union. This interview first appeared in Pan-African journal Chemchemi.

INTRODUCTION

Professor Bereket Habte Selassie has the distinction of observing and participating in African politics for almost five decades. He was trained in Britain and then joined the service of the Ethiopian government in 1958. In 1962, at the age of 30, he was appointed by Emperor Haile Selassie to be the attorney general of Ethiopia. He participated in the Africa People’s Conferences organised by Kwame Nkrumah and in the formation of the OAU. In 1962 when the Emperor unilaterally scrapped the federation with Eritrea and sent his army to occupy Eritrea, Bereket Selassie resigned to join the Eritrean freedom movement. Later, following Eritrea’s liberation, he chaired the constitutional commission and drafted Eritrea’s constitution, which was never adopted by the Eritrean government. In this interview with Issa Shivji, Habte Selassie reminisces on his impressions of the Pan-African Movement.

ISSA SHIVJI: Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview for the Chemchemi, Bereket. You have had the distinct honour of living through and participating in some momentous events in the Pan-Africanist history of our continent. You were present both at the first All Africa People’s Conference in 1958 called by Kwame Nkrumah and also at the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (the predecessor of African Union) in Addis Ababa in 1963. Tell us of the mood of African leaders and their views, opinions, positions on creating a United States of Africa at the 1958 Conference. Did the idea look realistic then? More or less realistic than today?

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: As you mentioned, I was indeed privileged to have been present at those events. But before I answer your specific questions, let me begin by making reference to the current African reality, very briefly. The reality today is such that even the most optimistic of men – and I am one of them – find it hard to banish feelings of doubt, if not desperation.

Though I remain optimistic, in view of the prevailing African reality, my optimism is tinged with a dose of scepticism. Africans of my generation were involved in what I can only call a romance with Africa, from the heady days of the independence era through four decades of neo-colonial exploitation, invariably accompanied with protests – protests against domestic dictatorships and continuing poverty as the rich few got richer and the greater mass of the poor populations got poorer.

In these circumstances, to continue in a state of romantic engagement with the continent would have implied wilful refusal to accept the reality, in the hope of transforming it. It is admirable to make attempts at transformation but, on the whole, there have been no meaningful changes. In fact, as the French say, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose [the more things change the more they stay the same].

It brings to mind the story of Sisyphus in Greek legend, pushing a boulder up the hill, forever trying to climb to the top, and forever failing. Such seems to be the fate of our benighted continent. I have not abandoned hope; but there must be a limit to optimism. As Antonio Gramsci famously opined, the pessimism of the intellect is a good corrective to the optimism of the will.

Now let me turn to the glorious days of the independence era when most Africans of my generation agreed with Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a United African Continent. The first time this was brought home to me as a distinct possibility was at the All African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958.

The conference was convened by the indefatigable and inimitable Nkrumah, who had tried to persuade his brother African heads of state and government a few months earlier to agree to the creation of continental unity. He had just published his book, Africa Must Unite, and was gathering a group of young Pan-Africanists, using Ghana’s not inconsiderable wealth, to help liberation fighters throughout the continent.

Some of the best known were Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Felix Moumie of Cameroun. Both were Pan-Africanists and both were martyred. Lumumba was a victim of a joint CIA and Belgian conspiracy. Moumie was poisoned by an agent of the French Intelligence Service.

Nkrumah’s All African People’s Conference was designed to bring pressure to bear on the government leaders by mobilising labour unions, the youth, women’s organisations and leaders of liberation movements. We should remember that in 1958 there were only seven independent African States; and none of their leaders except perhaps Guinea’s Sekou Toure, was in favour of a Pan-Africanist vision of uniting the continent. It was clear that Nkrumah’s was a lonely voice. But the sentiment of the political forces outside government seemed to be on his side at the time. As always happens, once they attain governmental power, former liberation leaders forget, or at least modify their previously held view about African unity. Personal power grounded in a colonially-derived nation state structure militated against the ideal of African unity. Once ensconced in national state power, even former Pan-Africanists like Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, whose concept of Negritude contained elements of Pan-Africanism, changed. Even the regional experiment of a Mali federation that he had championed earlier was abandoned as personal rivalry between him and his Malian comrade, Mamadou Dia, vitiated its realisation.

Clearly, in all cases, personal power at the state level trumped the Pan-Africanist ideal. That has become the dominant political reality.

ISSA SHIVJI: In your article in Societies without Borders (volume 2-1 2007) you say that you were very impressed by the camaraderie between sub-Saharan and North African leaders at the 1958 conference. Again, you allude to the fact that North African leaders like Nasser of Egypt and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria were received with great enthusiasm and reverence at the 1963 founding conference of the OAU. In the light of the oft-repeated claim – even by some African intellectuals – made these days that unity of black states south of the Sahara and Arab states in the North is untenable, how do you see, understand and explain that historical precedence compared with present-day perceptions?

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: In the heady days of the independence movements when the Algerian revolution was embraced as part of the African revolution, and some of us even entertained the notion of going there and fighting for it (perhaps foolishly), there was no division between black Africa and Arab Africa, or between the ‘Arab’ North and the ‘black’ South. The Algerians were regarded as African heroes by most Africans of my generation. Similarly, as Ben Bella’s speech at the founding conference of the OAU eloquently expressed it, the Algerians considered the liberation struggle in the rest of Africa as part of their struggle.

The ideology of the Algerian liberation front (the FLN), with its socialist orientation and internationalist stand, also provided a point of solidarity and unity with the struggle in the rest of Africa. You may remember the Martiniquian doctor, (author of the famous The Wretched of the Earth) Frantz Fanon, was accepted as one of their own by the FLN leaders. In fact he led the Algerian delegation at the Accra conference. As it happened, our delegation and theirs stayed in the same hotel and we chatted a lot as I happen to speak French.

As for the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, his strategy of anti-imperialism was framed within the concept of Egypt’s three circles – African, Arab, and Islamic. These three circles were the defining elements of his strategic and geopolitical goals. But, though this goal was expressed in his unstinting help to African liberation movements, there were times when the three circles tended to create contradictions and problems. At times, black Africans who went to Cairo for help might have felt neglected or sidelined. But on the whole, there was good reception. It is not easy when you don’t understand the language and culture of the country from which you seek aid.

So on the whole, in the halcyon days, there was better mutual understanding and accommodation between North and South. Changing economic and social conditions have negatively affected that relation. People and governments tend to be less generous during economic hardship. We should never lose sight of this. When a country is in a better economic condition, it behaves more generously, as illustrated by the behaviour of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his record of the last few years, including his push to reform the OAU and help create the African Union (AU). I would say that we need to have a broader view of things when we consider relations between North and South in Africa. While we cannot ignore history and some differences of culture, we need to accept our North African brothers and sisters as fellow Africans and do our best to create conditions for fostering mutual acceptance and cooperation. To that end, we need to define some minimal common goals and start with those, beginning with culture and trade.

ISSA SHIVJI: In relation to the above, how do you see Nkrumah’s own attitude? Was there an undercurrent of this type of tension then?

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: I have never heard Nkrumah utter a word that in any way showed any reservation regarding our North African brothers and sisters. Nor have I read any writing of his to that effect. On the contrary, the fact that he married an Egyptian woman shows the opposite to be the case. Nkrumah and Nasser respected each other as fellow socialists, even though Nkrumah’s socialism was a little more to the left – his organisational principles were grounded on Leninist precepts, as he often cited Lenin as a supreme teacher on questions of party organisation. Where he parted company with Lenin (and Marx) was in his insistence on the application of the African cultural heritage. His Pan-Africanism was influenced more by W. E. Dubois. But it embraced the entire continent and did not make a distinction between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Whether there were hidden tensions in the application of that principle of unity of North and South it is hard to tell. In any case, all relationships involve tension of one kind or another—even domestic relations, among siblings.

ISSA SHIVJI: You describe in interesting detail the founding of the OAU and Nkrumah’s attitude towards it. Nkrumah, you recall, would have walked out had it not been for the intervention of Emperor Haile Selassie through Sekou Toure. In the light of your experience of over half a century of the independence of African states within colonial borders, how do you rate Nkrumah’s vision of the United States of Africa?

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: There are two ways of answering this question. One is by reference to what I stated in the introduction, that is to say, to judge Nkrumah’s vision in hindsight, from the perspective of the sorry sate of affairs in Africa today. In that sense, Nkrumah may be characterised as a failed prophet, vainly proselytising and chasing rainbows, rather like Don Quixote round the wind-mills. That, I am sure, is how his adversaries would paint him. To Pan-Africanists, however, he was a true prophet who battled mightily to impress upon his brethren the historic necessity of African unity if Africa were to secure her rightful place in the family of nations - if she is to face the rest of the world united and stronger, both politically and economically. The artificially created colonial borders that define African nation-statehood, which the OAU reaffirmed in Cairo in 1964, need to be revisited in all seriousness.

Let me conclude the answer to this question by saying that Nkrumah’s warning still rings in my ears when he said, ‘Unless we are united politically, we will be for ever vulnerable, subject to economic exploitation by the powerful economies of the world’. Those were prophetic words, and globalisation has made Africa even more vulnerable today than before. I think these words of Nkrumah, which sum up Africa’s predicament, should be written in golden letters at the entrance of the African Union as a reminder of our sad condition, and young Africans should be exposed to the ideas of African unity in every way possible. In this task we academics bear a special responsibility. We can certainly take a leaf from the experience of Europe of the last fifty-odd years, though I don’t think we have to wait fifty years to achieve the end of African unity.

ISSA SHIVJI: And how would you assess the two major trends – those who advocate gradualism and those who insist on political unity ‘now, now’? (By the way, during Nkrumah’s time too we had those two trends represented by Nyerere and Nkrumah!)

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: Realistically speaking, the regional economic organisations that we have today may be used as building blocks for eventual unity. But the ultimate goal should be unity in accordance with Nkrumah’s vision. That is how I see his relevance in our times. I am aware that the two approaches were also present in the 1960s. In fact it was Mwalimu Nyerere’s eloquence and popularity with the majority of African leaders, who were opposed to Nkrumah’s vision, that defeated Nkrumah’s idea of continental unity at the time when the issues were debated at the first and second OAU summit meetings.

This is an area where we can learn from the mistakes of other regions of the world. It took Europe some fifty years to create the European Union (EU). They did it in stages. In 1968, they established the European Economic Community (EEC), under the Treaty of Rome. The original signatories of the Treaty of Rome (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), agreed to form a customs union, adopt a common external tariff, and harmonise their domestic economic policies.

They made it clear that their ultimate goal was a common market embracing all of Western Europe. In 1973, Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined in, followed by Greece in 1981, and Spain and Portugal in 1986, bringing the number up to twelve. Thus in a matter of thirty years, the EEC became the second largest economic power in the world. By 1992, the EEC had created a common market, and within the next decade, Europe achieved the dream of centuries, transforming itself into the European Union, bringing into its membership several former allies of the USSR.

Africa has had its experience of regional cooperation, such as the East African Economic Community patterned on the EEC and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Despite the multiplicity of regional groupings, however, there has been slow progress towards economic integration. What has been missing from the very beginning is the political will and cooperative vision.

ISSA SHIVJI: Finally, you have spent over three decades of your life in the Eritrean freedom struggle. How do you see such conflicts on the continent in relation to Pan-Africanism? Some argue that such conflicts precisely dictate a gradual process of unification so that individual countries can put their houses in order, so to speak, before we think of unification. Others argue the opposite: That only Pan-African political unity has the potential to resolve inter-African conflicts.

BEREKET HABTE SELASSIE: The debate as to which is the best way to achieve the aim of African unity will probably go on for generations. It took Europe centuries; I hope we don’t have to wait that long. The case for Pan-Africanist unity can be made in different ways. Opponents of Eritrea’s case for independence, influenced by Emperor Haile Selassie’s diplomacy (powerfully backed by the United States), used to argue that recognizing Eritrea’s case would open a ‘Pandora’s Box’ in African politics by inspiring other groups within constituted nations to seek secession.

To put the case in perspective, a brief historical background is necessary. As you know, the Eritrean case was grounded in legal and historical arguments that should have resonated with the African post-colonial rationale. According to that rationale all former colonial territories defined by the colonially-fixed boundaries constitute the post-colonial nation-state. In other words, African leaders accepted the colonial legal order created under the Berlin Conference; they confirmed it as the post-colonial legal order by passing the Cairo Resolution (of the OAU) in 1964.

The Eritrean argument was that the application of that rationale should extend to the case of Eritrea because Eritrea is an entity created by the same colonial history as the rest of Africa. There is a very interesting statement made by former Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who recognised the same rationale long before the Cairo Resolution. He said that, though the Eritreans had a just case, American strategic and geopolitical interests in the region dictated that Eritrea should be given to the US ally, Ethiopia.

Thus the convergence of American interest and Emperor Haile Selassie’s expansionist ambition sealed Eritrea’s fate. It was only after peaceful, diplomatic means to exercise their right to self-determination failed that the Eritrean people took up arms: what was denied them diplomatically, they achieved by force of arms, after thirty years of a bloody war.

Now, the Americans used the UN forum to achieve their strategic objective. At their behest, the UN passed a Resolution joining Eritrea with Ethiopia under a lopsided federal arrangement in which Eritrea had a modicum of regional autonomy. But at least the UN legal instrument creating the federation recognised Eritrea as an autonomous entity, and Eritreans accepted the fait accompli hoping to retain their autonomous identity within the federation. The Emperor’s vaulting ambition overreached itself, and he abolished the federation and imposed an imperial rule. That was the origin of the war of independence. That, incidentally, was also the point at which I resigned from his government and eventually joined up with the Eritrean liberation struggle.

Many Ethiopians, including some of my friends who were anti-imperial in their ideology, had hoped that the Eritrean autonomy would inspire other regions of Ethiopia to gain a measure of autonomy and thus transform the empire eventually into a sort of a commonwealth of willing partners. What the current government of Ethiopia originally set out to do is an approximation of that vision. Whether it can be sustained is another matter. The two governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia (based on the EPLF and TPLF respectively) are led by former comrades-in-arms who fought jointly, defeating Mengistu’s army. Much hope was pinned on their promise to establish a progressive regional government based on cooperative principles that would be a model for the rest of Africa. It proved to be a vain hope. Indeed, they not only failed to create a regional cooperation; in 1998, they fought a deadly and futile war that took the lives of over 100,000 people and much devastation of property.

This conflict, among others, seems to lend credence to the argument that each country has to put its own house in order before thinking of unity with others. But then waiting for each country to do that is like waiting for Godot, if I may be melodramatic. I still maintain that we need to hold Nkrumah’s vision aloft and work towards its realisation in various ways, perhaps through stages of regional groupings. In this the AU may need to act more vigorously to prod regions and countries to create regional trade relations. The AU needs also to tap into African resources at two levels:

1. At the level of wise elders tapping on the African genius of mediation and peace building to resolve conflicts; and
2. At the level of experts, tapping on increasing African expertise in all technical fields related to trade and commerce, culture and other areas.

The recent experience of conflict in Kenya provides an example of an extreme case of tribally-based conflict centred on, or exacerbated by, competition over resources. In the present instance, the competition was for political power which has become an all important resource. In the final resolution of the Kenya conflict, an exemplary model of mediation was provided by the role of the Tanzanian President, if my information is correct. The Kenya example reminds me of an interesting phrase of British historian John Lonsdale. Writing about the artificial creation of ‘tribes’ by the colonial authorities, he described the effect of that division as the ‘conversion of negotiable ethnicity into competitive tribalism.’

This useful insight is helpful in all attempts to create structures that can restore the original ethos of negotiating and mediation in place of deadly competition. In such endeavour, Pan-Africanism may need to be redefined to accommodate new modes of thinking derived from research and creative writing. Our poets, as much as our historians and sociologists, have to weigh in on this Herculean task.

I am dreaming, of course!

* This article first appeared in the maiden issue of CHEMCHEMI, Bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the editorial board of CHEMCHEMI.
* Bereket Habte Selassie has observed and participated in African politics for almost five decades.
* Issa Shivji is the Mwalimu Nyerere professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Will economists Stiglitz and Yunus add to debate on crisis?

Patrick Bond

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57583

cc flickr.comAlarmed at the fondness for neoliberal solutions to the global financial crisis among the Nobel Prize Winners Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz, Patrick Bond suspects that the two economists are simply aiding rather than challenging the global capitalist system. With Yunus and Stiglitz both set to give talks in Johannesburg this week, Bond fears that civil society's calls for social and environmental justice will continue to remain overlooked.

A couple of Nobel prize-winning economists are giving major talks in Johannesburg this week. Many in civil society hope the visits by two of global capitalism's best-known critics can pull local economic policy debates further leftwards, towards meeting social needs, not market dogmas and corporate profitability.

Without wanting to prejudge, I just don't think such expectations will be fulfilled. The ideas for which Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Economics Prize in 2006 and 2001 respectively are simply not sufficient for these tumultuous times.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation is honouring Grameen Bank founder and microcredit guru Yunus on Saturday with the annual Mandela Lecture, while Columbia University Professor Stiglitz will be giving two speeches at Wits University on Wednesday and Friday.

The way both have addressed the global economic meltdown leaves a great deal to be desired. Yunus is most complicated because his micro-finance strategy dovetails with the most rabid model of neoliberal capitalism, especially after his 1998 autobiography made clear the Bangladeshi's maniacal policy agenda.

As Yunus put it, 'I believe that "government", as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector", a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.'

Over the past three decades, across the world, many governments pulled back from regulating financial markets, especially in the United States under the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations.

One might expect that the resulting financial crisis would change Yunus's tune. After all, the catalysing event a couple of years ago was the rising default rate on a rash of 'sub-prime mortgage' loans given to low-income US borrowers.

Earlier the Yunus philosophy was that 'credit is a fundamental human right', not just a privilege for those with access to bank savings accounts and formal employment that permits stop-order repayments.

Reflect on this, and you quickly realise how ridiculous, inappropriate and dangerous it is to compare bank credit with crucial political and civil liberties, healthcare, water, nutrition, education, environment, housing and the other rights guaranteed in constitutions such as South Africa's.

Yet the biography of Yunus supplied by his local speaking agent – www.speakersinc.co.za – still makes reference to 'credit as a fundamental human right' in its opening sentence.

Apparently backing away from this posture four months ago, Yunus told India's MicroFinance Focus magazine the opposite: 'If somebody wants to do microcredit – fine. I wouldn't say this is something everybody should have.'

Indeed, the predatory way that credit was introduced to vulnerable US communities in recent years means Yunus now must distinguish his Grameen Bank strategy of 'real' microcredit from microcredit 'which has a different motivation'.

'Whenever something gets popular,' he told the Indian magazine, 'there are people who take advantage of that and misuse it.'

To be sure, Yunus also unveiled a more radical edge in his interview, interpreting the crisis in the following terms: 'The root causes are the wrong structure, the capitalism structure we have. We have to redesign the structure we are operating in. Wrong, unsustainable lifestyle.'

Fair enough. But in the next breath Yunus is back in the neoliberal box, arguing that state microfinance 'regulation should be promotional, a cheerleader'.

For a man whose strategy of lending to women in group-borrowing schemes garnered such praise, but who when times were tough allowed interest rates to soar and his loan collectors to rip the tin roofs off the women's houses as a means of taking collateral when they defaulted, a robust consumer watchdog is needed, certainly not a cheerleader.

Similar contradictions characterise Stiglitz's views. His first Wits lecture promises to address 'the role that orthodox economists played in the creation of the crisis and the implications for the teaching of the discipline of economics in universities.'

This sounds very welcome. Stiglitz won the Nobel prize for his new 'information-theoretic economics', especially the critique of the flawed market assumption of perfect information by buyers and sellers.

He coined the phrase 'post-Washington Consensus' in 1998 to suggest the need to drop the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank orthodoxy of the day, and in 2002 he even called for the IMF to be shut down.

Yet Stiglitz's own ideology is based upon fixing capitalist markets, not transcending them. As he explained six months ago, 'No one can be sure what will work. But long-standing economic principles can help guide us. Incentives matter.'

The same reversion to orthodoxy was witnessed in his leadership of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, which met last week in New York.

Ultimately, Stiglitz's work disappointed those with more ambitious reforms in mind. There was no mention of capital- and exchange-controls to grant countries insulation from disastrous global financial flows.

There were no suggestions for converting banks' nationalisation from 'lemon socialism' into genuine public utilities. The Jubilee movement's projects of debt cancellation, 'odious debts' and 'reparations' were not mentioned.

There were no detailed strategies to address ecological debt and the financing implications of climate crisis. There was no attempt at commodity price regulation, in spite of disastrous swinging.

Instead Stiglitz's commission endorsed the tired, dubious Doha Agenda of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as a greater role for the much maligned IMF.

The commission proposed a UN Global Economic Council with two dozen members with a similar status to the UN Security Council, which might potentially lock in the power of the G20 elites – including South Africa – rather than democratising the world economy.

On the other hand, the commission also proposed a new currency and reserve system that would suffer relatively less veto power from the wealthy countries, plus a 1 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) levy to redistribute from North to South.

But overall Stiglitz failed to grasp the opportunity of de-legitimising the world elites who are desperately trying to return to business-as-usual. A much greater challenge to prevailing international economic relations will be needed to recover from the depression.

During a week in which the G8 leadership is meeting in Italy with the intent of sabotaging prospects for a workable climate change treaty in Copenhagen, the world needs genuine voices of clarity on behalf of social and environmental justice.

Maybe Yunus and Stiglitz can rise to the occasion. My guess though is that they will remain trapped inside the box of their training as damn economists.

* Patrick Bond is the director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Donors should treat the disabled equally

Phitalis Were Masakhwe

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57577

cc Daquella ManeraDissatisfied with donors' unwillingness to promote disabled people's rights in their dealings with Kenyan organisations, Phitalis Were Masakhwe calls on international funders to show greater scrutiny when it comes giving financial assistance. From women's rights to promoting multi-party democracy, carrot-and-stick policies have been central in forcing Kenya to reform, Were Masakhwe notes, arguing that they should occupy an equally central role in cementing equality for disabled people.

In the early 1990s it took the intervention of the international community to break Kenya's one-party authoritarianism and open the door for plural politics and enhanced respect for human rights in the country. The powerful networks of Kenya's development partners forced the regime of former President Daniel arap Moi to reform and expand the democratic space. It was reform or no development assistance, period! That is the power and leverage development partners can bring to struggling economies like ours.

A couple of years back, phrases like 'gender mainstreaming' didn’t mean anything to the government and even NGOs' leadership in Kenya – not until the donors flexed their muscles. Child rights, human rights, democracy and the environment are just some of the globally accepted themes and values that were 'forced' on our government and civil society. Today neither government nor civil society organisations can submit a bid to say the US' USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the UK's DfID (Department for International Development), Sweden's SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) or Canada's CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) without evidently reflecting gender concerns. Certainly no donor that I know of will disburse money to either a government or NGO programme if that support will promote or perpetuate child abuse.

And where those seeking donor funding ignore those universally agreed agendas, donors reject these proposals or they are sent back for review to reflect these concerns. The inclusion of doctrines like gender parity is not therefore a matter of choice for anybody; it is a matter of life and death! Amazingly, I have not come across a donor that has rejected a request for funding on the grounds that it has not included disability concerns or not shown the extend to which the proposed project will impact on children, women and men with disabilities. Why? The majority of these same donors have fancy statements on disability equality on their websites and foreign policy pronouncements! It is high time donors walked the walk on the principle of disability equality in their interaction with governments, UN agencies and civil society in general.

The British, Swedish, German, Italian, Japanese or US governments for instance cannot allow inaccessible public transport on their highways. They can’t allow discrimination in education and employment opportunities with regard to the disabled! How then can they give their cooperation, funding and technical assistance to countries like Kenya to be used exclusively or to perpetuate inequality and marginalisation? Shouldn’t their friendship with countries like Kenya include spreading the gospel of disability inclusion and equality as it is done in their own countries? Shouldn’t it include broadening human rights and governance to include all the disabled?

Through acts of omission and commission, Kenya has not yet created nor maintained decent conditions for those with disabilities.

Reflect on free primary education, healthcare, HIV/AIDS, social protection and related poverty eradication schemes, human rights, judicial, institutional and constitutional reforms including infrastructure developments which are heavily subsidised by donors. How accessible and inclusive are these programmes?
Do the donors bother to make sure that they are inclusive and accessible to all, including the disabled? If not, why not place conditionalities that will force the disability agenda onto and within those programmes? Why apply conditionalities thinly and exclusively?

Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities clearly deals with this issue:

'States Parties recognize the importance of international cooperation and its promotion, in support of national efforts for the realization of the purpose and objectives of the present convention, and will undertake appropriate and effective measures in this regard, between and among States and, as appropriate, in partnership with relevant international and regional organizations and civil society, in particular organizations of persons with disabilities.'

This should be applied through ensuring that international cooperation, including international development programmes, is inclusive of and accessible to persons with disabilities. This can be done by supporting capacity-building, including through the exchange and sharing of information, experiences, training programmes and best practices. Others approaches should include facilitating cooperation in research and access to scientific and technical knowledge and providing, as appropriate, technical and economic assistance, including by facilitating access to and sharing of accessible and assistive technologies, and through the transfer of technologies.

A quick walk into the offices of any of the major development partners in Kenya will find desks and advisors on virtually everything under the sun, except disability! How can that be tolerated in this era and age when disability affects more than 3 million Kenyans?

The carrot-and-stick policy by donors has helped reform Kenya. It has helped lift women out of obscurity to cabinet boardrooms. It can surely and firmly apply to give the disabled greater visibility and consideration in the country’s socio-economic and political landscape.

Development partners in Kenya must be part of the solution to the problems bedevilling the disabled population and not part of the problem as their current silence and lack of tangible actions seems to suggest.

The time to practice disability equality in international cooperation with Kenya is now.

* Phitalis Were Masakhwe is a sociologist who has a physical disability.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

SA: To nationalise or not?

William Gumede

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57611

cc Jespah JoyThe South African government will have to bail out private companies as the global financial crisis begins to bite the national economy, writes William Gumede. But which companies should the government nationalise? Moreover, given its 'depressing record' thus far, is it actually capable of running a complex organisation without making the headlines for mismanagement and corruption? Dismissive of BEE consortiums or majority foreign ownership as an alternative, Gumede calls for ‘a stress test’ to prioritise which companies to rescue, based on what the country would lose if they were to close.

To ease the wave of job losses, factory and mine closures as a result of the global financial crisis, the question should not be whether the South African government should bail out or nationalise certain struggling companies, it should be: Which ones?

The very real immediate danger about nationalising a private company is that the South African government‘s record of managing complex public organisations is depressingly poor. Of all the state-owned organisations, arguably only the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and South African Revenue Service (SARS), are being managed well. PetroSA, a state-owned company set up to be supposedly run with the nous of an efficient private company, albeit with national development objectives – which is certainly the way to go – is still misfiring.

Most of the other state-owned organisations are mostly in the news for mismanagement, failure and corruption. So there is a real danger that any company that will be nationalised by government or even any new state-owned company set up will be beset with mismanagement, jobs-for-pals and corruption. Even the new proposed state-owned mining company will fail like South African Airways (SAA) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), unless only the best talent is appointed to run it.

ANC leaders must forget about the ideology, faction or colour of the management appointed to run the proposed state-owned mining company, or any other new state-owned company. What must now count is to set clear developmental targets, namely job creation, beneficiation, skills transfer, and so on, for the new company, and then appoint only the best managers, on merit, to deliver on these targets. If they don’t deliver, fire them.

Handing over struggling companies to black economic empowerment (BEE) tycoons or consortiums must be an absolute no-no. In this national economy emergency, we cannot afford the luxury of giving away scarce funds and resources to enrich individuals. To date, none of the BEE companies or individuals has contributed anything substantial to expand the skills base, to come up with totally new industries, or lift communities out of poverty.

We must set a stress test for bailing out or nationalising companies. The test for bailing out a company must include whether South Africa will lose strategic industrial and technological capacity, mass jobs, and the social costs to the surrounding community, region or province if the private company closes.

Crucially, it will be important to see whether the technology can be transferred to other sectors, and whether a company would be sustainable in the future, but just needs financial support to survive the current financial global meltdown. For example, not only is the automotive industry crucial in the economically depressed Eastern Cape, it also has strategic capacity and technology which can be transferred elsewhere: Building a locally owned industry to build buses, mini-business and rail coaches, during this economically depressed period.

Platinum is another industry that cannot be allowed to go belly up. Platinum is a strategic metal. For one, Chinese state-owned companies are eager to buy up struggling local platinum mines. In fact, state-owned Chinese companies are trawling Africa, looking for bargains – often strategic mines, agricultural land and companies – to buy for a song during this difficult time for African economies. It will be a mistake to hand-over majority ownership of such a strategic metal to the Chinese. Any foreign buy-in must not be a majority share, and it must be strictly policed to see that there is job creation, skills transfer, injection of real money and technology, and that most of the latter two stay in this country.

