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Financial crisis and the Third World

Dani Wadada Nabudere

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58603

Dani Wadada Nabudere's 'The Crash of International Finance-Capital and its Implications for the Third World' is now available from Pambazuka Press for only £16.95 (pp 280). What's more, Pambazuka News readers can get a 20% DISCOUNT on orders placed before 1 October 2009 – simply enter 89453751 as your discount code when placing your order.

'The Crash' was first published in 1989 in the wake of the 1987 'Black Monday' financial crash. In this new edition featuring both the original and new chapters, Nabudere provides an updated analysis of the 2007–08 international financial crisis and draws out the likely implications for the Third World, a perspective that has received little attention elsewhere.

The following is an extract from the first chapter of the 1989 original in which Nabudere discusses the history of commodity production and the self-serving efforts of bourgeois capitalists to obscure the true function of money.

The international capitalist system is fundamentally undermined by two contradictory forces at work: the over-production of commodities and the money-credit instruments that accompanies it on the one hand, and the economic environment which compels individuals to act as if they are all accumulators of private wealth, on the other. The system at first appeared to have a rationale in that, at least as far as Europe was concerned, all individuals had an apparent equal opportunity to work and enrich themselves. Although this was patently untrue, the worker who in fact produced this wealth and had no equal opportunity to accumulate, was nevertheless overwhelmed by the ideological enthusiasm of the period which the new capitalism, counter-poised with feudalism on the opposite side as it was, unleashed. In this way, the system of production based on private appropriation of wealth by a few capitalist individuals out of the labours of the majority constituted by the working-class was accepted as the only natural and reasonable one.

THE DILEMMA OF THE BOURGEOISIE

But in fact the system was fraught with inner contradictions inherent in this economic arrangement, and this is what explains why the very over-production of commodities and over-expansion of credit should in themselves imply a crisis for the system as a whole which was worsened as the system developed to higher levels. This was because as the capitalist system increased its potentiality to produce ever increasing volumes of commodities, the drive to accumulate wealth in private hands by the few surplus-value appropriators created the necessity that this wealth would be accumulated in the form of money. This was in reality a historical necessity which was imposed on the capitalist system by the material forces of previous society in which money in its latest fully developed form as silver or gold had brought forward a material limit to its unfettered production because of cost. The inheritance of this limitation by capitalism meant that its newly acquired potentiality to increase production, assisted by science and technology to hitherto undreamt levels, would itself be limited by the material conditions of money production and expansion. Although the capitalists tried to overcome this 'metallic' barrier – as David Ricardo came to call it – capitalism has never fully managed to overcome these limitations, precisely because the system of production based on capitalism implied the private appropriation of wealth which was only possible in the form of money. In this way, then, money became a hindrance to the full development of capital, and this is what manifested itself in the recurrent economic crises as the financial crisis. The crisis was in reality a production crisis because it was connected with over-production of commodities which, at certain points within the production cycle, had led to the 'over-production' of money-credit, for in such events all the capitalists holding money-credit instruments or paper money craved that these instruments, which resembled money, would be turned into real cash-money!

The question then which appears to be posed in the understanding of capitalist production and crisis is what is money? The bourgeoisie have attempted to answer the question with little success. It is the purpose of this chapter to reveal the reasons for this failure. Nevertheless, the question is a real one and a problem at that for the bourgeoisie. Laughable definitions of money by bourgeois monetary economists such as 'Money is what money does' give one an idea of the quandary in which bourgeois economic theory has found itself with every complication that capitalist crisis has presented to these ideologues of capitalism. According to John Richard Hicks, even that most eminent of bourgeois monetary economists, John Maynard Keynes, ended up with three definitions of money. Thus whilst the bourgeoisie use money in the production process, they still face the dilemma that they cannot explain the process of production based on money-capital.

The reason for this dilemma lies in the fact that the bourgeoisie have always attempted to obscure the function of money within capitalist production because to reveal its true function would expose the true role of money as the basis upon which the labour of the majority in the form of surplus-value is converted into the private wealth of a few. For this reason attempts have been made to present money as a neutral, technical device which serves the circulation of commodities per se. The fact that money more fundamentally is a means of expropriating wealth from others and then storing it is only momentarily mentioned in the latter aspect but in a manner that is segmented in order to obscure the total process of production and appropriation. In this way, the organic link between money and capital as a social relation between the producers of wealth and its private appropriation is silenced theoretically.

It is for this reason that Joseph Schumpeter points out to us that although debates raged on for years and decades among bourgeois economists as to the true function of money, and hence also on questions of definitions, these discussions and debates 'did not produce very interesting results'. He singles out Georg Friedrich Knapps as having been the exception, although the latter produced a definition of money that obscured its role even more – the so-called state theory of money. But Schumpeter points out nevertheless that the other economists got stuck at the 'neutral' definition of money as 'money is what money does' – a phrase coined by one Francis A. Walker to save them from the embarrassment of having achieved nothing out of the years of talk and writing. The discussion from then onwards was bogged down with drawing distinctions between 'primary money' and 'credit and fiduciary money'. Other bourgeois economists devoted their efforts at examining the four classical functions of money, with one faction within it emphasising the 'separability' of the functions, and another emphasising their combinability.

It was within this theorising that one branch of monetary economists came to try to find the basis for the existence of value in money. Léon Walras and Adam Smith used the concept of 'labour standard value' as the numeraire in which labour quantities of labour-power could be expressed as direct labour-units created by labour. On the whole, however, the majority of the new economists increasingly separated the problem of monetary theory from that of the 'theory of value and distribution'. Prices of goods and services were looked at merely as monetary expressions of the quantities of goods and services which did not affect their production. Money was seen as a unit which facilitated exchange in something which was in the nature of barter since money played a non-influential and non-affecting role. In this way economics came to express the 'real analysis' of production and distribution in which abstract 'neutral' money units were used, while monetary analysis was left outside as a different science which was not related to the main issues of production and the existence of real values.

Monetary theory therefore came to look on itself as concerned with the analysis of exchange-value, and this came increasingly to mean examining the origins, meaning and problems of defining the 'purchasing power of money'. It was with this view that many books came to be written examining 'money and prices', as if these were unrelated to the actual problems of production and distribution of goods. With this development, the monetary economists found they had nothing material to their analysis and since money in this role was 'neutral', efforts were made to find neutral index numbers which were created to express the value of money as a basis for calculating prices of goods and services. The Austrian School added to this de-materialisation of money by advancing marginal utility concepts to explain how value in money was created, and under this new theory any objective basis to the production of money and its value was denied. Instead a 'subjective theory of money' was advanced in which the value of money was said to lie in the subjective wills of individuals and their desires.

The above tracing of the dilemma of the bourgeoisie can then explain to us why the bourgeois economists came to find it impossible to disentangle the role of money and credit in capitalist production, and yet it was fundamental to the system of production. In fact the 'impossibility' became the necessity for obscuring the reality in order to continue to combat other more scientifically based theories which had already emerged to challenge these obscure theories of the bourgeoisie. It is not surprising then that the bourgeois economists came to see money as only an agent of circulation. Keynes tried to overcome this weakness by pointing to the storage function of money and tried to build it into the money-capital market operations, but it never sank into the general analysis.

Most quantitative economists stuck to the separation of money into 'primary money' which later came to be called 'narrow money' – meaning currency notes and demand deposits – and 'fiduciary money' or credit which today is called 'broad money', which meant narrow money plus time deposits. This latter classification has been sub-divided so that there is now broad money one and broad money two – MB1 and MB2 – adding further to the confusion as to what categories of 'money' qualify for final payment. The new explosion of financiering that has struck the global financial markets with the deregulation and de-control of money and financial markets had broadened even further the paper claimants to the 'narrow money'. That has undermined the quality of money which has complicated and worsened the 'liquidity' problem of the financial system. In these circumstances, it cannot be surprising for Noboru Takeshita, the Japanese Prime Minister, to have exclaimed recently: 'If I am asked to give you a projection of how far a certain currency can go down, that is a question that only God can answer, especially in the spirit of the floating rate system!' This was said after the 1987 financial markets crash followed by rapid fluctuations of the US dollar and of the other currencies connected with it globewise. It must be clear from this that the bourgeoisie find themselves at a dead-end in their understanding of the system they are supposed to operate as a ruling class. This then is their dilemma.

MONEY AND CREDIT IN MARX'S THEORY

While the bourgeoisie were struggling in this way to make head and tail of what they were managing, Marx's theory, which was abused and sidetracked, stood the test of time. Even Marxist scholars, who found themselves overwhelmed by this concept of 'neutrality' of money, paid very little specific attention to Marx's theory, except in as much as it concerned capitalist circulation. This is reflected in the writings of Rudolf Hilferding who, despite his major contributions on this matter, still looked at money as an agent. The recent writings of the Trotskyist–Marxist Ernest Mandel also fall into the error of seeing inflation in prices as lying in the over-explosion of credit, which is the same thing as seeing money as a circulation agent of commodities. The writings of 'neo-Marxists' such as Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran also tended to confuse a proper analysis of money and credit in capitalist production, for in their rejection of the law of value in relation to monopoly capitalism, they made it impossible to apply Marx's concepts of value to production.

For Marx, the development of money follows the same path as that of other commodities. Money is a commodity just like all other commodities, except that at a certain stage of its development, it steps aside to act as the sole representative of all other commodities in that it is only through it that all other commodities' values can be expressed.

Marx argues that commodity production does not begin with capitalism. It is, he asserts, prius to capitalism. It existed in the earlier modes of production and social formations. It existed under the slave-owning societies as well as under the feudal societies. Indeed, it was on the basis of this commodity production that merchant capital developed and it was under these conditions that the social and economic pre-conditions for capitalist development were created. Nevertheless, commodity production under these conditions was simple commodity production. Only under capitalism did it develop into complex expanded forms.

Simple commodity production brought about a certain division of labour among the direct producers under which individual producers specialised in producing and making particular products. It also brought about the existence of private property in the means of production in the products of labour. Peasant and craftsman production was based on the personal labour of the commodity producer. But it had something in common with capitalist development in that its foundation was private property in the means of production. This petty commodity production is what served as the base and point of departure for commodity production under capitalism and it is under the latter that commodity production became a universal and dominant mode of production.

It is this evolution of commodity production that enabled the labour process to become identified, leading to the emergence of the social division of labour, without which exchanges are impossible. One form of labour became identified with a particular production and in this way it became a concrete labour. The skill of a tailor and that of a shoe-maker became different, but all produced use-values. What was important was that both these different forms of labour were human labour and as such they were abstract labour. It was only when they were both human labour in this way that exchanges became possible. Different labours and use-values have different measures which are appropriate to their physical characteristics. What expresses this measure of the different concrete labours and use-values is the time it takes to produce them. Hence labour-time became an important element in establishing a relationship which enabled exchange-value to be established. Thus it is the two-fold character of a commodity which makes it possible for money- commodity to emerge and develop.

In a society in which private property in the means of production exists, this two-fold character of the labour embodied in a commodity reflects the contradiction between the private labour of individuals who produce the different use-values, and the social labour which can only be carried on in the generalised abstract labour of the commodity producers as a whole. While each producer acts as an individual and regards his production activity as his private affair, he cannot dispose of his surplus or excess product to himself.

This interconnection between the individual producers is established in the market, where every individual meets to compare, measure, evaluate and exchange his particular product for others. The more labour is divided and separated along these lines, the more varied are the products which are manufactured by the different producers and the more extensive becomes the mutual dependence of all the producers one to the other. Consequently the labour of each producer increasingly becomes essentially social in character and in that way it becomes just one particle of the labour of society as a whole. It is within this set of economic relationships that the interests of individuals are developed, and it is in the course of this development that class struggles emerge and are fought to their conclusion.

Marx points out that he was the first to pin-point and to examine this two-fold nature of the labour process and of the labour contained in commodities, for with this discovery the conception became the 'pivot' upon which a clear comprehension of political economy was possible. The discovery enabled him to bring into analytical focus the qualitative differences in the commodities, because without this their quantitative content could not be established.

The common factor in the exchange relation, or in the exchange-value of the commodity is therefore abstract labour. The magnitude of this value is measured by the quantity of the 'value-forming substance', namely the labour contained in the article. The quantity of labour is in turn measured by its duration, and this labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days and weeks. The labour that forms the substance of value is equal human labour. It is the expenditure of identical human labour-power – a social average unit of labour-power, which is socially necessary to produce any use-value under conditions of production normal for a given society, and with an average degree of skill and intensity of labour which prevails in that society. This relation therefore varies with time and space. It is this relation which exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article. Commodities which contain equal quantities of labour, or which can be produced in the same time, have therefore the same value.

This time changes as a result of the growth of the productivity of labour. The productivity of labour is expressed in the amount of products created in a given unit of labour-time. It grows as a result of the improvement or fuller utilisation of the instruments of production, the development of science, the increase in the worker's skill, the rationalisation of work and other improvements in the production process and other natural conditions. The higher the productivity of labour, the less the time needed for the production of a unit of the given commodity and the lower the value of this commodity. Intensity of labour, on the other hand, is determined by the amount of labour expended in a unit of time. A growth in the intensity of labour means an increase in the expenditure of labour in one and the same interval of time. More intensive labour embodies a greater quantity of products and creates a greater value in a given unit of time, as compared with the less intensive labour.

The skill of the workers in the production process is either simple or complex. Simple labour is the labour of a worker who has no special training or experience. Complex labour is the labour of a worker with special training and experience. Complex labour creates value of a greater magnitude than is created by simple labour in the same unit of time, to which must be added the labour expended in the worker's training. Complex labour is therefore equivalent to multiplied simple labour: one hour of complex labour is equal to several hours of simple labour. In the actual process of commodity production based on private property, the reduction of various forms of complex labour to simple labour takes place spontaneously. The magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined by the socially-necessary amount of simple labour-time.

Armed with these findings, Marx then embarked on tracing the evolution of the different functions of money. As we know these functions are: the measure of value, medium of exchange and store of value. It turns out that this analysis is also a historical tracing of money's development, which finally resolves the problem of how it comes about that: 'the thing measured becomes the measuring unit'.

In short, how does one commodity become the universal measurement of all other commodities, that is, how does one commodity become money? The singling out of particular commodities at different times leads to one commodity – gold or silver – becoming acceptable universally by different communities as the sole measure of all their commodities' values. This took a very long time and the process of how communities came to accept certain ways of measurement became blurred with the passage of time, as it becomes a habit to accept a certain unit as the basis for measuring. It is this development which expresses the history of price- formation. Gold ultimately becomes the standard of price, with a scale of measurements such as 1 ounce of gold = 35 dollars, which is the price of gold as a commodity, but also a scale in which the prices of other commodities are expressed. In this same process money evolves as the medium of exchange in that gold becomes the only commodity which is acceptable to all commodity producers in the process of circulation of their commodities. It is this also which brings about the emergence of coin, for gold can be divided in this form and again melted into bars, making it a convenient commodity to act as a medium in coin and yet also as a conserver of wealth as a gold bar. This possibility which gold or silver offer to other commodities ensures their evolution into money or gold as a store of value. It also shows that it is only gold acting both as coin, and again as bar, which alone survives the process of circulation. Other commodities disappear into private consumption, but gold, although it disappears in private hoards, can and does reappear to act as money.

It is this development of the different functions of money in this dialectical and historical process that ensures the emergence of money as a means of payment. It is this which enables the appearance of money-credit to develop into the credit system that appears with capitalism. In this function, money enables someone to sell a commodity when another is not yet ready to buy or vice-versa. A seller is able to sell and deliver a commodity to a 'buyer' whose commodity is not yet ready for sale and exchange. In that case, the buyer is able to 'buy' by means of the promise to deliver when his or her own commodity is ready to deliver or sell. The seller becomes a creditor and the purchaser a debtor. This transaction enables a pause which facilitates the development of commerce and trade. Here we can already see the emergence of contract and legal relations in the process of production.



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* Professor Dani Wadada Nabudere is the executive director of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute (MPAI), Mbale, Uganda.
* 'The Crash of International Finance-Capital and its Implications for the Third World' is available from Pambazuka Press for only £16.95 RRP. Pambazuka readers however can get a further 20% DISCOUNT by entering 89453751 as the discount code when completing their orders.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Morocco uses torture to silence Sahrawi activists

Konstantina Isidoros

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58609

cc SaharauiakMoroccan security agents abducted and tortured a 19 year-old Sahrawi woman on 27 August for being a human rights activist, Konstantina Isidoros tells Pambazuka News. Nguia El Haouassi’s ordeal is just ‘one of many episodes of Moroccan police brutality’ that occur every year’, says Isidoros, but thanks to ‘an increasing number of Sahrawi student-led internet blogs’, records of human rights abuses against Sahrawi in the Occupied Territories are breaking through Morocco’s ‘propaganda wall’ to reach a global audience.

At 9:00 pm on Thursday 27 August, 19 year-old Nguia El Haouassi, a Sahrawi woman, a student and a human rights activist, was abducted while walking through Maatallah District in Laayoune. Laayoune is a large town in the northern Saguia al-Hamra region of the Moroccan occupied territory of Western Sahara. The news was first broken by the Saharawi Journalists and Writers Union (UPES) on the internet on Friday morning.[1] Mohamed Brahim, a Sahrawi internet blogger also posted the story on Friday morning at 8:48 am.[2]

Nguia’s testimony is that two police officers, Khalid Barakt and Aziz Anouch, blind-folded and subjected her to physical and psychological torture. These two police officers were then joined by additional Moroccan security agents who began interrogating her and removed her clothes. They asked what her political affiliations and views regarding the Morocco-Western Sahara conflict, and questioned her reasons for wanting to participate in a youth conflict resolution programme being run in Oxford, England earlier in August. Nguia’s ordeal was videotaped with the threat that she would be exposed naked on the internet if she revealed her ordeal and did not cease her human rights activities. Nguia states that she was also threatened with rape if she did not answer questions, and one of the high-ranking officers, part of the Moroccan DIAG secret service, threatened to kill her next time they caught her. She was then abandoned at around 2:00 am in the dark and left naked on the outskirts of Laayoune. She was able to find refuge with another Sahrawi family who clothed her and helped her reach her family.

What provoked Nguia’s ordeal? Just three weeks earlier, she was one of the ‘Oxford Six’, a group of Sahrawi students who had received invitations and visas from the British Consulate to come to Oxford, England to participate in a two-week ‘peace camp’, a youth conflict resolution programme, run by Talk Together, with numerous international academic and peacekeeping experts volunteering their time to participate.

On the point of departure on 5 August, the six students were arrested at the Agadir’s Al Massira airport and refused permission to travel, their mobile phones confiscated to prevent them for communicating with the outside world. They were then reportedly assaulted at three different locations – outside the airport, at a border police station, and again at the home of one of them. Amnesty International issued a full investigation and public statement.[3] Talk Together’s website also provides detailed chronological information on the full story, the statement issued by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Amnesty International’s statements.[4]

In 1975, as the Spanish colonisers began to withdraw, Morocco invaded the Western Sahara behind the veil of the Green March, annexing approximately 80 per cent of the territory. A sixteen-year war ensued between the Moroccans and the Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front. A 1991 UN ceasefire was agreed and a referendum for Sahrawi self-determination was promised, but this has been repeatedly stalled or blocked by Morocco. For the last 34 years, an estimated 165,000 refugees have lived in the inhospitable Algerian desert in refugee camps administered by the Polisario Front. The Polisario formed their nation-state in exile in 1976, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), and control the remaining 20 per cent of the Western Sahara, often called the ‘Free Zone’ or ‘Liberated Territories’. The Polisario continues to seek self-determination and return to their homeland. The remaining Sahrawi population live under Moroccan occupation. Each side of the Sahrawi population is separated from each other by the Berm, a heavily land-mined and fortified sand wall built by the Moroccans.

Nguia’s ordeal was immediately picked up by the global network of Western Sahara campaigners, NGOs and human rights organisations, with postings appearing on the internet over the weekend, such as Stefan Simanowitz, chair of the global campaigning initiative, the Free Western Sahara Network, and two press statements have been issued.[5]

Nguia’s story is one of many episodes of Moroccan police brutality that occur every year. As Simanowitz writes, ‘For over three decades…serious concerns about human rights violations against the Saharawis who have remained in Western Sahara have been raised by UN High Commissioner for Human rights and numerous human rights organisations. A 2008 report by Human Rights Watch found that Morocco violated the rights to expression, association, and assembly in the Western Sahara. An Amnesty International report of the same year found that “politically motivated administrative impediments have been used to prevent human rights groups obtaining legal registration and curtailing their scope of activities.” There is also widespread evidence of the use of torture.’

Nguia is lucky to have returned home to her family, many others have simply disappeared. According to human rights organisations, over 500 indigenous Sahrawi have ‘disappeared’ for challenging the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, most of them taking place up until the signing the UN peace plan for a referendum in 1991. Sunday 30 August 2009 marked the 26th International Day of the Disappeared. Yahiaoui Lamine, the Polisario representative for the United Kingdom and Ireland, says ‘Since 1975 the Sahrawi people have been the victims of disappearances at the hands of the Moroccan authorities. Campaigning tirelessly is the Association for the Families of Sahrawi Prisoners and the Disappeared (AFAPREDESA) who have been using all their resources to expose the deplorable human-rights situation, Forced disappearance constitutes one of the cruellest forms of psychological torture to the relatives of a missing person.’

There are an increasing number of Sahrawi student-led internet blogs which record these human rights abuses and upload video clips as evidence. One such site has Hayat Rguibi’s videoed testimony of her rape by Moroccan police, and postings about the killings of two male Sahrawi students, Houssein Abdessadik Alktaif and Khaya Baba Abdelaziz, in December 2008 in Agadir, Morocco.[6]

Another site has video clips commentated on by Rabab Amidane, a young female human rights student activist who won the Norwegian 2009 Student Peace Prize.[7] Rabab’s video clips record Moroccan police violence at student demonstations.[8] Also both UPES and Reuters report that another young Sahrawi human rights activist, Ennaama Asfari, was sentenced on Thursday 27 August 2009 to four month’s imprisonment ‘because of his political views in favour of self-determination of people of Western Sahara’.[9] This prompted the Sahrawi President Mohamed Abdelaziz, to write to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to call for the establishment of a mechanism to ensure the protection of human rights of the Sahrawi in the Moroccan occupied territories of Western Sahara.[10]

Yahiaoui Lamine says ‘The international community ought to react quickly to stop these atrocities. The double standard in dealing with human rights must come to an end, and the human dimension referred to by the United Nation’s Security Council Resolution 1871 must have substance’.[11] The United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) has been increasingly under pressure from campaigners and a number of governments to properly assume their responsibilities to monitor these human rights violations in the Moroccan occupied territory. Last time the issue was raised in the UN Security Council, the suggestion was blocked by France.

Until now, Morocco has fairly successfully kept the beatings and killings of Sahrawi students in the Occupied Territories beneath the radar of the global media. But now the internet, mobile phones and video uploading have played a crucial part in getting evidence through Morocco’s propaganda wall, thereby enabling campaigners and analysts to monitor and examine the situation. The vast network of NGOs, academics and analysts provides a literary ‘Green Line’ between Morocco’s ‘tools of persuasion’ and – as Pazzanita so aptly put it – the ‘antidote to propaganda’ (1994: 274).[12]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Konstantina Isidoros is a doctoral researcher in Social Anthropology at the
University of Oxford. Her field of specialisation is on nomadic pastoralism
across the Sahara Desert with a particular interest in the hassaniyya-speaking
Sahrawi nomads of the western Sahara.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] http://www.upes.org/body1_eng.asp?field=sosio_eng&id=1683
[2] www.sahara-panorama.blogspot.com
[3] http://asvdh.net/english/?p=542 and http://www.amnesty.org
[4] www.talktogether.wordpress.com
[5] http://freesahara.ning.com and www.en.afrik.com
[6] http://moroccoviolatinghumanrightsinwsahara.blogspot.com/
[7] www.vest-sahara.no, a Norwegian NGO and campaigner for Western Sahara
[8] http://www.saharawi-students.org
[9] http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/033a6e203c442108a79d47093ded7837.htm
[10] http://www.upes.org/body1_eng.asp?field=sosio_eng&id=1725
[11] http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sc9650.doc.htm The resolution was passed on 30 April 2009.
[12] Pazzanita, A.G. 1994. ‘Morocco versus Polisario: A Political Interpretation’. The Journal of Modern African Studies. 32 (2). June. pp.265-278.

Gabon: Françafrique's interests remain safe

Tidiane Kassé

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58615

cc WikimediaFollowing the election of Ali Ben Bongo to the Gabonese presidency, Tidiane Kassé considers the reaction of commentators in the African press to the victory. With the death of his father and long-time dictator Omar Bongo in June, many regard Ali Ben Bongo's election as the mere continuation of the Bongo dynasty, Kassé notes, a continuation decidedly in the interests of the French former colonial power.

Gabon's constitutional court has confirmed the results of the country's presidential elections of 30 August, putting Ali Ben Bongo in power. Beyond the accusations of meddling and violence that have marked the electoral process, the malaise surrounding the installation of a new power in Libreville stems from a deep fault around the management of state affairs passing from a late father to his son. Whatever the democratic façade endorsing the election, the patrimonialisation of power in relation to Africa's oil – with France's blessing and in the clear interests of the 'Françafrique' – is worrying. Following Ali Ben Bongo's victory, Pambazuka News presents a review of the responses of the African press.

After Omar Bongo, Ali Ben Bongo. After the father, the son. Forty years of a paternal presidency – which only death would bring to an end last June – and a dynasty in power continues. The Gabonese presidential elections of 30 August leave a bitter aftertaste around the prospects for democracy in Africa.

The 41.73 per cent which allowed Ali Bongo to succeed his father scarcely reflect the perverse symbol of his comfortable victory. It's clear that as a silent epidemic develops, a new, nascent illness starts to threaten the democratic process in Africa. For a long time, power has been a matter of clan or tribe. The changes – desired and forced – witnessed by the continent's people via the ballot box came to change things at the beginning of the 1990s. Today however, in a supreme historical irony, the devolution of power is returning to its 'origins' and turning in on a yet more nuclear unit: the family.

The African press this week regarded the results of the Gabonese elections as the success of developments played out both in the open and behind the scenes; a story whose end was clear from the beginning and which did not lack for precedents, and whose reoccurrence is to be feared. This is the take of the Senegalese daily, Sud Quotidien. In an article entitled 'Dévolution du pouvoir en Afrique: les héritiers présomptifs arrivent' ('The devolution of power in Africa: the heir presumptives arrive'), Madior Fall writes:

'Following the era of the fathers of the nation, that of coups, national conferences, multipartyism, here comes the hour of the heir presumptives! The son of Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Faure Gnassingbé in Togo yesterday, Ali Bongo Odimba in Gabon today. Tomorrow, who will be the next king's son to take the place of his father? After the speech of La Baule and the national conferences it gave rise to, multipartyism and democratic changes, the dynasty is on the rise in Africa. It's the coming of the bosses' sons.'

Thus from now on every look will be towards the court of these bosses to see who among their children will become the 'men of tomorrow'. Sud Quotidien evokes a circle where one would find the pictures of Mohamed Gaddafi, Hannibal Gaddafi and/or Seif el Islam Gaddafi in Libya, as well as Gamal, the son of the Egyptian President Hosni Moubarak, along with Karim, the eldest son of Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal – all involved, at an important level, in the running of their fathers' countries and well-positioned to succeed them.

This picture also belies, in France's African backyard, a sure formula to guarantee the future of the Françafrique. In Gabon, behind the screen of neutrality displayed by Paris, the contradictions and the faults of language have been numerous and significant enough to forge certain convictions. The fact that the Gabonese attacked French interests en masse as soon as the announcement of the official results came out reflects that their view is clear. Analysing this 'anti-French' sentiment, Noël Kodia, the Gabonese literary critic and writer, writes in Afrik.com:

'For the Gabonese, of whom 70 per cent live on less than one dollar per day in a country that paradoxically is rich, France appeared complicit in the anti-social and anti-economic policies perpetuated under Bongo Sr. and to want to carry on in the same vein with his son authorising the numerous French multinational monopolies working away from scrutiny…

'In welcoming the progress of the vote in Gabon a few days after 30 August 2009 and in declaring its confidence in Gabonese institutions' ability to oversee a calm process, did France not look towards Ali Bongo? Had Bongo himself not last December been received at the Elysée by President Sarkozy? … In declaring that France did not favour a candidate in Gabon because the country itself is sovereign, was Bernard Kouchner (the minister of foreign affairs) not contradicting the words of Alain Joyandet (the secretary of state for cooperation), who confirmed that his country was simply waiting for Ali Bongo to be confirmed by the constitutional court as Gabon's new president?'

Thus Sarkozy's words at the time of Omar Bongo's funeral in Libreville on 16 June 2009 to the effect that France wished for no particular candidate are entirely unconvincing, particularly in a country where the deceased president was regarded as the godfather of the 'Françafrican mafia'. This is a country where, with a population of 1.2 million, one can count 10,000 French nationals, a country where France has one of its most important military bases, and finally a country where Total is the king of oil, where Eramet invests in manganese and where Areva controls uranium.

All this leads L’Intelligent d’Abidjan to think that 'France indeed had an influence, as elsewhere in francophone Africa, in the election results in Gabon, because quite simply France needs Ali Ben Bongo as a dynamic tool to assure it own interests.'

Long groomed by his father while defence minister, Gabon's fourth president has been risen to power under particular conditions that could mark his exercise of power. His 41.73 per cent indeed won him an electoral victory, but he lacks legitimacy, with a combined 51 per cent of the vote having been achieved by the other leading candidates of Pierre Mamboundou (25.88 per cent) and André Mba Obame (25.23 per cent).

This majority led Dieudonné Zougrana to write in Burkina Faso's L’Observateur: 'The opposition won the presidential race, but lost the presidency.' For Zougrana, 'The two elected new challengers together constitute a majority. They would have been able to balance the votes of the victor if they had been together as a union with this type of ballot (a single round) – "It's a coup Ko." … Obssessed by an "anti-Bongoism", the "Manboundou–Mba Obame" duo and the 'TSA' (Tout sauf Ali (Anything but Ali)) camp did not anticipate the danger represented by a ballot where Ali Bongo was the runaway favourite, with the name, the electoral machinery and all the money.'

The Bongo dynasty goes on, but the context has changed. The exercise of power cannot continue on its own. In the Kinshasa daily Le Potentiel, Bienvenu Marie Bakumanya notes that 'Gabon has entered a period of uncertainty.' This is due in part to the fact that 'the Bateke (Bongo's ethnic group) are not the majority group in Gabon' and because the clan could suffer from the fragility resulting from the post-election contests and political conflict sure to emerge. From there on, Bienvenu Marie Bakumanya continues, 'the solution lies in forming a government which involves even the losers.' Ali Bongo has launched an appeal to this effect, albeit around his own programme. 'But flexibility in Gabon's interests should not be ruled out', Bakumanya notes.

* Tidiane Kassé is the editor of Pambazuka News in French.
* Translated from the French by Alex Free.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Niger Delta amnesty: Peace cannot be dictated

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58611

cc World Economic ForumThe Niger Delta amnesty won’t bring real or lasting peace to the region, Sabella Abidde tells Pambazuka News, because despite the government's haste to hurry through a deal, it hasn’t set out its plans for what the amnesty will mean in practice for local communities. The amnesty is a ‘band aid’ solution for a ‘festering wound’, says Abidde, which if left untreated has the potential to ‘undo’ Nigeria.

At a recently concluded socio-cultural event in Odi, Bayelsa State, Dr Timiebi Koripamo-Agary, who is one of the most trusted, most seasoned and most professional federal civil servants, and who is also a member of the Federal Government Committee on Amnesty and Rehabilitation, was quoted as saying: ‘It is time now for those who have carried arms for whatever reason to drop them and embrace peace, so that real peace and development can come in for our people. We have had enough of violence. This is the time for peace.’ Koripamo-Agary comments emphasised that the government is sincere with the general pardon being floated by President Yar’Adua.

AFTER THE AMNESTY

Well said, but what’s next after the amnesty? Really, what’s next after the amnesty gala? Where do we go from there? What concession is the Nigerian government willing to make? How is this administration different from previous regimes that have been, in so many ways, duplicitous and indifferent to the plight and anguish of the Ijaw and other oil-producing communities? In any case, what does the government mean by peace? Moreover, what does the administration mean when it speaks of development? We need to know. We need to know what the government is talking about and we need to know its aims and intentions vis-à-vis the Niger Delta imbroglio.

And so we ask: First, what manner of peace is Dr Koripamo-Agary talking about? What is peace and at what price is the Yar’Adua government seeking it? Second, is the government ready to be sincere and upfront in its dealings with the Ijaw and other oil-producing communities? Third, why is the government so bent on the amnesty deal now? Why the haste? Why hurry a process no one is really sure about? And finally, why is the government so determined to shove the amnesty down everyone’s throat? If not properly done, and if there are whiffs of ulterior motives, what the government may get, in the end, will be a bad and useless peace. If Abuja wants to know what a bad and useless peace is, they should ask Tel Aviv.

ALL IN THE NAME OF PEACE?

As one-sided and as unpalatable as the proposed amnesty deal is, we see that the Yar’Adua government is (a) playing one Niger Delta governor against another; (b) pitting one militant leader against another; (c) using one justice-seeking group against another; (d) encouraging politicians to engage in private and public spats; (f) throwing millions of dollars on the table, knowing full well that political prostitutes will sell their birth rights for dollars and cents; and (g) threatening those who refuse to obey or collaborate with the government with awe-inspiring threats. All these in the name of peace?

Peace cannot be dictated, it has to be a natural born child of a just and humane environment. In this case, there can be no peace and security when people feel cheated, used and abused. Military might or not, international condemnation or not, there will be no durable peace if there is no political and economic righteousness in our country. What is fair is fair and fairness is what the Ijaw and the oil-producing communities have been asking for. It is all they ever wanted.

‘What’s next’ is the question virtually everyone concerned with the Niger Delta crisis and the hyped amnesty seems not to know the answer to or to understand. To my knowledge at least, no one has publicly articulated the concerns, questions and challenges that are likely to trail the amnesty deal. And in fact, none of the major participants of the complex and seemingly complicated entanglement – militants, politicians, profiteers, and double-dealing sycophants – has cleverly communicated the how and what should be done for the Ijaw and the region a day before and a day after the fanfare.

For now, however, President Yar’Adua and his underlings simply wants the low intensity conflict to stop; and also, for the various justice-seeking assemblages to stop harassing the oil companies and the multitude of domestic and international oil bunkerers that have seen their operations take a hit. Other than the monetary cost to the Nigerian government and the oil companies, the Nigerian military an intelligence services are also feeling the pain. They are bleeding.

DANGEROUS DIMENSIONS

In my estimation, the proposed amnesty is a stop-gap measure, a band aid on a festering wound close to the heart of a sluggish, wounded, and sleepy elephant. For several years, the government has simply talked its way out of problems, or, in most cases, allowed very simple problems to assume dangerous dimensions. When not being lackadaisical or allowing the ballooning of problems, she has, in some cases, simply used hammers on those she consider houseflies. But this crisis is unlike any this or any other government has ever faced. This has the potential to undo Nigeria: Solve it or dissolve.

The history of this crisis can be traced to (a) how the country was put together; (b) the unequal relationship between the 355 or so ethnic groups; (c) how political power and resources are being shared; and (d) the pervasive believe that the Hausa/Fulani hegemony controls and runs Nigeria. These are the kinds of questions the proposed National Sovereign Conference would have addressed. But it was not to be. For now, however, what the Ijaw ethnic nationality is asking for is simple, and is in concurrence with the demands of the larger Niger Delta community:

1) Creation of more stand alone Ijaw states;
2) Provision of federal infrastructures and institutions;
3) The availability of basic needs;
4) To elect their political leaders freely as opposed to being forced on them by Abuja;
5) Fair distribution of revenues and an eventual control of their resources;
6) The economic ownership of oil wells;
7) Socially responsible behavior by the oil companies;
8) Respect for their ecology;
9) The restructuring of the federal system of government; and
10) The need to convene a Sovereign National Conference to address age-old questions.

THE IJAW WILL NEVER BE FAIRLY TREATED

As to what comes next after the much hyped amnesty, well, one does not need the services of an oracle to know. I alluded to it earlier: There will be a bad and useless peace a day after the amnesty is concluded. Essentially, there will be no lasting peace, no authentic security, and there certainly will be no sense of freedom and satisfaction. None. Nothing. None and nothing because of the way the State is structured, and because of the manner in which several groups within the federation has been conducting political and economic business. Under the current arrangement, the Ijaw for instance, will never be fairly treated. Never. And they know it.

As to the fundamental question of what’s next after the amnesty, in the short term, I foresee a setting in which (a) a more determined and more lethal MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) materialises; (b) the emergence of a splintered MEND that gives birth to octopuses, spiders and mambas; or (c) a weakened MEND that hobbles into the sunset. From all indications, however, the first and second scenarios are more likely. Their target will remain the federal government and the multinational oil companies. But beyond that, we are likely to see the formation and rise of other groups.

Also, there is a great likelihood that a Palestine-type situation will emerge: A situation whereby the dominant figures in the militant groups betray one another, and/or assassinations becoming pervasive. Furthermore, when private individuals are bold and strong enough to challenge the authority of the state, then such individuals may not think twice before challenging the power and legitimacy of other institutions within the state. Such individuals may become monsters and beyond the dictates of commonsense, decency and the rule of law. They may even go on to raise private armies and engage in extralegal activities.

Under such conditions, people may act on primordial suspicions and sentiments; anarchy becomes the common currency; and before you know it, calamity spreads to other parts of the country. The aforesaid is the second half of the likely scenario. There are five other likely scenarios, but for now, these will do.

In the period leading to and after the amnesty, the goal of the federal government and those with vested interests in the country should be durable peace: Efforts and genuine commitments that are geared toward justice and fairness and which prevent or dissuade the reoccurrence of hostility and low intensity conflict. The root cause of the conflict has to be genuinely addressed through institution rebuilding as well as through economic rearrangement and political transformation of the political space and landscape. Unfortunately, this has not been done; and is not likely to be done anytime soon because the various powerhouses in the country prefer the status quo: Feeding off revenue from oil; maintaining a stranglehold on power; feeding off of myriad crises; and feeding off the people’s suffering and misfortune. When is this gluttony and inanity going to stop?

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* Sabella Abbide is a public intellectual who has written and commented extensively on African affairs. He is currently based in Washington D.C.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Wealth for Africa, not from Africa

William Gumede

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58601

cc WikimediaWith much of Africa facing an effective re-colonisation in the wake of the global financial crisis, William Gumede underlines the importance of ever increasing cooperation and trade between African countries. As forces to the east and west alike plunder the continent's mineral wealth, it remains the task of African countries themselves to develop a continental common market and political union based on sound democratic foundations, Gumede concludes.

The after-effects of the global financial crisis may lead to the re-colonisation of some African countries, with some likely to go bankrupt and others stripped of their assets by Western and Eastern powers. The signs of Africa’s re-colonisation are ominous and action is needed quickly; there is no time to dilly-dally, shout slogans or stay stuck in blaming imperialist forces – which are of course also responsible – without coming up with effective responses.

Europe is already planning to link the hydroelectric dam project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to supply power to southern Europe. The project has the backing of the World Bank. Yet very few people in the DRC have access to electricity. Actually, less than 10 per cent of Congolese have access to electricity, and indeed continent-wide United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) figures show that less than 30 per cent of Africans have access to electricity. In all the countries through which the planned pipeline and its electricity will flow from the DRC to Europe, very few ordinary citizens have access to electricity.

In August this year, the European Union signed an agreement with Nigeria, Niger and Algeria to channel gas to Europe through a direct pipeline to that continent. Again, Nigeria, Niger and Algeria cannot even supply gas to their own citizens. In July this year, a consortium of European companies announced that they would build a facility that will direct solar polar from the Sahara Desert to Europe. They said the plan would satisfy 15 per cent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050. Western and Eastern governments and multinationals are increasingly also buying African land to set up commercial agricultural businesses from which they export products back to their countries or to other markets. A South Korean multinational bought fertile land in Madagascar and Sudan at a pittance. Indian farming companies have fertile lands in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique. Chinese companies and Middle East-owned companies are also increasingly buying tracts of land for agricultural purposes. A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) stated more than 2.5 hectares of African land had been bought by foreign companies since 2004, and this is only scratching the surface. Yet most African countries now import food. Similarly, foreign companies are also increasingly buying up African mines on the cheap, as African countries fail to come up with economic strategies to deal with the devastating effects of the global financial crisis and the closure of mines, factories and farms. Western and Asian countries buy up African minerals to stockpile supply to buttress global commodity price fluctuations. They are looking for strategic commodities, including platinum, oil and gas.

The African Union estimates that more than US$150 billion a year is looted from Africa through tax avoidance by giant corporations and capital flight using 'a pinstripe infrastructure' of Western banks, lawyers and accountants. But is not only money that leaves Africa every year, it is also skills which are leaving in the brain drain of local expertise to industrial countries. The brain drain is a combination of hostile environments in Africa, with a lack of democracy in African countries, jobs being allocated through jobs-for-pals and political buddy systems.

African countries must now increase manufacturing and trade with each other and with their neighbours. We must stop simply exporting raw materials, which generates little jobs, and instead beneficiate and diversify. We need to pool our money, knowledge and expertise. We will need effective leadership and to jettison the likes of Robert Mugabe. Furthermore, we must boost the quality of our democracies and cobble together industrial policies through developmental coalitions between governments, communities, businesses and civil societies. Finally, African countries together must speedily form a continental common market and political union, underpinned by democracy.

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* This article originally 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 Pambazuka News.

Sierra Leone must revive public education

Don't deprive the poorest of a decent education

Roland Bankole Marke

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58608

Education is the engine of freedom, Roland Bankole Marke tells Pambazuka News, but with Sierra Leone’s public schools in a state of decay, the country’s poorest children are unlikely to break their way out of a life of deprivation. Given the lifestyles of politicians and their cronies, writes Bankole, the argument that the ‘government has no money to fund education in this donor driven economy, is bogus’. ‘If education is cumbersome or expensive,’ says Bankole, ‘who wants to try ignorance?’

The ministry of education, youth and sports is entrusted with the mandate to supervise education in Sierra Leone. Evidently, it has done a lousy job, having failed to provide a high standard of education – especially for the perennially deprived and at risk kids in this tiny, former British colony, and war torn nation. Education is the incubator and vanguard that would drive development and the economic engine to freedom, and unshackle the undeveloped mind: Like the key that opens up closed doors. Education prepared Barack Obama to rise to the pinnacle of power and fame, and become president of the United States. He’s the most powerful man in the world. A child that washes its hands clean will dine with kings and queens. To articulate it poetically: Knowledge marinated with discipline is the palm kernel that nurtures a healthy and rational mind. In a sovereignty that is desperately searching for its lost soul, and once admired legacy.

Public education is broken in this recovering nation, where teachers are functionally the Cinderella. They are the poster child of disrespect and indignity, working a thankless job that nobody else wants. They cannot compete with the rest of society for decent housing or an optimum lifestyle. This society gives them very little, but expects the highest standards of integrity and professionalism from them. But who’s looking out for them during these terrible times: Is this how we want to be remembered?

Private schools, on the other hand, provide a far better quality of education for their kids. They have deep pockets with a vested interest, and the tenacity and goodwill to advocate for a reasonable limit to government control. Some private schools do not take part in state run public exams. And even opt for foreign exams conducted in London or other examination boards. The haves can afford to send their children to colleges and universities in the west – mostly to England and the United States – to acquire the best education that money could buy, on completion of secondary education at private schools.

Trained and qualified teachers will continue to migrate to private schools, where the haves send their kids to school – unlike the have-nots who attend poverty-stricken and rundown public schools. Society has carved the moniker ‘poor, unpaid teachers’ when referring to teachers within the public school system. Comparatively, private school teachers earn remunerative salaries with benefits, and they usually get paid on time.

Historically, the private sector, including NGOs, has done more justice to education than the government: because of the passion and dedication to make a difference educating kids from diverse backgrounds. Government has grown more complex, lacks sufficient funding and is inefficient in running the schools effectively. Probably, returning government-assisted schools to their previous owners or managers is a plausible vision, with limited control over privately funded schools.

Mission schools, like NGOs, have invested a fortune in primary, secondary and tertiary education and produced credible results, instilling a passion for discipline and high standards with integrity. Since the complete takeover by government, these institutions have taken a nose dive and have never recovered. The indictment from critics that the delivery of public education has been politicised by government is a legitimate one. Government bureaucracy and its tardiness to implement the necessary policies in a timely way, have forced some philanthropists to opt out of privately funded education for good.

The introduction of the 6-3-3-4 education system, by the previous administration of former President Tejan Kabba, in which primary education runs for six years, followed by secondary education that is divided into two three-year cycles. The first cycle leads to the Basic Education Certificate Examination, while the second segment leads to the Senior School Certificate Examination, which gives access to higher education, offered by the University of Sierra Leone (comprising institutes) and its constituent colleges, teacher-training colleges, and a technical institute. They fall under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports.