* This article first appeared in the Sowetan.
* William Gumede is author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

The man in our mirror: Michael Jackson

Greg Tate

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57581

cc M S MelvaIn the wake of Michael Jackson's death, Greg Tate discusses the entertainer's place in the pantheon of black American musical greats. Considering his immense cultural significance within American political and cultural life, Tate stresses that Jackson 'came to rank as one of the great storytellers and soothsayers of the last 100 years'. Regardless of his alienation from the black America of his origins, Tate argues, Jackson remained a devoted student of black music, dance and style, taking and giving back in unparalleled ways.

What black American culture – musical and otherwise – lacks for now isn't talent or ambition, but the unmistakable presence of some kind of spiritual genius, the sense that something other than or even more than human is speaking through whatever fragile mortal vessel is burdened with repping for the divine, the magical, the supernatural, the ancestral. You can still feel it when you go hear Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Aretha Franklin, or Cecil Taylor, or when you read Toni Morrison – living Orishas who carry on a tradition whose true genius lies in making forms and notions as abstract, complex and philosophical as soul, jazz or the blues so deeply and universally felt. But such transcendence is rare now, given how desperate, soul-crushing and immobilising modern American life has become for the poorest strata of our folk, and how dissolute, dispersed and distanced from that resource-poor but culturally rich, heavyweight strata the rest of us are becoming. And, like Morrison cautioned a few years ago, where the culture is going now, not even the music may be enough to save us.

The yin and yang of it is simple: You don't get the insatiable hunger (or the black acculturation) that made James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson run, not walk, out the hood without there being a hood – the Olympic obstacle-course incubator of much musical black genius as we know it. As George Clinton likes to say, 'Without the humps, there's no getting over.' (Next stop: hip-hop – and maybe the last stop too, though who knows, maybe the next humbling god of the kulcha will be a starchitect or a superstring theorist, the Michael Jackson of D-branes, black P-branes, and dark-energy engineering.) Black Americans are inherently and even literally 'damaged goods', a people whose central struggle has been overcoming the non-person status we got stamped and stomped into us during slavery and post-Reconstruction and which resonates even now, if you happen to be black and poor enough (as M-1 of Dead Prez wondered out loud, 'What are we going to do to get all this poverty off of us?'). As a people, we have become past-masters of devising strategies for erasing the erasure. Dreaming up what's still the most sublime visual representation of this process is what makes Jean-Michel Basquiat's work not just ingenious, but righteous and profound. His dreaming up the most self-flagellating erasure of self to stymie the erasure is what makes Michael Jackson's story so numbing, so macabre, so absurdly Stephen King.

The scariest thing about the Motown legacy, as my father likes to argue, is that you could have gone into any black American community at the time and found raw talents equal to any of the label's polished fruit: The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, or Holland-Dozier-Holland – all my love for the mighty D and its denizens notwithstanding. Berry Gordy just industrialised the process, the same as Harvard University or the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) have always done for the brightest prospective servants of the evil empire. The wisdom of Berry's intervention is borne out by the fact that since Motown left Detroit, the city's production of extraordinary musical talent can be measured in droplets: the Clark Sisters, Geri Allen, Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Kenny Garrett, J Dilla. But Michael himself is our best proof that Motown didn't have a lock on the young, black and gifted pool, as he and his siblings were born in Gary, Indiana: a town otherwise only notable for electing our good brother Richard Hatcher to a 20-year mayoral term and for hosting the historic 1972 National Black Political Convention, a gathering where our most politically educated folk (the Black Panther Party excepted) chose to shun Shirley Chisholm's presidential run. Unlike Motown, no one could ever accuse my black radical tradition of blithely practicing unity for the community, or of possessing the vision and infrastructure required to pull a cat like Michael up from the abysmal basement of America and groom him for world domination.

Motown saved Michael from Gary, Indiana – no small feat. Michael and his family remain among the few Negroes of note to escape from the now century-old city, which today has a black American population of 84 per cent. These numbers would mean nothing if we were talking about a small Caribbean nation, but they tend to represent a sign of the apocalypse where urban America is concerned. The Gary of 2009 is considered the 17th most dangerous city in America, which may be an improvement. The real question of the hour is, how many other black American men born in Gary in 1958 lived to see their 24th birthday in 1982, the year Thriller broke the world open louder than a cobalt bomb and remade black American success in Michael's before-and-after image? Where black modernity is concerned, Michael is the real missing link, the 'bridge of sighs' between the Way We Were and What We've Become in what Nelson George has astutely dubbed the 'post-Soul Era' – the only race-coded 'post' neologism grounded in actual history and not puffery. Michael's post-Motown life and career are a testament to all the cultural greatness that Motown and the Chitlin circuit wrought, but also all the acute identity crises those entities helped set in motion in the same funky breath.

From Compton to Harlem, we've witnessed grown men break down crying in the hood over Michael, some of my most hard-bitten, 24/7 militant black friends – male and female alike – copped to bawling their eyes out for days after they got the news. It's not hard to understand why, for just about anybody born in black America after 1958 – and this includes kids I'm hearing about who are as young as nine years old right now – Michael came to own a good chunk of our best childhood and adolescent memories. The absolute irony of all the jokes and speculation about Michael trying to turn into a European woman is that after James Brown, his music (and his dancing) represent the epitome – one of the mightiest peaks – of what we call black music. Fortunately for us, that suspect skin-lightening disease, bleaching away his black-nuss via physical or psychological means, had no effect on the field-holler screams palpable in his voice, or the electromagnetism fuelling his elegant and preternatural sense of rhythm, flexibility and fluid motion. With just his vocal gifts and his body alone as vehicles, Michael came to rank as one of the great storytellers and soothsayers of the last 100 years.

Furthermore, unlike almost everyone in the Apollo Theater pantheon save George Clinton, Michael now seems as important to us an image-maker – an illusionist and a fantasist at that – as he was a musician and entertainer. And until Hype Williams came on the music-video scene in the mid-1990s, no one else insisted that the visuals supporting R&B and Hip Hop would be as memorable, eye-popping and seductive as the music itself. Nor did anyone else spare any expense to ensure that they were. But Michael's phantasmal, shape-shifting videos, were also, upon reflection, strangely enough his way of socially and politically engaging the worlds of other real black folk from places like South Central Los Angeles, Bahia, East Africa, the prison system and Ancient Egypt. He did this sometimes in pursuit of mere spectacle ('Black and white'), sometimes as critical observer ('The way you make me feel'), sometimes as a cultural nationalist romantic ('Remember the time'), even occasionally as a harsh American political commentator ('They don't care about us'). Looking at those clips again, as millions of us have done over this past weekend, is to realise how prophetic Michael was in dropping mad cash to leave behind a visual record of his work that was as state-of-the-art as his musical legacy, as if he knew that one day our musical history would be more valued for what can be seen as for what can be heard.

George Clinton thought the reason Michael constantly chipped away at his appearance was less about racial self-loathing than about the number-one problem superstars have, which is figuring out what to do when people get sick of looking at your face. His orgies of rhino- and other plasties were no more than an attempt to stay ahead of a fickle public's fickleness. In the 1990s, at least until Eminem showed up, Hip Hop would seem to have proven that major black pop success in America didn't require a whitening up, maybe much to Michael's chagrin.

Whatever Michael's alienation and distance from the black America he came from – from the streets, in particular – he remained a devoted student of popular black music, dance and street style, giving to and taking from it in unparalleled ways. He let neither ears nor eyes nor footwork stray too far out-of-touch from the action, sonically, sartorially or choreographically. But whatever he appropriated also came back transmogrified into something even more inspiring and ennobled than before. Like the best artists everywhere, he begged, borrowed and stole from (and/or collaborated with) anybody he thought would make his own expression more visceral, modern and exciting, from Steven Spielberg to Akon to, yes, okay smartass, cosmetic surgeons. In any event, once he went solo, Michael was, above all else, committed to his genius being felt as powerfully as whatever else in mass culture he caught masses of people feeling at the time. I suppose there is some divine symmetry to be found in Michael checking out when Barack Obama, the new King of Pop, is just settling in: Just count me among those who feel that, in Michael Jackson terms, the young orator from Hawaii is only up to about the Destiny tour.

Of course, Michael's careerism had a steep downside, tripped onto a slippery slope, when he decided that his public and private life could be merged, orchestrated and manipulated for publicity and mass consumption as masterfully as his albums and videos. I certainly began to feel this when word got out of him sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber or trying to buy the Elephant Man's bones, and I became almost certain this was the case when he dangled his hooded baby son over a balcony for the paparazzi, to say nothing of his alleged darker impulses. At what point, we have to wonder, did the line blur for him between Dr Jacko and Mr Jackson, between Peter Pan fantasies and predatory behaviour? At what point did the Man in the Mirror turn into Dorian Gray? When did the Warholian creature that Michael created to deflect access to his inner life turn on him and virally rot him from the inside?

Real soul men eat self-destruction, chased by catastrophic forces from birth and then set upon by the hounds of hell the moment someone pays them cash-money for using the voice of God to sing about secular adult passion. If you can find a more freakish litany of figures who have suffered more freakishly disastrous demises and career denouements than the black American soul man, I'll pay you cash-money. Go down the line: Robert Johnson, Louis Jordan, Johnny Ace, Little Willie John, Frankie Lymon, Sam Cooke, James Carr, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. You name it, they have been smacked down by it: guns, planes, cars, drugs, grits, lighting rigs, shoe polish, asphyxiation by vomit, electrocution, enervation, incarceration, their own death-dealing preacher-daddy. A few, like Isaac Hayes, get to slowly rust before they grow old. A select few, like Sly, prove too slick and elusive for the tide of the River Styx, despite giddy years mocking death with self-sabotage and self-abuse.

Michael's death was probably the most shocking celebrity curtain-call of our time because he had stopped being vaguely mortal or human for us quite a while ago, had become such an implacably bizarre and abstracted tabloid creation, worlds removed from the various Michaels we had once loved so much. The unfortunate blessing of his departure is that we can now all go back to loving him as we first found him, without shame, despair or complication. 'Which Michael do you want back?' is the other real question of the hour. Over the years, we've seen him variously as our Hamlet, our Superman, our Peter Pan, our Icarus, our Fred Astaire, our Marcel Marceau, our Houdini, our Charlie Chaplin, our Scarecrow, our Peter Parker and black Spider-Man, our Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke, our Little Richard redux, our Alien vs. Predator, our Elephant Man, our Great Gatsby, our Lon Chaney, our Ol' Blue Eyes, our Elvis, our Frankenstein, our ET, our Mystique, our Dark Phoenix.

Celebrity idols are never more present than when they up and disappear, never ever saying goodbye, while affirming James Brown's prophetic reasoning that 'Money won't change you. But time will take you out.' Brown also told us, 'I've got money, but now I need love.' And here we are. Sitting with the rise and fall and demise of Michael, and grappling with how, as Dream Hampton put it, 'The loneliest man in the world could be one of the most beloved.' Now that some of us old-heads can have our Michael Jackson back, we feel liberated to be more gentle toward his spirit, releasing him from our outright rancour for scarring up whichever pre-trial, pre-chalk-complexion incarnation of him first tickled our fancies. Michael not being in the world as a Kabuki ghost makes it even easier to get through all those late-career movie-budget clips where he already looks headed for the out-door. Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise, both for him and for us, that he finally got shoved through it.

* Greg Tate is a writer for The Village Voice.
* This article was originally published by blackpower.com.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

On Michael Jackson: Blackness and 'pigment-ocracy'

Sokari Ekine

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57584

cc flickr.comFollowing the death of Michael Jackson, Sokari Ekine considers the motivation and meaning behind the pop icon's changing features within the context of the politics of 'pigment-ocracy'. While unconvinced by the idea that Jackson needed to change his features to become more 'marketable', Ekine concludes that the entertainer made a personal choice, one which ultimately did not change him from being anything but a black man.

So many millions of words have been written about Michael Jackson (MJ) over the past 10 days, most of which I confess I have avoided. However, I feel compelled to respond to a recent post by Blackman Vision (BMV) – 'Michael Jackson did not want to be white'. The post draws on a chapter 'Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson' by Kobena Mercer in 'Welcome to the Jungle' and on the politics of 'pigment-ocracy'.

Mercer explores the idea that Michael Jackson changed his skin colour not to be white, but to be a light-skinned black man. Jackson's whole remodelling of his hair, face and skin was to make him more lovable and marketable to a wider audience. Did Jackson believe it was easier to sell himself more successfully as ethnically androgynous than ethnically unambiguous to a global pop audience? The pop charts are not usually dominated by dark-skinned black men.

BMV goes on to say that those who believe that MJ was trying to be white are missing the point and fail to understand the politics of pigment-ocracy within the African diaspora whereby the desire is not to be white but to be light. She also comments on MJ's move towards an androgynous gender, which raises its own particular challenges in the largely 'plastic hyper-masculinity' which exists in the African-American and Afro-Caribbean family. While I believe both these points to be true, my response is to the former, for which I feel there is the need for a deeper reading.

What are the signs of blackness? Is skin colour sufficient, or do we, as Bell Hooks writes in 'Reel to Reel', need to look beyond that to political (and cultural) consciousness? Quoting filmmaker Issac Julien, she writes:

'Blackness as a sign is never enough. What does the black subject do, how does it act, how does it think politically … being black isn't really good enough for me. I want to know what your cultural politics are.'

Although here Julien is speaking about 'radical representations of black subjectivities' in film, I am comfortable in using this to examine the meaning of MJ's transformation from black to light. If we take political and cultural consciousness as one of the 'signs of blackness', where then does this leave MJ's slow physical transformation? Such a transformation, because it was always juxtaposed against dance moves and music wholly rooted in the black American musical tradition, speaks to the complexity of race and representation. How does political consciousness work side-by-side when feeding into pigment-ocracy and the desire to be light-skinned and delete one's black features?

BMV makes the point that MJ's father, Joe Jackson, told him he was ugly with a big nose and that he was also teased by his brothers. This abuse, together with the physical punishment he experienced, must have had an affect on MJ. Absolutely, I am sure it did. But how many black kids at home and in the playground have not had similar experiences of growing up with parental and peer jokes and slurs about their skin tone and features, having to deal with internalised racism in a wash of whiteness? If we are truthful the abuse is everywhere – too 'black' or too 'light'. We all have the choice of feeding into these racisms or of refusing to. MJ in particular as a 'star' of immense talent and success was in a far better position to overcome the politics of colour than most others. I don't accept that remaining his original self would have impacted on his success. By the time 'Off The Wall' was released in 1979 he was already heading for the pinnacle of stardom. Are we saying that musically the album Thriller (released 1983) was not sufficient to raise him above his peers, past and present, and that he had to remodel himself to become 'more lovable and marketable' to a wider audience'?

MJ made a personal choice and I am not prepared to make judgment or cast any slur on the choices he made as to the degree of his blackness. I believe them to be entirely personal – we alone define ourselves, how we perceive our bodies and our heritage. In 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora', Stuart Hall argues that there are two kinds of cultural identity. The first is the identity of being, which is part of a belonging to a shared identity, a 'collective "one true self", hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed "selves"', which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.

The second type of identity is the identity of becoming, an identity of the future. While recognising our similarities as in an identity of being, the identity of becoming relates to the 'critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute "what we really are"; or rather – since history has intervened – "what we have become".'

The point of Hall's argument is that it is only from the 'second position' of identity as an expression of discontinuity that we can begin to understand 'the traumatic character' of the colonial experience. In this instance, this is the transformation of MJ from being black/black to black/light but always remaining a black man – a fusion of the 'being' and the 'becoming'. Michael Jackson – RIP!

* Sokari Ekine blogs at Black Looks.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Jailed for taking humanitarian assistance to Gaza

Cynthia McKinney

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57604

cc flickr.comCynthia McKinney, human rights advocate and former US congresswoman was arrested and forcibly abducted to Israel, while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on 30 June. Speaking from the jail in which she and other activists were detained until July 5, McKinney said she wants 'the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.' Questioning how she could be imprisoned 'for collecting crayons to kids', McKinney added that 'if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state'.

The following is a transcript of Cynthia McKinney's original audio message. Cynthia McKinney is a former US Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the US House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested and forcibly abducted to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on 30 June 2009.

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies, and even crayons for children – I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza, the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis hijacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel's Operation Cast Lead [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day's notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, US-supplied F-16s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became fullscale outright genocide. US-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water... It's a miracle that I'm even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime ... I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could colour and paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: Populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream... like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better... The once proud, never colonised Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel – only after they arrived, Israel told them 'there is no UN in Israel.'

The police here have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandised slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christians. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle's detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough.

The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give US$12.8 trillion to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can' were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us, but more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr Martin Luther King Junior's letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the US have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school programme without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] What are you willing to do?

Let's change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United States Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: Send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, 2 July 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

* This transcription was first published by The Free Gaza Movement.
* Cynthia McKinney is a former US Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an advocate for human rights and social justice.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Israel practising apartheid in Occupied Palestinian Territories

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57606

cc D LisbonaIsrael is practising both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), an interim report released by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) suggests. Based on 15 months of research, the report reviews Israel’s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid in international law. Violations of international prohibitions on colonialism cited include Israel’s policy to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently and its appropriation of land and water in the OPT. Laws that give privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantage Palestinians in the same territory based on their identities are among the examples of apartheid highlighted in the study.

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The study is being posted for public debate on HSRC’s website.

The interim report, which will form part of a discussion at an upcoming HSRC conference on the subject, titled Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine, on 13 and 14 June in Cape Town, serves as a document to be finalised later this year.

The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct the study. The resulting 300-page draft, titled Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under international law, represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel's practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israel’s practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

You can download the report here:
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid: Executive Summary [PDF 950KB]
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid: Full Study [PDF 3.5MB]

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel's policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism, which the international community developed in the 1960s in response to the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel's economy, and imposed a system of domination over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of colonialism.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel's laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of their respective identities, which function in this case as racialised identities in the sense provided by international law. Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six 'inhuman acts' listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic ‘reserves' in the West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of ‘Grand Apartheid' in apartheid South Africa, in which black South Africans were confined to black homelands delineated by the South African government, while white South Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the rest of the country.

The Executive Summary [PDF 950KB] of the report says that the three pillars of apartheid in South Africa are all practiced by Israel in the OPT. In South Africa, the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third pillar was ‘a matrix of draconian “security” laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination.’

The report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same three 'pillars' of apartheid:

The first pillar ‘derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews’.

The second pillar is reflected in ’Israel's “grand” policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by Israel's extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians’.

The third pillar is ‘Israel's invocation of “security” to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group.’

The research team included scholars and international lawyers based at the HSRC, the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban), the Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and al-Haq/West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Consultation on the study's theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe.

The HSRC serves as the national social science council for South Africa. The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the South African government and civil society and the concerned international community.

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

The SOAWR campaign and ICTs

Karoline Kemp

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57578

cc SOAWRSurveying the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) campaign around the Protocol on Women’s Rights to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, Karoline Kemp discusses the role of ICTs (information and communication technologies) in engaging civil society and facilitating the campaign. Highlighting SOAWR's ability to nurture productive relationships with African Union (AU) departments in promoting the protocol, Kemp stresses that despite the success of communication tools like Pambazuka News, the real challenge will be to promote the protocol at the grassroots level through more traditional media.

According to the Overseas Development Institute (2006), the past 15 years have seen significant changes in the contexts affecting the relationships between civil society organisations and governmental policymakers. This shift in relationships has resulted in opportunities in the policy arena for an increasing number of actors. Civil society organisations constitute some of these players, and are embracing a range of methods to assist in their new roles in order to instigate networking, information-sharing and capacity-building. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing a large function in this new environment, and their role in international development is growing.

In the arena of women’s rights, a coalition of civil society organisations from across the African continent has capitalised on this policy-making space in an attempt to promote the Protocol on Women’s Rights to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. The Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) group has been working at the level of the African Union (AU), with member state governments and in local communities in order to ratify, popularise and implement the protocol. Their work as a coalition of different organisations engaging with governments has an explicit strategy of using ICTs, namely Pambazuka News, the electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa. SOAWR thus provides the basis of a case study for this research due to the fact they have claimed success around the ratification and popularisation of the protocol. Their use of ICTs is a significant aspect of this success.

As of November 2005, the protocol has been ratified by the African Union. However, governments have been slow to ratify it, and those which have done so have not generally taken the initiative on their own to begin popularising or implementing this new tool. African civil society organisations – all of whom are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who campaigned for many years around the protocol – worked alongside the African Union from the 1990s to draft and promote the adoption of the protocol. It was adopted in 2003. Civil society from across the continent came together in 2004 to form the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights coalition in order to work towards the ratification, popularisation and implementation of the protocol.

SOAWR, requiring a broader strategy in order to influence not only the AU but also its member states, has needed a completely new approach in order to encourage the protocol's ratification, and also to popularise it and begin the work of its implementation. Existing in an age of information and communication technologies, where the internet dominates offices around the globe, SOAWR has had an explicit strategy of capitalising on this means of sharing information and communicating with various players.

Generally referred to as the 'Maputo Protocol', or simply 'the protocol', the African Union adopted the Protocol on Women’s Rights to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights in 2003. It is the only women’s rights instrument originating in Africa and represents many 'firsts' in terms of legal protection for women, including the right to abortion in the case of rape, as well as a required principle of equality between men and women in national constitutions and other legislation. In order to take force, the protocol required signatures and ratifications by 15 African governments. This occurred in November of 2005, breaking historical records with regard to the speed with which it was ratified (most continental and regional human rights instruments in Africa have taken from eight to 10 years to obtain the ratifications needed for them to enter into force, according to SOAWR).

A concerted push for the protocol’s ratification, popularisation and implementation was taken up by a coalition of civil society organisations in 2004, at which point only one country (The Comoros) had signed and ratified the protocol. The SOAWR coalition was established by a small group of African civil society members and now has 29 members, which range in size from local organisations to pan-African as well as international organisations. Their goal was the universal ratification of the protocol and the subsequent popularisation and implementation necessary to make this legislation truly effective. To this end, the strategies that SOAWR lists to meet these goals include influencing public opinion in favour of the ratification, expanding its relationship with the African Union, actively engaging with mass media, making use of the internet to popularise the protocol and strengthening the leadership capability of women’s organisations. The coalition's strategies have been broad, and to meet these goals, its members have produced advocacy material which has been received at both the level of national governments as well as the African Union. A key approach has involved participation in AU summits and engaging with its various departments, as well as with member state governments.

When SOAWR was first created at a meeting in Nairobi, Fahamu, as a member of the coalition, offered the use of Pambazuka News to the group. This has resulted in the creation of advocacy material, much of it used at African Union summits. These advocacy materials have included special issues of Pambazuka News dedicated specifically to information about the protocol, as well as space within Pambazuka News’s African Union Monitor, which provides up-to-date information for civil society about the AU, including events, issues and debates. This, according to SOAWR members, has been especially useful at the African Union summits themselves.

This case study offers interesting findings about the relationship between participatory and political spaces. SOAWR, as a coalition, has worked to a large extent with the African Union. At this level, SOAWR was able to participate in some political processes and events, exploiting opportunities in different ways to access a variety of spaces, which were to various degrees more or less open, closed or created. SOAWR did this in a variety of different ways, and also utilised public spaces, where communication has the potential to move decision-making from a political realm to a more public one. Of course, while theoretically it may be easy to maintain divisions between closed, invited and created spaces, in reality those are less prominent. In the case of SOAWR’s advocacy work at the level of the African Union, there is much overlap.

In the instance of closed spaces, where there is little space for participation, SOAWR members found that despite policies laying out regulations for civil society engagement with the African Union, the roles and responsibilities of the various bodies, institutions and even individuals themselves were difficult to understand. Dealing with the AU as a structure was in some ways then a closed space for SOAWR. To counter this, in what is perhaps a sister publication to Pambazuka News, the African Union Monitor was created in order for civil society to understand better an institution of such influence over the continent. In this way, civil society is better able to understand the institutional policy channels that impact their work, and can also add to the political discourse around the AU by publicising that it is being watched or 'monitored'. Further, even member state governments are made more aware of the institution. This is an example of a closed space being transformed into a created space by way of communication. By putting information into a public space, SOAWR is able to interact with the African Union in a manner which not only monitors but also allows for interaction between governments and civil society.

Published online, but handed out in print copy at the summits, the AU Monitor plays a complementary role to Pambazuka News, which is also distributed in hard copy at summits. Special editions of Pambazuka News profile issues related to women’s rights and the protocol, and through linking current events, political situations or themes to this issue keep the protocol relevant and pertinent so that officials can be convinced to support it. This links to invited spaces, where opportunities for civil society to participate are offered by decision-makers.

To this end, at AU summits, which SOAWR has decided to strategically target as a means of accessing decision-makers, SOAWR has used their good working relationships with the AU Directorate for Women, Gender and Development as well as other key officials to use that space more effectively. They do this by engaging in joint campaigns and activities, and this has enabled SOAWR to have more access to other AU departments as well as state officials. The process of getting accreditation to participate in the opening and closing ceremonies of these summits has also been facilitated by these relationships, which SOAWR has nurtured and exploited in order to further the cause of the protocol. Further, SOAWR members have used their own reputations to be invited to participate in various African Union functions and even committees. This works at the level of institutional policy channels, which has to do with the first stage of SOAWR’s work, an elite strategy to target political figures. But this also serves a function in terms of political discourses. By engaging with civil society in such an official manner, a clear signal is sent with regards to the fact that they are in fact a part of the process of decision-making and that their input is valued, allowing civil society to hold some sort of legitimacy in terms of their work. With regard to the way in which this work affects social practices, I would argue that its purpose is more political, and that the second and third phases of the SOAWR strategy address this issue more concretely. Another way in which SOAWR has been able to access invited spaces is perhaps with regard to funding and trends in development. Some argue that women’s rights are a popular issue, and further, that it had been quite easy for SOAWR as a coalition to attain funding due to this trend, as well as an increased commitment to good governance, which included supporting a wider variety of actors engaging in political issues.

Created spaces for participation are those opportunities that have been initiated by civil society. In this sense, again, there is much overlap, especially in terms of countering the closed political space of the African Union, but the usage of Pambazuka News is an area in which most closely fits the bill. Taking advantage of characteristics of the internet that promote what Tettey lists as interactivity between many different voices, a global network, uncensored speech and the ability to challenge and cross check official views, Pambazuka News publishes articles that often cannot be found in other places and is a uniquely African voice around issues faced by communities across the continent.

An example of 'what Africans are doing with ICTs' (van Binsbergen, cited in Njamnjoh 2005: 9), Pambazuka News provides a space for debate and analysis, thus providing discourses about Africa by Africans, which promote communication between various communities, linking them in a way that fosters a collective movement. By providing lessons learned and best practices, civil society talks with one another, and in using Pambazuka News as a platform to share these stories, SOAWR members cited that this collective effort provided support, encouragement, motivation and momentum for their work that they would not otherwise feel. This in a sense has created a community for SOAWR members, where they can update one another about their activities and share experiences. In speaking with a staff member from KEWOPA (Kenya Women Parliamentary Association), an intergovernmental organisation charged with promoting women’s participation and representation in the Kenyan parliament, I was told that Pambazuka News was crucial in keeping her up-to-date with what was going on in order for her to do her job effectively. Civil society members outside of SOAWR were familiar with Pambazuka News and most subscribed to receive it weekly. SOAWR members claimed that Pambazuka News helped with visibility in terms of the SOAWR campaign, and that having space in a reputable publication like Pambazuka News also meant that a certain legitimacy was acquired for their work.

This serves also to add to the public spaces defined by Castells; by putting this information into a domain where it can be accessed by a diverse group of people, SOAWR has raised its profile and built a reputation that lends political credibility. In addition to these created spaces, SOAWR has built in a further aspect of capacity-building to their work through training journalists at African Union summits and, in promoting women bloggers, not only is the potential visibility about women’s rights in Africa increased with an online presence, but more importantly the capacity of individual women is targeted, creating not only women who are more aware of their rights, but also engaging these women in a discourse they may not have previously been conscious of. On the level of created participatory spaces, Fahamu and FEMNET (The African Women's Development and Communication Network) have also recently created a series of radio programmes for SOAWR’s use. These are aimed towards the third stage of SOAWR’s work, which is to popularise the protocol and create a constituency aware of their rights and knows how to claim those rights. This is done on a much more local level; country-level focal points spearhead these initiatives, and disseminate, for example, the radio programme, which can be used as is, or as part of a toolkit, for grassroots organisations and communities. Thus relationships between communities and SOAWR are mediated through awareness-building.

The above analysis demonstrates a number of interesting points which examine spaces for participation. What remains to be evaluated are some of the challenges and opportunities that exist for SOAWR in terms of both the usage of ICTs in its work as a coalition and for policy advocacy.