This innovation, replicated from Ghana’s framework, has stalled because of inefficient planning and inadequate funding. A nation that is still picking up the pieces of war lacked the capacity to implement such a huge capital-intensive program, with its infrastructure in serious ruins, and desperately gasping for life support. The current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, who was himself a teacher – though briefly – has expressed dismay and disappointment at the nation’s failing educational system. He has set up a commission to study its shortcomings, make recommendations to fix the broken system, and turn around the dismal performance of students in public examinations. A very disastrous performance put up by the nation in two consecutive public examinations, while competing with other West Africa nations, is disgraceful and unacceptable. In Sierra Leone, schools are measured by their performances at public examinations, and the calibre of students they produce.

A report from a research conducted jointed by UNICEF and the Education Ministry revealed that about 300,000 school children are out of school in Sierra Leone. Earlier report had estimated that about 375, 000 kids – mostly girls from rural and city schools – dropped out of school. The decrease in the dropout rate is attributed to the establishment of community schools and the passion and generosity of NGOs in the diaspora, including former child soldier Ishmael Beah, who has built a school in his village through his foundation. He also donated about US$22,000 to help fight illiteracy and make education available and accessible, especially to the mentally and physically challenged kids and orphans in Sierra Leone.

The drop out rate is disturbing to people with a heart. The systemic malaise of poverty continues to dog the suffering and less fortunate folk. Child labour is a prevalent factor that prevents children from going to school. These children mostly girls, have become peddlers, or take part in petty trading, to help their parents generate the needed income. Teenage pregnancy and very early marriage to older men is not at all uncommon. Parents cannot afford to provide their children’s basic needs, including books, uniforms and school supplies even though primary education is officially free. The boys fetch water in five-gallon containers, to sell for about a dollar to the highest bidder. The proceeds would help to provide their basic needs. But government lacks the muscle to make education its highest priority, with due respect for the teachers who deliver this indispensable service to a society that does not appreciate the opportunity cost to teachers in this chronically poor nation. Lip service and empty rhetoric is not going to rehabilitate a system that is in dire need for life support. Only drastic and expedited actions, mapping out practical solutions can save public education in Sierra Leone. At their daily devotion the children recite the Lord’s Prayer. The telling verse below evokes passion and compassion:

‘Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’

The kids’ faces tell a bleak story. Some of them did not have breakfast, and there is no guarantee that they will receive lunch. Most teachers make about Le 250,000 monthly (less than US$75). Some have not received their salaries for about four months to a year. And they feed their faces with artery clogging secretions. About two weeks ago, Dr Nyallay, the deputy minister of education youth and sports, paid out a backlog of salaries to 617 teachers approved since the 2006/2007 academic year. These teachers are in the south, east and western rural parts of the country. But the Sierra Leone Teachers Union claimed that about 4,000 teachers have not been paid for about a year.

Earlier, it was reported in Awoko news paper on 21 August 2009 that a despondent Roman Catholic primary school teacher in Dia Town in the Kissi Kama Chiefdom, in Kailahun District, Tamba Borbor, who was not paid for two years hanged himself with the sleeves of his shirt, tied around his neck onto a tree. His body was discovered dangling on the tree by local farmers. Tamba was going through very hard times and had borrowed money from creditors. He was fooled repeatedly by school authorities that his name was not on the school voucher, but on that of a neighbouring school close to Guinea. He made the long trip there, only to find out that he was again duped by the school officials. Returning home feeling very depressed and worthless, he decided to end this nightmare of shame and disgrace. It’s therapeutic to humanise those who have been demonised.

This chronic problem of late payment of salaries could be alleviated by computerising the accounting system to expedite the processing of employment papers. Before, the schools would pay new teachers from their own funds and government would later reimburse them, once the papers are approved. Other government employees too face similar contempt. Corruption is endemic and fleshy here. Ghost teachers regularly appear in large numbers on school vouchers, receiving salaries on payday. They include electricians, plumbers, security personnel, who were registered to pose as teachers. This is not a novelty to most Sierra Leoneans. High profile greedy government officials have teamed up with dishonest school authorities to siphon money from the nation’s treasury. In some cases, payments have been made to ghost teachers at fictitious institutions, in a scheme that is the brainchild of ingenious senior education officials. How can such a treasonable act escape the watchful eyes of independent auditors, and the perceived vigilant anti-corruption truth and justice squad?

The argument that government has no money to fund education in this donor driven economy, is bogus. Politicians and their cronies live eye-popping lifestyles, nursing an obsession for items that are status symbols, riding the latest models of Hummer SUVs that cost about US$30,000–$63,000. The selected and connected access a sea of foreign currencies, especially the highly favoured women who can afford to go on shopping sprees, spending about US$40,000 at Macy’s in the US, or the designer stores in London. But where are they getting the money from? Sierra Leoneans in the diaspora and folk back home are asking: How comes we work so hard, yet we cannot afford such a flamboyant lifestyle? It’s the power of their example and not the example of their power that inspires and motivates the nation. Are the politicians serving the populace or is the populace serving them? Who calls anyone civilised, where can the crying heart graze? What should the honest patriot do now? Indeed the truth is bald and cold.

A prescription to salvage the present enigma is to start building this ailing system from the bottom up. Primary and secondary education should be made affordable. Tap into the reservoir of Sierra Leonean experts in the US, who are proficient in their various disciplines. They would love to give back to their motherland by helping to fix the outmoded and failing system. But they would need a free hand to work unhindered, free from political pressure. They have proven record of successes. Include among these Professor Eustace Palmer, Professor Abioseh M. Porter, Professor Abdul Karim Bangura, Dr Francis Nichol and Dr Yvonne Atiba-Davies. The list is in no way exhaustive. Whether it is English, reading and writing skills, math skills or computer science and technology, they have the gray matter to innovate and inspire the students back home, who are thirsty for fresh and modern skills that would make the learning process exciting and rewarding. I hope President Ernest Bai Koroma will deem it urgent and necessary to request their expertise, and tap into their invaluable skills and professionalism. If education is cumbersome or expensive, who wants to try ignorance?

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* Roland Bankole Marke is a Sierra Leonean writer, poet and author of three books. He is an activist for the poor, disadvantaged children and women and gives voice to the voiceless.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Accountability and keeping promises

An interview with Abahlali baseMjondolo

Abahlali baseMjondolo with Sokari Ekine

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58602

© Abahlali baseMjondoloSokari Ekine recently met in London [mp3] with two members of the South African shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, Mnikelo Ndabankulu, a founding member and spokesperson, and Zodwa Nsibande, the general secretary of the Abahlali Youth League. In their interview they were joined by David Ntseng of the Church Land Programme, an NGO based in KwaZulu-Natal province which works on land rights issues. They discuss a range of issues from movement building and successes and the 2008 'Slums Act', to the decision not to vote in national elections and combating xenophobia in South Africa.

In 2005 Durban’s shackdwellers started to build the Abahlali baseMjondolo (people living in shacks) movement, which in just four years has become the largest organisation of the militant poor, not only in South Africa but across the whole continent.

The broad aims of Abahlali are to prevent illegal evictions and the demolition of shacks; to demand improved service delivery such as clean water, electricity and proper sanitation; to challenge anti-poor legislation such as the 2008 'Slums Act'; to provide training and education to develop the skills of its members; and to build alliances with other land rights and poor movements in South Africa and across the globe.




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* Abahlali baseMjondolo is the South African shackdwellers' movement.
* 'A Place in the City', Jenny Morgan's film made with members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, is available from Pambazuka Press for only £9.95.
* Sokari Ekine blogs at Black Looks.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Freedom of expression and censorship in Kenya

Africa Free Media Trust

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58599

cc Tom MarukoFreedom of expression is one of the main pillars of democracy, argues the Africa Free Media Trust (AFMT) in this week's Pambazuka News. Although freedom of the press and expression are theoretically guaranteed in Kenya, AFMT stresses that the reality is different and indeed wonders whether the country is reverting back to the old days under President Daniel arap Moi. The existence of multiparty elections and the right to speak out should not be taken for granted, AFMT concludes, and Kenya must not allow freedom of expression to be jeopardised any further.

Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British writer, once said, ‘What is freedom of expression? Without freedom to offend it ceases to exist.' Equally, Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and activist, was quoted saying, ‘If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.’ We trigger off our argument based on the above quotes and by reflecting them against the face of governance and politics in Kenya.

Freedom of expression is a basic foundation of democracy – it is a core freedom without which democracy could not exist. The word 'democracy' is not limited to having a just governance or freedom of expression within political circles, but stretches to the right to express one’s views on any platform.

For instance, democracy is the very reason why students form unions, within which they voice their concerns to the relevant authorities. At the college level, we often see unrest when students’ right to freedom of expression is suppressed. This can be equated to the analogy of a cat whose tail is stepped on. The first time the cat will yell, the second time it will perhaps yell louder and the mammal might not get to the third time before it launches a scathing attack at its offender. This scenario is replicated at the working-class level, be it in white-collar jobs or the informal sector. The recent strike by Kenya Airways staff is but a reminder that, when workers fail to get an audience when expressing themselves, they will seek any avenue to get heard. In other words, freedom of expression carries with it a force that only tones down when one's concern or thought is voiced. It is a must-do; if diplomacy fails people use force to get heard.

In a civilised society, we find that most of those who are denied a chance to express themselves incognito tend to get ‘additional mouths’ to voice their concerns. An example is the case of the cold-blooded murder of Oscar King’ara, an activist and student and the founder of the Oscar Foundation. The Oscar Foundation and human rights watchdogs tried in vain to conduct ‘proper and thorough’ investigations into the murder. Most Kenyans know what happened next when students of Nairobi University took to the streets in the name of peaceful demonstrations.

It is unfortunate that there are people who at times go out of their way to risk their lives (although it is not clear if they get paid for their daring stunts) just to express themselves. On 12 December 2008, in a well-choreographed move, Fredrick Odhiambo sneaked his way into the VIP area at Nyayo National Stadium and sat less than 10 metres behind President Mwai Kibaki. It is from this point that Odhiambo shouted down the president as he delivered his speech to the nation. Again, the fourth estate had tried in vain to persuade the president not to append his signature to the communications of the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act that contained offensive clauses. Indeed, Fredrick Odhiambo made it be known to the president that the act was not welcome in the form that it had been drafted in.

A closer look at the interactions between the first family and people who may appear to criticise them reveals a strange pattern. Renowned laywer Paul Muite found himself in a bitter exchange of words with the first family when he told the press that a powerful minister had testified before a commission and touched on details of President Kibaki and his wife. Another lawyer and member of parliament of Imenti South, Gitobu Imanyara, also found himself nearly in trouble when he publicly made comments that he had been assaulted by the first lady. These gentlemen later told the press that they had been threatened with death just because they spoke out.

Going down the hierarchy of leadership from presidency to the cabinet, Labour Minister John Munyes was not given a chance to deliver his Labour Day speech on 1 May 2009. Members of the public wanted him to explain what the government was doing around the creation of employment and new guidelines for minimum wages. In our opinion, workers used this platform to express their anger over the slow pace in which the government is addressing their plight. Again, it begs the question why those who attended the celebrations at Uhuru Park opted to shout out and not use the workers union?

At the legislators level, it is evident that the newly launched XYZ TV comedy show has rubbed politicians, MPs and especially sitting MPs the wrong way. The creator of the unique African political satire has sought to show how politicians – mostly Kenyan politicians – tackle issues of public interest. To be frank, the creator, Gado, has been concentrating more on the goofs. The packaging style is blunter and questions some of the politicians’ leadership capabilities. It is no wonder that with the show having been aired for scarcely two months, it is now being threatened with suspension, if not a ban.

Recall the dictatorial regime of President Daniel arap Moi, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 24 years at a time when freedom of the press and freedom of expression was almost killed through unwarranted censorship of the media. But when President Kibaki took office, the reverse seemed to happen. However, do recent events signify that Kenya is slowly degenerating back into a state where its citizens’ mouths remain gagged at all levels?

It should not be taken for granted that 15 years ago a wave of change swept through much of Africa and that this wave brought with it two fundamental changes: competitive multiparty politics and the liberalisation of the media's playing field. In Kenya and other parts of the world, we cannot afford to sit back and see journalists threatened and thrown out in the manner Robert Mugabe expelled BBC journalists, nor have international humanitarian aid agencies withdrawn, as was the case when they criticised the Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir. Let everyone have a chance to speak out.

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* This article is compiled by Africa Free Media Trust, a media and human rights non-governmental organization working mainly in Kenya.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The Kennedys and Africa

John Otim

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58600

cc WikimediaThe recent death of Senator Edward Kennedy marked the end of the long dynasty of the Kennedys, who were not only prominent in domestic US politics but also on the world stage. In this week's Pambazuka News, John Otim reflects upon the relationship that Africa had with the Kennedys. Arguing that much has changed since the decolonisation process and the subsequent Cold War, and most importantly with Africa’s relationship to the US, Otim writes that Africans will mourn the death of a figure who recalled a 'glimmer of hope in a still colonial world'.

It was as though the thousands of young Americans John F. Kennedy sent to Africa in the early 1960s on his Peace Corps initiative followed a biblical injunction: ‘Go forth into the world and be of good cheer.’ In good cheer they came. In like manner they were received. Africa loves visitors. Visitors at times took advantage.

The young people that trooped to Africa in the early 1960s knew – they must have known – that they played a role on the world stage. They were without exception highly educated people, some of them men and women of great talents. They had skills to offer. There were certainly other considerations.

Under the departing empires, Africa had been largely denied higher education and the skills the continent needed to prosper in a modern world. Suddenly there came along the glamorous 1960s and with them the scramble for decolonisation. The wind of change was here.

The 1960s came on the wings of the soviet Sputnik. The period saw the high point of the Cold War. Decolonisation and the Cold War were but Siamese twins. The Cold War hastened decolonisation; decolonisation in turn inflamed the Cold War. Between imperial powers this made for a bitter struggle.

Who shall replace the departing colonials? Who shall sit as the right hand of the new African prince? The Peace Corps initiative was a spanner in the equation of global power. When they realised it, the departing colonials rued the day they consigned Africa to backwardness. Had we known! Had they known! But the Americans were at the front door, it was too late for the old empire to turn the clock back. The Kennedys in all their glamour represented the new American surge.

The Americans and the Kennedys were unlike the British. They were unlike the French, the Belgians or the Portuguese. In their staid bush jackets, the British, the French, the Belgians and the Portuguese were the old order whose time was coming to an end.

Despite the spectacle of Tarzan on Hollywood celluloid, the Americans appeared untouched by the syndrome of the white man’s burden. Paul Theroux, himself a peace corper, could in the 1960s write in the magazine Transition, as though Tarzan were exclusively a British thing, as though America had nothing to do with it.

The Americans appeared different in the eyes of Africans. Africans mourned the death of John F. Kennedy in a way they probably would not have mourned the death of a European monarch. Kennedy appeared the man who was more or less like them, a man of the New World, free of old colonial stains. But Africans knew about the Congo. And they held America responsible for the brutal murder of Patrice Lumumba.

The Russians knew the depth of African feelings. The smart men that they were, they built a new college in Moscow and named it for Lumumba and filled it with young African students – those people that they knew had been denied education and good things in life under the empire.

Moses Isegawa is a Ugandan novelist. In his 'Abyssinian Chronicles', a novel primarily about Idi Amin, we encounter the bitterness of a man the British denied a college education on account of his colour. It mattered a hell of a lot then if you were black or white.

When the only son of the late President Kennedy died in a plane crash, Africans mourned for him. Africans love sons who look and act like their fathers. And John Kennedy Jr did. Africans saw in the young Kennedy the reincarnation of the late president. ‘One day, one day, maybe’, but that was the end of their hope.

Today Africa mourns the death of Senator Edward Kennedy because he is a Kennedy, because the Kennedys represented, no matter how dim it appeared, a glimmer of hope in a still colonial world. There is a new empire now, led by America. But Africans are confident players in the new global order, come what may.

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* John Otim is a Ugandan teacher at Nigeria's Ahmadu Bello University.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Dispelling Africa's myths about albinism

Urgent measures needed to protect people with albinism

Phitalis Were Masakhwe

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58610

cc S WojtkowiakPeople with albinism have been ‘shunned, ridiculed, tormented, tortured and killed in cold blood’ all over Africa, simply 'on account of the skin colour', Phitalis Were Masakhwe tells Pambazuka News. The biggest threat to persons with albinism, says Masakhwe, is ‘misleading and negative belief systems about the condition’. And when ‘these negative beliefs combine with illiteracy and limited knowledge and facts about the situation, the net result can be calamitous.’

Unless far-reaching, concerted and urgent measures are taken, persons with albinism in Africa face a real threat to their very survival as a people. The killing of a six year-old girl with albinism in Tanzania recently best epitomises the cruelty and danger directed at this group of people by society – in this era and age! The treatment this group of people has received from fellow men and women best depicts intolerance to diversity in its vilest form. Merely on account of their skin colour that makes them easily differentiated, persons with albinism have been shunned, ridiculed, tormented, tortured and killed in cold blood, not only in Tanzania but also in Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique and DR Congo. Going by media reports on the reasons behind the sad state of affairs in those countries, persons with albinism in Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, Ghana, Sudan – or any other African state – have every reason to be really worried. Indeed they are a very apprehensive lot!

The utmost threat to people with albinism in most of Africa is misleading and negative belief systems about the condition. When these negative beliefs combine with illiteracy and limited knowledge and facts about the situation, the net result can be calamitous. Some people wrongly believe that those with albinism are a cursed lot. Some believe persons with albinism are terminally ill, weak, cannot hear, and/or are intellectually challenged.

In some cultures, like the Maasai, the ‘albino’ child was traditionally abandoned and left for dead in the wilderness, or left at the doorstep to be trampled upon by cattle because of the attitude that the child who cannot see well cannot take care of cattle or do other communal chores and is therefore useless.

According to Isaac Mwaura of the Albinism Society of Kenya (ASK), ‘It is funny that even in cosmopolitan Nairobi where orientation to human diversity is assumed, there have been weird accounts of people losing their appetite at the mere sight of a person with albinism, associating the condition with disease. Many are people who are convinced that persons with albinism are sterile or barren, that they are immortal, that they are mentally handicapped, or that they can cure HIV/AIDS! Others think that acquiring some body parts of those with albinisms brings good luck and instant riches.’ Now that speaks volumes in a continent where majority are poor and many keep praying for good luck to join the ranks of the rich and powerful!

There is also a gender angle to this issue. Mothers of children with albinism are the primary victims from the misconception that children with albinism are born out of illicit affairs with white men. It is also very common for the mothers to be singularly blamed for the genetic mutation; many women are disowned by their husband and even banished from their communities. Such misplaced family or community tensions do not help matters for children with albinism.

‘Don’t stare, just ask,’ boldly declares the motto of ASK. Tired of the daily stares that meet its membership, the society’s motto is calling on all Kenyans who need to know anything about albinism to ask for more information instead of staring at those with albinism as if they are strange fellows from the moon! Albinism refers to a group of inherited conditions that causes little or no pigmentation in the eyes, skin or hair. It is a genetic mutation that causes a lack of or deficiency in melanin in the body, the photo-protective pigment that protects us from the sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays, resulting in physical characteristics like white or light blond hair, violet to blue eyes and very pale skin that is particularly sensitive to the sun. Without sufficient melanin, our eyes are unable to function properly and the nerve connection to the brain is also altered. Persons with albinism therefore are characterised by long-sleeved clothing, hats and prescription glasses as a measure of protection against the sun.

To preserve and ensure protection and dignified life for children men and women with albinism, robust and extensive awareness and public education programmes particularly at the grassroots’ are sorely called for. Enhanced and diversified media work on the subject, such as In My Genes, a film produced by Lupita Nyong’o, is highly encouraged. Martin Wanyonyi of ASK calls on the government to do more to improve policy and legal environment for Kenyans with albinism: ‘We need a specific law or a review of the Persons with Disability Act 2003 to specifically and expressly recognise and cater for our rights and unique needs such as skin cancer, ritual killings and discrimination in employment, education and healthcare.’

Courtesy of Hon. Eugene Wamalwa and responding to a petition from ASK, Kenyan parliament recently discussed this agenda. The petition to the august house also called for a special code to help identify and count persons with albinism for targeted planning. There is also need to waive duty on sunscreen used by persons with albinism to protect them from the sun.

President Kikwete of Tanzania has shown great leadership on the issue not only through regular advocacy but he has equally appointed a woman with albinism as nominated member of parliament to give enhanced visibility to the cause. How I wish other leaders could emulate the Tanzanian leader.

* Phitalis Were Masakhwe is a sociologist.He has a physical disability.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The emptiness of life in exile

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58612

cc P V CanalePeople leave sub-Saharan Africa in search of opportunities for personal growth and happiness, Sabella Abidde tells Pambazuka News, but whether self-imposed or forced upon you, life in exile can be ‘one of the most painful of all human experiences’. Ultimately most exiles, says Abidde, ‘would rather be home: Helping their own people and helping to advance their own countries.’ But, he cautions, ‘several years of exile have a way of making one a stranger in one’s village or community.’

The vast majority of sub-Saharan Africans who live outside of the continent are in exile. For these Africans, their condition may either be self-imposed or forced by the prevailing conditions in the continent. And the general conditions in the continent are not healthy or enriching, or conducive to personal growth and happiness. Although conditions differ from one country to another, by and large what we have is a continent where a sizeable number of the people – especially those between the ages of 18 and 45 – cannot wait to go into exile. They cannot wait to get out of their respective countries. Nigeria is an archetypal example of a country where, if embassies assured travel visas, 70 per cent or more of the college students will leave of their own volition.

The majority of those in exile either have nothing substantial to return home to, or their own governments do not want them back. We also see that in some cases, the political, economic, social and cultural space is not large or absorbent enough to accommodate exiles; in other cases, some exiles get blinded by the security, comfort and predictability of their host countries so much so that going back home becomes less attractive. Nigerians, for example, habitually point to the lack of basic infrastructure, poor personal and human security, and a sickening and corrupt political system. To be sure, there are other discouraging and encouraging factors, but mostly, the aforesaid accounts for why most exiles remain in North America and European countries.

Whether one knows it or not, acknowledges it or not, living in exile is horrible. It is one of the most painful of all human experiences. The pain and the anguish is less for most who vacated in their pre-teenage years. For them, acculturation and assimilation is much easier. With time, their memory of the old country fades; cultural chips become less powerful or insignificant; and ties to friends and family may become loose or non-existent. Essentially, therefore, they lose one country and gain another; lose one set of identity and gain another. They transfer their love and loyalty to their new country. For most of these early exiles, they will know one country and one country only. This is generally the case and the pattern unless of course a mother or a father or an influential relative kept the flame and the desire for the old country alive.

The United States, with which I am most familiar, is home to millions of African immigrants. Data may show that the US now houses more Africans than Western and Eastern Europe combined. For a while, Europe – especially Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium and Germany – was the preferred destination for Africans, particularly because of their colonial relationship. In other words, until recent years, colonial Europe was the port of call for Africans. Today, the whole world is present in the US: Every language and culture and nationality is present here. They are present here for different reasons. But above all else, people come here for the freedom, the opportunity and the option to live in manners that are guaranteed by US law and customs.

However, sooner or later, immigrants – African immigrants, who this essay is about – will come to realise that the longer one stays in this country, the deeper the pain and the agony. They may have big cars and big homes; they may have beautiful wives and successful children; and they may also have investment portfolios that are the envy of most. Yet, most will and do feel empty. Every so often, they travel to the motherland to see friends and family. Still they feel empty. Most act and feel like tourists in their own father’s land (as most can only spend two to four weeks at a stretch before returning to the grind and their predictable lifestyle). There are those whose eyes swell (with tears) at the thought of returning to Oyinboland. It can be lonely here. And they know it.

If you were a ‘nobody’ before coming to the US, and if you are still a ‘nobody’ after all these years, the ache and the grief may not be much. What may matter to you is that you are now a success compared to your previous life. But if you were ‘somebody’ before your departure, and you are still a big deal here, you are more likely to feel the pain. Even if you were a ‘nobody‘ in your previous life, but once you become ‘somebody’ here, you begin to, after a while, feel a gradual pain – the type of pain that get more discomforting and unbearable as time passes. First the pain and then the anguish, followed by a sense of uselessness and sadness. If left unchecked, acute sense of loss and actual depression may set in.

An accomplished Nigerian author and teacher once told me: “Most of the professors and successful African immigrants you see in this country are sad and depressed… especially the professors… most are angry, and are not respected by their non-Black peers.’ From his vantage point, ‘most of these Africans are better read and smarter than most of their counterparts, but they generally are saddled with supporting or subservient roles; they have to defer to their non-black colleagues.’ To make matters worse, ‘even their students complain about their accent and mannerism, and assume they must be less qualified than other professors, especially the whites.’

Faced with such a situation, ‘they are angry at their home government, angry at their colleagues, angry at their students and subordinates, and are also angry at themselves.’ But within their enclaves and between their own people, ‘the African professors are the most pompous, most condescending and most irritating. Most cannot explain simple concepts or simple phenomenon without resorting to antiquated language… they have the need to impress.’

Indeed, the western world – and increasingly, South African universities – are filled with Nigerian and Ghanaian professors. I can’t think of a colleges or university, anywhere in the United States, without at least two Nigerian and or Ghanaian teachers or administrators. I also doubt if there is a medical establishment, anywhere in the UK, Canada and the United States, without Nigerian and Ghanaian doctors and nurses.

In all these places and beyond, I doubt if the majority of these Africans truly enjoy being there. The financial compensation is good, but my thinking is that they would rather be home: Helping their own people and helping to advance their own countries. But here they are – needed primarily for their skills and services; needed just to help develop and advance a country that is truly not theirs. How terrible it must feel to be just a hired hand.

If you are a South African, your lot in life may be a lot better. The same goes for those from Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and a few other countries. In the West African sub-region, Ghana is the newest darling, home to quarter of a million or so Nigerians. If you are a Nigerian then you know you are violated. Twice over!

First, you are violated by a government that is utterly incompetent, utterly corrupt, and utterly wayward. You have a government, a succession of governments, which take pleasure in exploiting and brutalising their citizens. And then you have a citizenry that is too scared and falsely religious to fight back. And so they lie there and take it.

Second, it is not a good time to be a Nigerian anywhere in the world. It has not been a good time to be a Nigerian anytime in the last two decades or so. The world knows you have a well-endowed country that is badly run; the world knows about your soiled reputation (even though it is highly exaggerated and undeserved); and the world also knows you are scared to return home. For more than 30 years, to be a Nigerian was to be respected; in the last 20, it has become a hindrance. So, as an immigrant or as an exile, you feel it and you know it. How painful to know that people deal and interact with you from the other end of a long rope.

To be an African immigrant in the West or anywhere else is not easy. Within the international political and economic system, Africa is an afterthought; socially and culturally, Africa is also an afterthought. And even at the individual level, most non-blacks do not think much of the African. Sometimes one gets the feeling that non-blacks think of Africans as incapable of complex task; a people incapable of governing themselves without generous assistance from the Western world.

Such attitude and conviction, whether state or unstated, is condemnable. Even so, there are times when one surveys the continent and the various governments therein and wonder if, if, if – oh well, just take a look at Nigeria and its leaders (and leadership) for the last 30 or so years. If you are educated, enlightened, polished, decent, and with renaissance thinking and living in the West, is that the kind of country and condition you want to return to?

In the end though, if you have been living in the West for much of your productive life, and you are now clocking 55, 60 or 65 and with the urge to return home, you are likely to have a headache or develop insomnia for a few days or weeks. One might even have panic attacks. Long before this period, one may have planned it all out. One may have methodically planned it all out, in which case the transition – assuming home is where one wants to spend the fourth quarter of one’s life – is as smooth as possible.

However, whether planned or not, several years of exile have a way of making one a stranger in one’s village or community. How well and for how long you’ve planned the transition may determine your place and comfort in your new environment. Planned or not, smooth or not, you will, every now and then, get your bearings wrong, your traction will be shaky, your worldview out of sync, some of your mannerisms alien, and your thought pattern criss-crossed. This is the price you must pay for being in exile.

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* Sabella Abbide is a public intellectual who has written and commented extensively on African affairs. He is currently based in Washington D.C.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Pambazuka News 113: Le complot pour assassiner Sankara

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/58614

Pambazuka News 20: Governabilidade, corrupção e liberdade de imprensa em Angola

2009-09-09

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summarypt/58590

Organise more conferences for a United States of Africa

Okello Oculi

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/58595

From 26 to 30 July 2009, the Cheikh Anta Diop University and Senegal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs combined efforts to host a conference of scholars drawn from the African diasporas and the continent. From Australia came the Zimbabwean economist Ndhlovu; from Brazil came the engineer Diallo; from Temple University, USA, came the prolific writer on African affairs Molefi Kete Asante; from Germany came Fofana and Godwin Onuora; and from South Africa, Matlou.

The organisers, probably driven by a desire to invoke echoes of a collective village palaver, held all proceedings in plenary sessions seated in one amphitheatre. Flanked by several large portraits of Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah atop those of Muammar al-Gadaffi, Abdoulaye Wade, Marcus Garvey, Haile Sellassie and Samora Machel – all on the main stage – key speakers and presenters spoke on a common theme: the urgent need to establish a United States of Africa. With chairpersons of sessions calling out by name those who were to make comments about papers presented, the community spirit was to be rudely shattered by the protests of those shut out. Long since the conference ended, these protests have spilled out onto the internet. Murmurings had started about Senegalese participants jostling for an opportunity to make comments that would curry favour with President Abdoulaye Wade. The fact that such interventionists were, during the opening session, called up to get hand shakes from Wade himself, fed an atmosphere of job-seeking speeches.

The fact that 200 presenters could not be accommodated during four days (without night sessions) of discourses should have been obvious to the organisers. With Dakar's long legacy of being a conference bazaar since the days of Leopold Senghor it was clear that it would be difficult to find accommodation. There was a fly in the milk. The organisers were sluggish in handling their self-inflicted handicap. Furthermore, there seemed to be a secret pact to shut out papers whose contents were unlikely to appeal to the funders of the conference. As Dambisa Moyo would have put it, they threw sand into a trust, owed to participants who had travelled far to get to the pan-African watering hole. There was also a lack of simple symbolic vents, like a volume of abstracts with names of authors – a measure that would have assuaged some egos a little, but more importantly, which would have encouraged dialogue outside open sessions and during the collective meal sessions.

Such shortcomings became more irritating as simultaneous translators appeared sluggish. It is as if the cancer of rigging elections and ideas by Africa's politicians has, like Harmattan dust, entered the ears and brains of their academic hangers-on. The failures in the matter of proceedings must not, however, overshadow larger shortcomings and successes. Among the successes was President Abdoulaye Wade's open and vigorous participation in critiquing papers. In one session he complained about the legalistic focus on challenges of building a United States of Africa while ignoring economic issues. Since copies of the papers had not, earlier on, been distributed to participants, it was Wade's verbal protestations against those of the scholars in question. The fact that Wade had gone beyond the mundane ritual by which Africa's leaders read hollow plastic texts recycled by cynical and contemptuous civil servants in ministries of foreign affairs, and instead thought aloud, was commendable. However, as one of the apparatchiki had revealed at breakfast, the organisers had shut out members of opposing political parties because they had trounced Wade in parliamentary elections held prior to the conference. This was a disgrace to the legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop, the intellectual giant who had made his name by daring to challenge the racist French and Euro-American history of ideas by bashing down walls of intellectual silence and prejudice. President Wade and his collaborators had returned to the likes of Leopold Senghor's vicious and satanic legacy of preventing Cheikh Anta Diop from lecturing at the university for the twenty years he ruled over Senegal. Coming from the tragic and destructive intolerance of rulers who reigned and ruined lives of Africa's peoples under narrow walls of ‘sovereign African states’, it was silly to invite Africa's intellectuals into a union project under Wade's leadership.

The late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem had always lamented incidences in which Africa's leaders who have overstayed their welcome continue to torture captive private and public audiences with the same 'scratched-gramophone’ speeches and exhortations, sometimes first presented over 20 years earlier. He also despised the rampant fear among Africa's rulers of being contradicted and criticised. One incidence of this in Dakar occurred when President Wade intervened and talked and talked with the clear aim of ensuring that one of his most eloquent and caustic critics, Aminata Sow, was not given a chance to make an intervention. Bayo Olukoshi had called out her name as one of those to talk from the floor, but President Wade won his silence and Africa won a decay.

A second positive element of the Dakar conference was the intensive effort made by Jean Ping, chair of the Africa Commission (the boss of the bureaucrats that run the African Union (AU)), to render an account about the AU. The value of his effort was in showing his hunger to talk to a public outside the sterile walls of a heads of state meeting. The African Union's bureaucrats lack the African people to banter with. Dakar did not throw any grenades at Ping. The scholars themselves appeared so starved of debating and discoursing about the nitty-gritty elements of the administration of their continent that they looked as numb as audiences at America's satellite launch sites. With Senegal's intellectuals like Professor Abdoulaye Bathily locked out, Ping left attired in praises from President Wade for ‘doing a difficult job’. Ping forgot about the US$10 billion that is annually stolen and deported out of Africa's economies to encourage Europe's unification and inhibit Africa's drive to unity. His mentor and family relation, the late President Omar Bongo, was accused on the eve of his death of giving European banks deposits of over US$5 billion. Ping obviously does not lose sleep over the corruption that has Nigeria's new governor of the central bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, forcing Nigeria's media to name and shame executives of the Intercontinental Bank and the Oceanic Bank into awarding loans of Naria 45 billion and Naria 32.3 billion, respectively, to one Henry Imasekha. The man did not even have to put down any collateral. Ping must be rather bored by Sanusi's ‘schoolboy zeal’. He probably does not see that thousands of Imasekhas known to bank-vault attendants in Switzerland do not care for access to raw materials and industrial production across Africa's country borders. Their wealth does not need a united production chain across Africa.

Holding large conferences is expensive. The hunger for talking about Africa outside the confines of donor-funded NGO talks about ‘synergies, templates, and development partners’ – with death resulting from ‘exploitation and domination’ in Africa's relations with the outside world – is enormous. That was what Dakar revealed and instantly wasted. But as Tajudeen would say: 'We must organise more conferences and talk and act loudly and boldly about a United States of Africa.' We must campaign against time-wasting ploys like postponing a union government until 2017. These deadlines are becoming death knells for the ambushing and beheading of a surging political dream. Do not agonise, organise to arouse Africa's peoples to push African rulers to establish the United States of Africa before 2017.

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* Okello Oculi is the executive director of the Africa Vision 525 Initiative.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Government should concede to ASUU/SSANU/NASU demands now!

Osun State Labour Party, Nigeria

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58591

The Osun State Labour Party hereby condemns the unrepentant and highly irresponsible attitude of the federal and state governments to the demands of the university staff unions – Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Union of Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) which are sine qua non to the revival of public education in Nigeria. We also reject and call on all progressively-minded people to reject the obnoxious no-work, no-pay policy. The federal government has shown that it has no iota of dignity; otherwise it needs no ASUU, SSANU or NASU to compel it to fund education properly or pay education workers adequately.

The Osun Labour Party also condemns the treacherous positions of state governments for pitching their tents with the federal government. It again confirms our long-held position that Nigerian capitalist ruling class, no matter their political colouration are committed to the same policies of neo-liberalism, which has been the major ideology behind the under funding of education. The state governments are only protecting their selfish interests of avoiding proper funding of education and adequate remuneration of workers, and their inordinate support for federal government has nothing to do with the so-called federalism. It is a known fact that most of the state governments pay poor salaries for their workers (including education workers) while public education has been commercialized and privatized in most states. Therefore, you do not expect these people to side with education workers or workers generally, no matter the genuineness of their demands. The governors have only acted true to type.

It is a common truism that the Nigerian ruling class result to such terms as federalism, marginalization, etc when their class interests are affected. For the ten years of civil rule when over N6 trillion (an amount more than the total budgets of education in the past ten years) shared by politicians in power as official perks, none of the governors ever rejected the fraudulent salaries given to them in the name of federalism. However, when it comes to issues that affect the well being of poor people, politicians-in-power result to banal morality. Nigerians must reject fraudulent morality of politicians asking the striking workers to resume work without conceding to their demands. This is just postponing the evil days. As far as we are concerned, without answering the demands of ASUU, SSANU and NASU, the country is sitting on a keg of gunpowder which result will be far worse than Boko Haram or Niger Delta crisis, as more strikes and crises will engulf public education while more graduates will be unemployed. To us, Nigeria has adequate resources to provide free and globally competitive education at all levels without tears to the nation. The over one trillion naira wasted on just 17, 474 (less than 0.013 percent of the population) is enough to lift public education up. But Nigerian politicians are committed to the interests of the few rich in big business and corridors of power.

It is also important to set the record straight on the issue of federalism. It is a constitutional responsibility for the federal government to set policies for education sector, therefore the issue of federalism does not arise. We ask: what principles guide the setting up and activities of JAMB, NUC and even UBE agencies? Furthermore, the 1999 constitution compel government to provide free and functional education at all levels as and when practicable. What other time is this applicable than now when Nigeria is lagging behind in every facet of human capital development; when politicians could afford to earn tens of millions of naira. That state and federal governments have abandoned this constitutional provision is enough to chase them away. Moreover, the governing councils are represented in the negotiating team of the government. Therefore the excuse of federalism is as fraudulent as those canvassing it.

Furthermore, the government’s proposal that ASUU should negotiate with governing councils of various universities is like hiding under one finger. Is it the governing councils that will fund education by at least 26 percent of the budget has recommended by UNESCO and demanded by staff unions? Where will governing councils get monies to fund salary increase for university workers? Will each governing council determine the retirement age of workers separately without government’s direct responsibility? Government’s ploy is to break the resolve of the striking university staff and use governing councils as horse whip to punish workers for their patriotic stance. It is also an attempt to finally commercialize and privatize education. For instance, if governing councils are to determine conditions of service without government proper funding of education, school fees will have to be hiked, workers will have to be retrenched while vital services in the universities will be privatized. This will also lead to attack on democratic rights of workers and students as forces will be deplored to introduce these obnoxious policies.

Consequently, the Labour Party in Osun State call on students and youth, the labour movement through the central labour unions and well meaning people to mount pressure on the governments at all levels to concede to the demands of ASUU, SSANU and NASU as basis for end to the strikes. This is not the time for Nigerian students to stand on the fence in the name of being the grass among two elephants. Both workers and students are the grass being trampled upon by the government through under funding of education; they need to come together and bring government to its knees. If less than 0.013 percent of the population consume almost N3 trillion in two years while less than one-fifth of this is spent by all levels of governments on education where over 80 million youth and workers reside, it is clear that students and workers must know their real enemy. A genuinely minded student must know that even if lecturers are forced to resume, it will only postpone and aggravate the problems in the education sector, including industrial crisis.

We therefore call for immediate convocation of joint summit of all striking unions, students’ movements and organizations, other education workers’ unions like NUT and the central labour unions (NLC and TUC) and build a united front to resist government attempt to punish university workers for its irresponsibility. This is the time to build a national mass movement to compel the government commit public resources to public education and social services. The current action of the government also call for the working people to build an alternative party that can defend the interests of the poor and working people as current ruling parties are pro-rich, anti-poor and imperialistic. For us in the Labour Party, we shall continue to defend the collective interests of the working and poor people.

Signed:
Comrade Rufus Oyatoro - State Chariman
Mike Awodire - State Secretary

Osun State condemns handover of schools into private hands

Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR)

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58592

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) in Osun State hereby condemn in strong term the obnoxious policy of education privatization by the Ogun State. Our attention has been drawn to the handover of about 45 secondary schools to churches in the state. This action to us is anti-poor, fraudulent and reactionary. In a country where over 90 percent are living on less than $2 a day; a country where human capital development is at its abysmal level, the current privatization of secondary schools in the state is totally absurd.

Without mincing words, this policy is already taking its tolls on the poor parents in the state. In one of the schools privatized, Anglican Grammar School, Abeokuta, poor children have been denied access to the school as a result of hiked fees. According to one of the protesting parents, the fee in the school has been increased from N2, 000 to more than N30, 000. In fact, the examination fee charged in the school recently is more than the school fees paid by the parents previously. As a result, many of the parents will have to withdraw their wards from the schools as a result of this obnoxious policy. Even before the privatization, many parents could even hardly afford the increasing cost of educating their wards while living standard has critically fallen to an abysmal level in the country. Not only parents but teachers will also bear the brunt of this policy, as most of the privatized schools will have to retrench staff in order to balance off.

Consequently, the CDWR, Osun State fully supports the protest march and picket organised by the affected parents (and parent association) against the conduct of the examination into the school. We call on the parent associations, workers’ unions especially NUT, NASU, SSANU, CHOPSON, NLC and TUC, student movement and civil society groups in the state to build on the heroic action of protesting parents, so as to compel government to reverse this obnoxious policy. If we fail to do this, we will be laying the basis for the total commercialization and privatization of education and other social services not only in the state but in the country. An injury to one is an injury to all. We also use this medium to condemn the use of police by the government to attack protesting parents. We ask: whose interest is the state government serving? A pro-poor government would have taken the protest in good faith and reverse this policy. But like every anti-poor government, the state government prefers to attack the victims of its policy then addressing their grievances.

The argument of the state government that the policy is meant to instill discipline in schools is preposterous. In the first instance, most of the developments witnessed in the country are mostly through publicly funded education. In fact, most of the public officers who are now rabidly advocating privatization and commercialization are product of a highly subsidized and publicly funded education. Furthermore, it is on record that it is the government destruction of the economy which has denied majority of the citizens basic means of livelihood coupled with chronic under-funding of education which has destroyed standard in the education sector that is behind the low morale of students and youth to education. Also, the brazen corruption and looting going on in the state and country, which has made a tiny few in the corridors of power obscenely wealthy while the hardworking poor people hardly break even has further eroded youths’ confidence in education as a basis of economic and political liberation. As we are writing this statement, the teachers in Ogun state, have joined their members in other eighteen states, in a strike to compel state governments to pay their 27.5 percent salary increase tagged TSS. How can you talk about education standard when teachers are hardly paid their salary arrears?

The latest privatization further knocks a big hole in the claim of the state government that it is funding education properly. In 2008, the state government and its town-criers went to town to brandish the fact that it was funding education by 26 percent as prescribed by UNESCO. Since then, education sector in the state has gone from bad to worse. Fees in the state tertiary institutions like Moshood Abiola Polytechnic (MAPOLY), Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), etc have been astronomically hiked by over 500 percents while most of these institutions are poorly funded by the state government. The latest privatization of secondary school again raises the question of where the billions of naira supposedly spent on education going to. With this privatization, the officials of the state government are just acting true to type. How can one expect politicians who earn millions as salaries and allowances, aside monumental looting, care about poor parents earning less than N10, 000 monthly?

The CDWR, Osun State hereby demands immediate reversal of the obnoxious policy of education privatization and commercialization of education in the state. We also demand massive funding of education by over 26 percent of education, with the fund to be managed by elected representatives of workers’ unions (NUT, NASU, SSANU, ASUU, ASUP, COEASU, etc), students’ movement and parents’ associations to prevent the prevailing situation where the fund budgeted so far did not reflect in the state of education in the state, thus engendering corruption and perfidy. We further demand for provision of free and quality education at all levels; and for massive development of education facilities in the state and country. This is the starting point to boosting students’ morale in education.

Signed:
Comrade Waheed Lawal - State Chairman
Kola Ibrahim - State Secretary

And now onto climate change for Meles Zenawi

Ethiopian Recycler

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58597

There is no end to Meles Zenawi's inventiveness. He relishes bullying and blackmailing. He will kill to position himself as a spokesperson for global issues and craves to be taken seriously as a statesman. Well, he has been failing in both and nobody seems to take notice. Remember 'Making Poverty History' summits? Agriculture-led economy? The 'developmental state' – a jargon he picked up from Joseph Stiglitz? Bio-fuel? Land-lease and commercial farms? HIV/AIDS? Terrorism? Secret Rendition? Piracy? Genetically modified food? Somalia? Corruption? Privatisation? Democracy (he as the new democrat refusing to abide by election results and already 18 years in power)? Peace-keeping? Meles is always first in line to send troops to conflict zones (when the nation he rules is virtually under siege). The untold story is that peace-keeping is a lucrative business and not easy to account for. Over the past several years Meles has delivered on average 2,000 Ethiopian soldiers at a cost of about US$1,200 per head per month. Go figure.

Meles seems to have his hands in every international political jar. But what has been the outcome of all this hyperactivity, other than smooth talk? Lots of hype and not enough substance. In other words, those activities were initiated at breakneck-speed but rarely sustained. And now climate change has provided him yet another venue to showcase his oratorical skills. Listen to what he said to Reuters:

'We will use our numbers to de-legitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position… If needs be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent… Africa's interest and position will not be muffled as has usually been the case… Africa will field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all member states of the African Union.' ('Single negotiating team' fits his demeanour because he cannot stand a rival or to share the spotlight with strong personalities). Pretty tough talk? Well, we dare you to walk out of those negotiations, Spokesperson Meles. You will be back begging on all fours.

The Economist recently praised Meles for his 'elephantine memory'. Indeed, that is the case. However, the magazine also failed to add that this trait is not exclusive to Meles and is what is causing Ethiopians in general from progressing in their politics. But one thing is certain: Meles's 'memory' skills are such that he has recognised that Western democracies are plagued by impatience and a short attention span, as well as being enthralled by 'positive news' (never mind that it could be a lie so long as it is cost-efficient and in Africa) and by the muscular guy who trounces his 'enemies', never mind how unjustly. What is even more bizarre is that African nations trust Meles more than the people who know him best. As we say in Ethiopia, 'The hyena travels to where he is unknown and requests a hide for bedding.'