The use of information and communication technologies across the African continent presents numerous potentials. However, the facilities for and culture of email, obtaining online news and utilising electronic information and research databases are not embedded in Africa in any significant way for those opportunities to reach their full potential. Internet users remain within certain elite circles. From my limited interviews, it appeared as though Pambazuka News, as it exists online, did not reach official or political figures, though I imagine that there are many exceptions to this. The intergovernmental organisation KEWOPA, which works with parliamentarians, described having to physically go and speak with those officials because they did not check their emails. At the level of government, advocacy print materials seemed to be the most effective means of projecting ideas and recommendations. Pambazuka News remains more as a tool for those active in civil society, which is in fact its target in any case, and these civil society members do in fact see Pambazuka News as strengthening their work as a movement. Providing an online community, lending credibility and exchanging news and information which strengthens their work are some of the characteristics that were cited. At the same time, Pambazuka News does not reach those people who are the targets of civil society’s work; awareness-raising at the grassroots level is still most effectively carried out via radio. Thus in terms of using ICTs to promote the protocol, besides for SOAWR and a small group of civil society members, their usage is limited. However, providing a platform for these civil society members to voice their opinions and debate and analyse social, political and economic issues and policies does serve to create a community that has the potential to result in widening the discourses around these issues, which can then move into a more political realm.

With regard to policy advocacy around the protocol, SOAWR has faced numerous challenges, most of which have revolved around governmental structures and resistance. At the level of the African Union this has been characterised by a lack of understanding of structures, but it appears that for the most part, partly due to the fact that the African Union itself had already adopted the protocol and was urging member states to ratify it quickly, there was less resistance at this level. SOAWR members cited that most resistance was in fact felt at the level of member states, much of it owing to conservatism, strong religious ties and internal politics. However, SOAWR used some creative campaigning techniques, including an SMS (short message service, or text messaging) campaign and a Colour Card Campaign, which not only raised attention outside of the usual actors, but also served to name and shame governments into responding to the protocol.

These creative techniques were carried out by SOAWR members for the first time on the continent; they had never been used before, and therefore brought interest from other civil society organisations, funders and governments. Further, that SOAWR members had strong relationships with a number of African Union figures has allowed some degree of support for its work. Further challenges with regard to policy advocacy exist around bringing the policies back to the people which they affect. In the case of SOAWR, their initial strategy has been at an elite political level, and in fact the organisations participating in the campaign are, in some cases, quite removed from constituents, existing in a realm of international donors, other global civil society actors and the like. While this has also been a strength of the coalition, because being able to speak the language of politics has indeed been necessary, any real change will need to be carried out at a more grassroots level, which is a real challenge for the organisations involved in SOAWR. The process of implementing the protocol, for example, will require genuine partnerships between more local actors – governments, service providers, community-based organisations – and will need to take place across the whole of the continent. This relates to Merry’s theory of translating (2006) whereby civil society acts as an intermediary between local and international ideas, institutions and meanings. SOAWR has indeed done this at the level of the African Union, but in some ways has been aligned more closely at that level than at the grassroots. Thus local organisations, and the networks they belong to, will become increasingly important.

While the above analysis has shown that Pambazuka News has indeed played a role in pushing women’s rights and the protocol into a wider arena of discourse, it has also demonstrated that a number of factors have resulted in SOAWR’s success. Perhaps most significant among these has been the relationships that individual SOAWR members have been able to take advantage of in gaining access to political spaces not normally open to civil society. This has proven to be the most effective means with regard to the political lobbying that SOAWR has carried out. But, as SOAWR members recognise, the ratification of the protocol by member states will in fact be the easiest part of their work. Making the protocol known, respected and used practically means a completely different kind of approach, and requires an even wider range of actors. It also necessitates women knowing about the protocol and the rights afforded them under it. This will not come from online debates and emails, but will rather require a more realistic approach of using radio and print media. The potential for utilising mobile phones also exists, but as has been demonstrated by the 'Text Now 4 Women’s Rights' campaign, must be carefully implemented.

This is not to say that the usage of ICTs is misplaced; for African non-governmental organisations to be effective and integrated into an inevitably globalised civil society, they must have access to this important means of communication and network-building. Working across wide physical spaces and in varying contexts means that the potential that exists in creating an online community that can provide support and a sense of cooperation is invaluable.

* Karoline Kemp recently graduated from the Institute of Social Studies with an MA in Development Studies and a specialisation in Public Policy and Management.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castells, M. (2008) ‘The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616: 78-93.

Clark, J.D. (2006) ‘Dot-Causes and Protest: Transnational Economic Justice Movements’, in Batliwala, S. and L.D. Brown (eds) Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction, pp. 124-141. Connecticut: Kumurian Press.

Cornwall, A. and J. Gaventa (2001) ‘From Users and Choosers to Makers and Shapers: Repositioning Participation in Social Policy’. Institute of Development Studies Working Paper 127. Sussex: Institute of Development Studies.

Engberg-Pedersen, L. and N. Webster (eds) (2002) In The Name of the Poor. London: Zed Books

Gaventa J. (2004) ‘Towards Participatory Governance: Assessing the Transformative Possibilities' in Hickey, S. and G Mohan (eds) From Tyranny to Transformation, pp. 25-51. London: Zed Books.

Gaventa, J. (2005) ‘Reflections on the Uses of the ‘Power Cube’ Approach for Analyzing the Spaces, Places and Dynamics of Civil Society Participation and Engagement’. CFP Evaluation Series 2003-2006: No. 4: MFP Breed Netwerk.

Inagaki, N. (2007) ‘Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research’. World Bank Working Paper 120. Washington: World Bank.

Manji, F. and P. Burnett (2006) ‘Catching History on its Wings: The Experience of Pambazuka News’, Development in Practice 16(6): 587-592.

Mercer, C. (2004) ‘Engineering Civil Society: ICT in Tanzania’, Review of African Political Economy 99: 49-64.

Merry, S.E. (2006) ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping The Middle’, American Anthropologist 108(1): 38-51.

Mitlin, D., S. Hickey and A. Bebbington (2007) ‘Reclaiming Development? NGOs and the Challenge of Alternatives’, World Development 35(10): 1699-1720.

Nyamnjoh, F.B. (2005) Africa’s Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. London: Zed Books.

Overseas Development Institute (2006) ‘Policy Engagement for Poverty Reduction – How Civil Society Can Be More Effective’. ODI Briefing Paper 3. London: The Overseas Development Institute.

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When torture is dismissed

Bill Fletcher Jr

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57596

cc SokwaneleThe Left finds it hard to condemn torture when it is carried out by 'progressive' governments rather than imperialists, writes Bill Fletcher Jr, and often attempts to deny its existence or downplay its significance. Speaking with reference to acts of torture perpetrated by the Mugabe government – some against people he knows – Fletcher argues that if 'the Left is to hold the moral high ground, it must mean that it is prepared to engage in criticism – including constructive criticism – when crimes are uncovered'.

Many people on the Left have difficulty addressing the issue of torture. Certainly when the torture is carried out by imperialists, there is no problem condemning it. But what happens when torture is carried out by organisations or governments that claim to be progressive, anti-imperialist, or even on the Left? At that moment there is often silence, sort of a freeze-frame.

Most recently I have found myself badgered by emails from an insulting individual who happens to be a fanatic supporter of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. On one level, this is par for the course. Despite my stand on countless issues, there exists a small collection of individuals who believe that the sun rises and sets based on one's stand on President Mugabe. Thus, due to my criticisms of the Mugabe clique, I have become el Diablo. So be it.

What was interesting, however, was that in both this experience as well as several others, when I have raised that I know people – not just know OF, but know people – who have been tortured by the Mugabe regime, there is complete silence. The statement is not even acknowledged. Then the silence breaks and the polemics continue as if nothing was ever mentioned.

In general, the Left has four main responses to allegations of torture carried out by progressive organisations and/or governments. These include:

Denial: It is all a lie; never happened.

Minimise: It is an aberration, committed by rogue elements.

Silence: Let's pretend that it will all go away.

Relativism: It may have happened, but it is not as bad as what the capitalists do.

We on the Left are so afraid that any acknowledgement of a crime committed by a progressive or so-called progressive will give aid and comfort to the enemy that we respond in such a way as to discredit ourselves and our mission. I understand this. In the 1970s and early 1980s I could not believe allegations that were made against the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea/Cambodia. I simply could not believe that a political movement that had carried out such a heroic struggle against a US puppet regime (Lon Nol's) and united the country would descend into such fanaticism. Yet they had and each time that criticisms were raised and went unanswered by segments of the Left, our credibility plummeted.

Today we have the case of the Mugabe regime. At this very moment there is an attempt at a unity government between the Mugabe group and the main opposition (Movement for a Democratic Change). Such an effort should be supported, including by the dropping of sanctions that have been instituted by the USA and other countries. This, however, does not clean the slate. Torture, including rape-as-repression, has been too widely documented to dismiss. While the people of Zimbabwe will have to settle their own accounts in a manner that they deem appropriate, that does not mean that those of us on the outside can or should remain agnostic, and it certainly should not mean that we live in a world of denial.

If the Left is to hold the moral high ground, it must mean that it is prepared to engage in criticism – including constructive criticism – when crimes are uncovered. Certainly every action must be put in a context, and there is no doubt that actions are at times carried out by or in political movements and governments that are not sanctioned by the leadership. Yet when there is a pattern, any and every attempt to dismiss it weakens our ability to insist on a practice of consistent democracy. If torture is wrong when carried out by pro-capitalists, for example, both because it is unreliable as well as immoral, how then can we on the Left tolerate it under any circumstances? How can we so quickly dismiss as `fabricated stories' the reports of rape-as-repression whether they emerge from Zimbabwe or from the Sudan? The fact that these matters are reported by the mainstream white, capitalist press does not mean that they can be rejected out of hand. It should mean, instead, that we take investigation seriously in order to uncover the truth and separate that from pro-imperialist dis-information.

The case for self-determination and sovereignty for Zimbabwe and against any efforts by the USA, Britain or any other country to destabilise the situation is not helped by denial of the often vicious repression (including torture) that has been meted out against the opposition. If anything, denial is met with an unanticipated consequence at the mass level: Democratic-minded people can often naively throw their support for so-called 'humanitarian interventions' by the big powers.

* This article first appeared on BlackCommentator.com.
* Bill Fletcher Jr is executive editor of BlackCommentator.com, a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organised Labour and a New Path toward Social Justice.

Leadership more complicated than you comprehend

A letter from the Ugandan president to an activist

Presidential Standards Task Force (Uganda)

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57599

cc WikimediaThe Presidential Standards Task Force, the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens, sent the following letter to human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba. The letter, apparently signed by President Museveni, responds to comments Nuwagaba submitted to the website, covering issues from corruption to unemployment.

Dear Mr Nuwagaba

I have read your comments with dismay about the amount of venom in it. You clearly have a personal vendetta against me as an individual, as opposed to working for the good cause of Ugandans. I will address the points that you have raised in turn.

1. DISASSOCIATION FROM CORRUPT MINISTERS AND INEFFICIENCY:

I think I made it clear from the statement on the www.ugandapstf.org that the general population should attack individual ministers and government officials in cases where they think that the services delivered are not effective and or acceptable. This is the way forward in the modern politics, the reasoning behind it is because the population is the one on the receiving end and I can not be expected for example to monitor supply of medicine in hospitals or to go to the ministry of transport to personally inspect their accounts. What I expect is pressure groups and the media to work hand in hand in exposing these incompetent officials.

So it is not a question of saying that I have kept them around myself. Appointment of ministers is clear in the constitution that they must be MPs and much as I have campaigned for some of them, unfortunately I do not have an overriding authority over the constitution. Otherwise I know some good cadres I can appoint to these positions and they will perform. They are elected by their respective constituents and the parliament vets them first and clears them for appointment.

In this aspect I strongly advise you to start thinking of strategies where you can highlight weakness in specific ministries and then put the officials concerned to task of explaining the same. Do it in the public domain and let them offer explanations in public. MAKE SURE THAT SUCH CRITICISM OF INEFFICIENCY IS BACKED BY COGENT EVIDENCE AS OPPOSED TO WAFFLING ABOUT THINGS THAT CANNOT BE PROVED.

2. THAT I DO NOT CARE IF THE MPS SNOOZE IN PARLIAMENT AND THEN VOTE NRM PROGRAMMES:

Vincent under the doctrine of separation of powers, I cannot influence how the parliament conducts business. All I do is that I give the MPs proposals to be discussed in parliament, tell them the reasons why we need them to be passed. The rest is up to them. Indeed I know that they do not attend as required and indeed some sleep in parliament. So as long as I do not see NRM MPs opposing government proposals then unfortunately how they pass them is really out of my control.

That is why you see that some rebel MPs have the luxury to say whatever they want in parliament and they get away with it. I do not like some of their comments and attitude but I am contented when they vote in the positive. Their conduct can only be judged by the speaker and their respective constituents.

3. YOU ARE MISINFORMED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF GRADUATES THIS COUNTRY HAS:

Again my statement of fact is very clear i.e. ‘that we have more graduates and most of them are not employed’. I did not discuss the figures and I do not think that the figures mitigate the fact that graduates are not being employed swiftly.

4. MY VISION:

Vision is a personal mindset and unfortunately we do not share the same vision. As an educated man Vincent, I am sure you perfectly understand that some visions are not realised in a lifetime of the beholders and some visions are realised with difficulty. For example when I told some people that we could successfully attack Kabamba with 27 guns, some people said I was crazy. But indeed we were successful.

5. VOTING ON WHAT I HAVE DONE, NOT WHAT I HAVE PROMISED, THAT I SHOULD HAND OVER THE BATON TO SOMEONE ELSE:

Though I have not even declared my intention of candidature, I believe that the only promise to be made is to continuing to consolidate what we have achieved (‘by the majority of voters standards’) and improve it. I really do not think that the opposition which has failed to come up with one single simple proposal/policy in the last 20 years will have a lot to tell Ugandans today. In modern politics, it is all about policy and constructive criticism. I have not seen a single policy tabled by the opposition in parliament on how they think we should run our hospitals. All they do is talk talk talk. If they tabled their own bill and it gets rejected in parliament because of ‘unfairness’ then at least they can bring it to the public as a campaign tool and say look, Museveni is a bad man and his MPs are all corrupt because they have refused to accept our bill which would have cut costs in the health sector and improved the service delivery. And when it comes to voting the voters will vote based on such merit. But everyday you hear them saying Museveni this Museveni that. In turn if the bill is accepted and adopted or even a few elements accepted, then they can go and brag about to the voters. All they do is wait for the last minute to promise what is already there. I am sure they can prey on the illiterate Ugandans but people like you should be alert to such empty talks and propaganda. For the last 10-15 years, their campaign tool has been corruption, this is being addressed very intensely and we shall see results very soon.

6. THAT MY SON IS A PATRIOT AND HE SHOULD BE SALUTED:

I do not recall making a statement of the sort. What I know to have said, is that he serves in a position of sacrifice. He chose the army over other privileges/luxuries. I do not perceive being in the army as a privilege/luxury, though it is in the context of our politics, an act of patriotism, especially when you are the first son. On whether you can do what Muhozi is doing, I have no doubt whatsoever that should you show interest in joining the UPDF; your application will be considered with high priority.

7. THAT YOU HAVE BEEN HARASSED:

Please compile evidence on such harassment and present it to the police for due process. I am aware that some of my supporters take the law into their hands however it is naive, immature and sheer malice for you to think that I personally have a hand in your plight.

8. THAT I SHOULD BE READY TO ACCEPT DEFEAT:

I believe again you are letting your emotions impair your judgment. Accepting defeat before elections is not something expected of people who have ‘rich brain faculties’ to discuss and/or address.

9. I SHOULD FIRE ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED ON PATRONAGE BASIS:

Unfortunately the person of the president has the prerogative of appointing people that he feels can work with him. There are so many examples of the same in worldwide democracies. However, these people are subject to criticism in terms of their performance. This is what you must address.

10. THAT I HAVE TURNED UGANDA INTO A MONARCHY:

This point is not worth addressing.

11. THAT I AM HOUNDING YOU OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY:

Again this point is not worth addressing.

12. THAT PRESIDENT KAGAME IS BETTER THAN ME:

I am not sure in what regards and from where you draw your conclusions.

Mr Nuwagaba, I can understand your anger but like I have said in my statement, it would be more constructive if this venom of yours is diverted to criticising service levels especially in the ministry of health and education.

Leadership at a presidential level is much more complicated than you can ever comprehend. I strongly recommend that you make your position very clear. If you are a politician, then I suggest that you join or start a party where you can address these issues through dialogue. If you are a human rights activist then please advocate for better health services, better roads and better benefits for children of men and women of the UPDF etc. You do not have to attack me on a personal level as you did in order to help in the development of our nation.

You should compile evidence of non-performance civil servants and make sure that you hold them accountable. For example go to Mulago Hospital, check and take pictures of what time the doctors arrive for duty, what time they leave, the hygiene of the wards. Once you have this information then ask the minister of health to explain why these conditions exist.

Ask him what he intends to do about it, let him give you a time frame as to when he will implement these measures or when he will have results.

It is very hard to be a human rights activist and a politician at the same time. As a young man you much to choose your path quite carefully for the benefit of all Ugandans. Whether I stay in power or not, is for millions of other Ugandans to decide.

I do not expect you to reply to this letter and I wish you good luck.

Y. K. Museveni

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

The difference between activists and politicians

A letter from a Ugandan activist to the president

Vincent Nuwagaba

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57601

cc Sarah McCansUgandan human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba responds to an e-mail letter he received fron the Presidential Standards Task Force, apparently signed by President Museveni. Nuwagaba received the letter after submitting comments on issues from corruption to unemployment to the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens.

On Monday 29 June 2009 at 12:10, I received an email purportedly from President Yoweri Museveni responding to the comments I had made on the Presidential Standards Task Force website. The author of the email said I clearly have personal vendetta against him as opposed to working for the good cause of all Ugandans. The president (or any other person who wrote the mail on behalf of the president) outlined 12 points and said points number 10 and 11, which talked about turning Uganda into a monarchy and hounding me out of my country were not worth addressing. I will address the president’s concerns in turn.

1. DISSOCIATION FROM CORRUPT MINISTERS:

I wrote that the president cannot use ministers as an alibi in his bid to fight corruption when he is the one who has kept them around himself. It is documented in black and white that ministers that were censured by the 6th Parliament over accusations of corruption were recycled and appointed to senior cabinet positions in the aftermath of 2001 elections. The sole reason for their reappointment was because they vigorously and rigorously campaigned for President Museveni when he faced his former physician Dr Kizza Besigye. Actually, when the eyebrows were raised over the reappointment of these people, the president was not shy to tell everyone that they were censured out of sheer malice!

Furthermore, we have permanent ministers in some ministries. The minister in charge of works has been in power ever since I gained knowledge to date. This is despite the appalling road carnage as a result of the very poor state of our roads, with gullies and potholes virtually everywhere. It is rumoured that a road which ordinarily should have six layers ends up with three layers, with the money that would provide for the other three consumed by corrupt officials. It is clear that people who win government tenders and contracts do so either through bribery or patronage as opposed to meritocracy. As of now Makerere University Livingstone Drive is impassable. The president concedes that he has campaigned for some of them. Is it not clear that he who pays the piper calls the tune?

2. THE PRESIDENT DOESN’T CARE IF MINISTERS SNOOZE IN PARLIAMENT AND WAKE UP TO VOTE NATIONAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (NRM):

The president himself said it on radio in the run up to the 2001 parliamentary elections that the people of Kinkizi should vote Mr Amama Mbabazi as opposed to Garuga Musinguzi although the former slumbers in parliament because if he woke up he would vote the NRM position. Some of us believe the Movement position is Museveni’s position. The president is an embodiment of the NRM party. Surprisingly, by then even Dr Kizza Besigye was still a movementist and he came under the banner of reform agenda which aimed at reforming the Movement.

3. THAT I (VINCENT NUWAGABA) AM MISINFORMED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF GRADUATES THIS COUNTRY HAS:

Makerere University, the biggest university whose enrolment is even bigger than all other Universities combined, has had only 59 graduations. The total number of Makerere’s products ranges between 100,000 to 150,000, out of which number some merely get certificates and diplomas. Remember also that before it was undermined by government through denial of research funds and poor pay to the academic staff, Makerere used to be the Harvard of Africa and would attract very many foreign students. These cannot be counted as Ugandan graduates.

Truthfully, Uganda has less than one per cent of university graduates and I can stake my money on this if anyone proved me wrong. But I raised this matter in regard to graduate unemployment, to which the government has paid little attention. Today, we have many graduates running out of the country to do odd jobs (which in Ugandan parlance is termed as 'kyeyo') in America, Japan and the UK among other areas. My concern as a patriot and Pan-Africanist has been: Why can’t the government provide or create jobs for the meagre number of graduates that we have? What sort of vision does the president have when peasants’ children have remained jobless even after their parents have sold their land to have their children study? Parents sell their property to ensure their children access education which is believed to be a liberating tool. These children sadly never get jobs, as jobs are a preserve of those that are connected to the powers that be, either through blood, marriage, cronyism or patronage.

In fact, people hired as coursework mercenaries and those who run printing bureaus which forge academic transcripts are mostly university graduates with honours degrees but have failed to get jobs. Sadly, those who forge academic transcripts use them to get jobs. The government has proven incompetent to handle this small problem. Even when I suggested in my Sunday Monitor (16 March 2008) article 'Graft begets graft' that government could hire me as a consultant to fight that sort of corruption, all government officials kept a deaf ear. People in Uganda faced with unemployment problems are not those who haven’t gone to school but the educated. The illiterate and semi-illiterate are happily employed as wheelbarrow pushers, boda boda (motor bike) cyclists, shoe shiners, chapatti bakers, etc.

4. THE PRESIDENT’S VISION:

Vision means a mental image or a dream. In leadership it denotes what one intends or envisages to achieve in a given period of time. I am fully convinced that at the moment, it is imprudent for the president to tell us about his vision when he has been given more than two uninterrupted decades to put his vision into reality. Any other person can talk about vision but not our dear president. It is also apparent that the president has deliberately refused or inadvertently failed to share his vision with other Ugandans. Not even his fellow NRM members! At this point in time we don’t want a personal but a shared vision. As to whether some visions are never realised by their beholders or realised with difficulty, some of us feel it is reason enough why he should offload excess baggage from himself lest he dies under a heavy load that he is carrying. I want to restate that the president’s vision was applicable before 1986, in 1986 or shortly thereafter. At the moment the vision talk is but hot air.

5. THAT THE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE VOTED ON THE BASIS OF WHAT HE HAS DONE AND NOT WHAT HE PROMISES:

In 1996 the president promised a community polytechnic for each sub county in his manifesto. To date I am yet to see one in my sub county Bitereko and neighbouring sub counties in Ruhinda. He promised in 2001 that universal secondary education (USE) was to begin in 2003 to cater for universal primary education (UPE) products who would have finished Primary Seven then. Universal secondary education was to be used as a campaign tool in 2006. Yet both USE and UPE have raised many people’s eyebrows over their quality and the reason is because they were not properly thought out but introduced for expediency (as vote winning gimmicks). I am not bothered whether the opposition only does the talking. The Uganda that the opposition is concerned about is the same Uganda the NRM is concerned about and the same Uganda that I as a human rights defender am concerned about. All I can say is that something is wrong and that is why we hear secession talks. The weakness of the opposition is no justification for the failure of the ruling party. As a human rights defender I have both a moral and legal obligation to demand accountability from the government that uses our taxes.

6. THAT MUHOOZI KEINERUGABA IS A PATRIOT:

The newspapers quoted the president as having said so. I fail to believe that Afande Muhoozi is not in a position of luxury. Is he not a commander of special forces having risen through the ranks at a supersonic speed? Don’t we hear of classified budgets and expenditures in regard to the military? In the mail I was told that if I showed interest in joining the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) my application will be considered with the highest priority. Is it only in UPDF where my knowledge can ably be exploited? Why can’t the president talk about appointing me as one of the directors in National Planning Authority, Uganda Revenue Authority or any other parastatals?

7. MY HARASSMENT:

It is good that Mr President you know that some of your supporters take the law in their hands. I have written to you twice over my ordeal and told you the reason as to why I appealed to you is because all other institutions failed to handle my case. I have never got a report, although I am sure that your office has gathered enough data about me through Mr Tito Ntsigaireho the NRM chairperson of my sub county. Moreover, my tormentors invoked your name which is well documented in the report that Dr Tom Onen wrote about me. I am still traumatised by the psychological torture they inflicted on me. They also stole my property and money. Although you advised me to compile evidence and present it to the police I believe we just have a semblance of the police. The Uganda Police Force has been militarised as some of the officers have left military cadet courses and are deployed into the police. I am sure you will not ask me how I know this for our police and military officers are from the same society with us. Some of them are our neighbours, others are our friends, and others are former schoolmates and classmates. So I and all other Ugandans know the extent to which the security organs have been militarised. In fact, I reported this case to the Professional Standards Unit but you can ask them how they handled it.

8. THAT YOU SHOULD ACCEPT DEFEAT:

Mr President, the press has quoted you to have said before that you cannot hand over power to people you fought and defeated. You have also said that if in 1996 Dr Paul Ssemmogerere had won, you would not accept. You have said in the past that you cannot be chased anyhow, as if you are a chicken thief. In the aftermath of the court ruling that declared the movement and 2000 referendum void abnition, you hit the tables saying the judges in that case were only fit to handle Matoke and chicken thieves. You have in the recent past told MPs not to give you an ultimatum because civilians cannot give an ultimatum to a general, adding that it is a general who gives an ultimatum to a general. All this creates fear in our hearts and portends a picture that it may not be easy for you to accept defeat.

9. THAT YOU SHOULD FIRE ALL THOSE APPOINTED ON PATRONAGE BASIS:
Your Excellency, although you say you have the prerogative to choose people to work with you, your choice often borders on sectarianism. In fact, the people appointed on patronage basis are largely responsible for the high levels of corruption. Remember, Alice Kabayo is one such person that was appointed on patronage basis. Everyone in the world that cares to know knows the mess she caused when she was on your youth desk.

10. THAT YOU HAVE TURNED UGANDA INTO A MONARCHY:

I will not address this point since you never addressed it. If put to task to explain though, I will elaborately explain.

11. THAT YOU ARE HOUNDING ME OUT OF MY COUNTRY:

I wish to explain briefly: I was detained and tortured and your name was invoked. I made you know this, Your Excellency, through the letters I wrote to you. I know, your Excellency, that these nonentities misused your name, but I thought you should have called to book the people I complained about. To date, they walk with their heads up – yet they almost killed me. I do believe Mr President you don’t condone impunity and as such, it is not too late. You can see my article in the Red Pepper of Saturday 4 July 2009 and get just a tip of the iceberg of the ordeal I went through.

12. PRESIDENT KAGAME VIS-À-VIS PRESIDENT MUSEVENI:

I firmly believe that President Kagame is a transformational leader. There are no potholes in Rwanda. It is a policy for primary school children now to own a laptop computer. In short, Rwanda is a social democratic state; a state that cherishes social justice and social welfare for all regardless of one's social, political or economic background. I am sure that if opportunities were allocated on meritocracy basis, some of us would never ever raise a finger to criticise your leadership. Mr President, please revisit your blueprint – the ten point programme, your 1986 inaugural speech and your own book What is Africa’s Problem?

You said, if I am a human rights activist, I should advocate for better health services, better roads and better benefits for children and women of the UPDF etc. I commend the task you are giving me but please give me facilitation to enable me perform that task.

As to whether I should choose between being a human rights defender and a politician, Mr President, what human rights defenders do is entirely political in nature, only that they play politics in a non partisan manner. Politics is about resource allocation and if I feel I am marginalised, I will not keep quiet because I am a human rights activist. Human rights activists want drugs in hospitals, want good roads, want jobs for all people among others, which politicians promise while campaigning and are duty-bound to provide upon their election. Right now, my dear mother is likely to die of fibroids because I have no money to treat her and there are no drugs in the hospitals. Should I keep quiet? The United Nations fact sheet number 29 is clear about who can be a human rights defender. Politicians can as well be human rights defenders – and indeed some politicians are – although some choose to become notorious human rights abusers. I am a citizen, not a subject. As a citizen I clearly have rights and I have a role to play in my Uganda. For God and my country!

* Vincent Nuwagaba is a Ugandan human rights defender.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

What is the real value of Africa's wealth?

Khadija Sharife

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/57597

It used to be that single-digit – or better yet, double-digit – GDP growth was precisely the medicine that economic doctors prescribed to ailing patients –underdeveloped economies. More recently, Africa has been applauded for celebrating single-digit growth in 30 African countries in 2008. Sudan and Equatorial Guinea even host two of the fastest-growing GDPs in the world, the former despite US sanctions.

But is GDP a valid tool in determining real economic development?

GDP methodologies, initially formulated in the US and UK in the early 1930s, were strictly designed as a specialised tool to monitor trends in total economic activity during the Great Depression which began with Wall Street's crash in October 1929.

GDP was later used as an economic scorecard justifying the US's participation in World War II (1939) to a still bankrupt nation. The development of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank during the Bretton Woods conference witnessed the adoption of the GDP methodology, the US dollar and other economic policies as the dominant traditions of the global financial architecture.

Eighty years later, Wall Street has crashed again, sparking yet another global recession, with the IMF claiming in October 2008 that the global economy was teetering on 'the brink of systemic meltdown'.

The US$56-trillion crash of US financial institutions was primarily caused by derivatives: Toxic assets that were not required by law to be recorded, and by default, could not be tracked. These assets were subsequently traded in unobserved vacuums. The law could not regulate what it did not know existed.

The crash, known as the 'Panic of 2008', catalysed a growing awareness of debased 'paper' wealth delinked from real asset-based value.