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* This article was originally published by Ethiopian Recycler.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Kenya’s issues are old and complex

Arap Rotich

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58605

‘History despite the wrenching pain cannot be unlived,
but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’ (Maya Angelou)

Allow me, if you may, to comment on the article by Isaac Newton Kinity.

Kinity alleges that Moi should be ‘arrested and prosecuted’. Let me take him through a historical journey that might well serve to enlighten the likes of Kinity. Emotions should never be allowed to override intellectual discourse at the expense of public good. We desire peace in our country, and by allowing articles of Kinity’s nature to be published only heightens the situation.

Of course Moi, like the Kenyatta and Kibaki governments, is not blameless. Most Kenyans are living in self-denial, trying to wish away the past corruption by the Kenyatta regime. While it is possible to be optimistic about the return of sanity to Kenya’s deeply cleft socio-political fabric, it is realistic to expect the damage done by Kenyatta regime to take much longer to repair.

The issues before us are diverse and divisive. They are old and complex. They go beyond the Mau issues. The poll and the violence in 2007 are symptoms of deeper national problems and are not exactly the problems themselves.

The nation can very easily deceive itself with cosmetic and palliative solutions that cannot withstand the taste of times.

The chaos that spread following Kenya’s contested elections unmasked historical disputes over land. It is a symptom of failing to face up to history.

Traditionally, the Kikuyu had inhabited the region around Mount Kenya. But because this happened to be some of the best land, the British acquired it in the 1900s.

By 1964, after independence, the Queen’s powers were transferred to the Kenyan government, which – through the Commissioner of Land – could now dispose of the land without recourse to anybody else.

Many of ordinary Kenyans, had hoped that with independence, the Kenyatta government would facilitate the return of their land.

But this was not to be, yet the British Government had offered funds to help Kenyans buy back the land that was once theirs.

This system of ‘Buy Back’ was administered under the ‘Settlement Fund Trustee’ (SFT), a state corporation that was supposed to buy the land held by British settlers and offer it to the community on the agreed understanding that the latter were to repay agreed sums of money on easy terms.

Today, there is a whole body of literature showing that the SFT aided the Kenyatta cronies and his community to resettle its own people.

Whether Kenyatta handled the resettlement scheme well, or whether it respected the land rights other communities held before the advent of British rule in the country, is debatable.

Some of the resettlement schemes in Kilifi district were open to Kikuyu despite the fact that there were many landless people among the Miji Kenda.

Those who have been questioning the occupation of land by the Kikuyu in places away from Central Kenya have – unconsciously – been asking not just how the Kenyatta government handled the resettlement in the immediate post-independence period. They have also been asking the very justification the same government had to assume the legal powers hitherto held by the Queen of England.

By buying off or grabbing the land offered for sale by departing British settlers in Central Kenya, the Kikuyu political elite – in a way – continued the process of disinheriting their own people.

One can therefore conclude that these displaced Kikuyus might argue that they had no option but to occupy lands in the vast Rift Valley.

Did the displaced Kikuyus have their land in Central Province that had been alienated from them? Was Rift Valley the best option to resettle them?

Most other communities were left out by the Kenyatta regime during the allocation of land soon after independence. Outsiders taken to other provinces were rewarded with large swathes. This was unfair.

There is no doubt that one community benefited a lot from the White Highlands formally owned by colonial settlers during the Kenyatta regime. This is evident by names given to huge tracts of land they own i.e. Kiambaa, Kimumu Rurigi, Rogoini, Nyakinyua, Kimuri, Yamumbi, Gitwamba etc.

Although it is community ancestral land, they should never ever take it for free. They should be ready to purchase it at a reasonable and fair price.

Historical injustices, perceived or real especially the question of land will always provide the fuel for the fire that threatens to consume us. Elections merely strike the match.

From South Africa to Liberia, to Chile to Argentina, people are refusing to allow history to be silenced. Succeeding generations refuse impunity and demand moral accountability for past injustices.

Kenya will be no different, and the longer we leave our issues unresolved, the more complicated they would become.

There are those who caution us not to reopen old wounds. But we must open them up if they did not heal properly, to let the pus out.

‘Forgive and forget,’ is the famous mantra of the morally lazy. As our recent experience has shown, memories can return with a vengeance unless they are redeemed and become a way of transforming the future.

There are several underlying factors on top of them land that the GOK never addresses.

It is becoming clear that communities in regions are evidently suspicious of each of other before General Election.

The Kalenjins ‘strongly believed that president Moi failed to return the farms’ to their community when he was in power, a claim that partly explains why they ignored his advice to vote for president Kibaki during the election campaign.

And as the GOK seeks a solution to the Mau crisis, it is paramount that land is given priority if tribal animosity is to be resolved.

Rift Valley land problems are older than Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki’s reigns, and will not end unless some very deliberate policy decisions are taken to settle the matter.

Kibaki is an insider of the elite club that has ruled Kenya since independence. In his first five years, he showed a determination not to interfere with the status quo, opting instead to do business with the elite of the previous regime.

The challenge is that the land, which he is being called upon to redistribute, is in the hands of a significant number of the former powerful ruling elites that he has protected over his first five years.

Under Kenyatta, individuals formed land-buying companies, which assisted in resettlement in the Rift Valley. There were murmurs even then as the resettlement was being undertaken.

In 2004 former Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Francis Ole Kaparo, described one of the senior politicians as a ‘blood thirsty hound’. This was during a public altercation, over Maasai land disputes, which seemed primed toward invasion of large-scale commercial ranches.

It did not succeed, but could always be reincarnated with arguments that the Maasai Land Agreements of 1904 had elapsed and therefore the land should revert back to the Maasai.

At the National Archives, The Kenya Land Commission of 1933 (Carter Commission) received hearings from various groups from Rift Valley opposed to confiscation of land by settlers. The groups also opposed confinement of communities into Native Reserves and alienation and designation of the most arable lands as White Highlands, for allocation to foreign settlers to set up homes and commercial farming enterprises.

Kenya as Country was forged on land brutality and brutal land grabbing. First was Imperial British East African Company (IBEA), a private firm that later handed over the territory to the British East Africa, which became a protectorate and colony by the time the WWI (1914-1919) broke out.

As the British Empire consolidated its hold on the colony, bringing in more and more settlers to take up the White Highlands in Rift Valley, the communities never forgot they lost their land to the foreigners.

They kept on making demands for restitution, amid forceful suppression.

Against this restlessness by the locals in the Rift Valley the British Government established the Kenya Land Commission in 1932 with the following principle mandate, among others:

‘To determine the nature and extent of claims and assertions by natives over land alienated by non-natives and make recommendations for adequate settlements of such claims whether by legislation or otherwise.’

In the Rift Valley, communities that lodged claims for consideration by the commission included: Uasin Gishu Maasai, The Pokot (East Suk) The Njemps, The Nandi, North and South Lumbwa (Present day Kipsigis district of Bureti, Kipkelion, Kericho, Sotik), The Kamasia (Present day Tugen community of Baringo District) and Dorobo, all of whom claimed ancestral ownership of 127 square miles of Churo plains on the Eastern Side of the Laikipia Escarpment.

To date, Churo is among the hot spots and a battle zone between communities in the Rift Valley. Determination of these historical claims by the Kalenjin cannot be wished away.

‘In the opinion of the District Commissioner, the Kamasia claims to the land adjoining Ravine – including Uasin Gishu and the block of land between Eldama and Karasuria rivers – is in all probability valid…’

The Church, the only voice sympathetic then, to the African plight, struggling with an imperial military monster spoke candidly and loudly.

The Kenya Missionary Council wrote in a memorandum dated 22 February 1933 thus:

‘The root cause of trouble is the strange failure by Government to make any enquiry into Native Land Tenure systems before giving out land to non-native races… it is most unfortunate that when it became apparent that injuries had been committed, no attempt was made to make reparations…’. In most cases, natives were evicted, without knowing they had legal claim to remain.

None of the above mitigation had been implemented by the time the colony got sucked into WWII

I hope this summary is useful to enable us look at the whole picture and not a subjective issue.

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* When not perusing Pambazuka, Arap Rotich is a pensions benefits practitioner based in Nairobi. He welcomes rejoinders to this article.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Remember the 1991 killings in Kenya

Isaac Newton Kinity

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58598

Secretary General, United Nations

Dear Sir,

Re: The deadly massacre weapons imported into Kenya in 1991 from South Korea

In 1991 thousands of arrows were intercepted by the Kenyan police at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The arrows, which were displayed by both electronic and printing media for Kenyans to see, bore the labels 'Made in South Korea'. The arrows had poisoned heads which would cause instant death to any human being. When questioned, the then-South Korean ambassador to Kenya admitted that the arrows had been ordered and purchased by the Kenyan government.

The arrows had arrived in Kenya two years after the president of Kenya at the time, Mr Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, had already intensified his campaign of warnings to Kenyans and the international community of war and chaos if a multiparty system of governance was allowed in Kenya. He had for two years – 1989 and 1990 – addressed numerous meetings all over Kenya, warning of dear consequences of war and chaos once the multiparty system of governance was introduced in Kenya. He also never fell short of informing diplomats from various nations of the world about these predictions of war and chaos. Soon after the interception of the arrows and their subsequent display by the Kenyan media, both the arrows and their containers disappeared. A short while latter in the same year (1991), the same arrows with similar labels resurfaced in the bodies of 800 innocent and defenceless Kenyans, killed by the Kalenjin militia in Sondu, Kitale, Kericho, Londiani, Kipkelion, Molo, Njoro, Likia, Teret, Maji Muzuri and Mau Narok over the period of one week. Those attacked and killed had provided the greatest pressure for the introduction of a multiparty system of governance for the previous five years. They included the Luos from Sondu, the Luhyas from Kitale, the Kisiis from Kericho–Kisii borders and the Kikuyus from many other parts of the Rift Valley.

No one knows how many arrows had been imported into Kenya undetected before the amazing interception made in 1991, and no one knows how many were imported thereafter. Despite the news of the importation of the deadly arrows, their disappearance and their reappearance in the bodies of the 800 Kenyans heinously and senselessly killed in 1991, the President Moi never said a word. President Moi, who had the supreme authority and command over the land of Kenya, was unconcerned about the entire arrow importation scenario.

The 1991 massacre was the first of its kind in Kenya. It was the beginning of a new era of senseless killings of innocent Kenyans. The killings of Kenyans in 1991 and in 2008 were the worst crimes against humanity ever committed in Kenya. The 2008 killings are being taken care of, but 1991 seems to have been forgotten. A number of leaders who committed crimes against humanity have been prosecuted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, the Netherlands. Some of them committed lesser crimes than those committed in Kenya. Evidence is available in South Korea and in Kenya that dangerous arrows were imported in Kenya in 1991. The lack of action over 1991 is what made it possible for an even larger massacre in 2008.

I sincerely and kindly plead with your office of the United Nations to recommend for the prosecution of the former president of Kenya, Mr Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, at the ICC for crimes against humanity for the importation of poisoned arrows from South Korea in 1991 and the subsequent use of the arrows in the killing of 800 innocent Kenyans in the same year. Mr Moi should be prosecuted at the Hague just like other world leaders who have committed similar crimes.

Yours sincerely,

Isaac Newton Kinity
Former secretary general of the Kenya Civil Servants Union and chairman of the Kikimo Foundation for Corruption and Poverty Eradication

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* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Global: On arts advocacy

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/l84sqw

“Artists in all countries shall be encouraged and helped to form associations. Their organisations shall receive the support they need to create their own structures and make their action effective”...This is a quote from the Final Declaration of the World Congress on the Implementation of the Recommendation Concerning the Status of the Artist held in Paris in 1997.

The Trial of Robert Mugabe

A review of Chielo Zona Eze’s new novel

Dobrota Pucherova

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58607

How do you write a novel about genocide? In the Zimbabwean context, several writers have attempted to engage artistically with the Matabeleland massacre of 1981-86 in which Mugabe’s regime dealt with ‘dissidents’, including Chenjerai Hove in Shadows (1991) and Alexander Kanengoni in Echoing Silences (1997), but it was Yvonne Vera’s lyrical feat, The Stone Virgins (2002), that for the first time assigned sole responsibility for it to the Zanu PF government. With that government still in power, such an act was not without its risks. Saluting the postcolonial idea that writers are also historians, and fictions are often truer than the ‘truth’, Chielo Zona Eze borrows many of his characters from Vera’s novel. Placing them alongside eye-witness accounts published on public internet sites such as YouTube, in The Trial of Robert Mugabe he brings to life the unheard voices of the victims of Mugabe’s 29 years in power.

The narrative frame is the trial of the 85-year-old dictator, who is facing God’s justice on the Last Judgment Day. On the divine jury are no other than Yvonne Vera (1964-2005), whose attempts at healing the wounds of Zimbabwean history through exposing its taboos gained her international recognition; Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987), the enfant terrible of Zimbabwean writing who had predicted the country’s destiny with a Cassandra accuracy; Steve Biko (1946-1977), the martyr of the South African apartheid; and Chief Justice Olaudah Equiano, the 18th century Igbo writer and slave abolitionist. As a series of testimonies by victims of the Zanu PF regime unrolls, Mugabe looks on uncomprehendingly. His denials of history and self-glorification as Zimbabwe’s ‘liberator’, however, do not upend the trial, whose real purpose is healing and reconciliation through collective remembering. Working from the epigraph’s premise that:

‘Those who are picked for trial are sometimes just symbols for wider phenomena’, Eze’s novel thus performs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Zimbabwean context.

The issue Eze cannot avoid is one of authority. While Vera and Marechera, both critics of Mugabe’s power abuses, are cast here as the moral conscience of the nation, Eze, who is a Nigerian living in Chicago, self-consciously quotes J. M. Coetzee, the piercing interrogator of the human conscience: ‘Where is my heart in all of this?’ (p.144). Vera’s unflinching confrontation with the Gukurahundi atrocities she never personally witnessed, facilitated by her belief that ‘stories do not belong to individuals; they belong to communities. They belong to humanity’ (p.90), lends Eze a poetic license as well as ‘mnemonic devices’ to ‘re-remember’ a painful history. His answer is to place Zimbabwean history in a clearly trans-national context, linking it (through characters such as Biko and Equiano) with South Africa’s apartheid, the Nigerian-Biafran War, and even the Jewish Holocaust. Emphasising that ‘the injustice done to one person is done to all’ (p.90), Eze embraces the cosmopolitan idea of universal responsibility (as opposed to national unity) that has been increasingly on the fore-front of progressive political thought. The Africa he imagines creates its idea of progress by borrowing selectively from all the world’s cultures, rather than remaining closed in its own “tradition” – as the character of Mugabe would have it, when he cries, in one of the novel’s lighter moments, that “YouTube [is]the instrument of white magic propaganda” (p.31). On the contrary, internet is hailed here as a weapon of democracy in a country where media cannot operate freely.

The Trial of Robert Mugabe falls short of both Vera’s lyricism and Marechera’s subversive wit, falling rather too easily to sentimentality that dampens the narrative’s poignancy. It is also hard to imagine Marechera, this gad-fly of Zimbabwean nationalism, who heckled Mugabe on the eve of Independence in 1979, to address the disgraced dictator ‘Sir’ and ‘Your Excellency’.

Nevertheless, the service of The Trial of Robert Mugabe to Zimbabwe’s collective healing should not be undervalued. The scenario of the novel is as urgent as it is sceptical. Zimbabwe’s new unity government has just unveiled an ‘Organ for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration’ (ONHRI); at the same time, some victims have expressed concern they will never see justice or compensation. Perpetrators of state-sponsored violence continue to be at large, and victims have seen no compensation.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who has himself been severely beaten by members of President Robert Mugabe’s security forces, has stressed that he was ‘not just saying – forgive, heal and reconcile’. But he said ‘justice needs forgiveness… and if we do retributive justice, the danger is that we may slide back’ towards violence. Since Mugabe agreed to a power-sharing agreement in September last year, it is unlikely to see him tried in The Hague alongside the likes of Radovan Karadzic and Charles Taylor. Chielo Zona Eze’s The Trial of Robert Mugabe might thus be the only trial Mugabe is ever called on to stand.

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* The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zona Eze is published on 15 September 2009 by Okri Books (Chicago, USA).
* Dobrota Pucherova holds a PhD in English from Oxford University and specialises in the literatures of southern and central Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Write a review for Pambazuka News!

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58613

BOOKS AND ACADEMIC PAPERS FOR REVIEW

Reclaiming our Lives
Kaori Izumi

One World: A global anthology of short stories
Various authors

Postneoliberalism - A beginning debate
Ulrich Brand/Nicol Sekler

War Veterans in Zimbabwe's Land Occupations
Wilbert Zakanyorwa Sadomba

Courting Conflict?
Nicholas Waddell & Phil Clark

Africa's Development in the 21st Century
Fantu Cheru

Morocco and the Sahara
Mohamed Cherkaoui

International Journal on Human Rights No 8
Various authors

Who Answers to Women?
Anne Marie Goetz

A House in Zambia
Robin Palmer

Do something about it!
Bill Porter

Building the Green Economy
Kevin Danaher/Shannon Biggs.Jason Mark

Global Information Society Watch 2008
Alan Finlay

Women's Land Rights & Privatization in Eastern Africa
Birgit Englert & Elizabeth Daley

Waging the War on Want
Mark Luetchfrod and Peter Burns

Understanding Organisational Stability through African Proverbs
Chiku Mulunga with Charles Banda

Southern Africa (The Making of the Contemporary World)
Jonathan Farley

The Scramble for Africa
Steven Fake and Kevin Funk

The Trial of Robert Mugabe
Chielo Zona Eze

The Dark Sahara
Jeremy Keenan

ACCESS: How do good health technologies get to poor people in poor countries
Laura Frost & Michael Reich

Global Union Federations & International Business
Richard Croucher & Elizabeth Cotton

A Hand to the Plough
Patrick Evans

The Trouble with Aid
Jonathan Glennie

Displaced by Development
Lyla Mehta

Spots of a Leopard
Aernout Zevenbergen

China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities
Begsten, Freeman & Lardy

Dedicated to Ethiopian-Somalis

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/58596

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Why don’t you break the silence?

It’s time South African men spoke out against rape

Sokari Ekine

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/58604

A number of Nigerian bloggers marked the death of human rights lawyer and social justice activist, Gani Fawehinmi (1938-2009).

‘Gani Fawehinmi belonged in a class of his own. Selfless, visionary and dogged, even in the face of enormous personal risk, so long as the cause advanced the common good, he was not a man to shy from truth or fear inconvenience.” - Pat Utomi

Cognative Diary describes Fawehinmi as the ‘most famous figure in Nigerian history’. Possibly he meant to say the most famous ‘legal figure’. Nonetheless, Fawehinmi stands as out as a giant in a country where there are relatively few prepared to fight for social justice and his passing represents the end of an era and will be surely missed...

‘His death this morning, 5th September 2009, suggests the beginning of the end of an era of a particular generation of public activists in Nigeria, following on the death in 2006, of Beko Ransome Kuti (1940-2006), who, along with Fela Anikulapo (1938-1997) and Olikoye (1927-2003), to adapt the words of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, were, along with their sister Dolupo, their mother, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti ( 1900-1978) and father Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti (1891 to 1955) members of ‘the legendary Ransome Kuti [family] of Abeokuta.

‘Younger and older members of the group who fought such death defying battles are still with us, such as Femi Falana and Wole Soyinka, but I wonder whether the culture of civic resistance these people represent is still as powerful as what they demonstrated.’

My Pen & Paper asks who will stand up for the defenseless now Fawehinmi is gone?

‘Now that Papa Gani Fawehinmi is dead, who will speak for us? – someone with enough repute – who lives up to the words: honesty and dignity; someone we have always believed in – who puts the nation before himself and every other thing; someone we can be sure about – who won’t disappoint when he gives you a promise; someone whose ‘state of mind’ crosses the borders where tribal inclinations, financial status and musterable powers put the Nigerian masses to a perpetual loss; someone who knows the real issues, and puts these first and foremost.’

Finally Grandiose Parlor describes Fawehinmi as Nigeria’s Martin Luther King:

‘An indefatigable critic of military dictatorship and corruption, in the process of his crusades for the rule of law, the hopes and aspirations of the poor and the oppressed, he fought many battles against military dictatorship as a result of which he had been arrested several times by the military governments and its numerous security agents. He was dumped in many police cells and detained in several prisons between 1969 and 1996.’

Sokwanele has been running a series of posts called ‘Zimbabwe Inclusive Government Watch’. The aim is to monitor violations of the Unity Government agreement between Zanu PF and the MDC.

According to the latest report politically motivated violence, corruption and seizures of farms not only continue to take place but appear to be worsening.

‘The month of August has seen a notable increase in breaches in these two areas:
open subversion of legal or administrative processes for political benefit, and
deliberate non-cooperation with the other parties to the GPA agreement, or the deliberate undermining – or abuse of – other persons or parties for political ends.

Zanu PF's favourite political tool – violence – stills plagues Zimbabwe's populace to the extent that it is almost accepted as a norm by the majority. Our first listed breach in Issue 8 reveals that the government has turned deaf ears to the warnings by the Kimberly Process that the sales of Zimbabwean diamonds may be suspended internationally after the international body directed that Zimbabwe's diamond fields should be demilitiarised. The troops are still there, and rights abuses and smuggling continue unabated.’

Unlike Zimbabwe, which has extensive media coverage on human rights violations, there is relative silence on Ethiopia. Abbay Media reports on the continued human rights violations causing displacement in the country due to the ongoing internal conflicts as well as between the Ethiopian army and the Ogaden National Liberation Front and in the south-west between the army and the Oromo Liberation Front.

‘For decades, Ethiopia has been affected by famine and conflict. In 2009, there have been various reports of internal displacement resulting from conflicts and human rights violations perpetrated by the army and groups opposed to the government. It is difficult to establish the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) as neither the government nor any international organisation has undertaken a profiling exercise. The access of humanitarian and human rights organisations and the media to some areas of the country has been restricted....

‘The impact on civilians of the conflict in Somali Region has been likened to that of Darfur. Meanwhile, there are also conflicts in at least five of the country’s nine regions with causes ranging from competition over scarce water and pasture resources to disputes over administrative boundaries. In February 2009 alone, some 160,000 people were driven from their homes by conflict between the Garre of the Somali region and the Boran of the Oromiya region over a contested piece of land.’

Constitutionally Speaking comments on the recent granting of refugee status to a white South African, on the basis as white man he is in danger of his life. The law in Canada on refugee status does not require a full hearing with cross examination which enabled Huntley to present his case without any challenge from the SA government. If he had been challenged, the description of the leafy white suburb of Mowbray where he lived might have brought a different result.

‘Huntley is therefore very lucky. Imagine the Refugee Board had to have a full hearing and the South African government could present evidence – tested under cross examination – about the situation in South Africa. Hell, the South African government could merely have asked a representative of Pam Golding Properties to go and testify on their behalf. On the Pam Golding’s website, Huntley’s old suburd is described as follows:

Mowbray is known for its convenient locality to all of Cape Town’s amenities, particularly exclusive schools, the University of Cape Town, the world-famous Groote Schuur Hospital and sporting facilities, such as the Rondebosch Golf Course and Newlands Rugby and Cricket grounds. Boasting large family homes, when you buy a house in the Southern Suburbs, you are not only buying a home, but rather a lifestyle of carefree independence for your children.’

Africa Rise reports on the attempted deportation of African workers by the Israeli government:

‘There is a growing level of opposition within Israel to the deportation policy of the government, and in particular, to the fact that the government deports and at the same time, allows employers to ‘import’ new labour.

‘There “Human Resources Companies” are said to make dozens of thousands dollars on each new worker they import. Thus, the “revolving door" policy, in which the government allows to illegalize many workers only to import new ones is extremely profitable.

‘To support the deportation, officials use the cynical rhetoric of accusing the foreign workers in the growing levels of unemployment, ignoring the fact that it is the same government that constantly gives new permits for the industry to import new cheap labor from abroad.’

She asks how the Israeli government will explain these deportations and racism against migrant workers to prospective partnerships with African countries. I doubt the African countries would be any more concerned than they have at the massive deportations and racism experienced by their citizens in Europe.

Finally Black Looks writes on the welcome conviction of the seven men accused of gang raping South African lesbian Buyisiwe in 2005. The case has taken nearly four years – which is not very encouraging for women who wish to report their rape. BL asks why the remaining three-quarters of South African men [one in four of South African men have admitted to rape] are not breaking their silence around rape:

‘One in 4 South African men have admitted to rape and half of those admitted to more than one rape – meaning there are millions of rapists walking and driving the streets. 36,190 rapes and attempted rapes were reported in 2007. A 2005 study from the Medical Research Council (MRC) on sexual violence report that only one out of every nine rape survivors report the attack to the police and even when cases do reach the courts, there is a less than 5 per cent conviction rate – meaning there are 9 times 36,000 rapes and attempted rapes every year, nearly half million.

A recent brief conversation with a young SA man is a wake call for mass education. He was convinced that many women were in fact seducing men and then accusing them of rape. And whilst there are many women speaking and writing against the hate and violence directed at women particular black lesbians, I still do not hear the voices of men. Why are men particularly those in the progressive activist community not breaking the silence on violence against women? By not doing so, they themselves become complicit in hate and rape.’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Sokari Ekine blogs at Black Looks
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

African markets making sense for India

Nelly Nyagah

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/58593

Although India is an economic powerhouse in its own right, so much of its growth in recent years has been eclipsed by rival China’s shadow. Talk about India’s investments in Africa often steers towards “how it seems to be playing catch up with China.”

Yet, India has firmly rooted historical ties with Africa dating back to when merchants traipsed goods across continents to reach virgin markets. In contemporary times its trade and investment can be traced back to the 1960s, particularly in East Africa where there are numerous expatriate Indian communities.

“Africa accounted for virtually all Indian outward investment in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Indian firms also began to invest in the rest of Asia, and now Africa and Asia have an almost equal one-third share in foreign direct investment (FDI) from India,” says World Bank Consultant Premila Nazareth.

Indian FDI flows into Africa expanded geographically between 2000 and 2007 and increased by 837%. Initially limited to Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda in the seventies, Indian companies are now doing business in over 20 countries in Africa.

Associate professor at Sader Patel Institute of Economic and Social research, Dr Jaya Prakash, says more Indian firms are going to intensify their expansion plans in Africa given that traditional export markets are experiencing a slowdown. Also, energy security is of crucial importance if India is to satisfy rising demand at home. “Chinese investment into Africa particularly in the oil and gas sectors is also generating competitive pressure on Indian firms to invest more to secure access to natural resources,” he says.

The rise of Indian multinational corporations

In 2006 tyre manufacturer Apollo acquired Dunlop in what was then touted as the largest Indian investment in South Africa. The year before that the company‘s strategy team had drawn a map depicting the world’s tyre industry and noticed giants like Michelin and Goodyear had minimal presence in some regions , including Africa, because they deemed them challenging to operate in. But Apollo saw potential and took the plunge. Now renamed Apollo Tyres South Africa Pty Ltd, it has the highest market share in passenger car, truck and bus tyres in South Africa.

“Indian firms' globalisation is as much about ambition and competing with western multinational corporations, as it is about competing with fellow Indian competitors for global reach and technology with which to dominate India. You see this most clearly in telecoms where Tata, Bharti and Reliance are fighting for international presence as much in a bid to outdo each other globally, as to consolidate their dominance at home,” says Nazareth.

To gain market share at home, Indian companies have innovated unique service or product offerings particularly focusing on serving low-income earners. “This is clearly seen in the telecommunications sector - where Bharti innovated the world's cheapest calling rates and Reliance introduced the world's cheapest handsets. Due to the pressure on spectrum, Indian telecom firms are thus more frugal and efficient than global firms such as AT&T,” says Nazareth.

Nazareth also says firms whose innovations and paradigm-shifts have succeeded growing new market segments at home feel their price offerings may be of relevance to African consumers.

Indian investment abroad however turned bearish in 2008 after growing faster than other emerging markets for quite some time. “The global slowdown has made a difference, as have the credit crunch and a depreciating Indian currency. The stronger than expected gross domestic product growth in the first quarter of 2009 is a positive sign in this context, as is the fact that not every Indian firm with foreign interests is cash poor,” says Prakash.

Reforms at home are likely to provide a solid basis for corporate India to survive the global financial downturn and those with cash reserves will explore emerging markets rather than the beleaguered West. “Indications arising out of recent interviews with India’s leading outward investors show Africa once again becoming a key regional focus for investments over the next three to five years,” says Nazareth.

Indian footprint in Africa

Private investment in Africa has already exceeded $5 billion. (That figure could increase significantly if the $23 billion Bharti Airtel/MTN Group cross-border sharing deal is finalised.) Leading the pack is Tata with investments worth $1.6 billion in tourism, mining, automobile, energy and telecommunications. Other reputable players include Mahindra and Mahindra, UB group, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s Labs, NIIT, Kirloskar, Essar, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Reliance and Skipper Energy.

While the private sector eyes the continent for profits, India’s government has been vying for influence by giving more than $2 billion worth of grants and credit to African countries over the past six years for projects in rural electrification (Mozambique, Ethiopia), IT training (Lesotho), railways (Senegal, Mali), construction (Ghana), a cement factory (Congo) and military barracks in Sierra Leone.

Regional footprint

East Africa: By 2007 the East Africa region, led by Mauritius, was the main host of Indian FDI, accounting for about 70% of total flows into the continent. Mauritius has attracted a large number of Indian software companies catering to the financial services providers. In Kenya, Indian companies are active in a range of sectors including pharmaceuticals, machinery and equipment, chemicals, textiles, paper and paper products, financial services, software, refinery and printing. The total investment in Ethiopia by over 250 Indian companies (mainly in agriculture, engineering, pharmaceuticals and consultancy) stood at US$1.8 million by April 2008. In Uganda, pharmaceutical company Cipla is building a $32 billion plant which will produce drugs used to treat malaria and HIV/AIDS.

North Africa: The second most attractive region for Indian FDI, North Africa had attracted investment worth over US$550 million by March 2007. Sudan offers Indian investors – most of them in the oil and gas sector - attractive incentives and preferential access to Arab countries. Efforts by Sudan to encourage Indian investments in other sectors have drawn investments in automobiles and light engineering goods. Libya has only recently been able to attract non-development investment with OVL and the Oil India-Indian Oil Corporation (OIL-IOC) consortium and Hydrocarbon Resources Development Co investing in the hydrocarbons sectors.

West Africa: Due to instability in the region, Indian investment in West Africa was low at 8% of total Indian FDI into Africa in the period between 1961 and 2007. A number of Indian companies are showing interest in Liberia since the change in the political dispensation with shipping companies Seaking Empress and West Asia Maritime Limited now holding considerable investment. Mining company Arcelor Mittal won the bid to re-open Nimba iron ore mines in Northern Liberia. In Nigeria, the multinational corporations that moved in from the seventies include Ranbaxy Laboratories (pharmaceuticals), HMT (machine tools), Hyderabad Industries (cement products), Karam Chand Thapar (blankets), Skipper Energy (transformers) and consultants Birla Bombay. By 2007, Nigeria was India’s largest trading partner in the continent with major FDI directed at metals, rubber and plastic products, infrastructure machinery and equipment. Oil companies such as Essar entered Nigeria in 2007, while state-controlled oil firm ONGC has bought concessions for long-term oil and natural gas extractions in Nigeria and Angola. Senegal also has substantial Indian investment directed entirely into the chemicals sector. Other companies such as Tata Motors and Avantha Group are exploring opportunities in Senegal following the agreement with India to enter into double tax avoidance treaty.

Southern Africa: This region, in comparison to the North, East and West Africa, had attracted a minimal proportion of total Indian direct investment (1.4%) to Africa by 2007. However, major Indian corporations now have a presence in industries such as ICT (NIIT), mining (Verdanta, Arcelor Mittal), steel (Tata Steel), pharmaceuticals (Dr. Reddy’s Lab, Ranbaxy) and automotive (Tata, Mahindra). South Africa is increasingly becoming the gateway to the region as seen in Mahindra SA’s expanded operations in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia. Its managing director, Ashok Thakur, advocates the sustainability of the investments even during a downturn. “Overseas ventures are enabling Indian companies to share technology, skills and market access. In the end it benefits customers and stakeholders,” he says. In August India signed five accords that promise to bring investment into Namibia’s mining sector in a bid to secure a source of Uranium.

In conclusion, Indian investments are enabling Africa to become a processor of commodities – a major departure from the continent’s traditional economic relations with the North. Also, Indian companies are increasingly operating with world class standards thereby helping African businesses integrate into advanced markets.

* This article was first published in TradeInvest Africa on September 7, 2009.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

EU diplomats due in for talks

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/ldojoz

A group of European Union (EU) diplomats was due in Zimbabwe Friday for a series of high-level talks with the country's leaders on easing longstanding frosty relations between the two. The diplomats, led by Swedish International Development Co-operation Minister Gunilla Carlsson, were billed to meet President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Aurther Mutambara at the weekend.

MDC 10th anniversary celebrations set for Bulawayo

2009-09-11

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5979

Thousands of MDC supporters will on Sunday converge at the White City Stadium in Bulawayo to celebrate the party’s 10th Anniversary. Morgan Tsvangirai, who will be accompanied by the entire MDC’s national leadership will give a key note address at the rally.

Mugabe slams 'bloody whites' ahead of EU visit

2009-09-11

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5982

President Robert Mugabe has lashed out at Western sanctions against him, condemning "bloody whites" for meddling in Zimbabwe's affairs, on the eve of a landmark European Union visit. "Who said the British and the Americans should rule over others? That's why we say down with you. We have not invited these bloody whites. They want to poke their nose into our own affairs. Refuse that," he said.

Nigeria: Trafficking rises sharply

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48405

An alarming rise has been recorded in the number of Nigerian girls trafficked to Italy. Last year 1,782 young girls from Nigeria arrived in Lampedusa, compared to 166 in 2007, human rights organisations say. Lampedusa, an Italian island 205 km from the Italian coast, located between Tunisia and Sicily, is used as a holding centre for migrants, particularly from Africa.

Somalia: Doctors treat fistula in harrowing conditions

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/lmwpg3

Though political instability, violence and chaos surround them, surgeons and backup teams dedicated to ending the misery of obstetric fistula continue their work in the failed state of Somalia. The gratitude of their patients keeps them going in the most desperate of situations.

South Africa: Redouble efforts to reduce maternal mortality

Patrick Burnett

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48393

For Katriena Anthony, being four months pregnant comes with hazards particular to her living conditions. The 38-year-old resident of Mandela Square informal settlement in the rural town of Montague, three hours drive from Cape Town, she lives in a two-roomed shack made of wood and zinc sheets. She has no electricity or running water, and every morning she has to walk long distances to collect wood, while water for drinking and cooking must be carried to her home from a nearby tap in a plastic bucket.

South Africa: What’s wrong with the F-word?

Kazeka Mashologu Kuse

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/58620

I’ve recently been on two dates where the men asked me what I want in a man. Confidently I replied “a self-sufficient and self-assured man who doesn’t feel the need to maintain me, a pro-feminist who supports, and feels the feminist movement is a worthy cause that should be upheld in our relationship and society at large, an open minded man whom reading books is a lifestyle and a man who is able to move between masculine and feminine traits with great fluidity.”
I’ve recently been on two dates where the men asked me what I want in a man. Confidently I replied “a self-sufficient and self-assured man who doesn’t feel the need to maintain me, a pro-feminist who supports, and feels the feminist movement is a worthy cause that should be upheld in our relationship and society at large, an open minded man whom reading books is a lifestyle and a man who is able to move between masculine and feminine traits with great fluidity.”

“Are you some feminist?” the one dude enquired with a tinge of indignation. “Oh yes,” I said with great pride imagining Mam’ Lillian Ngoyi looking over me with great pride. The conversation went downhill afterwards as I debated his every accusation of me being “extremist, too independent or needing a man to tame me.”

Needless to say, neither called me again and both refuse to answer my calls, even when I call for business purposes. (At least my girlfriends and I have something to laugh about on a girl’s night out). What’s wrong with saying you are a feminist on a first date?

It seems that calling yourself a feminist to a man who is romantically interested is the easiest way of getting rid of him. It really has become a dirty word, synonymous with radicalism, or an assembly of women planning the demise of men. The word seems to conjure up images of humourless women who just are complaining about “order of nature.” This image goes for men and women.

Ask a woman if she would call herself a feminist and you will likely get a prompt “no.” Even second wave feminist and author of the The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, identified herself as a Marxist rather than a feminist, until she realised that Marxism, with its very noble intentions of gender equality, had also become patriarchal. Why are many accomplished and progressive minded women refusing to be labeled as feminists?

Modern women, who are the primary beneficiaries of the feminist movements fight for equal pay, pro-choice, available contraception and access to education, find it hard to answer the question “Are you feminist?” It seems that somewhere down the line the feminist movement lost the plot.

Before the 1956 March to the Union Buildings in South Africa, apartheid era passes were imposed on African women as an attempt to control the movement and autonomy of their bodies. Before 1994, women could not own a house, irrespective of the ability to afford it.

My own post-grad educated mother had to have her father’s signature on a bond that she would have to pay. That was the only way she could “own” a house. The Constitution, with the influence of the gender activism, changed those male dependency policies.

It is evident from women’s history that most women support the feminist agenda i.e. equal pay, equal opportunities, reproductive rights, the right to own land, freedom of choice; yet very few can call themselves feminists.

Even I took a very long time to admit and call myself a feminist with pride and joy, despite everyone close to me calling me one. I used to defend the accusation of being a feminist with “I’m not a feminist but…” (and proceed to with all sorts of excuses of how I support the movement’s agenda but am not a feminist). Why?

It appears that feminism has become aligned with the total rejection of traditional roles. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, American president, Barack Obama, observes that opponents of the feminist movement (usually social conservatives) argue that the realisation of feminist ideals would see a “brave new world” that would reject marriage, see motherhood as an inconvenience; promote promiscuity and “civilisation [would] rest on shifting sands.”

The reality is that some women enjoy a career without any children. Oprah Winfrey is one of them. Some want careers with children, but no husbands. Most choose a blend of both career and family.

Mam’ Maphele Ramphele, Wendy Luhabe and Michelle Obama are among such women. Other women are passionate about the traditional role of being a wife and mother such as Robin McGraw (Dr. Phil’s wife). Most women don’t want to totally reject traditional norms, they want to choose them and have their choices supported at large by society.

The freedom to choose is the premise of feminism. It is, according to Gloria Steinem, “the ability to redefine ourselves [as women and men] and the way we treat ourselves.” It is, in my view, the freedom to choose what is personally empowering and not be confined to the binary power-oriented perceptions of reality that patriarchy has put in place.

It is unfortunate that social conservative stereotypes of feminism have also permeated public consciousness as fact, hence the rejection of the label feminist. The spread of negative stereotypes about career-driven and progressive minded women as “unwomanly” or total rejection of tradition is what propels many women to hesitate in defining themselves as feminists.

The perpetuation of these stereotypes has been what Susan Faludi calls a backlash to the feminist movement in her book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against…Women. She continues that it’s the unspoken war that our place [i.e. women] is in the home. It is the essentialist argument that women have certain innate characteristics that draw them to the home, motherhood and domesticity.

I am a personal believer that whatever label one utilises must come from the user of the label. Whether you call yourself a feminist or not, my understanding of feminism is to make your choices not by expectations but with the free will to choose the experiences that resonate with you.

Because I call myself a feminist, most people are shocked to hear that I love cooking (at my own schedule). What’s there to be shocked about? It’s my choice! That’s why I love the F-word. Feminist, that is.

* Kazeka Mashologu Kuse is a freelance writer based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
* This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service.

Southern Africa: Cross-border links to boost economic empowerment

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48390

The Professional Women, Executives and Businesswomen’s Forum (PROWEB) organised a unique investment conference last week in Zimbabwe’s capital where businesswomen from South Africa and Zimbabwe got the opportunity to not only network but forge what may be a unique African association among businesswomen across national borders. The conference resolved, among others, to create an executive committee that will pursue women’s economic empowerment in both southern African countries.

Southern Africa: Women can be more than small-scale farmers

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48368

"Government must lead in breaking down the stereotypes of women as tuck-shop owners, candle-makers, peasant farmers, teachers and nurses and create the reality in which they become hoteliers, large-scale commercial farmers, miners and proprietors of retail chains." These were the words of Zimbabwe’s vice president Joyce Mujuru addressing a women’s investment conference held in Harare on Sep 4. The conference was attended by South African and Zimbabwean businesswomen.

DRC: UN points to possible war crimes in the east

2009-09-11

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31991

With two new United Nations reports detailing human rights abuses – including possible war crimes – carried out by both Government forces and rebels in the volatile far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the world body’s top rights official has stressed the urgent need for reforming the country’s security and judicial systems.

Global: Rethinking Conflict Transformation from a Human Rights Perspective

New Berghof Handbook article by Michelle Parlevliet

2009-09-11

http://www.berghof-handbook.net/uploads/download/parlevliet_handbook.pdf

One of the most prevalent stereotypes in the debate about human rights and conflict transformation has been that of two fields clashing, expressed in the idea that the normative nature of human rights standards may complicate the practical demands of peacemaking. This article moves beyond “justice vs. peace” and proposes that applying a perspective of human rights in conflict transformation brings it closer to its aims – by forcing greater emphasis on structural conditions, especially the role of the state, systems of governance and issues of power.

Liberia: Human rights 'must be paramount in policing'

2009-09-11

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31966

Respect for human rights must be central to police work, a senior United Nations official in Liberia has told the new members of an elite unit within the West African country's police force as she warned them never to misuse their strength and power. Eighty officers from the Liberia National Police (LNP) have completed a three-month intensive training programme to join the force's Emergency Response Unit (ERU), joining just over 200 others who have finished their training since courses began in mid-2008.

South Africa: Take steps together to improve human rights

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/lffbts

The European Union and South Africa should take steps to enhance cooperation on international human rights issues when they meet this week, Human Rights Watch said in letters to South Africa's minister of international cooperation and the prime minister of Sweden, which currently holds the EU presidency.

Africa: UNHCR hails 40th anniversary of landmark convention

2009-09-11

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32006

September 10 marks the 40th anniversary of an African refugee convention, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) hails as “groundbreaking” for having paved the way for millions on the continent to receive protection and assistance. Under the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee was defined as a person having “a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

Burundi: Congolese refugees too scared to move camp

2009-09-12

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86094

More than 2,000 refugees in Burundi have rejected UN appeals to move to a new camp for fear they could be exposed to attack. The refugees, from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Banyamulenge community, are housed in a camp in Gihinga, in Burundi’s central Mwaro province. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and the Burundian government

Niger: Lull in conflict favours return in the north

2009-09-11

http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/niger

Since the conflict between the Nigerien government and Tuareg groups intensified in 2007 following the creation of the Mouvement Nigérien pour la Justice, around 11,000 people have been displaced from their homes in mountainous areas north of Agadez. The conflict has abated in 2009, and many of the internally displaced people (IDPs) have started going back to their homes, whether spontaneously or with assistance from the local municipalities and the international community.

North Africa: Egypt must investigate border killings - AI

2009-09-12

http://www.afrol.com/articles/34130

The Egyptian authorities must control their forces at the border with Israel and prevent them from killing migrants attempting to cross it, Amnesty International has appealed. The call follows the border incident this year, in which four men were shot dead by Egyptian security forces as they attempted to cross the border into Israel. Two others were also injured in the incident.

Western Sahara: UNHCR chief visits displaced camps

2009-09-11

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31973

The head of the United Nations refugee agency has kicked off a five-day tour to North Africa to assess the conditions for people still sheltering in makeshift camps in Algeria after fleeing conflict in Western Sahara in the mid-1970s. UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has been providing assistance to the Saharawi people since they fled to western Algeria in 1975-76, after fighting broke out between Morocco and the Frente Polisario – a Saharawi movement – at the end of Spain’s colonial administration of Western Sahara.

Kenya: Activists released

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/mhb8ys

On Friday morning, Philo Ikonya and Jacob Odipo appeared before Resident Magistrate Ireri in Kibera Law courts to answer to charges brought against them for allegedly participating in an unlawful assembly. They had been arrested Thursday while demonstrating outside Integrity House in protest of the re-appointment of Aaron Ringera.

Morocco: Forum gives youth tools for social change

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/l7t6rt

Some 200 young Moroccans from sixteen regions around Morocco attended the first Civil Society Forum from September 8th-12th in Rabat. The forum was organised by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with co-operation from the youth ministry, under the theme "Mobilise, plead, change".

South Africa: Mitchells Plain traders facing eviction

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/58712

On September 10, 2009, in the Mitchells Plain Town Centre, traders were informed that the City of Cape Town would not attend a meeting that was scheduled by Traders. CHATA (Concerned Hawkers and Traders Association) was informed of this cancellation on the grounds that the city claims they cannot negotiate with the Traders. The meeting was intended by CHATA to inform the city of the irregularities and unfair & unconstitutional policies that have been implemented in the renovation and relocation process of the Town Centre.
PRESS RELEASE: Mitchells Plain Traders Facing Eviction Next Week
September 11, 2009
Contact: Mischka Cassiem 0731286657 or 0745257336

On September 10, 2009, in the Mitchells Plain Town Centre, the concerned Traders were informed that the City of Cape Town would not attend the meeting that was scheduled by Traders. CHATA (Concerned Hawkers and Traders Association) was informed of this cancellation on the grounds that the city claims they cannot negotiate with the Traders. The meeting was intended by CHATA to inform the city of the irregularities and unfair & unconstitutional policies that have become implemented in the renovation and relocation process of the Town Centre. City representative, Mr. Fritz, informed CHATA chairperson, Mischka Cassiem, that the city cannot meet the “demands” of the Traders. The city also claimed that the trader umbrella body must be consulted by CHATA with any further questions about the process.