This led to the fundamental question of what constitutes real wealth, beyond narrow tools such as GDP.

It is a question that development institutions, civil society, economists, environmentalists, scientists and governments all over the world are currently interrogating. In 2005, the World Bank launched a report titled Where is the Wealth of Nations? investigating the natural, produced and intangible wealth of 120 countries.

By recognising and integrating the economic value of natural capital – defined by the World Bank as cropland, pastureland, subsoil assets and forests – the science of the 'economy' can now be contextualised as a subset of ecology.

'What we have done is to go through the relevant data about what makes up the wealth of nations. We go much deeper than GDP,' explained Kirk Hamilton, the lead author of the report, in an interview with African Business.

'This has given us insight that low-income countries depend on natural resources. Our concern is that governments in Africa for example, don't have the right data to make better decisions when it comes to questions of development and growth. This data highlights the important role of managing resources, such as agriculture, through pastureland and cropland in Africa, which accounts for 70 per cent of natural wealth for low-income countries.'

The average share of total wealth in low-income countries includes 58 per cent intangible capital – defined by the Bank as, 'raw labour, human capital, social capital, and other factors such as the quality of institutions'; 16 per cent produced capital – or the sum of urban land, infrastructure, machinery and equipment; and 26 per cent natural capital.

This differs from high-income countries that derive the bulk of their wealth, on average, from intangible capital (80 per cent); produced capital (17 per cent); and natural capital (2 per cent).

The breakdown of natural wealth in low-income countries is largely composed of cropland (59 per cent), pastureland (10 per cent), subsoil assets (17 per cent) and timber resources (6 per cent).

Resources – both stocks and depletion were economically valued using 'world prices and local costs of extraction and harvest'.

According to the report, natural resources play two basic roles in development: First, resources as the basis of subsistence and, second, as a source of development finance derived from 'rents' on renewable (e.g. solar, wind, tidal); potentially sustainable (e.g. fisheries, forests and cropland); and exhaustible (e.g. gold, oil and water) resources.

VARIOUS VALUE SYSTEMS

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2005) assessed the economic value of intact ecosystem services versus their value when modified, exploited or destroyed.

'Recently economists have been focusing their work on capturing the true economic value of the world's natural or nature-based assets. For example, an intact hectare of mangroves in a country like Thailand is worth more than US$1,000. Converted into intensive farming, the value drops to an estimated US$200 a hectare and the same for aquaculture,' said Dr Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Programme, in an interview with the report's author.

Should development models, geared to spur 'paper' growth redefine 'development' by factoring in the innate value of ecosystem services?

'Yes, I think that is an important point. The overriding issue is that if we are not putting a value to the services provided by intact natural resources – if you didn't know that the mangrove provides US$1,000 in intact services – then you're going to be focusing on the US$200 only, because the relevant data isn't available,' says Hamilton. 'In the case of exhaustible resources, these rents must be invested if total wealth is not to decline,' the report states.

'With exhaustible resources such as diamonds, what we're asking is whether government is investing the revenue or consuming it through expenditure. The quality of institutions and the rule of law (governance) is what make countries prosperous. If “genuine savings” are negative, the question that has to be asked is how they are using it. Dependence on natural capital alone brings very low returns,’ said Hamilton.

'Genuine savings' (GS) is described by the report as an indicator of sustainability, and a means of framing natural resources within the bigger picture of development finance: ‘GS highlights the fiscal aspects of environment and resource management, since collecting resource royalties and charging pollution taxes are basic ways to both raise development finance and ensure efficient use of the environment.’

The World Bank states that consumption rather than investment ‘is common in resource-rich countries’.

The results documented in the report reveal many export-oriented African countries are in the negative, such as Gabon (-US$2,241), Nigeria (-US$210) and Congo (-US$727). ‘In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the poorest region in the world, the number of people living in extreme poverty has almost doubled, from 164m in 1981 to 314m today. Genuine saving rates in the region have been hovering around zero’, thus decreasing investment in intangible capital.

Intangible capital constitutes less than US$7,000 per capita in SSA. According to the report, the region dominated the bottom 10 low-income countries list for total wealth, save for the presence of Nepal, while Europe dominated the top list, including the US and Japan. The variations of intangible capital depend almost exclusively (90 per cent) on the quality of rule of law and education.

Switzerland, ranked first with US$648,241 in wealth per capita, has 1 per cent natural capital and 84 percent intangible capital; the US came in fourth place with US$512,612 in wealth per capita with 2 per cent natural capital and 82 per cent intangible capital. Madagascar – number one on the bottom 10 list, was characterised by high levels of natural capital (33 per cent – e.g. titanium) and US$5,020 wealth per capita; Nigeria, amongst other African countries such as Algeria and the Congo, experienced negative intangible capital (-71 per cent), with US$2,748 wealth per capita.

One question that arises concerns the quality of the Bank's indicators and the methodologies used to quantify data. ‘For simplicity purposes’, the report proceeds on the assumption that ‘all resource rents are invested in produced capital’.

Yet according to the African Union (AU), each year more than US$148bn –derived from resource revenues – is siphoned from the continent in capital flight. The UK-based Tax Justice Network states that 60 per cent of all capital flight is caused by multinational companies' internal mispricing, with just 3-5 per cent spirited away by the political elite.

‘It's there implicitly,’ said Hamilton, ‘We didn't use hard figures, but indirectly, it was taken into account.’ ‘How was it taken into account without hard figures?’ I asked him. ‘We are more concerned with how government invests the revenues it has,’ he responded. The report states that governments should be ‘taxing natural resources to the point where the private sector is just willing to risk capital’. But the rents from exhaustible resources are restricted by the IMF and World Bank-imposed reforms, making tax 'holidays' mandatory in a bid to attract foreign investment.

Hamilton responded: ‘You want to be sure the government gets the right revenue, their share of the wealth. But at the same time, you don't want to overtax. This is what the IMF is saying.’

John Christensen, former economic advisor to the famously secretive tax haven of Jersey, disagrees: ‘The IMF is in favour of the highly flawed incentive of tax holidays. Many countries have lost huge sums of revenue because tax incentives undermine the revenue base of developing countries.’

VALUE DEGRADATION

Similarly, potentially sustainable resources such as fertile land and forests are often degraded or deforested for cash crops – in line with the World Bank development model. These crops are sold to markets at artificially depressed prices.

Northern subsidies – currently standing at US$1bn per day – have devalued the world prices used by the Bank, for example, for agricultural commodities, through export credits, subsidies and by manipulating the free market through large portfolios.

Reforms have also undermined intangible capital and rule of law by reprioritising state expenditure toward intangible capital – e.g. education, healthcare and industry; repositioning underdeveloped regions as export-oriented economies; and exposing local firms, farmers and factories to heavily subsidised trade via WTO-imposed trade liberalisation.

These reforms are mandatory due to outstanding odious debt – low-income countries serviced around US$560bn in 2006 – forcing developing countries to embark on mass privatisation of state services, and resources being auctioned off piecemeal to corporations under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiatives.

‘There have been discussions about [developing countries'] government expenditure getting cut across the board because of the policies you mentioned. More attention should have been paid, but lessons have been learned,’ said Hamilton. When asked whether this was articulated in the report, he replied, ‘It's there implicitly, but not directly.’

The legal innate rights of the environment must recognised – as Ecuador has recently done, with communities acting as guardians of 'common trusts'. This move facilitated the democratisation of national wealth, without privatising or nationalising it.

Crucially, the role of government must also be redefined, not – as stipulated in the report – as owners, but as managers of the political ecology, heading public resource portfolios instead of endorsing the corporate financial 'trickle-down growth' model.

This would catalyse a paradigm shift away from obsolete paper GDPs to sustainable economics – and development – effectively halting Africa's free fall into real poverty.

* This article first appeared in African Business.
* Khadija Sharife is a journalist and visiting scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS). She is based in South Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Campaign of Terror unleashed on Nigeria’s ‘Witch Children’

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57588

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 7th July 2009
Campaign of Terror unleashed on Nigeria’s ‘Witch Children’

Coalition of civil society organisations and churches condemn the recent violence against children and local NGO staff members

A coalition of Nigerian and International civil society organisations and churches have strongly condemned the recent campaign of terror that has been inflicted upon the so-called ‘child witches’ at the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network Centre (CRARN) in Eket, Akwa Ibom State by Lagos-based police officers. The work of CRARN, and the children they care for, was shown on Channel 4’s Dispatches Programme on ‘Saving Africa’s Witch Children’ in November 2008.

On Friday 3rd July 2009, in the afternoon local time, a group of men appeared at the CRARN Centre claiming to be donors who wanted to donate goods and toys to the children. Shortly after, the men identified themselves as police officers, and unlawfully arrested two CRARN staff members and mercilessly beat many of the children whilst searching for CRARN’s Founder and President, Sam Itauma.
Two young girls aged 11 and 12 years old were beaten unconscious and are currently receiving treatment in a local hospital. Five other children suffered injuries at the hands of these men, who thenleft a round of bullets in Sam Itauma’s bedroom, presumably to act as a warning that his life is in danger.

Gary Foxcroft, Programme Director of the UK-based NGO Stepping Stones Nigeria, and partner of CRARN, said: “We condemn the actions of the police in the strongest possible terms and call for the Akwa Ibom State Government to ensure the safety of all CRARN staff and children. The beatings of theseinnocent children further highlight the depravity of these so-called men and women of God who label and abuse children as witches. However, we will not be intimidated in our fight to protect the rights of vulnerable children and ensure that children are no longer labeled as witches. We know that the truth is on our side”.

Stepping Stones Nigeria believe that this campaign of terror is a direct response to Channel 4’s Dispatches Programme, ‘Saving Africa’s Witch Children’, which highlighted the role that Mrs Helen Ukpabio, self-proclaimed pastor, evangelist and founder of the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church in Nigeria, and her film production company, Liberty Films, have played in spreading the myth of child witchcraft.

Helen Ukpabio has recently filed legal complaints against Sam Itauma and CRARN at the Special Fraud Unit at the Ikoyi station in Lagos for “fraudulent activities and threat to life”, charges, which the coalition argues are clearly fabricated in order to threaten and intimidate. The police officers that carried out these brutal attacks were accompanied by Mr Victor Ukott, the Lagos based lawyer who is representing Helen Ukpabio. Staff at CRARN, Stepping Stones Nigeria and Stepping Stones Nigeria Child Empowerment Foundation have also recently received numerous threatening phone calls, which would appear to be linked to this campaign of terror. CRARN staff have also been threatened by persons regarding the upcoming court case of “Bishop” Sunday Ulup-Aya, who was featured on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme bragging that he had killed “up to 110 witches”.

Sam Itauma, Founder and President of CRARN, said: “It is clear that forces of darkness are intent on taking my life and I remain deeply concerned for my safety and, most importantly, that of the children at the CRARN centre. I therefore plead for the Akwa Ibom State Government to offer us its full protection and ensure that its international image is not further damaged by this worrying situation”.

The coalition urgently calls on the Akwa Ibom State Government to:
• Arrest and prosecute the police officers who unlawfully arrested and detained CRARN staff members and beat and injured innocent children;
• Award their full protection to Sam Itauma, other CRARN staff members and the children to ensure their full safety now and in the future;
• Carry out in-depth investigations into the activities of Mrs Helen Ukpabio and the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church, prosecute anyone found to be labelling children as witches and close any church found to be labelling children as ‘witches’ through deliverance or other methods.
• Support the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the false legal charges that are being levelled against Sam Itauma and CRARN staff.

Notes to Editors:

1. Coalition members include: Stepping Stones Nigeria, Stepping Stones Nigeria ChildEmpowerment Foundation, Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network Centre, Consortium for Street Children, Nigerian Humanist Movement, StreetInvest, Mboho Akwa Ibom Association (UK & Ireland), Ibom People’s Forum, Ibibio Nation, Eket Development Congress USA, The Covenant of Grace Ministries, International Christian Ambassadors of God (ICAG) and Grace Chapel, London.

2. Saving Africa’s Witch Children’ Dispatches Programme was aired on Channel 4 in November 2008. The documentary graphically details how the belief in witchcraft leads to the widespread abandonment, torture, trafficking and killing of children in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The documentary has since won a prestigious BAFTA award and Amnesty International’s Media Award in the UK

3. Following the airing of the Dispatched documentary, The Akwa Ibom State enacted the Child Rights Act making it illegal to brand a child a witch. On its website the Akwa Ibom State Government states that it “will not fold its hands and watch evil elements of society dehumanise, demoralise, bastardise, displace, stigmatise, or persecute our children for personal gains.” The Government then states how it will:

• Place full legislative machinery against labelling of children as witches
• Advance high-powered investigation into every element of the issues involved and all allegations against persons involved in stigmatisation of children as witches
• Prosecute all persons found culpable of this crime of child labelling
• Deploy social resources for the support, comfort and enjoyment of all categories of children all over the state
• Possibility of closure of every organisation involved in this evil stigmatisation of children
• Government will not spare any culprit involved.


For more information please go to: http://www.aksgonline.com/issue_child_abuse.aspx

4. For more information about the work of Stepping Stones Nigeria, CRARN and the issue of child
witchcraft please visit www.steppingstonesnigeria.org
5. For more information about this press release please contact Gary Foxcroft, Programme
Director, Stepping Stones Nigeria on gary@steppingstonesnigeria.org or 0845 313 8391.

Declaration of the Organisations of La Via Campesina of Central America

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57589

Declaration of the Organisations of La Via Campesina of Central America

1-7-2009

CONSIDERING:

That on Sunday 28th June President José Manuel Zelaya, who was constitutionally and democratically elected by the Honduran people, was taken hostage by soldiers led by groups belonging to the country's oligarchies, only because these oligarchies do not accept the will of the majority to want to create their own laws.

That in the days after this event social movements and Honduran society in general has bravely and peacefully fought to defend itself against this attack on democracy, making it clear to the entire international community that the only Cabinet and government elected by the people is that represented by President Manuel Zelaya.

And in view of the fact that all the Latin American countries that make up the Rio Group, the Organization of American States (OAS) the ALBA, the Central American Integration System (SICA by its Spanish acronym) and the UN condemn the military coup, and categorically refuse to recognize the /de facto /president and current dictator Roberto Micheletti.

THE VIA CAMPESINA MEMBER ORGANISATIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA
ARE CONVENING THE FOLLOWING:

1. On the morning of Thursday 2nd July the Field Workers Association, representing Via Campesina International together with other Central American social movements will hold a press conference in Managua.
2. Friday 3rd July the Field Workers Association (ATC by its Spanish acronym), member of Via Campesina and other social organizations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala will mobilize to blockade the different borders with Honduras.
3. From Nicaragua we are organizing an international mission with delegates from Via Campesina in North America, Central America and South America, as well as delegates from Europe who will accompany the only legitimate president of Honduras when he returns to resume his responsibilities on the 4^th July. The mission will pursue the following aims:

a) accompany the leaders of popular, indigenous and trades union and peasant farmer organizations in resistance,
b) see that the mandate of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN is met.
c) Once in Honduras, to carry out risings and motivate people for action.
d) To call on the social movements of Honduras to join this peaceful struggle.

Once Mel Zelaya has been restored to his post, as second mission will be organised to accompany the president in the conclusion of his period in office.

It is the moment to build on Central American and Latin American integration, we will no longer let them trample our rights as they have done in the past. Today we are being called to build our own history

¡Globalicemos la lucha, globalicemos la esperanza!!!
Globalize Struggle! Globalize Hope!
¡Viva el movimiento campesino internacional!!!
Long live the international peasant farmers movement!!!
¡Viva el pueblo hondureño!!!
Long live the Honduran people!!!

Nigeria: DSM solidarise with great Ife workers

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57592

DSM Solidarise with Great Ife Workers

For a United, Mass Action to Defeat Management and Capitalism

The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) hereby solidarise with workers in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife in their current struggle to end illegal deduction from their salaries by the Prof. Michael Faborode-led university management running to over N400 million. We commend the workers’ resoluteness to struggle against this illegal deduction and enjoin them to go all the way to the struggle to its logical conclusion.

Furthermore, we in DSM commend the collective actions of all workers in the university. This example of joint struggle is highly commendable. We consequently, call on the in-house unions to maintain this collaboration as a permanent platform to fight collective struggles and to give solidarity to one another when any union is undertaking any struggle. This collective effort will give the workers the needed strength to be victorious. We enjoin the national leadership of each of these unions to also take this method of joint struggle to fight government’s attack on education, through chronic under funding.

Furthermore, we enjoin the great Ife workers not to limit this struggle to sit-at-home strike alone but to organize pickets and rallies as its being done now to counter any attempt by the management to break the strike. We call for daily monitoring of the strike by an elected Strike Committee while rallies and protest marches should be organised at least twice a week so as to keep workers together. Moreover, massive press campaign should be organised to all major press houses to inform the general public; and to serve as a good example to other workers in other institutions. The joint unions must also issue out educative materials including leaflets and posters.

The struggle is justified
It will be recalled that the workers through their unions – ASUU, SSANU, NASU and NAAT – had protested for several months, illegal deduction of contributory pension from their salaries when same are being deducted by the federal government from the source. It was also discovered that the deducted pension fund was no where to be found in the university account neither was it officially deposited with any PFA (Pension Fund Administrator) as workers did not ask the management to deduct the pension in the first place.

To us in the DSM, the deduction from the meagre workers’ wages for a so-called pension scheme is a fraud in the first place. The Nigerian state has a fundamental duty to pay a living, adequate and timely pension to all workers. It is fraudulent to ask workers who spend thirty years serving the country to part with their salaries before getting better living after retirement while politicians who contribute nothing except looting the nation’s treachery are guaranteed live pension or severance package from the nation purse. Thus, OAU management’s illegal deduction is simply adding insult upon injury.

This also reflects what has been happening in the university financial state for the past years where monies gotten from various sources have never reflected in the living conditions of workers and students alike. While students’ hostels are in deplorable conditions and laboratories and workshops hardly working, the workers living conditions have also plummeted. Though, it is agreed that the university and indeed the education sector is grossly under funded by the anti-poor government at all levels, the reality is that the university management’s graft tendencies have contributed more to this grave situation.

Rather than for the Faborode-led management to stop the deduction and refund workers’ monies, it resulted to cheap argument and excuse by asking workers to go to Abuja to stop federal government from deducting their salaries. But the same management fail to tell the world when workers has it to deduct their salary for any pension. If government is illegally deducting workers’ salaries why must the management compound their woes but further deducting their salaries. It should be noted that this is not the first time the management in its anti-worker character will be deducting workers’ salaries.

Consequently, we support workers’ decision to embark on strike and also their petitioning of the anti-graft agencies to probe the university management. If the university management is sincere, it should open its account for scrutiny by an open probe committee comprising representatives of staff and student unions.

Based on the aforementioned, we join the workers in the university to demand among other things:
• immediate stoppage to the deduction and refund of all deducted monies.
• scrutiny of the university account by a probe committee comprising representatives of staff and student unions.
• N52,200 minimum wage for all workers without retrenchment.
• massive funding of education sector and provision of free and quality education at all levels.
• public ownership of commanding height of the nation’s wealth under workers and poor people’s control to provide needed fund to develop the country and provide better living for all.


Signed.

Alfred Adegoke Coordinator
Kola Ibrahim
Secretary

Nigeria: Implement teacher’s salary scale in Osun State now!

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR)

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57591

Press Statement:
• Implement Teacher’s Salary Scale in Osun State Now!
• Immediate Reversal of the Anti-Poor 50 Percent Cut In Social Service Sector Spending
• For a 48-hour general strike by NUT and NLC to force government concede

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State hereby call for the immediate implementation of the long-awaited Teacher’s Salary Scale by the Oyinlola government. We also call on the leadership of the Nigerian Union Teachers in the state to call a 48 hour warning strike to force Oyinlola government to implement the TSS. On this basis, the leadership of NUT must call immediate congress of its members where collective decisions will be taken on how to conduct the struggle to achieve victory with a total strike (accompanied with rallies, pickets and protest marches) to follow strike committee if the Oyinlola fail to yield.

It will be recalled that the Oyinlola/Osun State government after threat of long drawn struggle by teachers three months ago to concede to implement the TSS in June this year if the state revenue improves. We of the CDWR had then called on teachers to reject this dubious position of the anti-worker government, as the excuse of low revenue profile of the state is only hypocritical. We maintained that the same argument will be used in June to avoid paying this pittance to teachers. We have been vindicated by the latest attempt of the government to pretend as if it has not any agreement with workers. We had then called for a mass strike by teachers to compel government to implement this allowance.

The same state government that claims not to have money could not explain what it has used tens of billions that had accrued to the state coffer for the past six years with every facet of public service already in shambles. Public education is in comatose while tertiary education has been commercialized; health facilities are in terrible conditions as health workers continue to protest lack of basic facilities and poor salary; public infrastructures like roads and water systems have collapse while jobs are elusive for the teeming youth as the Oyin-corp scheme is nothing short of extortion and exploitation of the poor people. Furthermore, workers, who knew nothing about the capitalists induced economic crisis, could not be made to be the victims of the crisis. While the state government claims not to have money to pay workers, it finds it convenient to pay politicians hundreds of thousands as monthly salary for doing practically nothing than looting the state blind. How can a state government justify the over N300, 000 salary paid to a ward councilor (and over N60, 000 to a councilor’s wife) while the highest paid teachers collects less than 30 percent and the least paid teacher collects less than 4 percent of a councilor’s pay. The total annual salaries of councilors in the state (running to over N1.4 billion) are enough to employ 2240 workers on N50, 000 monthly salary. This is pure robbery!

Worse still, all government policies have continued to favour the rich few in power and business which has made lives more miserable for the poor people in the state. Just few weeks ago, the state government issued an anti-poor, pro-rich policy of 50 percent cut in spending for public service sector including tertiary institutions and health sector. In a state where public facilities like education and health are in poor conditions and virtually inaccessible to the poor people in the state, the latest cut in public spending on these social services is another deadly onslaught on the poor and working people in the state.

With the latest policy, the state owned tertiary institutions will be given excuse to hike fees (which have already being hiked by over 600 percent in the past one year) beyond the reach of the students while many workers will also be retrenched in a state where government has provided little or no job for the teeming youth in the state. Also, health facilities will be elusive for the people of the state as the collapsing hospitals in the state will be made to fund themselves. It will be recalled that health workers in the state are still having battles with the state government on remuneration.

With the above scenario, Osun State teachers and indeed all workers must fight for a better living standard by compelling government to pay adequate wages. If NUT leadership in the state does not fight for the immediate implementation of the TSS, it will provide encouragement for the anti-worker Oyinlola government to reject the payment of N52, 200 minimum wage when the national leadership of NLC and TUC wins the battle. Moreover, the NUT leadership must demand for massive funding of public education in the state by at least 30 percent of the budget with education workers through their democratic representative determine and supervise how the money will be utilized in order to prevent the rats in government from looting such resources. NUT must reject a situation whereby workers will be working in a frustrated environment due to lack of basic facilities.

We also call on the NLC, TUC and other unions in the state to call a 48 hours warning strike through a general congress, to compel Oyinlola government to rescind the decision to cut public spending by 50 percent and to show solidarity with the teachers. They should not wait until the effects of the terrible neo-liberal policy start hitting working and poor people who are already groaning under pervasive poverty and want engendered by the anti-poor, neo-liberal policies of Oyinlola government and its masters at the federal level. Thus, the warning strike should be used to demand among other things:

- Immediate and full implementation of the TSS, backdated to January, 2009.
- Reversal of the anti-poor policy of cut in public spending by 50 percent. For massive funding of social service sector like education, health, etc.
- N52, 200 minimum wage to all categories of workers in the country.
- Cut in public officers’ salary to the level of workers to provide money to develop society.
- Well-paid and secure jobs for all able-bodied persons in the state.
- Regularize all temporary workers including Oyin-corps workers with full employment. No to retrenchment.
- Public scrutiny of the state account by democratic representatives of workers at all levels.
- Massive development of public infrastructures like roads, public housing, potable water, etc. through equipping of works ministry as a public works corporation rather than giving out contracts to looters in power.
- Public ownership of the commanding height of the economy under the democratic control of the working people and consumers’ representatives.

To us in the CDWR, we believe that the state and the nation’s resources, if judiciously and democratically used, could provide these demands without tears, but for the neo-liberal capitalist plundering being supervised by politicians in power. This is why labour movement must stand up to defend working and poor people’s interest.

Signed.


Ahaji Waheed Lawal

Kola Ibrahim
Chairman Secretary

Obama: Change Policy in Africa

Petition from Institute for Policy Studies

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57590

Obama: Change Policy in Africa

To: the President of the United States

Started by: Institute for Policy Studies

Join a coalition of African advocacy groups in asking Barack Obama to alter our policy towards the continent.

A just Africa policy would reform structures for economic recovery to reflect interdependence and cooperation.

It would restructure U.S. foreign assistance agencies to foster cooperative engagement with other countries and international agencies to confront global problems.

It would integrate regional collaboration and bilateral partnerships.

And a just Africa policy would reduce military spending and investment.

Tell our president to help end the crises occuring in Africa by installing a policy more focused on human rights, multilateralism, and diplomacy.

This petition ends on July13.


Mr. President: Change Africa Policy

Dear President Obama,

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, write to express sincere appreciation for your upcoming travel to Ghana, West Africa. Other U.S. presidents have traveled to sub-Saharan Africa while in office, but none has prioritized a trip to the Continent so early in his term. Africa, her Diaspora, and all social justice advocates eagerly look forward to the dawning of a new relationship with the Continent, and believe that your trip can be the first step in establishing new policy, based upon mutual collaboration and respect between the nations of Africa and the United States.

In charting a new course for our country's relationship with Africa, we assert that there are several critical general principles of engagement:

* A recognition of that our global interdependence requires sustainable, multilateral cooperation.

* Our long-term security depends on working together with others to find ways to increase common security, including less conventional threats that endanger us all: climate change, epidemics, natural disasters, economic disasters, and even the unpredictable side effects of accelerating technological changes.

* Our self-interest as a nation and our common humanity require investment in basic economic and social rights for all.

With specific regard to Africa, there is urgent need for the creation of a comprehensive new policy. During the period of the Cold War, U.S. relations with Africa were overwhelmingly dominated by the global rivalry with the Soviet Union. The consequences, in which both superpowers supported their clients with little regard to human rights or development concerns, remain visible today. Today, almost 15 years after Nelson Mandela took office in South Africa, the U.S. requires a comprehensive new Africa policy that builds upon affirmative general principles and fosters multilateral African-led solutions to create a stronger foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship.

There are pieces of such a policy which include the following four strategies:

1. REFORM STRUCTURES FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY TO REFLECT INTERDEPENDENCE AND COOPERATION RATHER THAN BLIND RELIANCE ON MARKET FORCES. Specifically, the United States should accelerate bilateral and international actions to cancel unsustainable debt of African countries. It should also support reform of international financial agencies dealing with Africa to promote democratization and transparency of decision-making, open dialogue on economic policies without ideological preconceptions, and accountability to and input from national and legislative bodies and regional civil society. It should cooperate with UN-specialized agencies and African policy analysts, instead of privileging narrow macroeconomic prescriptions from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

2. RESTRUCTURE U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE AGENCIES TO FOSTER COOPERATIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH OTHER COUNTRIES AND INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES TO CONFRONT GLOBAL PROBLEMS. It is essential not only to restructure foreign assistance programs for greater efficiency, but also to reframe U.S. contribution to internationally agreed efforts to meet common goals. The Obama administration can adopt a just approach to development, anchored in principles of mutual respects in a range of issues: food security, human rights, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and global health. The United States should: A) contribute its fair share to multi-lateral agencies; B) coordinate bilateral programs with international programs, e.g., the universally agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals, and C) ensure the integration of U.S. funded development programs within broader frameworks of regional and bilateral cooperation.

3. INTEGRATE REGIONAL COLLABORATION AND BILATERAL PARTNERSHIPS TO FOSTER AN INCLUSIVE APPROACH TO RESOLVE ISSUES WITHIN EACH REGION. It is urgent to establish frameworks for broader dialogue, including African and U.S. civil society, policy analysts, legislators, and a wide variety of government sectors rather than, as is now the case, to privilege the expansion of military ties through AFRICOM and of trade ties through the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

4. REDUCE U.S. MILITARY SPENDING AND INVESTMENT AND DEFUSE THREATS THROUGH COOPERATIVE SECURITY MEASURES, ARMS REDUCTION, AND MULTILATERAL PEACE INITIATIVES. Importantly, the United States should stop the militarization of U.S. policy towards Africa by suspending all bilateral military cooperation with African states and anti-terrorism initiatives until and unless it can ensure that they do not reinforce nondemocratic regimes, contribute to ongoing conflicts, or stimulate new conflicts. Instead, U.S. security policy towards Africa should focus on strengthening multilateral peacemaking and peacekeeping capacity, by the African Union, African regional groups, and the United Nations.

We thank you for the opportunity to share these views with you and look forward to an opportunity to discuss them in greater depth.

Respectfully,

UNHCR responds to Fahamu on the situation at Mtabila Camp

2009-07-08

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/57573

Fahamu - Networks for social justice

On the occasion of the annual consultations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with non-governmental organisations (Geneva 30 June), Fahamu asked the Africa Bureau to respond to the report ‘Coercion and Intimidation in the Voluntary Repatriation of 37,000 Burundian Refugees from Mtabila Camp, Tanzania.’

Senaize Solange, Senior Desk Officer in UNHCR’s Africa Bureau, explained in a plenary session that UNHCR is aware of the allegations and is monitoring the situation. She expressed UNHCR’s concern over the incidents and Tanzanian government declarations detailed in the Fahamu report but stated that positive changes in Burundi must be acknowledged. Further, she noted that certain refugee ‘leaders’ were encouraging refugees to refuse repatriation. Senaize explained that UNHCR has expressed its concern to the Tanzanian government, resulting in an extension of the 30 June Mtabila camp closure deadline and a commitment from the Tanzanian government that there will not be any forced return. UNHCR and the Government are discussing possibility of providing alternative status for Burundians who do not want to repatriate and have no specific protection concern. UNHCR may also move such individuals to another camp.

Following the plenary, when asked about the undated notice circulated to refugees in Mtabila camp (attached to the Fahamu report) and whether it might be the result of a divergence between policy at headquarters and policy in the field, Senaize explained that UNHCR’s position has evolved in response to the 36,000 refugees who have not repatriated. This does not, however, justify why the notice was issued in the first place. Senaize further explained that UNHCR is engaged in ongoing discussions with the Tanzanian government and donor countries regarding this population and is attempting to engage the East African Community regarding the movement of population in the region (which includes the repatriation of Rwandans from Uganda).

Apologies don’t put food on the table

Ife Kilimanjaro

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/57625

Apologies do not put food on the table. They do not end systematic exploitation, plunder, murder and rape. They don't shift fundamental socio-economic and political relationships that are reproduced with each class, race, generation, gender, culture and ethnicity.

Apologies give the impression that progress has been made when it hasn't. An apology doesn't mean anything. It doesn't go anywhere.

Actions do, however. So how about having concern about our own actions, correcting our historical and current mistakes, and defining our own futures without regard to meaningless words?

Credit our achievements in the reparations struggle

Cikiah Thomas

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/57624

Whereas your article made some very close up observations regarding the reasons responsible for the victory at the first World Conference against Racism and again at the recently concluded Geneva Review Conference; generally, you were too generous in crediting the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who was supportive of the US government and their allies’ attempt to destroy the reparations movement lead by African people.

Likewise, you failed to pay adequate detailed attention to the strategies and tactics African warriors had to deploy to overcome the dirty tricks slave owning nations employed in their attempt to disrupt the reparations movement.

It would be helpful in the future for you to note that our achievements in the reparations struggle is indeed akin to the Bandung creation and that Africans must be highly credited for such achievement. It would appears you are also giving too much credit to some of the nations states mention with respect to their support for reparations, as their support is directly linked to our lobbying efforts.

How donor agencies stifle development

Simon Kokoyo

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/57622

I have liked the article by Zaya Yeebo of UNDP's (United Nations Development Programme) Civil Society and Democratic Governance facility, aimed at helping community-based grassroots movements with the organisational skills, the expertise and the financial support to lead change from below. This approach should have been taken very long time ago. Before the election campaign, donor agencies funded big NGOs to engage in peace promotion campaigns/initiative which instead become counter productive because the real actors on the ground were never involved because they 'lacked capacity' to handle donor funds. CBOs have the skills to organize and mobile their own communities but their skills are rarely utilised or regarded by big NGOs.

While it is important to apply professionalism in working with communities; the challenges is how you bring in highly educated but inexperienced in development field to evaluate community based organisation if they qualify for the facility by UNDP?

What has made 'big civil society' organisation fail in achieving real change in Kenya is because they wasted more time in building structures in fulfilling donor requirements and conditions in the name of being efficient and accountable at the expense of working closely and genuinely with grassroots organisations for change.

The same mistakes are bound to occur if community based organisations are 'forced' to conform with requirements by donor agencies and they are assessed if they have structures similar to that of big NGOs. We might end up upgrading CBOs to ineffective organisations as agents of change.

Pan-Africanism is an elitist ideal

A response to Fatoumata Toure

Anne Khaminwa

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/57617

Dear Fatoumata,

Thank-you so much for taking the time to read my article. As you can imagine as a writer, I am honored when anyone takes the time to consider my ideas. But I disagree.

Pan Africanism itself is an elitist ideal. It does not come out of any real relationships between the peoples of different countries that are populated by African peoples. Most Africans can't even agree to live in peace with the diverse ethnicities within their national borders, much less to find common cause with distant countries.

Most of the points you raise actually support my contention that, for better or for worse, whether one likes it or not, whether it suits one's political/ideological inclinations or not, all those problems befell Haiti as the frist black republic. If that is the case, why not abandon that approach?

Here in the Americas for example, the failure of Reconstruction to uplift the South in the second half of the 1800s, after the Civil War, was due in part to blacks wanting to establish, black-only communities. This led to progressive Northerners withdrawing their support for the social and political changes made after the Emancipation Declaration. The outcome of this is such that listening to contemporary discourse on race in America, it would be very difficult to appreciate that white Northerners fought and died for the cause of black emancipation.

And yes, for some and arguably for enough people to have made the colonial venture proceed so quickly – how else could two average sized countries, England and France have gained control over such a large land area in such a short time – colonialism did have its benevolent aspects. In Kenya for example, landless Gikuyu gained access to land by squatting on white-owned farms. Even in contemporary times, one must wonder whether the type of tragedy that took place in Uganda for example would have occurred had it remained under British rule.

Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth has been quite influential although I think that Albert Memmi's The Coloniser and the Colonised is a more nuanced discussion of the dynamics of colonisation. Fanon himself was from Martinique. At independence, that island nation's leader, Aime Cesaire chose to remain in the French department system and to forgo outright independence in favour of the benefits that would accrue to his countrymen through their continued ties with France. How has that choice benefited the people of Martinique? How have they fared in comparison to, say Haiti?

Fanon thought that his countrymen lacked a sufficiently well developed radical consciousness. As depicted in Isaac Julien's video on Fanon, many elderly Martinicans did not even consider themselves to be African. So Fanon went to Algeria in search of an adventure.

At a time when participation in mutinational economies is a given, that 'colonised' identity is an asset. Don't sell yourself short. That is how we gain access to resources beyond our borders. Here we are communicating in English, on the Internet – a Western language in a Western technology. Why not appreciate the opportunity, be thankful and work to further improve the conditions that made this conversation possible?

The challenge that the people Waweru sought to enlighten face is how to find jobs in an economy that is not yet big enough to accomodate them. This challenge does not lend itself to all these -isms and schisms. It is actually a very practical supply and demand problem. Kenyatta had one solution, 'Rudi shambani' he extolled the urban poor. 'Return to the rural areas.' But human nature being what it is, this has not happened. Another might be to become producers of valuable products that can be sold to the complacent elites, tourists etc. for a profit.

At least not in my lifetime

Remembering Professor Haroub Othman (1942 – 2009)

Chambi Chachage

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/57594

It was saddening, indeed shocking, when I received a text message on a Sunday morning about the passing of Professor Haroub Othman. Pass the message to Professor Issa Shivji, the text said. 'What?' another text message queried in disbelief, as more texts flowed in as if to shatter our denial.

Time seemed to stand still. I sat in front of a laptop, my main gateway to the Pan-African world, and wondered as I reminisced. It was only three weeks before that I had seen the ever composed professor at the Dar-es-Salaam’s International Airport now fittingly renamed after Julius Nyerere whom he admired and worked with. As it normally happens to me when I see one or both of the ‘professorial couple’ – for his wife, Saida Yahya-Othman, is also a professor – I wondered how do they manage to keep that healthy and tranquil at such age in this fast-paced age?

As we waited for our plane, I took my time to observe from a distance the ‘gentle giant’, hoping maybe to pick a leaf or two, unnoticed. Upon boarding the plane, I decided to go to his seat to greet him. That was when I realised we were heading to the same place to attend the third European Conference on African Studies (ECAS). Well, I told myself, at last here is someone from Tanzania who is interested in my field of study – a field that is associated with that colonial legacy of studying and exposing Africa to capitalist and imperial forces – so I thought we might get to discuss about why the University of Dar-es-Salaam (UDSM) is not into that field per se.

Little did I know that the conversation we had on that trip – in the plane and on transit in Dubai – was to be the last. I only saw him afar at ECAS when Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza was delivering a contentious ‘Lugard lecture’ on ‘Pan-Africanism in the Age of Obama’ but somehow I lost track of him. Yet I thought I will meet him in Dar-es-Salaam and get the discussion on African Studies in Tanzania going. Such is the unpredictability and fragility of human life!

In moments like these, the best some of us can do is to reflect on the lives and times of those who have inspired our talk(s) on, and walk(s) toward, a better future for the Pan-African world which, in essence, is a Pan-Human world. I, for one, knew of the professorial couple since I was a little kid as I was growing up within the UDSM campus. However, my real personal intellectual and activist encounters with Professor Othman came very lately and so briefly. Ironically, most of those encounters had to do with upholding the legacies of those inspiring icons who had moved on.

One such encounter was after the famous Palestinian poet, Mahmood Darwish passed away. We had a session at the Soma Book Café on 5 October 2008. This was a special day chosen worldwide to commemorate his legacy. Professor Othman gave a solemn presentation on the plights and struggles of the Palestinian people as poetically portrayed by Darwish. One could sense his desire that the sons and daughters of Tanzania could know more about this poet of liberation. To that end he asked me to write a Kiswahili article on the event so as to reach a wider audience.

Gosh, it was one of those stressful moments when I have a lot on my plate! But that gentle professorial passion inspired me to wake up very early in the morning and come up with a tribute titled ‘Ulimwengu wamlilia mshairi mahiri’, that is, ‘The world mourns a brilliant poet’. 'Asante sana', that is, ‘Thank you very much’, was the response from Professor Othman as he notified me that he has also sent it to editors of two other local newspapers. Such was his passion for the dispensation of justice in all corners of our so-called global village.

Another encounter was when we had a ‘day vigil’ in memory of Tajudeen Abdul-Rahim. Professor Othman, as passionate as ever for the need of the current crop of Africa’s/Tanzania’s intellectuals and activists to always remember our historical struggles, asked, nay, reminded me, about sharing those memoirs with our online forum of ‘Wanazuoni –Tanzania’s Intellectuals.’

That was the same day he gave me a pack of Zanzibar Legal Services Centre (ZLSC) Publication Series, lamenting that one of the publications by his colleague, Professor Chris Maina Peter, was out of stock and that he will make sure I get a copy as soon as new ones arrive from Zanzibar. It was only when we arrived at ZLSC on our way to his funeral that I realised what these publications really meant to him and his colleagues: 'Transform justice into passion.'

The professor indeed transformed his vision and mission into passion. He was ready to side with justice even when the champions of democracy were siding with injustice in the Middle East and Latin America. When the right wing was talking the language of rights while shoving unjust neo-liberal policy pills on our throats he was ready to be among ‘what is left of the leftists.’ He talked and walked left. I can still vividly see Haroub and Saida, after listening to Oliver Mtukudzi’s revolutionary songs, going back home in their car with a sticker: 'The leftists have rights too'!

In brief this is the Professor Haroub Othman I knew of. Ours were such brief, albeit memorable, encounters. They were indeed filled with lasting humane impressions. In a way it was the professor’s way of passing the baton of his generation to our generation which, as Frantz Fanon reminded us long time ago, “must, out of its relative obscurity, discover its mission then fufill it or betray it."

Yes, it was his sagacious way of saying here we are the generation of the Rashidis of his Baraste Kipande homeboy Shafi Adam Shafi’s Kuli, who said ‘Yana mwisho haya’ as in ‘This will end’, passing the mantle to your generation of the Wanazuoni who should say ‘Lets end this.’ The lingering question is: Are we ready to seize the moment? Shall we make an end to injustice?

Here was a professor who was so passionate about the ideas and ideals of Pan-Africanism such as peace, justice and unity. No wonder, in the recent Mwalimu Nyerere Intellectual Festival, he thus said of the debatable union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar that formed the United Republic of Tanzania: 'It will not break, at least not in my lifetime.' What a subtle prophecy!

That was Professor Haroub Othman’s ‘parting shot’ to all those who are stalling the Muafaka/Accord and silencing the call for a government of national unity. It is a call to ensure that the upcoming 2010 election does not break Zanzibar let aloneTanzania. We must not break. Africa must unite!

* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist and policy analyst.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961–2009): A celebration of a life in full

Kayode Fayemi

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/57582

Over the last 40 days, I have read many eulogies and tributes to our brother, comrade and friend Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem since his rather untimely departure on 25 May 2009. Several times I have put pen to paper to share my own thoughts on Taju with his legion of friends and well-wishers, but on each occasion words have certainly failed me. I suppose since that morning when Bisi and I received the call from Nairobi, I have been in deliberate denial. Even after joining friends and family to receive the body in Lagos, travelling to Abuja, and subsequently Funtua, I still refused to confront the reality of this painful loss. My mind kept going back to our last conversation when he was with our mutual friend and brother, Napoleon Abdulai in Monrovia, just a week before the loss. And I kept asking myself, did he have a premonition that this was about to happen? Was he sending a message when he kept imploring me to watch my security more tightly because the goons who had taken over the political landscape in Nigeria were capable of resorting to any means of retaining what had been stolen? Why, I kept ruminating, do bad things happen to good people? Why must we always lose our brightest and best to the pervasive evil machinations stalking Africa? Why, why, why?

But as the eulogies poured in on the specially created Pambazuka News webpage and several other online outlets, the palpable sense of despair and sadness turned into a celebration of a life in full culminating in today’s 40th-day commemoration across the continent. The tributes have come from far and near, remarking Taju’s pan-African internationalism, his obsession with the unity of the African peoples, his quest for institution-building, his insistence on speaking truth to power and his refusal to be a cloistered academic and suffer fools gladly. Many of the tributes, from presidents to plebeians, made this abundantly clear.

Taju deserved no less. An accomplished scholar, exceptional teacher, Pan-Africanist ideologue, democracy activist and military scourge, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem was supremely unstuffy and approachable, irreverent and impatient of protocol, gregarious and boisterous, all at once. Taju was infectiously witty, and at the same time deeply caring for people. Not for him the lazy intellectualism of cloistered academics. He was very much at home writing in The New Vision and Daily Trust as he was espousing political theory in the Review of African Political Economy, Africa World Review and African Marxist. His intellect remained public property to the very last, exemplified by his refusal to suffer Africa’s real and putative dictators and their multinational collaborators gladly.

Born in Funtua, Katsina State on 6 January 1961, Tajudeen attended the Government Secondary School in Funtua and then Bayero University, Kano, where he distinguished himself with a first-class honours degree in Political Science. He later broke new ground by becoming the first Rhodes scholar from the north of Nigeria at Oxford University, where he earned his doctorate in Politics. Instead of pursuing the traditional route through the academy followed by many of his friends and colleagues, Taju was always breaking new ground and refused to be boxed into the cage of sterile scholarship. Not for him the pursuit of single issue or agenda. He was always in search of solutions, in a variety of ways. Though he never committed to a life in the academy, he was very much involved in 1980s debates on the Left, the state, class, the market and imperialism and subsequently in 1980s and 1990s debates on democratisation and development. He remained ever so critical of the tyranny of borrowed paradigms within social science research. Instead, he chose a life dedicated to the transformation of the African continent.

As an institution-builder, Taju was instrumental to the establishment of several research bodies, activist institutions and associations in Africa. He was the founder and first coordinator of the Africa Research Information Bureau, the founding chairperson of the Centre for Democracy and Development, the general secretary of the Pan African Movement Secretariat, the co-director of Justice Africa, the director of the Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Programme (PADEAP), the founder and proprietor of Hauwa Community College and a major driving force behind the Organisation of African Unity's (OAU) transformation into the African Union (AU). In between all this, as well as being a doting father and loving husband, he also served as a member and later as the chair of the board of governors of his daughters’ school in Haringey Borough, London.

Even as his ideas evolved with maturity, he never abandoned the goals of a socialist and united Africa, even when conventional wisdom swung heavily against these ideals. A visionary leader, Taju's enduring legacy remained his courage of conviction and the clarity of his ideas, through which he brilliantly and lucidly laid out the scientific necessity of a united and socialist Africa. In several of his academic and newspaper writings, particularly 'Pan-Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the 21st Century' (Zed Books 1996) arguably his magnum opus and his Pan-African Postcard articles, Taju exposed and attacked the imperialism of Western social science as a pernicious and yet subtle form of domination masquerading as the promotion of African division. Taju was a force of nature at social and intellectual gatherings, always ready to denounce the so-called scientific objectivity of the social sciences as a screen for the pursuit of particularistic, imperialistic interests. But even as he remained consistently critical of Western social science, his scholarship bore no malice as he always engaged the same Western scholars, activists and institutions on their own turf. That probably explained his last, and to many, somewhat inexplicable, relationship with the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

Taju exhibited total commitment to democratic ideals. As much as he recognised the inability of the average African politician, especially in his troubled homeland, he never used their inability as an excuse for justifying military intervention, as several other colleagues of ours did unashamedly. Indeed, at a time when many of his colleagues from his Bayero days were the ones hunting us in the UK and across the world either as military officers or security apparatchiks for perpetuating military domination, Taju stood respectably clear of such machinations, remaining a scourge of military dictators and a huge source of hope and inspiration to younger academics.

For Taju, the personal was also political. As someone quite close to him for two decades, I can say that he was infectious with his love and care. He doted over family and friends. He taught many of us what true friendship is. Although eclectic in his choice of friends, he would always ask after his friends and even casual acquaintances. As he traversed the length and breadth of the continent, Taju would always be in touch with friends in every city. That booming voice on the phone was unmistakable, even if you had not seen him for years. My abiding memory of the soft Taju was at his wedding in Tunis. I knew Mounira was special the day Taju said to me 'Man, this thing is getting serious and I think marriage is on the cards.' It was three days of revelry and fun in the Chaieb family home in Tunis with the father subjecting many of us to funny but critical scrutiny.

Of course, Taju was not without his own foibles. He was human, after all. Many who knew him remarked his less than organised lifestyle, characterised by a penchant for missing his flights and driving rough (I even held myself responsible as the one who taught Taju how to drive). But these foibles paled into insignificance placed side-by-side with Taju’s extraordinary qualities. In my two decades of knowing Taju, he was always ruminating about how to make a fundamental difference in the lives of ordinary people. He was for the most part the conscience of ordinary people and a scourge of powerful people. Many who know him can affirm Taju’s irreverent treatment of so-called powerful people. I encountered him speaking with Olusegun Obasanjo, Thabo Mbeki, Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, Wole Soyinka and Meles Zenawi, and he was one African who never wavered in speaking truth to power, often in the most undiplomatic manner.

The greatest tribute we can pay this African exemplar is to continue in his ways by building institutions and structures that will serve the purpose of our time and beyond. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once said, 'Not to participate in the major events of one’s time is not to have lived.' Taju not only participated in the major events of his time, he charted and shaped the course of many events through his scholarship and activism. Africa has lost a gem, indeed one of the brightest in our firmament. The democratic struggle in Nigeria has been short-changed by this consistent advocate of empowerment for the ordinary people. But the struggle must continue. And as he would have told all of us here, 'Don't agonise, organise!'

* Kayode Fayemi is the former director of the Centre for Democracy and Development.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Blue tales, other narratives and beyond: The art of Khalid Kodi

New works of storytelling

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/57574

The Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works presents Blue Tales, Other Narratives and Beyond: The Art of Khalid Kodi, New Works of Story Telling, Saturday July 11, 2009 from 3-7PM at the Church of the Covenant, 310 East 42 Street, NY (between 1st and 2nd, next to Tudor Hotel). The exhibition is open to the public and features small and large scale paintings, drawings, and mixed media on paper. Sudanese food and music will be shared for this very special inaugural benefit /art sale. A portion of the proceeds will support the Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works. Khalid Kodi, long recognized as a prolific Sudanese American master artist, has emerged as a central figure working on multi/ cross-cultural concepts. He uses contemporary themes for traditional story telling with references to magical realism, intricately layered in textures, symbols, and figures, and by synthesizing colors / rhythms. His past series have included works on human phenomena such as wars, genocide and their impact on human societies. These works incorporate sculpture, paintings, installations and environmental sites, and were featured in many national and international venues. Through his work, Kodi advocates for and humanizes victims of war and genocide in Africa, and exposes these events to the larger international community. His exhibitions carries an out reach and educational message, that promote peace, human dignity, and celebrate a rich culture. Khalid Kodi was born in the Sudan, immigrating to the United States in early 90s. As an African living in America, he has embraced both cultures, communicating elements of both to one another, and using his art as a forum to teach and to bring issues of the civil war in the Sudan to his Sudanese community all over the world. Khalid Kodi is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College, and a resident artist in the African American Master Artist in Residence Program (AAMARP), an adjunct of the Department of African American Studies, Northeastern University. For additional information please contact: Blanche Foster 973-274-9424 bfoster@darfurrehab.org or
Khalid Kodi 617-373-3901 Khalid_kodi@hotmail.com

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

Blue tales, other narratives and beyond: The art of Khalid Kodi

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/57602

The Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works presents Blue Tales, Other Narratives and Beyond: The Art of Khalid Kodi, New Works of Story Telling, Saturday July 11, 2009 from 3-7PM at the Church of the Covenant, 310 East 42 Street, NY (between 1st and 2nd, next to Tudor Hotel). The exhibition is open to the public and features small and large scale paintings, drawings, and mixed media on paper. Sudanese food and music will be shared for this very special inaugural benefit /art sale. A portion of the proceeds will support the Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works.
The Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works presents Blue Tales, Other Narratives and Beyond: The Art of Khalid Kodi, New Works of Story Telling, Saturday July 11, 2009 from 3-7PM at the Church of the Covenant, 310 East 42 Street, NY (between 1st and 2nd, next to Tudor Hotel). The exhibition is open to the public and features small and large scale paintings, drawings, and mixed media on paper. Sudanese food and music will be shared for this very special inaugural benefit /art sale. A portion of the proceeds will support the Darfur Rehabilitation Project and Cutting Edge Art & Culture Works.

Khalid Kodi, long recognized as a prolific Sudanese American master artist, has emerged as a central figure working on multi/ cross-cultural concepts. He uses contemporary themes for traditional story telling with references to magical realism, intricately layered in textures, symbols, and figures, and by synthesizing colors / rhythms.
His past series have included works on human phenomena such as wars, genocide and their impact on human societies. These works incorporate sculpture, paintings, installations and environmental sites, and were featured in many national and international venues. Through his work, Kodi advocates for and humanizes victims of war and genocide in Africa, and exposes these events to the larger international community. His exhibitions carries an out reach and educational message, that promote peace, human dignity, and celebrate a rich culture.

Khalid Kodi was born in the Sudan, immigrating to the United States in early 90s. As an African living in America, he has embraced both cultures, communicating elements of both to one another, and using his art as a forum to teach and to bring issues of the civil war in the Sudan to his Sudanese community all over the world. Khalid Kodi is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College, and a resident artist in the African American Master Artist in Residence Program (AAMARP), an adjunct of the Department of African American Studies, Northeastern University.
For additional information please contact:
Blanche Foster/ 973-274-9424 Khalid Kodi/617-373-3901

Kenya: Lola Kenya children's screen 2009

2009-07-03

http://75.127.72.207/lola_kenya_childrens_screen_2009_confirms_festival_dates

The 4th edition of the annual Lola Kenya Screen audiovisual media festival for children and youth in eastern Africa will be held at Goethe-Institut, Nairobi, Kenya, August 10-15, 2009. The only festival in Africa exclusively designed for children and youth, Lola Kenya Screen was established in October 2005 to explore, identify and nurture creative talents among children and youth in areas of filmmaking, cultural journalism, events planning and presentation and critical appreciation of creativity.

South Africa: Durban International Film Festival 30th Anniversary

23 July to 2 August 2009

2009-07-03

http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/Durban_International_Film_Festival.htm

The landmark 30 th Durban International Film Festival brings together films and filmmakers from around the world in a celebration of the diversity and magic of cinema. Across eleven intense days DIFF will present over 200 screenings at venues across the city of Durban and in surrounding communities. While the selection of fascinating, passionate and entertaining films forms the centre of the festival, an extensive programme of free workshops and seminars – this year based at the Royal Hotel - will prime a new generation of South African filmmakers.

South Africa: Urban Voices International Arts Festival 2009

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/57628

Urban Voices International Arts Festival 2009 promises again to deliver the most original, diverse and cutting edge spoken word for the South African aficionados of the arts. “As always, the Southern African Arts Exchange has scouted far and wide across the world, searching for the most talented and relevant poets for the South African audiences”, says Roshnie Moonsammy, executive director and founder of Urban Voices and its mother body the Southern African Arts Exchange (SAAE). The Urban Voices Poetry Festival takes place in three cities, Joburg, Cape Town and Durban.
Urban Voices International Arts Festival 2009 promises again to deliver the most original, diverse and cutting edge spoken word for the South African aficionados of the arts. “As always, the Southern African Arts Exchange has scouted far and wide across the world, searching for the most talented and relevant poets for the South African audiences”, says Roshnie Moonsammy, executive director and founder of Urban Voices and its mother body the Southern African Arts Exchange (SAAE). The Urban Voices Poetry Festival takes place in three cities, Joburg, Cape Town and Durban.

This year’s festival will feature dance, song and performance poetry eclectically influenced from Ghana, USA, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and South Africa. “Urban Voices 2009 continues with our programmes of mutual learning with Africans in the Diaspora talking with artists and people in South Africa. This is particularly important as we prepare for global events such as the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and others which present opportunities for people to connect, to enjoy and work together to building solidarity through culture and the arts for a just world and a vibrant and democratic Africa” said Moonsammy.

Urban Voices 2009

Talented young and emerging South African poets from the three cities will show their mettle on stage and proudly display the diversity that has become synonymous with our country’s image. Local poets include Rite 2 Speak (Naima Mclean, Ameera Patel, and Mbali Kgosidintsi), Tsoana Nhlapo and many more.

Staceyann Chin (Asian/Jamaican) will no doubt be a big draw card this year. She performed at Urban Voices in 2003 to sold out audiences in all three cities. Staceyann Chin has been an “out poet and political activist” since 1998 and returns to our shores with her vibrant poetry that always push boundaries and challenge social norms through her work on sexuality, gender justice and against homophobia.

Chin will be sharing the stage with Ghanaian poet/singer and storyteller Abena Koomson; Mandla Langa, a South African award winning writer and accomplished poet; Willie Perdomo (USA/Puerto Rican) is an accomplished academic with a style that merges Hip-hop and Shakespeare; bringing a unique performance structure to the stage is the talented dancer, choreographer, poet, educator and community worker, Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

The Urban Voices International Arts Festival is a programme of the SAAE, and has been running since 2001 when it hosted amongst others, Tony Award winning poet/actor Sarah Jones and various other award winning poets, theatre performers and musicians. In addition, Urban Voices has since brought various national and international greats to grace the Urban Voices stage, and these included artists such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Saul Williams, The Last Poets, Mutabaruka, Jean “Binta” Breeze, Dr. Don Materra, Staceyann Chin, Prof Willie Kgotsisile, Lebo Mashile and Mak Manaka.

Workshopping our past and future

“As with every annual Urban Voices programme, the workshops are an integral part of our learning and sharing as artists meet with aspirant writers and enthusiasts – in a free, secure and open learning space,” said Moonsammy. Master class on performance/movement, lectures on poetry will be held in prisons, schools and at some select cultural community venues.

The Poetry Festival will take place from 22 July to the 28 July, in cities Jo’burg, Cape Town and Durban.

Poetry Performances: Tickets at Computicket/Door

Saturday 25th July @ Bassline, Newtown, Joburg at 8pm: R150

Sunday 26th July @ The Baxter Theatre, Cape Town at 8pm: R150

Tuesday 28th @ The Bat Centre, Durban at 7.30pm: R110

Poetry Workshops and Lectures- Free Entrance – Please check www.artsexchange.co.za for more information on workshops or email zee@artsexchange.co.za or info@artsexchange.co.za

An interview with Rustum Kozain

Poéfrika

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/57579

In an interview with Poéfrika, the South African poet Rustum Kozain discusses his prize-winning collection of poems 'This Carting Life', material support for poets and the place of swearing in poetry.

POÉFRIKA: In your opinion, are the times we live in good or not for literature? If not, what do you do to 'make it'? If so, in what way?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: I'm not sure. From a writer's perspective, one's own time is one's own time, meaning, I live now and can't compare, in lived experience, to another time. Having said that, I imagine all times are good for literature from a writer's perspective – all times must have in them the stuff, the grist for the writer's mill. Have the past 20 years then been good for writing, especially for the monkish art of poetry? I think so, especially as we face a world from which it is probably better to withdraw if you're a poet, into your cell or tower, which is exactly where the writing happens.

As to the production side, I don't know. In SA [South Africa], big publishers publish less poetry, but small independents still have heart and courage to do so. Literature in general seems to be booming – books are published, reviewed etc. Let's forget the lack of space for good reviewing; I guess boom times are interested in quantity. In that sense, it seems a good time for literature, if not perhaps for poetry.