CHATA feels that this is a poor and lame excuse. The city wants Traders to hear from other Traders the issues that the city has imposed. This makes the city not liable for the rules and unconstitutional provisions that they have put in place in order to further their own agenda and control the Traders. If Traders have questions on the relocation process that will inevitably evict over half of the current Traders, the city should me more than willing to answer these questions and at least attend meetings that have been called. CHATA knows that the city did not attend the meeting because it has also recently become aware of the fact that CHATA is now affiliated with SAMWU, COSATU and StreetNet. The strength of the traders will not be broken.

Mitchells Plain Town Centre Traders have been under the threat of eviction for over two months now. New bays have been numbered and allocated in a process that is undemocratic. The consulting party for the City of Cape Town has informed Traders that the relocation will begin next week. Mr. Paul Williamson of the City of Cape Town was supposed to issue letters informing Traders about the next phase of the relocation, but these letters were never received. There is currently an investigation on the urban renewal program in Mitchells Plain, so why is the city still moving forward with the relocation process? The process should be stopped until at least the investigation has been completed. Mr. Waleed George is also no longer the facilitator and consultant between the city and the traders as his contract was terminated by the city. What is happening in Mitchells Plain? Why is the city not following through with its demands? Why are the Traders not being informed?

The issue is pressing and the livelihoods of many traders are at stake.

African Diaspora: Special issue on the African Diaspora in China - Call for Papers

Adams Bodomo

2009-09-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/58594

This is a call for papers that address many issues involving all aspects of Africans in China: issues of history, society, culture, language, and Africa - China relations, among others. How are these Africans being influenced by their Chinese hosts and how do they in turn influence their hosts? How does their presence in China impact on trade between Africa and China and how do these Africans contribute to the economies of the countries they originate from? Is this new and emerging African diaspora different from other African diasporas? What theoretical and methodological insights does the study of these African migrants in China have on general theories of migration and diasporan studies?
The African Studies Program, University of Hong Kong is editing a special issue of the journal:

African Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World (published by Brill: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=212&pid=26610)

This special issue is on the African Diaspora in China.

As an African resident in Hong Kong and China, and doing research work on this topic, I have witnessed a steady stream of visibility and interest in the African presence in China since 1997. With China's entry into the WTO in December 2001, there has been a dramatic increase of Africans coming to China to buy goods for sale back home in Africa, and this has created a sudden and comprehensive presence of Africans in Guangzhou, which has been receiving a lot of coverage in daily news magazines on issues of immigration irregularities.

However, behind all these is a much more positive presence and impact of Africans in China, especially their robust though often little recognized contribution to the development of Africa - China relations.

It is necessary to do detailed and sustained in-depth on-site studies beyond some of the current rampant one-day journalistic coverage and fly-by academic writing to really come to a deeper, more reflective understanding of Africans in China. As we know, beyond the negative news coming out of Guangzhou, there are substantial numbers of Africans who are employed and engaged in both the formal and informal economies of China in major cities such as Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and, of course, Beijing. What are these Africans doing in China? How are they received? And how does their presence contribute to a general understanding of larger issues about Africa-in-China and China-in-Africa?

I call for papers that address many issues involving all aspects of Africans in China: issues of history, society, culture, language, and Africa - China relations, among others. How are these Africans being influenced by their Chinese hosts and how do they in turn influence their hosts? How does their presence in China impact on trade between Africa and China and how do these Africans contribute to the economies of the countries they originate from? Is this new and emerging African diaspora different from other African diasporas? What theoretical and methodological insights does the study of these African migrants in China have on general theories of migration and diasporan studies?

These and many other issues can be covered in your contribution which must be limited to NOT more than 6000 words. We have space for only 6 to 8 articles, so no one, not even me the editor, is guaranteed a place. We all have to compete for a place, so please write as concisely as possible, present only original data/material and ensure that issues of literature review, methodologies, theories, among others are well-addressed.

We are working with a tight schedule. All papers must be received by January 2010 for internal review by me and a few colleagues. We will then select some and send to the editors of African Diaspora by May 2010. The editors say they will in turn send out papers for a rigorous peer review. Good luck to all of us!

To enable me to respond to the editors with a formal proposal, kindly send me a one-page write up of your intended contribution containing title of paper, name, address and affiliation, along with an abstract of no more than 500 words. This document should reach my editorial assistant, Ms Iris Yu, before 30th September at the following address:

Ms Iris Yu
Editorial Assistant
African Diaspora, Special Issue on Africans in China

African Studies Programme
School of Humanities
University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong
irisss@hku.hk
Phone: +(852)22415148

I look forward to putting together a rich collection of articles that inform us about Africa’s newest diaspora.

Dr Adams Bodomo
Associate Professor of Linguistics and African Studies
University of Hong Kong

Emerging powers news roundup

2009-09-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/58719

A) Trade, Investment and Aid

1) Chinese investors show interest in Olokola deep seaport
More Chinese investors have indicated interest in the development of a deep seaport at Olokola Free Trade Zone in Ogun, Nigeria.
more

2) China pledges more backing to Kenya
China will support Kenya to overcome challenges posed by the current global economic crisis, incoming Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Deng Hongbo has said.
more

3) Chinese Miner Buys Into Kenya Titanium Project
Chinese mining company Jinchuan has purchased a 70 per cent stake in Canada-based Tiomin Kenya Ltd in order to finance a delayed titanium and precious minerals mining project in Kenya.
more

4) China Expands Investment in South Africa and the Whole Continent
Although trade has declined between China and Africa in the global slowdown, China still sees this as a good time to expand investment in Africa. With the help of the China-Africa Development Fund (CADF), China's large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are entering the field of industrial infrastructure in South Africa.
more

5) U.S.-Africa Trade Has Growing Potential
Exports to the U.S. from sub-Saharan Africa fell nearly 60% year-on-year in the first half of 2009. Nevertheless, the U.S. remains a significant trading partner for African countries with the prospect for deeper ties, despite the current dominance of oil in trade relations and increasing competition from China in the region.
more

6) WB chief wants CIC in Africa
Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, has spent half of his time during his latest trip to China in persuading local companies including the country's sovereign fund to invest in Africa.
more

7) Namibia set to supply uranium, diamonds direct to India
The Namibian government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on geology and mineral resources and an agreement on coopera- tion in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy with its Indian counterpart, which will see the African country supplying uranium to the South Asian country to power the latter’s civilian nuclear power plants.
more

8) India to invest $10 billion in IMF
India is to invest up to $10 billion in the International Monetary Fund as part of a major thrust to wrest a greater say in the running of international financial institutions, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced.
more

9) Standard Bank sees Chinese returning to Africa
Standard Bank Group, Africa's top bank by assets, expects to seal a dozen major lending deals in Africa in cooperation with its China partner in the next year, as resource-hungry Chinese firms begin returning to the continent.
more

10) Brazil's Big Interest in Exploring Phosphates in Middle East
Bilateral investment was among the main themes discussed by the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, with representatives of the top echelon of the government of Tunisia Tunis during a recent visit.
more

11) Former nuclear pariah India seeks uranium stocks
Energy-starved India, armed with permission to buy atomic fuel from around the world after the end of a three-decade ban, is courting new partners alongside old friends in its global hunt for uranium.
more

12) Egypt looks to China to make up FDI shortfall
Egypt is seeking increased direct investment from China in a bid to shore up dwindling overseas backing for the northern African country amid the global economic downturn.
more

B. Company News

1) Asian Multinational Corporations Poised for Global Success
Asian Multinational Corporations Poised for Global Success and Asian Region
May be World's Most Influential Economy by 2020. Multinational corporations based in China, India, Japan and South Korea have unprecedented opportunity to succeed in the current global business environment, according to a study released by international communications and public affairs consultancy Fleishman-Hillard on the sidelines of the WEF in Dalian.
more

2) MTN shareholders want more from $24bn accord with Bharti
MTN Group shareholders want more for their stakes in Africa's biggest cellular operator after it reached a $24 billion (R181bn) share purchase accord with India's Bharti Airtel, the first step in their planned merger.
more

3) Angola blocks sale of Marathon field stake to China
Angola has blocked the sale of Marathon Oil's 20% stake in an oil block in the African nation to Chinese state owned firms CNOOC and Sinopec
more

4) Bharti sweetens MTN offer as deal deadline looms
Indian mobile operator Bharti Airtel's move to sweeten a $24-billion deal with South Africa's MTN is a key step in reaching an agreement as a deadline nears, analysts and sources said on Friday.
more

5) China's CNPC gets $30 bln loan for overseas buys
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), parent of Asia's largest oil and gas producer PetroChina said it secured a $30 billion state loan to fund overseas expansion, as Beijing seeks to secure resources for the world's fastest-growing major economy.
more

C. Cooperation, Strategic Partnerships and Global Issues

1) China-Tanzania cooperation fruitful in various fields
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Liu Xinsheng termed the bilateral relations between China and Tanzania as an "example" of sincere cooperation and unity between China and Africa, even among the developing countries.
more

2) South Africa, India are strategic partners, says SA Trade and Industry Minister
South Africa and India both agree that their bilateral relationship is a strategic one, said South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies last week. “India is already South Africa’s tenth-largest foreign investor,” he highlighted.
more

3) India says WTO stand-off is over, Doha talks will resume
India hosted a meeting of the world’s trade ministers which aimed to revive the stalled Doha round of trade negotiations.
more

4) City of Cape Town Strengthens Relations with China
The Mayor of the City of Cape Town, Dan Plato, and the Mayor of the City of Huangshan, Song Guoquan, signed a friendship agreement that will facilitate closer economic ties between the two cities.
more

5) Chinese President puts forward four proposals for improving ties with Central Africa
President Hu Jintao put forward four proposals for improving ties with Central Africa when meeting with his counterpart Francois Bozize Yangouvonda.
more

D. Rivalries and Tensions

1) Maldives, Mauritius new centres of Sino-Indian rivalry
For a change, India is responding swiftly to the intended Chinese encroachment in a region it has seen as its traditional sphere of influence.
more

2) China Oil Deal Is New Source of Strife Among Iraqis
While the relationship between the CNPC and the Iraqi government has gone smoothly, the presence of a foreign company with vast resources drilling for oil in the province of Wasit, a poor, rural corner of Iraq has awakened a wave of discontent.
more

3) China will come on our terms
China is one of the few countries close to the long-embattled Zimbabwe government, but that did not deter Mutambara from challenging Beijing to do more to help development.
more

E. Agricultural Scramble

1) SA farmers in new scramble for Africa
South Africa is joining a “green rush” for the African continent. The Republic of the Congo has offered Agri SA 10-million hectares for South African farmers to produce maize and soya beans as well as to establish dairy and poultry farms.
more

F. FOCAC News

1) Ugandan President commissions school donated by Chinese government
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday commissioned a secondary school in central Uganda donated by the Chinese government to boost education in the East African country.
more

2) Interview: Zimbabwe benefits a great deal through FOCAC
Zimbabwe has benefited a great deal over the past years through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Secretary for Regional Integration and International Cooperation for Foreign Ministry, Tadeous Chifamba, said.
more

Gabon: Travel ban for opposition

2009-09-11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8247830.stm

Gabon has barred opposition leaders from leaving the country following recent riots over claims of fraud in last month's presidential election. One defeated candidate said he had been prevented from flying to Ivory Coast. A minister said the ban would last while the violence was investigated.

Madagascar: Security forces teargas protesters

2009-09-11

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58A0C720090911

Security forces in Madagascar fired tear gas on Friday to try and disperse hundreds of opposition supporters gathering for a rally in the capital of the Indian Ocean island. Backers of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana massed in a park near a central square, but security forces moved in saying the demonstration had not been authorised.

Niger: ECOWAS asked to intervene in crisis

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/mxncp5

The ECOWAS Parliament has called on ECOWAS and the African Union to "intervene immediately" for the restoration of constitutionalism in Niger, where President Mamadou Tandja has changed the country's constitution to allow him to run again when his second term runs out in December. The call was contained in a resolution of the ECOWAS Parliament, adopted Wednesday at the current 2009 Second Ordinary Session held in Abuja, the seat of the parliament.

Southern Africa: AU to sanction Madagascar

2009-09-11

http://www.africanews.com/site/African_Union_to_sanction_Madagascar/list_messages/26880

The African Union condemned Madagascar's Andry Rajoelina's decision to appoint a new government and said it may impose sanctions on the authorities and their supporters. The country has been rocked by turmoil since Rajoelina toppled former President Marc Ravalomanana from power in March this year.

Africa: Sudan could owe south millions in oil revenue - report

2009-09-11

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSHEA659427

Campaigners say they have found serious discrepancies in reports of Sudan's oil revenues which could mean Khartoum's government was underpaying its strife-torn south by hundreds of millions of dollars. The findings by UK-based Global Witness could spark a political storm in Sudan, where relations between its Muslim north and mostly Christian south have remained tense since the end of their two-decade civil war in 2005.

Kenya: Who loses if the KACA is shut down?

2009-09-11

http://blog.marsgroupkenya.org/?p=1196

Although widely derided as an expensive toothless bulldog – and even as a fig leaf for the corrupt – the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) is Kenya’s premiere statutory anti-corruption agency recognized as such by the United Nations Convention against Corruption and the African Union. It has been in operation since 2004 and has investigated among many other pending mega corruption Scandals.

Africa: Poverty reduction strategies during post-conflict recovery

2009-09-11

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3485

What is the role, relevance and effectiveness of PRSPs in supporting post-conflict recovery in Africa? This paper from the Economic Policy Research Centre in Uganda discusses challenges in developing PRSPs using case studies from Zambia, Malawi, Ghana, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola and Uganda. It concludes that not all post-conflict African countries have successfully developed PRSPs.

Africa: Small hydro plants to help boost rural development

2009-09-11

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58A07L20090911

Mini hydro plants could be the answer to a lack of power in rural Africa, especially as larger power projects are put on hold due to limited cash and abundant red tape, industry officials say. Analysts say the continent could generate as much as 330,000 megawatts (MW) from its hydro reserves, yet only some 7 percent of that potential has been exploited so far.

Gambia: AfDB gives US$5m for fisheries project

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/l3xbpr

The Gambian parliament has ratified a Supplementary Loan Agreement amounting to about US$ 5 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the financing of Artisanal Fisheries Development Project, according to official sources. The repayment period of the loan has been spread over 20 years after a seven-year grace period starting from the date the agreement was signed.

Kenya: Oxfam warns of new urban disaster

2009-09-11

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/AHHD-7VRLCA?OpenDocument

Kenya is facing a new urban time-bomb, with millions of Nairobi residents suffering a daily struggle for food and water as the divide between rich and poor widens, international aid agency Oxfam warned in a new report. A combination of falling household income, rising prices, and poor governance is making life a misery for the poor majority in Kenya's capital, the report on 'Urban Poverty and Vulnerability in Kenya' said.

Malawi: Fertiliser subsidies or cash transfers – renewing the debate

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/lumqxk

Fertiliser subsidies have received a lot of attention, and praise for success in combating food shortages in Africa. The most notable case is that of Malawi, which introduced a fertiliser subsidy in 2005. In late 2007, the New York Times, for example, published an article hailing Malawi’s success in fighting famine. But in a new research paper, Professor Frank Ellis of the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), argues that while fertiliser subsidies have a number of benefits, they also have limitations, and should not be seen as an alternative for other social protection measures for the poor — most notably, social cash transfers (pensions and child support grants, for example).

Malawi: Government defends tobacco expulsions

2009-09-11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8246712.stm

Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika has defended his decision to deport four senior foreign tobacco buyers for flouting minimum-price rules. "For a long time I've been warning these exploitative colonialists to pay fair prices to farmers," he said.

Africa: Continent urged to invest in TB

2009-09-11

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032493

Dr Jorge Sampaio, the United Nations Special Envoy on Tuberculosis recently addressed the 59th World Health Organisation Regional Committee for Africa in Kigali, Rwanda. He reminded ministers that putting money in TB is one of the most cost effective public health investments.

Africa: Sickle cell children dying 'preventable' deaths

2009-09-12

http://tinyurl.com/modk26

Thousands of African children with sickle cell anaemia are dying needlessly every year from preventable infections, say researchers. About 230,000 children are born every year with sickle cell anaemia in Africa. The genetic disease causes the formation of sickle-shaped red blood cells which block blood vessels, leading to pain, infections and organ damage.

Global: Child mortality drop 'too slow'

2009-09-11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8249786.stm

The UN children's agency says child mortality is decreasing, but the rate of decline is not enough. A new report says more than eight million children under five died last year with pneumonia and diarrhoea the two leading causes of death. Unicef says 40% of under-five deaths take place in just three countries - Nigeria, India and DR Congo.

Rethinking AIDS 2009 International Conference

November 6-8, 2009

2009-09-11

http://ra2009.org/

Rethinking AIDS 2009 will consist of talks that question the widely held dogma that HIV causes AIDS, including whether HIV exists, whether it is sexually transmitted, whether HIV tests are accurate and whether AIDS drugs are safe and effective. The social, psychologic and legal impacts of an HIV diagnosis will also be considered, as well as alternative health approaches for people whose health has been damaged by an HIV diagnosis, by the prescription of AIDS drugs or who have been diagnosed with an AIDS-defining illness.

South Africa: NHI timeline leaves little space for public comment

2009-09-11

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032500

Government publishes an ambitious timetable for preparing health institutions for the National health Insurance scheme - but leaves virtually no space for public comment. The public will have very little time to comment on the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, as it will only see the official plan in November.

Southern Africa: One infection will be avoided for every 5 to 15 men circumcised - study

2009-09-11

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/F0E2B9AE-E969-43EA-AA47-4D4B5DDB9D14.asp

In the high HIV prevalence countries of southern Africa, between five and fifteen men will need to be circumcised to prevent one HIV infection in the ten following years, at a cost of between $150 and $900 per infection prevented. These are the conclusions of an expert review of mathematical models of the impact of male circumcision, organised by UNAIDS, WHO and the South African Centre for Epidemiological Analysis, and published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

Nigeria: Investment in primary education must include teachers

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48414

Nigeria has over the past 10 years recorded high enrolment and completion rates in primary school education. From 67 percent in 1990, enrolment jumped to 74 percent by 2000, and 91 percent by 2007. The schooling completion rate also improved from 60 percent in 1990 to 76 percent in 2003, and 82 percent by 2007. Enrolment continues to rise.

Southern Africa: Malawi has no free nursery schools

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/lu3tv5

Most Malawian children are struggling to acquire pre-school education before enroll in primary schools because nursery education is not free. "In Malawi, children aged between 6 to 8 years are generally enrolled in primary school. The problem, however, is that many of these children miss out on early learning and stimulation that would have better prepared them for school," said Secretary for Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development Olive Chikankheni.

Uganda: Makerere honours Mazrui

Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University,New York

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/58621

Since the source of the Nile is in Uganda, and Ali Mazrui’s professorial career began at Makerere University in Uganda, Mazrui has often described his entire academic career as “a child of the Nile.” His Inaugural Lecture when Makerere appointed him Professor was entitled Ancient Greece in African Political Thought but was in fact a salute to Uganda and the Nile in the history of civilization.
AFRICAN SCHOLARS AS ARCHITECTS OF A NEW CIVILIZATION: MAKERERE UNIVERSITY’S MEGA-TRIBUTE TO ALI A. MAZRUI

Since the source of the Nile is in Uganda, and Ali Mazrui’s professorial career began atMakerere University in Uganda, Mazrui has often described his entire academic career as “a child of the Nile.” His Inaugural Lecture when Makerere appointed him Professor was entitled Ancient Greece in African Political Thought but was in fact a salute to Uganda and the Nile in the history of civilization.

Now Mazrui as intellectual son of the Nile is about to be honored in an exceptional way by the land from which the great river begins its long journey to Egypt and theMediterranean. In Sudan the White Nile from Uganda is joined by the Blue Nile fromEthiopia.

Endowed professorial chairs and chairs which bear the name of a major political or cultural figure are very rare on African university campuses. In eastern Africa such endowed professorial chairs are virtually unknown.

However, Makerere University in Uganda is about to break new ground. It is planning to establish an endowed chair bearing the name of Ali A. Mazrui, its first African professor in the humanities in Makerere’s history. In 1965 Makerere had given Ali Mazrui accelerated promotion to full professor of political science in less than two years after he had been appointed lecturer. The following year Ali Mazrui became East Africa’s first indigenous Dean of Social Sciences (all previous Deans having been either British or American).

Makerere plans to raise a minimum of $5 million for the Mazrui Chair and a minimum of another $10 million for constructing a special Ali A. Mazrui Center for Global Studies. Makerere is hoping to raise this $15 million by the time of Mazrui’s 80th birthday in February 2013. Whether Mazrui will be well enough to attend the culmination of the project in 2013 remains to be seen. Makerere wishes him continuing health in the years ahead.

The twin-concept of a Mazrui Chair and a Mazrui Center for Global Studies was ceremonially launched at Makerere University in the third week of August 2009 in the presence of Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi, other Cabinet Ministers of Uganda, foreign ambassadors, other dignitaries of Uganda, as well as the intellectual elites of Makerere and sister universities.

Ali Mazrui laid the foundation stone of the proposed Center for Global Studies, and then joined a procession from the Faculty of Social Sciences to the main Assembly hall of Makerere’s main building. For health reasons Ali Mazrui was in a wheel chair as the procession marched to the Assembly hall. Mazrui’s wheel chair was pushed by no less a person than the Prime Minister of the country, Professor Nsibambi.

President Yoweri Museveni’s written tribute to Ali Mazrui was distributed at the ceremony to coincide with what was described as the “enthronement of Ali Mazrui”. A special wooden throne had been constructed for the occasion. Mazrui’s enstoolment was described as “an intellectual coronation.”

Professor Museveni saluted Ali Mazrui as “Africa’s illustrious scholar” and “one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals.” Uganda’s Head of State added the following words:

Uganda is proud and honored to be the “cradle” of Professor Ali Mazrui’s global scholarship and fame. We give him special recognition as one of Makerere’s renowned former Professors and Deans.

President Museveni later received Ali Mazrui at State House, and had a one-to-one private conversation with the Professor for one hour and a half.

In August 2009 Mazrui’s old Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere awarded him a Citation of Excellence which proclaimed the following:

Makerere, mother of all universities in eastern Africa, immortalizes her world famous son by launching the Ali Mazrui Chair and Scholarship Endowment and the East African Ali A. Mazrui Center for Global Studies in perpetual honor and recognition of Ali A. Mazrui, D. Phil (Oxon) CBS.