At the same time, people are reading less, or spending reading time on the internet where, in general, the reading experience happens in short, sharp shocks. And it apparently has cognitive results – attention spans get trained down, etc. (And I'm already nervous that this answer is too long). Of course, there are equal amounts of good, long serious reading to be found, but in general, the production tends to the twittering end of the scale. This should be a good time for the short short-story, the short poem. One can become fabulously popular – and quite possibly rich – by inventing trends in this regard – the e-novel in Japan, published via cellphone; there's been some version in SA as well, etc. I am sure someone has already invented the 'twitku'. I think this can work for prose and poetry, but I would still wish to maintain certain guild-like views for poetry because people (readers, potential, aspirant poets) in general tend to think of poetry as a part-time, instant thing: that it amounts to quickly scribbling a few lines and voilà, a poem. Twittering before Twitter was invented. That sounds perfect for the times and the media. But I mourn the fate of the long poem, when even a sonnet cannot hold the attention. And I mourn what people believe poetry should be in this regard, and it probably impacts on the publishing industry as well, on poetry becoming a stepchild.

So, there's tremendous activity – writers write, publishers publish. It must be good, but there is certainly some not so good aspects, just touched on above.

POÉFRIKA: What mistakes did you make when you were just setting out to write?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: Oh, all the normal adolescent mistakes all young poets – I am sure – make: too much dependence on adjectives and adverbs, gushing, crazy images (and calling it surrealist). And writing those anguished love poems to the girl who sat next to me in Physics class, many phrases cribbed from the too much Khalil Gibran I was reading as a teenager. Later, I also liked using the word 'history' too often, whether it was history's gaze or history's doubts or history's resolve. And rebelling against poetic tradition without really knowing what I was rebelling against, yet using the word 'history'. Oh, there are many more.

POÉFRIKA: Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. So, where's the money?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: The money's everywhere: in the perfectly weighted line, in the soft chime when you happen on an internal rhyme, in finally getting a whole piece equal in temper to that first line that came to you on the train or the mini-bus taxi or while walking to the store. And in the surprise when you find what it is that you wanted to say. That's the money.

POÉFRIKA: How long did you work on 'This Carting Life'? With hindsight, was that long, short, just right?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: It wasn't a book until, like Geoffrey, I gathered what had been accumulating in my folders for a over a decade. Of course, I always wanted to publish in book form, but what I'm trying to say is that I didn't set out to write a 'book' of poetry. I just wrote poetry, published them in magazines, grew envious as peers and elders published yet another book. I just kept on writing poetry and getting a few published here and there. But I just wavered in getting a manuscript together, even after two different publishers (2001) had asked me to consider sending them a manuscript. Eventually, a friend in the US got me to get one together and submitted it to a competition on my behalf, where it won publication (2002) but I once again let it slide. In the meantime, I was still writing new stuff, publishing in magazines and editing, always editing, the existing manuscript. Again, a cousin and friend forced me to get a manuscript together (2004) and she herself (bless her) delivered the manuscript to one of the publishers who had approached me before. By this time, of course, the poems in the manuscript had been through much editing and it was a large manuscript. Several poems had to be dropped.

At the time of publication, the oldest poem in the book was 12 years old, the newest 2 years old. But that was a reflection of the process. One reviewer remarked that it is normal, but not good practise, for writers to want to include everything they have written. I have to agree; yet, there was a biographical impulse to include everything and I'm glad I did it.

The length of time it took is half due to a slack attitude, to not being a disciplined writer, to being a Romantic in that I write when it comes to me. It suits me. So, I have to say that the lengthy process – including not getting the manuscript together – suited that particular book. I also wonder about rushing out books for the sake of getting the next one published; I think that that conscious, deliberate approach can easily lead to rushed, formulaic books, especially in a context where few of us can be truly full-time writers and have to depend on other sources of income. I trust in the material finding its way out.

For example, I've been fretting over a years-long dry spell after 'This Carting Life'. Then poetry coming in bits and pieces, but nothing seemed like enough to base a book on. Now, six years after submitting my first manuscript, I look at my folders and it seems I might have a manuscript in there.

POÉFRIKA: A university teacher of mine (Elizabeth, one of the reasons I'm here busting my..., well... my head to try and write) told me that if I ever got a poem published in a prestigious magazine, she'd go back and turn my grade into an A+. No matter when that happened. Question: Was that a good or a bad move on her part? Would you do something of the sort if you were a varsity teacher?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: Who knows how these motivations work? Wanting to prove yourself is a good dark driving force. I agree with Geoffrey that it can set up the writer for despair, but I also agree with Michelle that if it is a driving force, then it's all good. One of my university teachers suggested that when submitting, start high (prestigious magazine), then work your way down. In that way, you have a way out and forward, towards publication of some sort down the line. If a small mag turns you down, where do you go afterwards? No use in aiming low. It can be as despairing.

And yet, I have to say, that I am happy to have my poems published in a journal that has a small local subscription, and to read at small, local groups, because the money remains in the line of poetry.

As a teacher, though, I wouldn't have (had) that kind of audacity to throw down a challenge like that. I come across many of my past students – many – who outstrip whatever expectations (high or low) I may have had of them. I would have had to change many grades.

POÉFRIKA: Where's African poetry at this stage? What structures are in place in southern Africa to help aspiring poets?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: Sometimes I despair that there are no structures, sometimes I realise that there may be structures and I just don't know about them (SA does have an arts grants service), and sometimes I despair at the welfarist approach to something like poetry. Yes, I would like to be able to live off my poetry (I live frugally, so it wouldn't cost much), or get a grant from the arts council (if I can just get my applications in on time!), but, even while I am struggling economically, I get irritated by the idea that poets need 'support structures'. All it takes is pen and paper. Steal a pen, recycle paper. And join a public library.

If support structures mean community, well, start your own. Poetry blogs, for instance, make up self-started communities and support structures. Poéfrika, for instance, didn't need support external to your own needs and drive to become your own and others' support structure.

To aspirant poets I would thus say, steal a pen, recycle the paper, and find friends of similar bent to talk poetry. And there's no easy answer to development – the only way is by trial and error. If, however, you imagine any kind of material support to be your automatic right, then try something else, like Pop Idols.

POÉFRIKA: You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a 'writing prompt' out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.

RUSTUM KOZAIN: This is from a former university teacher: Write a poem about heat, without using any words that directly connote heat or temperature, etc. E.g. while you may use the word 'sun', you can't use the phrase 'the sun burns down'.

POÉFRIKA: What position do four-letter words hold in your work? Can a poem be good despite its use of profanity?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: Of course it can. Even in general use, profanities are just words, and I laugh at people who use euphemisms for some prudish notion, like saying 'jeepers' when they mean, say, 'Jesus'. 'Jeepers' stands in for 'Jesus', but it means the same, like a synonym. So if you're wanting to say 'jeepers', but don't want to blaspheme, rather use a different word. And we use euphemisms for swearwords all the time: 'frigging' instead of 'fucking', etc. We may as well be using the swearword.

Of course there are times when swearing and cursing are bad taste, but I don't think swear words deserve the bad press. We have developed them for very human reasons, and they express the thing only they can express, otherwise we wouldn't have them, they wouldn't exist. And it's naive to pretend they don't exist.

In poetry, swearwords for the sake of swearwords are of course adolescent and don't work. But they can also be used to push the boundaries (of taste, in this case), which is what good art normally does. But the right to use them should be earned: in other words, the poem should earn the right to the use of swearwords in the poem. Like both Michelle and Geoffrey indicated, the poem's qualities do not depend merely on the absence or presence of a swearword.

Secondly, in this regard, I come from a family of auto-mechanics, working-class. I grew up with swearing all around me; I don't feel particularly damaged by it. And it's in my vocabulary. It's bound to pop up in my poetry.

And poetry is about everything; it's not about a certain kind of 'poetic' language, nor about 'pure' thoughts expressed in 'pure' language. People who blanch at swear words in poetry probably suffer from a misapprehension about the aesthetics of poetry, and should read some Chaucer.

POÉFRIKA: Is there a 'right' number of poems per book? How many poems are in 'This Carting Life', and why that number?

RUSTUM KOZAIN: I haven't counted the number of poems in the book. I feel the book is the right length for what it does – gathering together poems from a span of over 10 years. It's a weighty volume by SA standards, but I hope readers also feel it's the right length for what it says. Also, I favour the long poem, so, page length would be a better way to put it: 100 pages of poetry. 10 pages per year... that seems okay.

I don't know how to quantify the right length for a book, but I do want poetry books to be meaty.

POÉFRIKA: Here's an ongoing poem. Please write the fourth verse.

RUSTUM KOZAIN:
They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree
The moon as bright as the moon and no metaphor.

* Rustum Kozain is a poet based in Cape Town. Published in 2005, his debut collection of poetry, 'This Carting Life', was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 2006 and the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2007.
* This interview was originally published by Poéfrika.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

E.C. Osondu wins 10th Caine Prize for African Writing

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/57580

Nana Yaa Mensah described E.C.'s story as 'a tour de force describing, from a child’s point of view, the dislocating experience of being a displaced person. It is powerfully written with not an ounce of fat on it – and deeply moving.'

E.C. Osondu was born in Nigeria and worked as an advertising copywriter for many years before moving to New York to study for his MA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. He has won the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction and his story 'A Letter from Home' was judged one of 'The Top Ten Stories on the Internet’ in 2006. In 2007 his story 'Jimmy Carter's Eyes' was short-listed for the Caine Prize. He is now at Providence University. Also short-listed were:

- Mamle Kabu (Ghana) ‘The End of Skill’ from ‘Dreams, Miracles and Jazz’, published by Picador Africa, Johannesburg 2008
- Parselelo Kantai (Kenya) ‘You Wreck Her’ from the St Petersburg Review, NY 2008
- Alistair Morgan (South Africa) ‘Icebergs’ from The Paris Review no. 183, NY 2008
- Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya) ‘How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile’ from ‘Wasafiri’ No. 54, Summer 2008, London

Two other entries were highly commended: ‘Devils at the Door’ by Sierra Leone’s Brian James and Ghanaian writer Nii Parkes’s ‘Socks Ball’.

Chair of Judges Nana Yaa Mensah is a commentator and editor. She is on the advisory board of Wasafiri, the quarterly journal dedicated to the literatures of Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, and is at present editing a collection of think pieces on Ghana in the 21st century. Joining her on the panel were Professor Jon Cook of the University of East Anglia, award-winning novelist and Georgetown University Professor Jennifer Natalya Fink, Guardian journalist and author Hannah Pool, and Mohammed Umar, the Nigerian novelist, journalist and bookseller.

Once again the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity of taking up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Last year the Caine Prize was won by South African writer Henrietta Rose-Innes for her short story Poison, from ‘Africa Pens’, published by Spearhead, an imprint of New Africa Books, Cape Town, 2007. Chair of Judges Jude Kelly said at the time that the story showed 'a sharp talent, a rare maturity and a poetic intelligence that is both subtle and deeply effective. It is writing of the highest order.'

Previous winners include Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko, for Jambula Tree from ‘African Love Stories’, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2006, and Brian Chikwava, from Zimbabwe, whose first novel 'Harare North' has just been published by Jonathan Cape.

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

Fat Cats

Marion Grammer

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/57576

The two fat cats sat reading on the mat.
A Persian rug actually, but we won't go into that.
The Stock Market's up, they saw. Oh, what fun,
As their sleek black coats gleamed in the afternoon sun.

'Lyric, my mate', said cat one with a purr,
'scratch my back, just there, under the fur.
It's lasted a while, since 1994, this constant itch,
Which coincides incidentally with me getting rich, rich, rich.'

'You're wearing your diamond studded collar,
I see', said Kyoto. Did you perhaps pay top dollar?
'It was a bargain', said Lyric looking shifty,
'In the current financial climate you have to be nifty.'

'I rang my mate, old Nacker de Beer.
He said 'Look Lyric, everything's not as it may appear.
There's a storm brewing, the markets might tumble,
Don't cash in your shares yet, be ready to rumble.'

Kyoto's whiskers twitched, and he asked with a frown,
'Should we let them know the market's going down?'
'Who's them', meowed Lyric. 'You mean the unwashed?
Why, they're too stupid, they'll never have us sussed.

'Look at them, stretch your neck and you will see,
Those starving masses, they've never heard of BEE*
We've been out in the cold, in exile, for ever so long,
Now our financial masters are playing our song.'

A sound at the door made them prick up their ears.
They got up and stretched, exposing their rears.
'I think it's the boss, he's home early today.'
Said Lyric to Kyoto, 'Get ready to play.'

'Hello little pussies.' He enters the room.
'Had a good day boys?' his voice a loud boom.
He scratches their chins, his fat white hand lingers,
As he waves under their noses some golden fish fingers.

Now Lyric and Kyoto being nobody's fools knew,
That this was the moment, this was their cue.
They had to perform, to sing for their dinner,
Else their bank balances would surely get thinner.

They cleared their throats and puffed out their chests,
And prepared themselves for what they do best.

'Who wants to be a millionaire, we do.
'Who wants to be a billionaire, you do'.

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

Pambazuka Blog Review – July 9, 2009

Dibussi Tande

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/57593

Up Station Mountain Club links to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the purchase by rich countries of huge swathes of farmland in Africa:

“The acquisiton of farmland from the world's poor by rich countries and international corporations is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in the past six months, say reports from United Nations officials and agriculture experts… at least 30 million hectares is being acquired to grow food for countries such as China and the Gulf states, who cannot produce enough for their populations.

The UN says the trend is accelerating and could severely impair the ability of poor countries to feed themselves...

Some of the largest deals include South Korea's acquisition of 700,000 hectares in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia's purchase of 500,000 hectares in Tanzania.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects to shortly conclude an 8 million-hectare deal with a group of South African businesses.”

Koye-Ladele Mogbekeloluwa explains why Ghana and not Nigeria will be President Obama’s first stop in Africa:

“According to Obama, part of the reason why he is visiting Ghana first of all is that Ghana has conducted peaceful elections and seen peaceful power transitions in recent times. Remember that their last election generated quite close results, but the transition was still relatively uneventful. He also says that President Mills (the new president of Ghana) has shown himself committed to the rule of law, and to the kinds of democratic commitments that ensure stability in a country. He postulates that there is a strong correlation between governance and prosperity. In other words, countries that are well governed are prosperous! Ghana is well governed, that translates into prosperity.

Did I hear someone say Nigeria IS the giant of Africa?

Someone might argue that Ghana has a smaller population (23,382,848 people as at 2008) than Nigeria, and that we cannot model our political system after theirs. I contend that principles hold everywhere; the political system is no exception. If you plant beans in Nigeria, and you plant beans in Europe – you still get beans; not apples. Ghana might be smaller, but they are currently following principles that are guaranteed to make them into a developed country quite soon; and at the present rate – way before Nigeria. However, that will only continue if we refuse to take our places, and do our thing.”

Saharan Vibe showcases and writes about the origins of the Busuuti/Gomesi, the official dress for women in Buganda:

“The busuuti/gomesi is very elaborate, with a square neck adorned with two buttons, pointy sleeves, full skirt, and a huge sash. There are many historical contradictions about the origin of the busuuti/gomesi. Contemporary history indicates that the it was originally made for Gayaza schoolgirls in around 1940s and 50s. Their first school uniform was a cotton sheet, which they wrapped around their breasts and tied to the waist with a strip of cloth. But the uniform often slipped off whenever the girls bent down to dig. Their missionary tutors thought it was indecent for a woman to expose her breasts. So, they had an Indian tailor sew out the busuuti/gomesi. Two decades later, the gomesi became a popular outfit at all traditional functions for the Baganda and later the Basoga, Iteso, Alur and Japadhola.
But some people, especially the Baganda, dispute this version of history and say the busuuti/gomesi existed long before the coming of the missionaries and that missionaries only improved the existing design made from bark cloth and changed the name to claim the discovery.”

Zambian Economist supports the proliferation of new political parties in Zambia, which have been criticized by many:
“Dr Ludgwig Sondashi has formed another political party after leaving MMD called Forum for Democratic Alternatives (FDA)...Dr Sondashi's announcement comes hot off the heels of another recently formed par.ty by Fred Mutesa (Head of Development Studies, UNZA), the Zambians for Empowerment and Development (ZED) party... Also let us not forget the recently formed Leftist Progressive Party, but now appears to have collapsed as its leader has joined the new FDA party.
I find this all very interesting and probably The Anti Voter Apathy Project (AVAP) disagrees and have appealed to the National Constitution Commission (NCC) 'to adopt a clause in the draft Constitution that would allow a political party to havvery healthy for democracy. e more than one thousand members before it could be registered...'
I have a natural preference for laws that alter behavior in a positive way without reducing the choices of others. People should always be free to congregate as they wish and form as many parties as they like as long as tax payers don't have to foot the bill for their activities.”

Innocent Chia interviews Cameroonian blogger Dibussi Tande, who talks among other things about new book, the impact of the Internet on press freedom in authoritarian societies, among other issues:

First of all, I think that the traditional media is still in chains in repressed societies, and the Internet has not really helped that much apart from being able to quickly publicize cases of press censorship and harassment or persecution of journalists. One simply has to look at the Reporters Without Borders’ 2009 Press Freedom Barometer to understand what I am talking about; 26 journalists killed, 167 journalists, etc.

The Internet’s main advantage is that it has been able to give unfettered freedom to those who operate outside traditional media, particularly bloggers, who are not restrained by the shackles of the state’s repressive apparatus. As I write in the preface of “Scribbles from the Den”, all over Africa, regimes which once had absolute control over the flow of information are taking note of, and trying to adapt to, this new phenomenon.”

Scribbles from the Den publishes a reader commentary following President Paul Biya’s 33rd cabinet reschuffle in 27 years:

“Accepting a prime ministerial position in Cameroon is an exercise in anxiety, which may not be worth a bucket of warm spit. You live in perpetual fear of the inevitable and the palpitation is heightened because the end can be anytime and for no reason. Young people should do it for the adrenaline rush, the fun and adventures. But I don't know how somebody in his or her sixties and above would want to submerge his or her dignity under the psychedelic pleasures of the president.

Every few years, an old man goes through the tortured ritual of being sacked as PM as the president becomes bored, restless, paranoid or futuristic, depending on which mallam you ask. What actually goes on in the head of the new PM - the next day after his appointment, the spectacle of primitive exuberance by elites and villagers alike paying pilgrimage homage to the homes of the newly minted PM and others shaking anatomies at various stages of inebriation, thanking God for Biya, is a combination phenomenon for psychologists and anthropologists to study. You bring in a hypnotist if the PM thinks merit is necessary for staying power.”

* 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/

China-Africa News roundup

2009-07-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/57457

Indian EXIM bank to open office in Addis Ababa
Russia hopes old alliances will help it forge new ties in Africa
African Union summit convenes amid looming problems for Africa
China begins Chad oil pipeline
Assistant FM voices China's further commitment to agricultural co-op with African nations
Why BRICs love Africa
Russia's New Scramble for Africa
Enabling Mugabe
AGOA Forum Seeks to Expand U.S.-Africa Trade and Investment
New Chinese partners for $750 mln Mauritius project
Chinese province governor in Nigeria on investment drive
Zimbabwe treasures China's help in difficult times
Russia-Africa Ties: Kremlin proposes Mideast Meet
China makes inroads into East Africa, gets road contract without bids
Russia signs deal to launch Angola satellite
Strategic partnership with India crucial for SA: Zuma
Foreign Investment Cushions Downturn in Africa
Chinalco expected to take up Rio rights
Short View: Chinese currency
Basic rules helped China sidestep bank crisis
Stalemate on key iron ore talks
Asia warned of growing poverty
NACCIMA advocates for more businesses with China
Yen Rallies Most in Seven Months on Earnings, Safety Demand
Is China losing friends in the developing world?
New Frontier, same old problems for China
China serves as "important pillar of strength" to world: Tanzanian statesman
Chinalco, Anglo may join forces
Mugabe lauds China for unconditional credit
G8 days numbered?
Ethiopians say 'salaam' to popular Indian envoy
Recession pinches G8 Africa aid
The food rush: Rising demand in China and west sparks African land grab
Zimbabwe, China sign US$5 billion deal
'China Is Acting on an Old Reflex in Urumqi'
BAIC plans Opel China plant
Fiat and GAC sign €400m China JV
‘Nigerian on the path of De-Industrialisation’
G8 shifts focus from food aid to farming
China National Petroleum Is in Talks With Repsol (Update2)
FACTBOX: Chinese investments in commodities, energy sectors
China Investment Buying Stake in Teck Resources
India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
Denel to resolve alleged blacklisting with India
China’s oil ambitions take it to new frontiers
China to allow renminbi trade payments
Ogun signs pact with China
New Chinese partners for $750 mln Mauritius project
UPDATE 1-China requests reserve currency debate at G8
Chinalco buys $1.5bn Rio Tinto shares
Assistant FM voices China's further commitment to agricultural co-op with African nations
China to lend $39 mln for Tanzania: Zambia rail
India joins 'neocolonial' rush for Africa's land and labour

Preparing for the next Forum for China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)

Sanusha Naidu and Stephen Marks

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/57575

As the 2009 summit of the Forum for China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) approaches, Dr Kerry Brown, senior fellow of the Asia Programme at Chatham House in London and Dr Zhang Chun, Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institute of International Affairs, have released a briefing note on the forthcoming meeting. In their note, the authors assess the likely outcomes from that meeting for the evolving, dynamic and complex relationship between China and Africa.

They point out that:

- China's involvement in African countries goes back many years. Relationships from the mid-1950s to the late-1970s were based more on emotional intimacy than that of the 1980s and the period after the Cold War. To some extent, the current relationship builds more on pragmatic economic considerations. China is already Africa's third largest trading partner.
- China is a complex actor, and Africa a complex continent. China, while predominantly state-led in its behaviour, differs depending on which country it works with in Africa, as well as how it works and what actors are involved, be they state or non-state companies.
- Some of this involvement has been positive, with major investment, under very flexible terms, going to aid projects. Some has been highly problematic, causing damage to China's reputation.
- In the coming years, China will almost certainly increase its interests in Africa.

In view of the above and as African leaders prepare for this important summit, the China–Africa Watch editorial team would like to invite our readers to share their views on the report and opinions on the forthcoming 2009 FOCAC summit.
The full report can be downloaded at http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/14269_0609ch_af.pdf.

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

SA: Excluded as an emerging economic power?

Francis Kornegay

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/57605

In the wake of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s maiden diplomatic safari to Africa, with stops in Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia and Angola, bypassing South Africa, the begging question is why South Africa was excluded from the mid-June BRIC Summit of major emerging economic powers at Yekaterinburg in Russia?

BRIC is investment bank Goldman Sachs' acronym identifying Brazil, Russia, India and China as the key ‘movers and shakers’ among emerging powers as the developed economies of the West experience relative decline. BRIC is now more than an acronym. The four countries decided in Yekaterinburg to institutionalise BRIC through regular summits, ministerial meetings and contacts between central banks. Their primary aim is to remove the US dollar as the world’s main reserve currency following the global financial crisis and recession originating in the US.

Were South Africa a member of this group, BRIC would be ‘BRICS’ with an added 'S' as some have advocated. South Africa was not in Yekaterinburg because, as department of trade and industry director-general, Tshediso Matona said, it 'simply was not invited,' adding: 'the department of international relations and co-operation must look into this. We must be in that club. We belong there.'

But apparently, not if Moscow has anything to do with. One Russian commentator indicated that neither South Africa or Mexico, which belong to the G8 Outreach Five (with India, Brazil and China), would be asked to join BRIC though Indonesia might; Indonesia being a major importer of Russian arms. Given the high stakes involved in re-shaping the global economy for South Africa and the African continent, South Africa’s exclusion is no small matter. The Russian president’s trip could be taken as a competitive BRIC challenge to Tshwane. The four powers have major interests in accessing Africa’s resources and markets, raising issues about how South Africa and the continent are managing what amounts to a ‘new scramble’ for Africa.

South Africa’s marginalisation by BRIC means Africa’s marginalisation in the overall scheme of things having to do with the terms of South-South cooperation and the future of such initiatives along these lines as the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Trilateral Forum. Indeed, from an African perspective, South Africa’s exclusion from BRIC could complicate the nature and dynamics of the whole notion of South-South cooperation to such an extent as to conceptually call it into question as an expression of global South cohesiveness.

This is where, in fact, much of the rest of Africa that resents South Africa’s status and chafe at the notion of Tshwane ‘speaking on behalf of the continent,’ score an ‘own goal’, given the reality that without South Africa’s presence in groupings such as BRIC, there is no African ‘voice’ to represent and articulate the continent’s interests. Call this the pettiness of Africa’s colonially-entrenched fragmentation where sovereignty, in the conventional sense of the term is meaningless in the absence of its continental application. As, effectively the default leader of Africa, South Africa provides a semblance of continental sovereignty within the councils of established and emerging power. This is why South Africa’s exclusion from BRIC is no small matter.

While South Africa, as a smallish ‘middle-income’ economy, is not in the mega-state league of China and India or Russia and Brazil, it does have one of the world’s main ‘floating’ currencies at a time when alternative reserve currency strategies are a central to the Sino-Russia agenda of countering greenback hegemony.

This is apart from South Africa’s overwhelming dominance of the continent’s economy and its strategic positioning as the gateway to accessing it; the reason why Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has become the largest shareholder in Standard Bank which, together, have embarked on 65 joint projects throughout Africa, with more in the pipeline.

South Africa is not just China’s largest market on the continent, this hold true for India as well where Indian vehicle maker, Mahindra, is considering setting up a local assembly plant. With a manufacturing facility, Mahindra SA, which began selling vehicles in South Africa in 2004, could export to Southern African Customs Union countries Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland. Brazil, through its Lusophone ties to Angola and Mozambique and to smaller Portuguese-speaking states along the West African South Atlantic, equally has a major interest in expanding its reach into Africa.

Further, at the May experts pre-BRIC summit preparatory meeting, it was decided that 'it may be useful for BRIC to engage with countries like South Africa, both to enhance trade possibilities between Brazil and the other three nations (using South Africa as a transit point) but to also tap into the trade possibilities with regional trade partners of each of the BRIC countries,' including pursuing co-investing opportunities outside the BRIC ‘region’ such as in Africa.

In spite of the fact that Brazil and India are engaged with South Africa in their trilateral IBSA relationship, and the G8 Outreach Five, neither country pushed for South Africa’s inclusion in BRIC. South Africa, meanwhile, seems to have been complacent in not comprehending the BRIC momentum and its implications for its status as a leading country in the emerging market, global South geopolitical-economic sweepstakes.

Is it possible that South Africa’s exclusion from BRIC reflects how the turmoil of transition between the Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma administrations exacted a heavy price on the country’s international standing where it most counts, in the emerging market-global South corridors of power and economic diplomacy? Economic diplomacy has become the central driving force in how the Zuma administration plans to go about its external relations with South-South cooperation looming ever higher on the agenda.

This was articulated recently by trade and industry minister Rob Davies. Davies plans to convene 'a South-South trade conference to begin shaping an agenda of negotiation of new agreements with the dynamic economies of the South,' where, in his estimation, 'the industrialised countries of the North are in decline and that where there is continuing growth, it is in the developing countries of the South.'

Could it be that a smooth transition between Mbeki and Zuma administrations might have made it more awkward for South Africa to be sidelined from what could have been BRICS instead of BRIC? The inter-personal diplomacy between Mbeki and his IBSA counterparts, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Manmohan Singh of India, might well have smoothed the way for Zuma into the IBSA troika.

This, in turn, could have paved the way for South Africa’s inclusion in the call that Lula made with Russian President Medvedev last November for the holding of the first BRIC summit. By then, the Mbeki presidency was history and the internal politics of the ANC was a muddle. On top of that, government seemingly lacks the strategic forward-looking contingency planning capacity to grasp what is coming down the pike in the world of global politics.

The National Security Council in the presidency seems solely preoccupied with state security as opposed to factoring in its international dimensions at the ‘big picture’ level of ‘high politics’; a level affecting the country’s international and economic security interests such as Brazil and India leaving South Africa in the IBSA lurch while joining forces with China and Russia in BRIC.

Russia appears to be the main culprit in this plot though South Africa’s bilateral relations with India may not be as healthy as they could be given New Delhi’s reported ‘blacklisting’ of Denel from selling arms to India, with all this implies as a lost opportunity at building South-South defence industrial cooperation between Brazil, India and South Africa.

But then this would compete with both US and Russian military-industrial commercial interests though South Africa, not India, appears to be at fault in this regard. But it was resource diplomacy that motivated Medvedev’s stops in Angola and Nigeria. Angola is the chair of OPEC. Nigeria is a member of Russia’s Gas Exporting Countries Forum whereas Moscow has been negotiating a raft of deals concerning Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas. These were signed off on during Medvedev’s Abuja visit.

Thus, does Tshwane have its economic diplomacy cut out for it. The stakes are high not just for South Africa but for Africa’s cohesion against being ‘picked off’ in a scramble for its resources while it remains the world’s marginalised backwater. For Tshwane, South Africa’s exclusion from BRIC means President Zuma and his team will have to readjust their foreign policy and economic diplomacy calculus to focus as much attention on North-South bridging as well as focusing on the global South.

Indeed, with news that US President Barack Obama is viewing Lula of Brazil as a potential head of the World Bank, when he concludes his term as Brazil’s president, this could signal a potential de-polarising of the North-South divide to an extent that South Africa will have to cultivate its leverage where it can find it. In that regard, one of President Obama’s priority bilaterals at the G8 summit in Italy will be with South African President Jacob Zuma.

South Africa, sidelined by the BRIC powers from their exclusive club, could be facing a fork-in-the-road in how it navigates between North and South in pursuit of what is its core agenda, the African Agenda.

* This article expands on a commentary published in the Sunday Independent on 28 June 2009.
* Francis Kornegay is a research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue and a political analyst with a particular focus on African and international geopolitical and foreign policy issues.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Government refutes fresh land invasions

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/mtprk6

Zimbabwe has dismissed allegation of any fresh farm invasions, a preliminary report of the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee fact-finding mission said. The Minister of Industry and Commerce, Professor Welshman Ncube, said the committee was in its second week to determine if there are reports of farm invasions in the country but said present findings have revealed that there are only a “spate of land disputes” as opposed to intrusions.

MDC outcry as another MP convicted on trumped up charges

2009-07-09

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news090709/mdcoutcry090709.htm

The MDC MP for Chipinge South, Meki Makuyana, was on Thursday convicted on ‘trumped up charges’ of kidnapping. Magistrate Samuel Zuze sentenced Makuyana to 18 months in prison with hard labour - 6 months were suspended. This means the MP will serve an effective 12 months in prison. This brings to 4 the number of MDC MP’s, all from Manicaland Province, who have been convicted and sentenced to jail by magistrates on the ZANU PF payroll. Coincidentally all the MDC MP’s targeted so far beat ZANU PF cabinet ministers in last year’s parliamentary elections.

Unity Government leaders get ultimatum

2009-07-09

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5788

Zimbabwe's power-sharing cabinet issued an ultimatum Wednesday to the three principals in the national unity government to resolve numerous issues that have been straining relations between the Movement for Democratic Change and ZANU-PF sides of the government.

Update on WOZA court appearances

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/57610

The seven members arrested in Bulawayo on Wednesday 17th June appeared on remand in Bulawayo Magistrate’s Court on July 3. The state was not prepared with either the docket or state witnesses. They have been further remanded out of custody until 22nd July.
The seven members arrested in Bulawayo on Wednesday 17th June appeared on remand in Bulawayo Magistrate’s Court on July 3. The state was not prepared with either the docket or state witnesses. They have been further remanded out of custody until 22nd July.

In Harare, the four members who had been arrested on 18th June and badly beaten appeared in Harare Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning. As in Bulawayo, the state was not ready with either the docket or state witnesses. Neither were the police ready to answer why the four were so badly beaten in custody. The magistrate has postponed the matter to Monday 6th July and has insisted that the state be ready on that date.

Subsequently all four members have been called into Harare Central Police Station by officers from the Law and Order Unit to give their account of what happened to them in custody.

Both groups of activists, in Harare and Bulawayo, are charged under Section 37 1 a of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act –‘disturbing the peace, security or order of the public’.

Global: Gender 'finally moving to forefront of AIDS fight'

2009-07-09

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=47564

With women now comprising 61 percent of all people infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, international donors, governments and advocacy organisations are looking more closely at the connections between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality. A new report released last week by two Washington-based think tanks, the Centre for Global Development (CGD) and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), more closely explores the connection between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality, and to what extent donors and countries are using this knowledge to help in the fight against AIDS.

Kenya: Defying the Odds

Lessons learned from Men for Gender Equality Now

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/lbvykd

In this book, gender justice activists from Men for Gender Equality Now (MEGEN Kenya) share their personal experiences as individuals and as Changemakers. Besides personal stories told by activists, this publication also includes short briefs on the work of MEGEN Kenya, highlighting the challenges, successes and lessons learned in different program areas.

Somalia: Women go where aid agencies fear to tread

2009-07-09

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85147

Women's groups in embattled Mogadishu are stepping into the aid vacuum to assist thousands more displaced by fighting in the capital, civil society activists said. "We have been helping in the past but now the situation is even worse so we have had to assume an even bigger role," said Asha Sha'ur, a civil society member and activist.

South Africa. Fund set up to deal with Gender-Based Violence

2009-07-09

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=2194

Concerned about gender based violence, rapidly spiraling out of control in South Africa, a group of committed donors have established a Joint Gender Fund with the aim to provide grants to civil society organisations in support of projects that integrate fighting gender based violence and HIV and AIDS.

Ghana: Obama visit should highlight rights

2009-07-09

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/08/ghana-obama-visit-should-highlight-rights

United States President Barack Obama should use his visit to Ghana on July 10 and 11, 2009 to encourage its new president, John Atta Mills, to take a leadership position in Africa on issues of democracy and justice, Human Rights Watch has said.

Israel: Nobel Laureate arrested

2009-07-09

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/2/nobel_peace_laureate_mairead_maguire_speaks

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks from her jail cell in Israel. She was taken into custody along with twenty others, including former US Congress member Cynthia McKinney, when the Israeli military boarded their ship in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza

Global: Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award, 2009

Call for nominations

2009-07-09

http://www.humanrightstulip.org/index.php/eng/Nominate

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2009 Human Rights Defenders Tulip award. Anyone can submit a nomination. The nomination form can be found on this page. Nominations must be received by 23 August 2009. Established in 2008, the Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award is an initiative of the Dutch government. It is awarded to acknowledge “persons who have shown exceptional moral courage in protecting and promoting the rights of fellow human beings.”

Liberia: Commission recommends sanctions, war crime trials

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/mmrgy9

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has ended marathon hearings into atrocities committed during the Liberian civil war, recommending stiff penalties, in a final report, likely to affect some 150 Liberians, including President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The report recommended that 50 Liberians, including Johnson-Sirleaf, be barred for 30 years from contesting and occupying political office in the country.

Global: Rights and Development: What progress at the world's largest aid agency?

2009-07-09

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.11308.aspx

A new article by Dr. Korinna Horta of the Environmental Defense Fund outlines the World Bank's commitment to human rights to date and advocates that the institution integrate a human rights approach into its own policies and programs.

Zimbabwe: Blood diamond team describes ‘horrific violence’ by army

2009-07-09

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news090709/blood090709.htm

A confidential memo by the head of a delegation of the Kimberley Process, which recently wrapped up an investigation into the reports of violence and killings in Marange, has detailed the ‘horrific violence’ used by the army against civilians there. The Kimberley Process, a scheme tasked with halting the trade in ‘blood diamonds, sent the delegation to investigate Zimbabwe’s ‘compliance’ with international diamond trade standards.

Africa: Refugee free press at a crossroads

Report on KANERE’s progress June 2009

Bethany Ojalehto

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/57613

In October 2008, several refugee and Kenyan journalists met in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, to discuss the development of a press in Kakuma using the Kanere Free Press. In previous years, they had been involved in a camp newsletter, produced by the refugee journalists, but edited by humanitarian agency staff and only intended for local in-camp circulation. That newsletter had eventually collapsed, but the journalists had continued to meet together and analyze the news events in their local milieu.
Beginnings and development

In October 2008, several refugee and Kenyan journalists met in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, to discuss the development of a press in Kakuma using the Kanere Free Press. In previous years, they had been involved in a camp newsletter, produced by the refugee journalists, but edited by humanitarian agency staff and only intended for local in-camp circulation. That newsletter had eventually collapsed, but the journalists had continued to meet together and analyze the news events in their local milieu.

The journalists now conceived of an independent news publication that would be directly owned by refugees—not censored by humanitarian staff—and would reach an international audience. The goal of the news forum was not merely to inform—it was also to counter the monopoly on information enjoyed by humanitarian organizations which largely controlled access to information to and from refugee camps. As an alternative source of news authored by the intended “beneficiaries” of humanitarian aid, they believed a refugee free press could potentially open new spaces for public debate and action on refugee encampment.

In collaboration with an American Fulbright researcher, Bethany Ojalehto, the refugee and Kenyan journalists developed an online news blog (www.kakuma.wordpress.com) and christened their news magazine the Kakuma News Reflector (or KANERE). While only one KANERE journalist has been a professional reporter, several writers hold advanced university degrees while others studied journalism in their home countries before their degree programs were interrupted by their flight. Together, the journalists established a monthly system of news reporting, pooling their skills in investigating and reporting on events around the camp.

Reaching out to the international community

The maiden issue of the Kakuma News Reflector was published online on December 22, 2008. Over the months, the news blog attracted international attention and received thousands of hits from viewers around the globe. The unique venture was profiled in a number of reports by human rights organizations and news publications, with international journalists covering KANERE’s story and sharing it via media outlets and the ICVA Conference in January 2009.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants hailed the free press as an “invaluable resource” that “follows in the footsteps of many other civil and human rights efforts and empowers refugees to shape their own story and better inform and organize their community” (USCRI 2009). It was hailed as in “unfiltered refugee voice” (Currion, 2009), and noted by the Humanitarian Futures Programme as “an absolutely fantastic example of citizen journalism, empowered by the web, completely changing the game of humanitarian business” (HFP, 2009). In unpublished papers, several researchers have analyzed KANERE’s significance as an example of citizen journalism and truly rights-based “empowerment.”

Challenges with local humanitarian agencies

But as international interest in KANERE grew, so did the problems facing refugee journalists. Soon after the first online publication, it became clear that local humanitarian agencies did not fully support the refugee free press. UNHCR officials cited concerns over confidentiality of information, protection of refugee identities, and ethical standards of reporting. In response to these concerns, KANERE deleted two sensitive articles and ceased to use refugees’ real names or journalist bylines in their publication.

The relationship between KANERE and agencies grew tense and KANERE’s attempt to register as a community-based organization was halted by local government officials. Although UNHCR officials dispute this account, KANERE journalists were informed by local government officials that they could not register KANERE as a community-based organization until UNHCR “approved” the refugees’ operation of a free press. Citing these concerns, the District Officer confiscated KANERE’s registration forms and refused to release them until KANERE brought a letter of support from UNHCR.

Faced with increasing hostility from local humanitarian agencies, KANERE sought the support of outside advocates. A network of support for KANERE formed among international NGOs. But the turning point in KANERE’s struggle for independence came with the arrival of Dr. Ekuru Aukot, a human rights lawyer and then director of the Kenyan legal advocacy group, Kituo Cha Sheria. At a joint meeting with KANERE and humanitarian agencies in February 2009, Dr. Aukot affirmed that refugees have the right to exercise a free press and cannot be prevented from exercising this right for any reason except those under law. He later summarized his position in an article for KANERE’s news blog (Aukot, 2009).

At this meeting, humanitarian agencies resolved to support KANERE’s registration as a community-based organization while reaffirming their desire that KANERE be held to the highest standards of ethical reporting. At a subsequent meeting, a UNHCR official invited KANERE to submit a proposal for material assistance from UNHCR and NGOs. KANERE has submitted the requested proposal and other documents to UNHCR officials, but the process of discussions have been stalled since March, 2009.

Current situation: An uncertain future

Little has changed in KANERE’s official status since Dr. Aukot’s visit to Kakuma in February. Local government officials say they will not move forward with registration until UNHCR supports the initiative. KANERE has submitted all requested documents to UNHCR officials, but no meetings have been called despite several requests by the editors. The status of the working relationship between KANERE and humanitarian agencies remains vague, and KANERE continues to operate entirely independently without support or recognition from agencies.

KANERE currently operates with minimal resources. The group has no source of permanent funding, instead relying on occasional donations from private individuals. The initial development of the project was almost entirely funded through a Fulbright Grant from the U.S. Institute of International Education, but the grant has now reached its end.

Print publication of the newsletter is nearly impossible due to lack of funds and material support from local humanitarian agencies. A few copies of the first two issues have been printed and are available in tea rooms around the refugee camp, but access to resources for further publications is now threatened.

Journalists supply their own materials for writing and reporting. Those journalists who wish to browse the web and read their own articles must pay for cybercafé usage. KANERE currently owns one donated laptop computer for use by the editor, but must still rely on the refugee camp cybercafé for internet access to maintain the blog. One digital camera means that journalists must juggle schedules to photograph events.

June marked the transition of KANERE to an entirely refugee-run activity as Bethany completed her Fulbright research and departed Kakuma Camp. In April 2009, KANERE held elections for a new editor and executive director to take over KANERE, enabling a smooth transition of editorial duties and looking towards a sustainable future for KANERE. At the moment, an Ethiopian refugee and former second-year journalism student at Addis Ababa University is serving as editor. A Rwandan refugee, school teacher, and current distance-learning university student is serving as executive director.

Since March 2009, the membership of KANERE journalists has dwindled from over 20 active members to ten. Many journalists seem to have lost their commitment to KANERE as they became disheartened by the lack of funding, non-publication (of print issues), and fear of opposition from humanitarian agencies.

While the operating costs of KANERE were always humble, even these costs will soon drain the group’s remaining funds from private donations. The bare minimum monthly operating costs are about $100 per month (covering phone communications, internet access, scanning, camera batteries, and local transport), but this does not include the publication of print issues or, of course, any compensation for journalists.. To print 1000 copies of the paper monthly at a local government printing press, KANERE would require 50,000 Ksh (or about $670) per issue. Ideally, journalists would also appreciate a monthly compensation for their work. But what is most important is that without their work, no information from Kakuma will filter out beyond the confines of this camp.



Works Cited

Aukot, Ekuru (2009). “Who Believes in the Rights of Immigrants? Do Refugees in Kenya Have the Right to a Free Press?” Kakuma News Reflector, Volume 1 Issue 3, February 2009. (http://kakuma.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/who-believes-in-the-rights-of-immigrants-do-refugees-in-kenya-have-the-right-to-a-free-press/#more-558).

Currion, Paul (2009). “The Refugee Voice.” 4 February 2009 blog posting at Humanitarian.info (http://www.humanitarian.info/tag/unhcr/).

Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) (2009). “Kakuma Refugee Newsletter.” 2 February 2009 blog posting at HFP (http://humanitarianfutures.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/kakuma-refugee-newsletter/).

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (2009). “Refugees in Kenya Now Speak With Their Own Voice.” 18 February 2009 web posting at USCRI (http://www.refugees.org/article.aspx?id=2286&subm=33&area=About%20Refugees).

East Africa: For one refugee, Rwanda is still too terrifying

2009-07-09

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/4061/context/cover/

Uganda, Rwanda and the United Nations High Committee on Refugees set a target date of July 31 for all Rwandan refugees in Uganda to return home, with the U.N.'s refugee commission planning to reduce support for remaining Rwandans in August. The closer that date gets, the more it worries Beatrice Mukasekuru, who has asked that her real name not be used to protect her privacy.

Gambia: Journalists challenge legality of the charges against them

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/57636

Counsel for seven journalists including Gambian Press Union (GPU) executives, accused of defaming President Yahya Jammeh on July 8, 2009 asked the Banjul High court hearing the case to free their clients because the charges preferred against them were “invalid” and “defective”.
Counsel for seven journalists including Gambian Press Union (GPU) executives, accused of defaming President Yahya Jammeh on July 8, 2009 asked the Banjul High court hearing the case to free their clients because the charges preferred against them were “invalid” and “defective”.

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s sources reported that lawyer Antouman Gaye told the court that the Constitutional provision on which the prosecution based its charges “conspiracy to defame” and “defamation” had been amended since 2004.

Gaye also argued that the prosecution did not specify any “defamatory words” in the GPU press statement said to defame President Jammeh.

Gaye further argued that the prosecution also violated Gambian laws by failing to meet Section 53 of Gambia’s Criminal Code, which requires that accused persons can not be convicted of any offence without being informed of their crime.

In his earlier submission, Richard N. Chenge, Director of Public Prosecution, told the court that the accused persons and others now on the run (including the GPU president who was not in the country at the time of the mass arrests by the authorities) conspired to publish in local and international media that President Jammeh was responsible for the death of Deyda Hydara, the journalist killed in 2004 by as-yet unknown assailants.

The prosecution said, the accused persons “all members of the Gambia Press Union” published the statement with “the intent to bring the government and the president into ridicule and public disaffection” and have therefore committed an offence

The court adjourned proceedings to July 11 to enable the prosecution to respond to the lawyers’ submission.

Meanwhile, the initial “sedition” case against the journalists at the Kanifing Magistrate court has been discontinued.

Prof. Kwame Karikari
Executive Director
MFWA
Accra
Tel: 233 21 24 24 70
Fax : 233 21 221084
Website : www.mediafound.org
Email: mfwa@africaonline.com

Namibia: Congolese refugees flee Namibia

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/57616

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17. According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. NSHR has appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.
July 7 2009

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17.

According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. This morning NSHR appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.

Recently the group has produced documentary evidence of what amounts to death threats. Consequently, NSHR has reasons to believe that these refugees are, indeed, unable and or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of the Government of the Republic of Namibia—owing to well founded fear of being persecuted, inter alia, for reasons of nationality or membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Most of the concerned refugees and asylum seekers—some of whom have been residing in Namibia for up to 10 years—are members of the Association of the Voiceless (AV), a non-violent organization established at the Osire Refugee Camp (ORC) to advocate respect for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. The ORC is located in the north-central Namibia, some 220 kilometers northeast of Windhoek.

The group has shown NSHR in this regard documents, to wit, letters addressed to most of them wherein they are told, inter alia, that their human rights activities at the ORC “constitute a threat to peace and security”. However, Article 21(1) of the Namibian Constitution guarantees the rights of “everyone” to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of association and freedom of assembly as well as freedom of movement. The Namibian Constitution is the supreme law of the country.

Furthermore, these vulnerable foreigners have also made reference to recent violent public statements made by, among others, the Founding Father of the Namibian Nation and the former Namibian President on May 23 2009 when he reportedly threatened inter alia that:

“We will only work together and co-operate with those foreigners who are respecting us and those who do not can pack and go or they will face bullets in their heads.”
In an attempt to urge the Namibian authorities to resolve this evolving crisis, on June 10 2009 NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh addressed an urgent letter to State Secretary for the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration (MHAI), Mr. S. H. /Goagoseb requesting him to, inter alia, “address this problem, to respect the rights of refugees by affording them all necessary protection in accordance with our national laws and international obligations”.

Although the NSHR letter concludes with: “We hope that this matter receives your utmost attention, and we are looking forward to your speedy reply”, no answer has so far been received from the MHAI.

Having failed to elicit any reaction from the MHAI through silent communication channels, NSHR on June 11 and 18 2009 issued Press Releases expressing its “disapproval of the manner in which MHAI has allegedly treated” refugees.

The concerned refugees have also made sworn statements in which they are claiming to having received death threats from other Namibian officials at the ORC.

Following such threats and gravely concerned about these helpless refugees and asylums seekers, on June 15 2009 NSHR directed an Urgent Appeal communication to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions (Mr. Philip Alston) in which the Human Rights Organization expressed concern that the refugees might “face imminent danger of summary execution, enforced disappearance or refoulement to their native Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)”.

In case of additional comment, please call: Dorkas Phillemon or Phil
ya Nangoloh at Tel: +264 61 236 183 or +264 061 253 447 (office hours)
or Cell: +264 811 299 641 (Dorkas) or Cell: +264 811 299 886 (Phil) or
E-mail: nshr@nshr.org.na or visit us at www.nshr.org.na

Namibia: Congolese refugees flee Namibia

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/57618

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17. According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. NSHR has appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.
July 7 2009

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17.

According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. This morning NSHR appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.

Recently the group has produced documentary evidence of what amounts to death threats. Consequently, NSHR has reasons to believe that these refugees are, indeed, unable and or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of the Government of the Republic of Namibia—owing to well founded fear of being persecuted, inter alia, for reasons of nationality or membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Most of the concerned refugees and asylum seekers—some of whom have been residing in Namibia for up to 10 years—are members of the Association of the Voiceless (AV), a non-violent organization established at the Osire Refugee Camp (ORC) to advocate respect for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. The ORC is located in the north-central Namibia, some 220 kilometers northeast of Windhoek.

The group has shown NSHR in this regard documents, to wit, letters addressed to most of them wherein they are told, inter alia, that their human rights activities at the ORC “constitute a threat to peace and security”. However, Article 21(1) of the Namibian Constitution guarantees the rights of “everyone” to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of association and freedom of assembly as well as freedom of movement. The Namibian Constitution is the supreme law of the country.

Furthermore, these vulnerable foreigners have also made reference to recent violent public statements made by, among others, the Founding Father of the Namibian Nation and the former Namibian President on May 23 2009 when he reportedly threatened inter alia that:

“We will only work together and co-operate with those foreigners who are respecting us and those who do not can pack and go or they will face bullets in their heads.”
In an attempt to urge the Namibian authorities to resolve this evolving crisis, on June 10 2009 NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh addressed an urgent letter to State Secretary for the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration (MHAI), Mr. S. H. /Goagoseb requesting him to, inter alia, “address this problem, to respect the rights of refugees by affording them all necessary protection in accordance with our national laws and international obligations”.

Although the NSHR letter concludes with: “We hope that this matter receives your utmost attention, and we are looking forward to your speedy reply”, no answer has so far been received from the MHAI.

Having failed to elicit any reaction from the MHAI through silent communication channels, NSHR on June 11 and 18 2009 issued Press Releases expressing its “disapproval of the manner in which MHAI has allegedly treated” refugees.

The concerned refugees have also made sworn statements in which they are claiming to having received death threats from other Namibian officials at the ORC.

Following such threats and gravely concerned about these helpless refugees and asylums seekers, on June 15 2009 NSHR directed an Urgent Appeal communication to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions (Mr. Philip Alston) in which the Human Rights Organization expressed concern that the refugees might “face imminent danger of summary execution, enforced disappearance or refoulement to their native Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)”.

In case of additional comment, please call: Dorkas Phillemon or Phil
ya Nangoloh at Tel: +264 61 236 183 or +264 061 253 447 (office hours)
or Cell: +264 811 299 641 (Dorkas) or Cell: +264 811 299 886 (Phil) or
E-mail: nshr@nshr.org.na or visit us at www.nshr.org.na

Somalia: number of displaced tops 200,000

2009-07-09

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31382

More than 200,000 people have now been forced to flee the Somali capital Mogadishu since fighting broke out between the Government and opposition groups in early May, in the biggest exodus from the troubled city since Ethiopian forces intervened in the Horn of Africa nation in 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said. By July 6, the eight-week offensive led by the Al-Shabab and Hisb-ul-Islam militia against the Government had driven a “staggering” 204,000 people from the capital, agency spokesperson Ron Redmond said.

South Africa: So near and yet so far

Asylum seekers and the 90 day Zimbabwe visa waiver

Samantha Mundeta

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/57615

While there have been reports of an increase in the number of Zimbabweans entering and leaving South Africa legally because of the recent introduction of the 90 day visa waiver for Zimbabweans by the Department of Home Affairs in March, refugee service providers have observed that illegal entry into South Africa by Zimbabwean economic migrants has continued to escalate, with many Zimbabwean asylum seekers still opting to jump the border and apply for asylum once already in the South Africa, rather than entering the legitimate way.
While there have been reports of an increase in the number of Zimbabweans entering and leaving South Africa legally because of the recent introduction of the 90 day visa waiver for Zimbabweans by the Department of Home Affairs in March, refugee service providers have observed that illegal entry into South Africa by Zimbabwean economic migrants has continued to escalate, with many Zimbabwean asylum seekers still opting to jump the border and apply for asylum once already in the South Africa, rather than entering the legitimate way. Mundeta

The 90 day visa waiver was the result of a bilateral agreement concluded between Home Affairs Departments from Zimbabwe and South Africa.[1] In terms of this new arrangement Zimbabweans who wish to enter into South Africa are issued with a sticker at the South African border post, allowing them to remain in the country for 90 days. If they wish to work while in the country, they are required to inform an immigration officer, who will endorse the permit.

A Zimbabwean can remain in the Republic for a maximum of 90 days with the possibility of renewal for a further 90 days at a Home Affairs Office at the cost of R425. Renewal is possible only once; however instead of renewing the permit, one has the option of leaving South Africa before the end of the 90 days, and re-entering the country later. Upon entry, they can be issued with a new 90 day permit. Zimbabweans are allowed to enter and leave South Africa as many times as they wish, receiving new visitors permits.[2]

Similar practice is followed in all ten Southern African countries and South Africa has been widely applauded in human rights circles for finally coming on board. This move is in line with the Draft SADC Protocol on the Movement of Persons which promotes free movement of people within the Southern Africa region in order to achieve interdependence and integration of the Southern Africa, with a view to building an African Economic Community in the future.

Through this 90 day visa waiver, one of the goals of the Ministry of Home Affairs was to ease the pressure on Refugee Reception offices which receive thousands of applications for asylum from Zimbabwean applicants who are often economic migrants, and not refugees as defined by the Refugees Act.[3] In the words of the new Minister of Home Affairs Nkosazana Dhlamini-Zuma:
“International law obliges you to process an asylum seeker until they have exhausted all the avenues in South Africa… Our problem is the portion of people who say they are asylum seekers because this is the only way of legalising their stay.”[4]
Home Affairs also hoped to more effectively control movement between South Africa and Zimbabwe, and provide a disincentive for illegal entry into South Africa. [5] However refugee service providers, including Refugee Aid Organization and Medicins Sans Frontiers, have observed that many Zimbabwean asylum seekers continue to circumvent the new system.

“In our research in Musina, a home affairs official we interviewed observed that as long as the 90 day permit has to be stamped into a passport or emergency travel document, legal entry into South Africa remains inaccessible to Zim asylum seekers because passports and emergency travel documents are expensive to acquire in Zimbabwe,” says Claudia Serra, Director of Refugee Aid Organization, “Also, banks and employers have only recently started to accept and recognize asylum seeker permits, so people are hesitant to try and explain new documentation to them.”
In the absence of a mass education campaign within the refugee community to clarify some of the misperceptions among some Zimbabwean asylum seekers on how the new system works, and also broadly clarification on what the difference between a work permit and an asylum seeker permit is, government’s goals are being achieved with limited success in relation to asylum seekers.

“I will continue to use the asylum seeker permit because on the new permit I can only stay in the country for 90 days, and that is it for the year. Yet, I sell baskets, and would like to be able to get in and out of South Africa throughout the year,” says a Durban-based Zimbabwean economic migrant.

“Out of a group of 60 women I trained at the Methodist Church in Johannesburg early this month, only 1 participant knew what an asylum seeker permit was. The rest were under the impression that it was a type of work permit,” says Claudia Serra of the Refugee Aid Organization.

Meanwhile Home Affairs has been silent on its promise to introduce a Special Dispensation permit for Zimbabweans, as announced on 3 April 2009 by Immigration Director General Jackie McKay. Since the Special Dispensation Permit would not require the applicant to have travel documents, and specifically caters for constituents of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, it would most likely achieve government’s purpose of controlling movement between the two countries, and provide a viable alternative for the majority of Zimbabwean economic migrants who apply for refugee status in South Africa.


[1] Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) Newsletter; Edition 14; 8th April 2009
[2] Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) Newsletter; Edition 14; 8th April 2009
[3] Act 180 of 1998:
“3. Subject to Chapter 3, a person qualifies for refugee status for the purposes of this
Act if that person-
(a) owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted by reason of his or her race, tribe, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, is outside the country of his or her nationality and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country, or, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his or her former habitual residence is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it; or

(b) owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing or disrupting public order in either a part or the whole of is or her country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his or her place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge elsewhere:
(c) is a dependant of a person contemplated in paragraph (a) or (b)

[4] Minister Dhlamini-Zuma South African Government Information “Transcript of interaction by Minister of Home Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma with Pretoria Press Club, Pretoria” (Comments from the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs) http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2009/09052609351001.htm [accessed 23 June 2009]
[5] “What we are trying to do is regulate access to South Africa by our neighbours because the more people come through legitimate ports of entry the more we can regulate and monitor access to and from South Africa.” South African Government Information “Transcript of interaction by Minister of Home Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma with Pretoria Press Club, Pretoria” (Comments from the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs) http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2009/09052609351001.htm [accessed 23 June 2009]

Global: The alternative G8 summit

2009-07-09

http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/7576.html

Ahead of the G8 summit in L’Aquila that takes place from 8-10 June 2009, Italy, members of civil society movements gathered in Sardinia in the alternative G8 summit called "Gsott8".

Kenya: Volunteer brings students in Washington face-to-face with poverty

2009-07-09

http://advocacynet.org/resource/1254

"You are sick and it is the weekend. You have a fever and you're sweating and vomiting so you fear you have malaria. You need medical attention. All the money you have is what is in your pocket, a total of $3.59. You never went to school so you do not know how to read or write. You live in the Kibera slums."This was one scenario played out on a leafy Washington campus, as students in the summer program at the Washington International School struggled to understand life on the edge for children in Nairobi's notorious slums.

Ghana: NGO seeks reparation from Britain, America for slavery

2009-07-09

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=165007

Members of the Ghana Reparation and Repatriation Foundation (GRARF), a local NGO operating in the north, have appealed to the government to take a strong stand and asked for compensation from Britain and America for their involvement in the Trans Atlantic Chattel slavery in Ghana. The members reminded government that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has classified the Trans Atlantic Chattel Slavery as crime against humanity and that must be pursued to its logical conclusion without any favour.

Namibia: Court case highlights workers rights

2009-07-09

http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=85126

In a landmark case in Namibia, 22 hotel workers are taking their employer and a doctor to court for allegedly testing them for HIV without their informed consent. In February 2000, the owner of Oshakati Country Lodge in northern Namibia hired a doctor to conduct HIV tests on all the lodge's employees. Those who asked about the nature of the test were told it was for general hygiene.

South Africa: Strike action: Pecking order prevails

2009-07-09

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/315.1

There are a few high profile labour disputes currently taking place in South Africa. The public have entered the fray, influencing the labour debates by engaging with them via newspapers and talk radio programmes. At the same time, public sentiment is being influenced by the manner in which the media is presenting the various labour disputes.

Kenya: Annan acts on poll suspects

2009-07-09

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8142263.stm

The names of key suspects involved in violence after the 2007 Kenyan election have been handed to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Mediator Kofi Annan said he had handed the names in a sealed envelope to the prosecutor in The Hague.

Niger: Constitutional referendum set for August 4

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/mugyvt

Niger's controversial referendum aimed at changing the country's Constitution to allow President Mamadou Tandja to run for a third term will be held 4 Aug., according to the chair of Niger's National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI), Moumouni Hamidou. The holding of the referendum will coincide with a meeting between President Tandja and the electoral body.

Madagascar: Elections could be held by year's end

2009-07-09

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE5680KR20090709

Madagascar's foreign minister has said that the Indian Ocean island's army-backed government was ready to hold elections before the end of 2009 if the "means" were available. Madagascar has been rocked by political instability since Andry Rajoelina took power in March from then president Marc Ravalomanana with the help of dissident soldiers -- a move that was labelled a coup by many countries and regional blocs.

Mauritania: Electoral campaign kicks off

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/njlg6c

Nine candidates are competing for the presidency in Mauritania, in a campaign that runs from July 2nd through the polls on July 18th. Observers believe a balance between majority and opposition leaders in the election – agreed in June's Dakar Agreement – will ensure transparency.

Guinea Ecuatorial: Account for oil wealth

2009-07-09

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/09/equatorial-guinea-account-oil-wealth

The government of Equatorial Guinea has set new low standards of political and economic malfeasance in handling its billions of dollars in oil revenue instead of improving the lives of its citizens, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. The 107-page report, "Well Oiled: Oil and Human Rights in Equatorial Guinea," details how the dictatorship under President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country's people.

Africa: Helping small farmers feed a continent

2009-07-09

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85094

As an African Union summit on agricultural investments opens in Libya, donors and non-profits are calling participants' attention to the role smallholder farmers – mostly women – can have in feeding their communities. Agriculture is an overlooked “emergency” that deserves as much attention as the global financial crisis, according to Kate Norgrove with Oxfam UK’s office in Dakar, Senegal.

Africa: Iran and Africa: What’s going on?

2009-07-09

http://reporterregrets.blogspot.com/2008/09/iran-and-africa-whats-going-on.html

Much attention has been focused on China’s growing presence in Africa. But Iran too has been seeking expanded ties on the continent. Just this month, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad expressed Tehran’s readiness to expand all-out relations with African countries. “The Islamic Republic of Iran sees no limits for the expansion of ties with African countries,” and sharing its experiences with them, Ahmadinejad told his Kenyan counterpart in New York. “Iran has always sought to boost ties with African countries in all arenas,” Ahmadinejad added.

West Africa: Church leaders caution against EPA

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/myn5nn

Leaders of churches in West Africa have cautioned the political authorities in the sub-region against signing the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) by African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in its present form. The leaders said the EPA in its current form was not beneficial and would not give member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) enough political and economic leeway to improve production of staple foods.

Global: 8 African leaders invited to G8 summit

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/n66grj

Leaders of eight African countries -- Angola, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Egypt, Algeria and Libya -- will take part in the G-8 Summit that opened Wednesday in l'Aquilla, Italy, a European spokesperso n announced in Brussels. The African leaders will Friday participate in a working session on food security. According to a report of the European NGO Action Aid, countries should devote at least US$ 23 billion per year by 2012 to food crisis in order to reduce by half, hunger in the world by 2015.

Global: UK donor policy stokes concern of overpromising

2009-07-09

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85195

Aid analysts applaud the “courage” of the UK government’s just-released development policy paper, which detailed plans to allocate at least half of all new bilateral funding to fragile states, but question how the government can do the job well without shrinking other aid commitments.

Africa: New therapy against malaria announced

2009-07-09

http://www.afrol.com/articles/33695

The Sigma-Tau Pharmaceutical has announced an innovative combination therapy fixed dose to fight Malaria, the disease that is responsible for 250 million cases worldwide and causes more than 880,000 deaths, especially among children under 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, malaria was endemic in 109 countries, 45 of them in Africa.

Global: Urban poverty and health in developing countries

2009-07-09

http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/health&id=43850&type=Document

This bulletin, published by the Population Reference Bureau, provides a sketch of urban health in developing countries, documenting the intra-urban differences in health for a number of countries and showing how the risks facing the urban poor compare with those facing rural villagers. It begins with an overview of the multiple dimensions of urban poverty and a summary of internationally comparable evidence on the urban health differentials associated with poverty.

Zimbabwe: The slang of sexual networks

2009-07-09

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85198

Risky sexual behaviour has a language of its own on the University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) campus in the capital, Harare. When female students arrive, they join an informal sorority known as the "university spinster association", or USA, while their male counterparts are inducted into the "university bachelor association", or UBA

Namibia: Floods interrupted AIDS services - report

2009-07-09

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85185

A UN assessment has revealed that flooding in northern Namibia during March severely disrupted HIV and AIDS treatment, care and prevention services. The floods, caused by heavy rains, affected more than 350,000 people in six regions with some of the highest HIV-prevalence rates in the country. The north is also one of the poorest and most isolated parts of Namibia, with limited social services, employment opportunities and infrastructure.

Botswana: Court rules on privacy violation

2009-07-09

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85208

In the first case of its kind in Botswana, a woman has successfully sued another woman for publicly revealing her HIV status. The High Court in Lobatse, a city in the southeast, has ruled that Sadi Nokane pay Obakeng Madubela US$1,000 in damages for violating Madubela's right to privacy. Around 55 percent of the population live on two dollars per day.

Uganda: Anti-Gay bill to be tabled soon

2009-07-09

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=uganda&id=2190

A stringent Bill against homosexuality is in the offing, the state minister for ethics and integrity, Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, has said. Addressing a press conference at the Media Centre, Buturo said the country was besieged by homosexuality, pornography, prostitution, human sacrifice, drug abuse, embezzlement and witchcraft to the extent that it was “dangerously becoming a permissive society.”

South Africa: Lesbian murder cased postponed for 20th time

2009-07-09

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=2193

The 07-07-07 Campaign, has condemned the 20th postponement of Zoliswa Nkonyana’s murder case, citing incompetence from both the presiding magistrate and the Khayelitsha Magistrate Court. Nkonyana’s case went to court again two weeks ago where it was postponed to 28 September this year. “The delays in Zoliswa’s case have reached ridiculous levels, there have been 20 postponements and 15 of these have been due to delays by defense lawyers”, says Joint Working Group coordinator, Emily Craven.

South Africa 'Israel is practicing apartheid and colonialism in the OPT' - Study

2009-07-09

http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Media_Release-378.phtml

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The interim report, which will form part of a discussion at an upcoming HSRC conference on the subject, titled Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine, on 13 and 14 June in Cape Town, serves as a document to be finalised later this year.

Southern Africa: Floods - breaking the cycle

2009-07-09

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=47579

The fourth largest river in Africa, the mighty Zambezi, is a lifeblood to 32 million people, from land-locked Zambia to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. But its blessing is also its curse. Climate change is blamed for an increase in rainfall and flooding along the river's 2,574 kilometre course through Angola, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Kenya: Crisis looms as water sources dry up

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/pkxz7r

An acute shortage of water resources has hit Kenya pushing the country into a crisis as water sources dry up in what experts say is a looming ecological disaster. The shortage has been complicated by drying up of water sources including rivers, lakes , dams ,wells and springs and worsened by a an ongoing 10 month drought.

Malawi: Adapting to climate change

2009-07-09

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=43900&type=Document

Climate change in Malawi interacts with environmental degradation, notably deforestation, and it is women who suffer most. Women have multiple roles as farmers and bringers of water and firewood and so depend very directly on natural resources. At the same time their position in society means that generally they have less access to income and credit and little or no voice in decision making. That resulting increased vulnerability feeds the spread of HIV and AIDS, for example if women resort to selling sex for food during the hungry months before the harvest. This Oxfam report details the impact of climate change on livelihoods in Malawi, and outlines the ways in which people are adapting to these changes.

Africa: Hotter states may lose maize by 2050

2009-07-09

http://www.afrol.com/articles/33711

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report has revealed that six of Africa’s regions will be unable to grow maize by 2050 as growing seasons get hotter that normal even if the carbon emissions are dramatically reduced. The six countries, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone which most of them are in Sahel, according to the researchers may have nowhere to turn as few countries currently experience their extremely hot projected climates.

Africa: FAO paper on land grab is "wishy-washy"

Julio Godoy

2009-07-09

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=47599

The boom in the acquisition of arable land in Africa by foreign companies and governments has stirred an international debate between international institutions such as the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and non-governmental groups and independent experts. The debate centres on whether the transfer of land from local farmers to foreign investors represents a development opportunity for the continent.

Kenya: People's launch of national land policy

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/m2s8en

In Kenyan history, the land issue has been an emotive issue. To address this problem, the government embarked on the formation of a national land Policy through a widely consultative process with the aim of producing a policy whose vision was to guide the country towards efficient, sustainable and equitable use of land for prosperity and posterity.

Kenya: After 50 years, land they can call their own

2009-07-09

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85149

After a 50-year wait, thousands of Kenyans in Central Province have received the most coveted asset in the country – a piece of land. The move is not only good news for those allocated the land but for the country as a whole as the move will boost food security when the recipients start farming wheat, beans, maize and livestock on the 6,070ha.

Global: G8 Summit: Feed the hungry or fuel hunger?

2009-07-09

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6239

As the rich Group of 8 (G8) nations convene in L'Aquila, Italy this week, world hunger will once again take center stage. The United States will likely announce a "significant" increase in funding for agricultural development aid, along with multi-year commitments from other G8 countries. This follows the G8's admission of failure in tackling hunger at its first-ever farm conference in Treviso, Italy in April 2009.

Gambia: ECOWAS Court dismisses jurisdiction objections

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/kvqo9j

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court, hearing the case of torture brought by Gambian journalist Musa Saidykhan against operatives of the Gambia's notorious National Intelligence Agency (NIA), dismissed preliminary objections raised by the Gambian government, the defendant in the case. According to the Community Court, Saidykhan is a citizen of West Africa and the court is mandated by the ECOWAS protocol to hear human rights violation cases brought before it.

South Africa: Government will not allow illegal interception of calls

2009-07-09

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

Sourth Africa's Justice Minister Jeff Radebe says the new law to register cellphone users will not be used to spy on citizens. He was briefing the media on the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication Related Information Act, which has come into effect. "Our people are protected by the constitution and there will be no illegal interception (of calls). The law prescribes heavy fines for intercepting private calls without the permission of a judge," Radebe said.

Madagascar: Growing threat to news media from political tension

2009-07-09

http://www.ifex.org/madagascar/2009/07/08/ramambazafy_death_threat/

Reporters Without Borders is very concerned about the still fraught political situation in Madagascar and its constant impact on the media. Several journalists have been harassed in recent weeks, a website was mysteriously blocked and a radio journalist was held for two weeks after being the victim of a heavy-handed arrest.

Swaziland: Journalists barred from covering workshop for legislators

2009-07-09

http://www.ifex.org/swaziland/2009/07/08/journalists_barred_from_workshop/

Journalists covering an HIV/AIDS workshop for Swazi parliamentarians were on 30 June 2009 kicked out of the workshop after MPs and senators expressed displeasure at their presence. The parliamentarians asked the organizers of the workshop to expel the journalists because they wanted to learn freely without the presence of the media.

DRC: Authorities refuse to disclose results of journalist death probe

2009-07-09

http://www.ifex.org/republic_of_congo/2009/07/09/ossebi_investigation/

Nearly four months after the death of Franco-Congolese journalist Bruno Jacquet Ossébi, the Committee to Protect Journalists called today for authorities in the Republic of Congo to publicly disclose a report that was prepared weeks ago on their investigation. A magistrate appointed in February to oversee an investigation into the cause of the fire that ravaged Ossébi's residence in Brazzaville, Jean Michel Opo, told CPJ in mid-May that a police commission had given a report to his office.

Somalia: Radio reporter killed in Mogadishu

2009-07-09

http://www.ifex.org/somalia/2009/07/08/yusuf_killed/

Another journalist has been killed in violence-ridden Mogadishu, report the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Mohamud Mohamed Yusuf, a journalist for the private station Radio Holy Quran, was shot in the stomach twice as he was covering the fighting on 4 July in the neighbourhoods surrounding the station, says NUSOJ.

DRC: A Comprehensive strategy to disarm the FDLR

2009-07-09

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6209&l=1

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the failed attempts of the past to dismantle the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an insurgency with roots that go back to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It recommends a new approach to help end great civilian suffering and restore state authority in the eastern Congo. Clear division of labour and better coordination are needed to capitalise on recently improved Congo-Rwanda relations.

DRC: Army to act over rapes

2009-07-09

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8140039.stm

The Congolese military has promised to punish any soldiers found guilty of rights abuses, after activists claimed troops were carrying out mass rape. Military spokesman Colonel Leon Richard Kasonga said commanders must ensure the safety of civilians.

Benin: Humanitarian response as floods take toll

2009-07-09

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31422

United Nations humanitarian agencies operating in Benin are conducting rapid assessments to determine how they can best assist the thousands of people caught up in the heavy floods that have struck the West African country. At least 20,000 people are estimated to have been displaced or otherwise affected by the floods, with the area around Cotonou, the commercial capital, and along the entire southern coastline among the hardest hit regions.

DRC: Insecurity hindering humanitarian operations

2009-07-09

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31411

The precarious security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where rebel fighters are continuing attacks against several villages, is a major obstacle to assistance programmes in the area, the United Nations humanitarian arm has said.

Nigeria: Rebel leader accepts government amnesty

2009-07-09

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE5680LU20090709

Nigerian militant leader Henry Okah, who is on trial for gun-running and treason, has accepted a government offer for "unconditional" amnesty, his lawyer told Reuters on Thursday. President Umaru Yar'Adua last week ordered his interior minister to extend the amnesty offer to Okah and promised to release him if he accepted.

Africa: Fibre cable will create 'growth bump'

2009-07-09

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

The arrival of four international fibre cables in East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands will give larger markets in these regions a significant “growth bump” in what might otherwise be uncertain times. The price reductions on the new fibre capacity makes it just so much cheaper that it should bring a price reduction dividend for both wholesale customers and retail end-users.

Africa: Google brings SMS service to Africa

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/57612

Google has unveiled a new service designed to provide information via SMS to cellphone users in Africa, where mobile handsets are prevalent but Internet penetration is low. The Internet search and advertising giant noted that Africa has the world's highest mobile phone growth rate and that mobile use on the
continent is six times higher than Internet penetration.
Google has unveiled a new service designed to provide information via SMS to cellphone users in Africa, where mobile handsets are prevalent but Internet penetration is low.

“At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people - not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home,” the Mountain View, California, company said in a blog post.
“It’s important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty,” Google said.

The Internet search and advertising giant noted that Africa has the world’s highest mobile phone growth rate and that mobile use on the continent is six times higher than Internet penetration.

“Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS,” it said.
Google said Google SMS, which will be available first in Uganda, would provide information, via SMS, on a number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather and sports.

Google also said that it is also launching a service called Google Trader, an SMS-based application that helps bring together buyers and sellers of product or services, from used cars to livestock to jobs.

Google said another service, Google SMS Tips, enables a mobile phone user to have a Web search-like experience. A user enters a text query and Google returns relevant answers after searching a database.

Google said Google SMS Tips and Google Trader were developed in partnership with several organisations, including the Grameen Foundation, an offshoot of the pioneering Grameen bank founded by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus. - Sapa-AFP

Global: The Quick ‘n Easy Guide to online advocacy

2009-07-09

http://onlineadvocacy.tacticaltech.org/

This guide presents advocates with a collection of popular online services that can be used for advocacy quickly with little to no technical support. There are services for publishing photographs and video, for setting up a campaign blog or for using mobiles to communicate in a group. An amazing amount of functionality and tools are available simply by connecting to the Internet and opening up a web-browser. You don't need to have a lot of technical expertise to try some of these. You also don't need much money, these services are offered at low- to no-cost.

Africa: Is Chrome OS good for Africa?

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/l5lakk

Google's new Chrome operating system (OS) will be good for people who live on the Internet. However, Joburg Centre of Software Engineering (JCSE) head Barry Dwolatzky questions whether it will be good for developing economies. The US Internet search giant announced it had released the first version of its Chrome OS, aimed at netbooks, which are mainly used for accessing the World Wide Web.

Tanzania: Cassava disease monitoring goes mobile

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/lykndj

Mobile phones are the unlikely weapons being used to fight cassava disease in Tanzania, in a collaboration between scientists and farmers. As part of the Digital Early Warning Network (DEWN) farmers from ten districts in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania will be trained to recognise the symptoms of Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD)

Global: Call for business and human rights reports

2009-07-09

http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/7580.html

A new joint initiative of ESCR-Net and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law seeks to provide advocacy and educational resource of first-hand human rights documentation on the impacts businesses have on human rights around the world. Send your contributions.

Africa: CODESRIA Sub-Regional Methodological Workshops for Social Research

2009 Special Session for Nigeria

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/57629

The Special Nigerian edition of the methodological workshops that is on offer for 2009 is designed for doctoral students and young, mid-career African researchers based in Nigeria. The working language to be employed during the workshop will be English. The session will be led by a director who will be assisted by a team of three lecturers, all with an acknowledged expertise in the application of social science research methods.
CODESRIA
Sub-Regional Methodological Workshops for Social Research in Africa: 2009 Special Session for Nigeria
Theme: Fields and Theories of Qualitative Research
Date: 24—28 August, 2009
Venue: University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Call for Applications

One of the major weaknesses of contemporary social research in and about Africa is its lack of careful attention to epistemological and methodological issues. This weakness has made itself manifest at a time when the increasing complexities of the social dynamics that shape livelihood on the continent and the wider global context call for a greater investment of effort in the refinement of the procedures and instruments of investigation and analyses with a view to achieving a more accurate and holistic assessment of rapidly changing realities. But instead of such an investment of effort, we are increasingly witnessing an astonishing neglect or misapplication of theory and method on a scale and with a frequency that calls for intervention. At one level, the neglect that has taken place has comprised a serious trivialisation of basic research protocols and their reduction to a fetishistic evocation of superficial recommendations thinly disguised with ritualistic appeals to rigour that are not reflected in the analyses undertaken. At another level, methodological issues have simply been instrumentalised in ways that ensure that narrow ideological considerations and pre-determined outcomes take precedence over science. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to come across studies in which methodological questions are outrightly ignored in the name of an alleged specificity or immediacy that amounts to the exclusion of African social realities from universal debates on the validity of scientific frames of analyses. The result is that in those debates, studies produced on Africa come across as a mix of purely literary discourses without an empirical anchorage or anecdotes hidden under a “scholarly” discourse that is not only pretentious but also vacuous. Consequently, the knowledge produced is bereft of heuristic value and simply becomes an element that, wittingly or unwittingly, justifies a predetermined set of economic, political and social policies. This is clearly not an acceptable state of affairs, if only because it impoverishes African social research. It is, therefore, high time that the social research community revisited and discussed the methodological foundations of current knowledge about Africa in order first to put an end to scientific impunity as it manifests itself within and outside Africa, and give a new impulse to the African social sciences through support programmes targeted at younger researchers.

The future of young social researchers begins with an excellent mastery of core research processes and their patient application to concrete situations as demanded by their work in the field, the archives, and the library. Unfortunately, the combination of the prolonged crises in African higher education systems and the poor example set in the writings of an increasing number of Africanists who have succumbed to the temptation to take liberties with methodological rigour mean that younger African researchers are poorly served in matters of training for independent social research. It is for this reason that the CODESRIA Secretariat has decided to convene young African researchers to methodological workshops on epistemological and methodological issues in social research designed to fill the gaps in their formal and informal training. The workshops are meant to serve as a critical space that would offer experience-sharing in the basic epistemological and empirical prerequisites for rigorous scientific imagination. The workshops will not only offer insights into the current state of the art but also provide an occasion for a critical review of contemporary research procedures, tools and theories as seen from an African perspective. The major question which the workshops will address can be summarized as follows: How can the researcher productively establish a link between dominant theoretical approaches and concrete situations in the field whilst simultaneously taking into account the state of knowledge, the techniques to be mobilized, and the evolution of African societies? In answering this question, the workshops will privilege qualitative research methods and tools on the basic premise that the popular tendency to oppose quantitative and qualitative methods is due to a wrong assumption that the former offers an exactness and “hardness” which the latter is supposedly too “soft” and “fickle” to match. Without diminishing the importance of quantitative research and methods, participants in the workshops will be encouraged to explore qualitative methods of capturing African social dynamics which do not always or often find expression, fully or partially, in figures and which are, therefore, lost to those who are wedded to rigid and exclusively quantitative approaches.

The Special Nigerian edition of the methodological workshops that is on offer for 2009 is designed for doctoral students and young, mid-career African researchers based in Nigeria. The working language to be employed during the workshop will be English. The session will be led by a director who will be assisted by a team of three lecturers, all with an acknowledged expertise in the application of social science research methods. Senior researchers wishing to be considered for a role as resource persons are invited to send an application which indicates their interest and includes their current CV and an outline of issues they would like to cover in four lectures of two hours each. The outline submitted should be detailed enough to enable the director of the workshop compile a syllabus for the guidance of the resource persons and laureates. Apart from the actual preparation of lectures and field visits, the resource persons will also be expected to submit a bibliographic list of texts relevant to the theme of the workshop and which can be made available to the laureates.

Among the issues that will be covered during the workshop are:
1. A critical assessment of the distinction between “quantitative” and “qualitative” research with particular attention to the question of measurement in the social sciences. Participants will be taken through presentations and exercises aimed at showing that the mode of processing data that is collected depends both on the field constraints encountered and the paradigmatic options of data interpretation that are available. The procedures for the “quantification” of “qualitative” approaches will also be reviewed through discussions on the distinction between the non-metrical and “comprehensive” presentation of data and the more mathematical renditions favoured by the quantitativists;
2. A presentation of the methodological principles of “object construction” which enables the researcher to transcend the illusions of immediate knowledge and undertake a hypothetical reconstruction of social reality. This demands that the status of the researcher, as well as the systematic role of theories and tools be subjected to intense epistemological control.
3. An assessment of various techniques of data collection and “fact-finding” instruments available to the researcher. The usual tools of qualitative research such as interviews, observation, archival studies, and the less usual ones such as photography, will be reviewed, so as to locate their potentiality for construction of successful research projects.

All interested candidates are requested to submit an application that should comprise the following:

1. A letter of motivation which should also clearly indicate the area of research or topic on which they are working;
2. A statement of their research project (maximum of three to five pages) stating clearly the problematic that is being addressed, the kinds of field research to be undertaken, the theoretical and methodological framework being used, as well as the methodological and epistemological problems encountered;
3. A detailed and up-to-date curriculum vitae;
4. Two reference letters, one of which must be from the thesis supervisor and the other from the head of the department in which the applicant is registered. The reference letter from the supervisor is expected to address the relevance of the research project, the state of progress of the research and the theoretical and methodological approaches used, as well as the results expected. The reference letter from the head of the department is expected to attest to the qualities and academic potential of the candidate; and
5. A letter confirming the institutional affiliation of the applicant.

Applications will be selected on basis of the innovative nature of the research question being addressed, a commitment to gender balance that is central to CODESRIA’s institutional strategy. Applications must be submitted by 31st July, 2009. They should be sent to:

SUB-REGIONAL METHODOLOGICAL WORKSHOPS
(Special Session for Nigeria)
CODESRIA
B.P. 3304, Dakar, CP 18524 – Senegal.
Tél: +221-33 825.98.22/23 — Fax: +221-33 824.12.89
E-mail: methodological.workshop@codesria.sn
Website: http://www.codesria.org

South Africa: ICTJ Fellowship 2009

Call for applications

2009-07-09

http://tinyurl.com/nrx5fr

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) is pleased to announce its 2009 Fellowship in Transitional Justice: a three-week professional development course on transitional justice based in Cape Town, South Africa. This course will be held from November 2nd, 2009 to November 20th, 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa.

South Africa: Is this seat taken?

Conversations at the Bar, the Side-bar, the Bench & the Academy

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/57600

As a matter of substance, SAIFAC and Constitutional Law of South Africa (CLOSA), the Centre for Human Rights hope to push the boundaries for legal debate within South Africa. One way to accomplish this end is by having lawyers, judges, legal academics, and academics from other disciplines engage in meaningful discourse about subjects that do not – for better or worse – engage the majority of public lawyers in this country.
In support and acknowledgment of the initiative by SAIFAC and Constitutional
Law of South Africa (CLOSA), the Centre for Human Rights would like to bring
the following to your attention:

IS THIS SEAT TAKEN? CONVERSATIONS AT THE BAR, THE SIDE-BAR, THE BENCH & THE ACADEMY

Two ideas drive this seminar series, colloquium and book project.

As a matter of substance, we hope to push the boundaries for legal debate
within South Africa. One way to accomplish this end is by having lawyers, judges, legal academics, and academics from other disciplines engage in
meaningful discourse about subjects that do not – for better or worse – engage
the majority of public lawyers in this country.

As a matter of form, the lecture series will require a polished (though not
final) paper and a written response. Both paper and reply must be posted on
the SAIFAC, CLoSA and CHR websites well in advance of the monthly seminar and
the more intense colloquium to be held on October 11th. The individual
seminars will take place several times a month at SAIFAC from 12:30 – 14:00
during lunch time from July through October. The advantage of the colloquium
is that we will have the best minds in a single room for an entire day.

The book that comes out of the seminars and the colloquium will be called: Is
This Seat Taken? Conversations at the Bar, the Side-Bar, the Bench & the
Academy. The book will be edited by SAIFAC Director David Bilchitz and
University of Pretoria Professor Stu Woolman (SAIFAC’s Senior Research Fellow).
We can guarantee a South African publisher: However, we hope to secure a
co-print with an international larger house that possesses a larger
distribution network. We may also make it free to air.

For more information, please go to:
www.closa.co.za/assets/docs/Is this seat taken_low res.pdf

For further enquires contact David at davidb@saifac.org.za or Stu at stuwoolman@mweb.co.za.

Global: Intern/ Volunteer - Living Ancestors exhibition

2009-07-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/57598

Portrait artist and social justice activist, Gabrielle Le Roux is seeking an intern / volunteer to coordinate as well as assist with fundraising for the Living Ancestors exhibition to travel further internationally. The Living Ancestors exhibition is a tribute in portraits and stories to the world’s oldest woman, Ma Pampo, 126 years old and nine other women over the age of 100 in the Caribbean Island of Dominica. Living Ancestors has been exhibited in the Caribbean, South Africa, Uganda, Amsterdam and is currently at the Museum of London Docklands [http://tinyurl.com/lbbb65]
Intern / Volunteer urgently needed for an initial period of 1 to 3 months to work with a traveling exhibition in London.

Portrait artist and social justice activist, Gabrielle Le Roux is seeking an intern / volunteer to coordinate as well as assist with fundraising for the Living Ancestors exhibition to travel further internationally. The Living Ancestors exhibition is a tribute in portraits and stories to the world’s oldest woman, Ma Pampo, 126 years old and nine other women over the age of 100 in the Caribbean Island of Dominica. Living Ancestors has been exhibited in the Caribbean, South Africa, Uganda, Amsterdam and is currently at the Museum of London Docklands [http://tinyurl.com/lbbb65]

Living Ancestors exhibition has never had any formal sponsorship but because if its content it is generating progressively more interest internationally and the primary function of the internship would be to make it possible for the exhibition to reach its potential.

Skills you will need: Excellent written and spoken communication in English and if possible French; proficient computer skills; good marketing and organisational skills; must be able to work on their own and be self-motivated. You will also have a commitment to social justice and an interest in innovative and creative activist initiatives.

You will be liaising with museums, universities and organisations including UNESCO who are already interested in hosting the exhibition. An internship will provide the volunteer with the opportunity to work with an ongoing unique and inspiring project. The right person may also have the opportunity to use their internship as a stepping stone to further work in the area of Black heritage and research.


For further information and to apply, email a cover letter (in English) and a CV to: info@blacklooks.org

Fahamu