Makerere is indeed the oldest institution of higher education in east Africa and the first to award degrees in the region. It produced at least two Heads of State of Tanzania (Julius K. Nyerere and Benjamin Mkapa), several Heads of State of Uganda (including Milton Obote and Y. K. Lule), and one Head of State of Kenya (Mwai Kibaki). This is quite apart from dozens of alumni who became cabinet ministers, ambassadors, priests, professors and such world–class novelists and writers as Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya and Paul Theroux of Britain and the United States.

At his “intellectual coronation” at Makerere on August 11, 2009, the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Makerere, Dr. Lillian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza, who was also Professor of law, turned to the honoree and said:

I will thus say to you, Professor Mazrui, that you represent the best of what this institution has consistently worked to stand for…In essence you stand for fearless integrity…You, Professor Mazrui, are an icon of this generation of knowledge seekers.

As for the house on campus in which Professor Mazrui spent his final years at Makerere, the university is considering the possibility of making it part of the Mazruiana project. One option would be to turn the house into the campus residence of whoever will occupy the Ali A. Mazrui Endowed Chair. The second option under consideration is to turn the house into a museum of the history of MakerereUniversity, both colonial and post-colonial. One of the rooms could explicitly be reserved for what are called “the golden years of Makerere” when Makerere MedicalSchool was strong enough to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for medicine. These were also the years when Mazrui was Makerere’s professor and his public lectures always packed the main Assembly hall to overflowing. Dozens of students missed their supper in order to get a seat at one of those public lectures by Makerere’s dazzling professor of political science.

Makerere is planning to celebrate Ali Mazrui’s 77th birthday in the last week of February 2010. The events may include a symposium on “The Global Face of pan-Africanism: From Okot Bitek to Barack Obama.” Ali Mazrui may be delivering the concluding address at the symposium.

The Mazruiana Extravaganza of February 2010 may attract two or three former Heads of State who have had a special relationship with Ali Mazrui over the years. It is also very likely that the occasion will be graced by either President Mwai Kibaki or Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya, as well as by President Yoweri Museveni and Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi of Uganda. None of them have confirmed yet.

The world’s largest river begins in Uganda, and has fertilized civilizations across the centuries. In August 2009 President Yoweri Museveni recognized Ali Mazrui as one more intellectual son of the Nile who had participated in the narrative of civilization. In the words of Uganda’s Head of State, addressed to Ali Mazrui on August 11, 2009:

I take this opportunity to welcome Professor Mazrui back home to his intellectual cradle. Intellectuals worldwide have benefitted from your tremendous contribution to world civilization.

Drafted by Staff of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies,
State University of New York at Binghamton, NY

Edited by
Seifudein Adem, Ph.D.
Institute of Global Cultural Studies,
State University of New York at Binghamton, New York

Zambia: Bicycles help girls go further

2009-09-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48349

Nine kilometres each way, rain or shine: That's how far Suzanne Chisulo has to travel to school each day. Chisulo is one of 120 girls who faced problems getting to the Ndapula Community School. Many of the girls were missing lessons at least twice a week.

Africa: Zuma calls for 'just climate deal'

2009-09-11

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58A0FJ20090911

Global climate talks aimed at reducing harmful emissions should be resolved fairly, taking into account the interests of both rich and poor countries, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Friday. South Africa, whose over-reliance on coal-fired power stations make it Africa's worst polluter, said on Thursday it would not agree to any emission-cutting targets if doing so hurt its recession-hit economy.

Global: Increased funding for renewable energy projects

2009-09-12

http://www.afrol.com/articles/34131

The World Bank Group announced today that its financing of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and programmes in developing countries has gone up 24 percent in the last fiscal year to reach $3.3 billion, the highest ever. Total renewable energy and energy efficiency commitments for the year ended June 30, 2009 accounted for more than 40 percent of total Bank Group energy lending.

Kenya: Appeal launched to save forest complex

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/n54elk

Kenya has launched a multi-million dollar appeal to help restore a vital forest resource which is threatened with extinction due to human encroachment. The appeal to save the Mau Forests Complex was launched late Wednesday by the Government of Kenya at a Partners Forum hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Kenya: UN assisting in flood preparations

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/lqhpdh

The UN is helping Kenya prepare to mitigate the impact of potentially-lethal torrential rains anticipated in the last three months of the year due to the El Nino weather pattern. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) made this known in a statement issued on Thursday in New York, US.

Brazil: Government liable for illegal on landless movement wiretap

2009-09-11

http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/7622.html

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) condemned Brazil for illegal wiretaps of the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) in the southern state of Paraná.

Tanzania: Evictions of Maasai communities

2009-09-11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqP2MRuJ4Ac

Following the evictions and burning of the houses of Maasai communities in Loliondo, these You-Tube films, part I and part II, provide documentary evidence of the abuses allegedly perpetrated by the Government of Tanzania and Ortello Business Company.

Uganda: Dozens feared dead in Kampala riots

Museveni seeks dialogue

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/ntfouu

As riots by supporters of Uganda's dominant Buganda kingdom over its (kingdom) disagreement with the government continued in various parts of the country, amid fears that dozens of lives may have been lost, President Yoweri Museveni has opted for dialogue to end the violence.

Gambia: President pardons six journalists

2009-09-12

http://www.ifex.org/the_gambia/2009/09/09/journalists_pardoned/

Six Gambian journalists imprisoned on charges ranging from defamation to "seditious publication" were released on 3 September on a presidential pardon, report the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and other IFEX members. The journalists were convicted for issuing a joint statement holding President Yahya Jammeh's government responsible for journalist Deyda Hydara's murder in 2004.

Guinea: IFJ Condemns threats on freedom of expression

2009-09-11

http://tinyurl.com/klc8o2

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the harassment and intimidation campaign against journalists in Guinea and the consistent threats on freedom of expression since the advent of the military junta in the country. “Since the advent of the military junta, we have witnessed more and more threats, and arrests that are squarely designed to intimidate journalists,” declared Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa Office.

Niger: New law grants president absolute control over media regulatory body

2009-09-12

http://www.ifex.org/niger/2009/09/09/president_controls_regulatory_body/

On August 28, 2009, President Mamadou Tandja signed into law a bill granting him absolute control over the Supreme Council for Communications (CSC), the country's media regulatory body. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)'s correspondent reported that Article 130 of the new Constitution that was recently adopted under a controversial referendum in early August has reduced the previous 11 members to seven. It also gives the president the power to appoint four members, including the CSC's president.

Somalia: Radio Horyaal director jailed in Somaliland

2009-09-12

http://www.ifex.org/somalia/2009/09/11/osman_arrested/

Police should release Mohamed Osman, director of Radio Horyaal, who has been held without charge since his arrest on Saturday outside parliament in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said.

Sudan: Trouser-wearing journalist released

2009-09-12

http://www.ifex.org/sudan/2009/09/09/journalist_trousers_convicted/

A Sudanese journalist was convicted on 7 September of "sensational dressing" and jailed for wearing trousers, report the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and the International Press Institute (IPI). Protesters in support of Lubna Ahmed Hussein were beaten outside the court and reporters barred from the proceedings.

Uganda: Four radio stations closed

2009-09-11

http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/11722.html

The Government of Uganda has closed four independently-owned radio stations and suspended their operating licenses for what it called “flouting rules by inciting people, mainly the Baganda tribe, against President Yoweri Museveni, his government and against other tribes”.

Global: It takes a Villager

Nick Mwaluko

2009-09-11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-mwaluko/it-takes-a-villager-kenya_b_281208.html

Owino Odhiambo left his tiny Kenyan village less than a decade ago to immerse himself completely in American culture. Equipped with American citizenship, two degrees, and five years experience working as a dedicated graphic designer in New York City, Owino is currently unemployed. "My entire village sponsored me to come to America. In turn, I am expected to support them but now, without work, I can hardly support myself," says Owino, the oldest of ten siblings and first in his family to travel outside his village.

Burkina Faso: 88,000 displaced by floods

2009-09-11

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32009&Cr=africa&Cr1=food

An estimated 48,000 people uprooted by severe flooding in Burkina Faso are sheltering in temporary accommodation such as schools, churches and public buildings while another 40,000 are living with host families, the United Nations has reported. A UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team that went to Burkina Faso in the wake of the recent flooding also found that facilities in many of the buildings in which people are taking shelter, especially sanitation, are under strain.

DRC: Letter to Clinton from elected officals

2009-09-11

http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/new/letter_clinton.php

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heard from a broad cross-section of Congolese society about how the United States can play a constructive role in bringing an end to the conflict and supporting local Congolese institutions. This is a letter from elected officials in the South Kivu province (one of the two most affected provinces by the wars of aggression against the Congolese people) that captures the essence of what many Congolese have argued since the first invasion in 1996. The world community cannot say that there are no answers or that the problem is too complex to comprehensively address.

Kenya: New attack against Samburu

Mike Rainy

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/58630

At 6 am on Saturday, 06 Sept. 2009,t is reported that 300 heavily armed Borana and Somali gunmen attacked the Samburu tribe at Losesia, in Samburu District, near Archer's Post, approx 38 km from Lerata. In addition to killing 3 herdsmen and injuring 2 others, the militia stole 3765 head of cattle, 2635 goats and sheep, 141 camels, and 19 donkeys, according to Samburu East MP Raphael Letimelo. All livestock were removed in lorries.
At 6 am on Saturday, 06 Sept. 2009,t is reported that 300 heavily armed Borana and Somali gunmen attacked the Samburu tribe at Losesia, in Samburu District, near Archer's Post, approx 38 km from Lerata. In addition to killing 3 herdsmen and injuring 2 others, the militia stole 3765 head of cattle, 2635 goats and sheep, 141 camels, and 19 donkeys, according to Samburu East MP Raphael Letimelo. All livestock were removed in lorries.

It is believed they were assisted by the militia group, Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), according to a statement given by Archer's Post Councilor Lukinwai, who also stated the Samburu tribesmen were on their own land and the attack was unrelated to water or grazing rights disputes.
Threats of more severe attacks on the Samburu tribe had been made by Borana and Somali in the Isiolo District for several weeks, with the Samburu people told to 'prepare for doom' and warned foreign militia troops from Southern Ethiopia and Somalia had been brought in to help fight and eradicate the Samburu.

Police were called repeatedly to assist and ignored all requests for help, even those made by the District MP and local Councilors. When police failed to assist, distress calls were made to NRT to aid the injured, but they were unable to respond.

These attacks occur during a severe drought which has resulted in widespread famine, which had been complicated by a maize shortage and police attacks on Samburu tribe in February, when over 5000 livestock were removed, villagers beaten and strafed at by police in helicopter, with lorries being used in the operation to move the livestock. At that time, 2 children had been kidnapped and brutally murdered in addition to other murders and human rights violations, such as the use of chemical weaponry on young children. The further loss of livestock is certain to cause profound suffering and further loss of life.

Earlier this month, reports of Samburu people being killed for body organs were reported in the Samburu Highlands, where similar attacks and livestock thefts have occurred on the Samburu, leading some to be concerned about early genocide trends.

Somalia: Puntland warns of looming crisis as drought bites

2009-09-12

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86086

Thousands of people affected by a severe drought in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, are in desperate need of assistance, with officials describing the situation as “very critical”. "We are at a critical stage and if help does not come within weeks the situation could develop into a catastrophe,” Abdullahi Abdirahman Ahmed, head of the Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Agency of Puntland (HADMA), said.

East Africa: Is Uganda starving telecoms growth through high taxes?

2009-09-12

http://tinyurl.com/kjctw7

Uganda was one of the first countries in Africa to develop a policy on universal access to telecommunications. Despite several blunders relating to the liberalisation of its telecoms sector, the country is held in high esteem by many for what is seen to be a far-reaching and proactive approach to providing access to information and communications technology (ICT) for the poor.

Senegal: Behind the guise of competitive prices

2009-09-12

http://tinyurl.com/ofg35o

Internet cafés are in decline in Senegal. These access points to knowledge and communication, once found on every street corner in Dakar and open day and night, are no longer so widely available. Thanks to the infrastructure and development of bandwidth put in place by incumbent operator Sonatel, the high cost of internet has fallen rapidly, from XOF 1,000 (USD 2.15) or 1,500 (USD 3.25) to XOF 300 (USD 0.65) or 200 (USD 0.43) an hour, making it possible for more people, from students to street vendors to private consultants, to surf the net from home (for those who can afford it) or elsewhere at a relatively accessible price.

South Africa: More bandwidth but no price reductions

2009-09-11

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

The battle of the bandwidth suppliers has begun, with MTN and MWeb not dropping their fees but instead increasing bandwidth to end users. This is a sort of price war in reverse: the prices stay the same but the volume is increased. MWeb is targeting its 300,000 residential customers by increasing the size of its data bundles. Subscribers with a 1GB data cap will now get 2GB for an unchanged R145 per month. Users with a 2GB cap will get 3GB for R219, and 3GB packages rise to 5GB for R299.

Zimbabwe: ZIG Watch : Issue 8

Sokwanele

2009-09-11

http://www.sokwanele.com/

August saw the continuation of the chaos in Zimbabwe, with ever more breaches of the GPA being recorded, the majority of which fell into the following categories:
* wanton politically motivated violence, or violence driven by politicians or petty officials, * harassment, and deprivation of freedom, of individuals through contrived arrests on spurious charges, * widespread corruption involving senior public and uniformed figures, * the deprivation of the right to Freedom of Expression, and the abuse thereof, * violent, unconstitutional, invasions and seizures of property and farms, and * deliberate attempts to derail the Constitution-making process.

Global: Fellowships for Threatened Scholars

IIE Scholar Rescue Fund

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/58635

IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) provides fellowship grants for scholars whose lives or careers are threatened in their home countries. The fellowships support temporary academic positions at universities, colleges and other higher learning institutions in safe locations anywhere in the world. Applications are due by October 12th 2009.
IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) provides fellowship grants for scholars whose lives or careers are threatened in their home countries. The fellowships support temporary academic positions at universities, colleges and other higher learning institutions in safe locations anywhere in the world.

Who can apply:
Professors, researchers and lecturers from any country or field may apply. We invite you to refer eligible candidates and ask for your help in forwarding this announcement to any academic colleagues who may be interested.


* Qualifying applicants are currently facing or have recently fled from direct and immediate threats.
* Professors, established researchers and other senior academics from any country, field or discipline may qualify.
* Preference is given to scholars with a Ph.D. or other highest degree in their field who have extensive teaching or research experience at a university, college or other institution of higher learning.
* Applicants must demonstrate superior academic accomplishment or promise.
* Applications from female scholars and under-represented groups are strongly encouraged.


*Students or professionals seeking funding to pursue academic studies or training are not eligible.

To apply:
Please download the information and application materials from:
http://www.scholarrescuefund.org/pages/for-scholars.php

For universities and colleges interested in hosting an SRF scholar:
http://www.scholarrescuefund.org/pages/for-hosts.php

Contact SRF@iie.org for questions.

How The Scholar Rescue Fund Works:
Fellowships are awarded for visiting academic positions ranging from 3 months to 1 calendar year. Awards are issued for up to US $25,000, plus individual health coverage.

Fellowships are disbursed through host academic institutions for direct support of scholar-grantees. In most cases, host campuses are asked to match the SRF fellowship award by providing partial salary/stipend support and/or housing, material support for researching/publications, and other in-kind assistance.

Applications are accepted at any time. For a decision by late November please apply by October 12th. Visit www.scholarrescuefund.org for more details.

Global: United Nations Online Courses for 2009

2009-09-11

http://www.unitar.org/pft/elearning

UNITAR is pleased to announce its course calendar for 2009 intended for a global audience of finance sector and trade officials. Each course will be conducted by UNITAR over the internet and will last up to six-weeks. High quality training content will be provided by UNITAR for each course, which will form the basis for study, discussions, group work and individual assessments.

AwaaZ Issue 2/09 - The Bombay Africans!

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/58638

AwaaZ Issue 2/09 - The Bombay Africans!

Contents:
- Cover Story: The Bombay Africans
- Linguistic Evidence of Bantu Origins of the Sidis of India by Abdulaziz Lodhi
- Alternative Angle: Paradise Revisited by John Sibi-Okumu
- Memories of a Diplomat – Bhupinder Liddar
- Contemporary India-East AfricaRelations

o Introduction by Gerard McCann
o Asian Diaspora in Nyanza Province ofKenya by Gordon Onyango Omenya and Mildred A J Ndeda
o Race Relations between Kenya’s Africans and South Asians by Zarina Patel

- Four Generations of the Naidoos in the South African Struggle
- Native African, Wananchi by Ramnik Shah
- The Asian Debate in East African Literature by Mwalimu Makokha
- Bats and Balls: Dr Saleem Rana: Farewell to a distinguished Sportsman and Doctor
- Dialogue through Dance by Neera Kapur
- Origins of a Passage to East Africa by Jarat Chopra
- Art Installation by Prina Shah
- Shailja Patel’s Bwagamoyo – The Father: Part II of Migritude

Book Reviews:
o Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji reviewed by Sunita Kapila
o Settlers Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown reviewed by Warris Virani
o Success with Asian Names by fiona Swee-Lin Price reviewed by John Sibi-Okumu
o Scram from Kenya by James Franks reviewed by Ramnik Shah
o Reading of M G Vassanji by J K S Makokha
o African Identity in Asia by Shihan de Silva by Shehina Fazal
- Footsteps: Bantu Mwaura (1969-2009) and Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961-2009)



AwaaZ Magazine
P O Box 32843 - 00600
Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: 020 2063405, 0722 344900, 0733 741085
Email: editors@awaazmagazine.com
Website: AwaaZ
AwaaZ is environmentally responsible. It recycles, reduces and reuses all its material

Finance Officer - ICCO

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/58636

Salary: Competitive terms and conditions will be offered
Based: Lilongwe, Malawi
Closing date: 17.09.2009
Starting date: January 2010








ICCO is the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation and Kerk in Actie is part of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Together they provide financial support and advice to local organisations and networks throughout the world that are dedicated to improving access to basic services, stimulating sustainable economic development and advancing peace and democracy. In the region Southern Africa, ICCO works in South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Madagascar. For this region, a Regional Office is currently being set up in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Duties & Responsibilities:
The finance officer is responsible for the financial aspects of relations/contracts between ICCO and partners. The job objective is accountability regarding the funding to local partners and programme coalitions, by assessing proposals and reports, and contributing to the quality and transparency of the financial management of the partner organisations.

• Financial analysis and assessment of partners, programme and project proposals
• Financial monitoring and evaluation of partners, programmes and projects
• Advise on preparation and review of plans, budgets, reports, and return on investment analysis
• Assess and advise on the financial capacity of partner organisations
• Facilitate capacity building and expert knowledge in financial administration and control

Qualifications
• Relevant degree in Finance and / or other relevant professional qualification
• Substantial experience in financial management of monitoring of projects
• Budgetary responsibility in an international environment
• Competence in use of financial software applications
• Experiences with institutional donors
• Strong interpersonal skills, attention to detail, discretion and high integrity
• Excellent language skills in English and French and/or Portuguese


Please send your CV with FO-ICCO in the subject line to Mission Talent Recruitment. africa@missiontalent.com

Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.

For more information on ICCO’s programmes, please visit our website

Programme Officers - ICCO

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/58637

Salary: Competitive terms and conditions will be offered
Based: Lilongwe, Malawi
Closing date: 17.09.2009
Starting date: January 2010








ICCO is the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation and Kerk in Actie is part of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Together they provide financial support and advice to local organisations and networks throughout the world that are dedicated to improving access to basic services, stimulating sustainable economic development and advancing peace and democracy. In the region Southern Africa, ICCO works in South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Madagascar. For this region, a Regional Office is currently being set up in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Duties & Responsibilities:
The main responsibility of the Programme Officer is the interaction with the partners and programme coalitions in one country of the region. The programme officer reports to the Regional Manager and works in a multidisciplinary team in direct cooperation with the Finance Officer. S/he will identify and facilitate multi-stakeholder programmes by applying 4 ICCO strategic roles in the programmatic approach: strategic financing, advocacy and lobby, capacity building and brokerage.
• Support programme coalitions to jointly develop and implement programmes
• Assess programme- and project proposals
• Review audit reports of projects and follow-up of recommendations
• Provide input to the financial planning, monitoring, capacity development of programmes and projects
• Control, evaluate and monitor ongoing contracts with local partners
• co-ordinate with other relevant actors in the region
• Contribute to learning, linking and coordinating research and knowledge
• Contribute to strategic policy development and to the development of the regional plan
• Contribute to fundraising opportunities.

Qualifications
• Educational background social sciences plus knowledge in one of the 3 main themes:
o Fair economic development (value chains; access to local and international markets);
o Access to basic services (food security; education; hiv/aids, water and sanitation);
o Democratization and peace building.
• Advanced knowledge of programme and project formulation, accountability requirements.
• Experience with funding of programmes and projects
• Experience with multi-stakeholder processes and institutional donors
• Good knowledge of economic, social and political situation in the region
• Excellent language skills in English (French and / or Portuguese an is added advantage)
• Relevant experience of assessment and analysis of project/programme plans.
• Negotiation, networking, facilitation and communication skills.

Please send your CV with PO-ICCO in the subject line to Mission Talent Recruitment. africa@missiontalent.com
Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted. For more information on ICCO’s programmes please visit our website

Global: Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) officer

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/58618

FORUM-ASIA is a founding member and host organisation of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN). The APRRN is a growing network of more than 100 civil society organisations and individuals committed to advancing the rights of refugees in the Asia Pacific Region through information sharing, mutual capacity building and joint advocacy. The APRRN Steering Committee, under the leadership of the Steering Committee Coordinator, provides strategic and policy direction to the APRRN.Closing date is 18 September 2009.
Job Announcement

Position Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network Officer
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Employment Duration: 10 months contract renewable subject to successful performance evaluation and fundraising.
Subject to 3 months probation at the beginning of contract Salary & Benefits
A competitive salary in local currency will be offered according to the successful candidate’s experience and qualifications
Health and Accidental Insurance
Relocation allowance
Round trip air ticket
Closing date 18 September 2009
Interview Dates 19-20 September 2009

About the Organisation

As a membership-based regional human rights organisation, FORUM-ASIA works to promote and protect all human rights including the right to development through collaboration and cooperation among human rights defenders and organisations in Asia.

Founded in 1991, FORUM-ASIA is committed to building an alternative society that is peaceful, just, equitable and ecologically sustainable; where all human rights of all individuals, groups and peoples - in particular, the poor, marginalised and discriminated people - are fully respected and realised in accordance with internationally accepted human rights norms and standards.

FORUM-ASIA, as a NGO in Consultative Status with the UN, also advocates human rights issues through engagement with governments, inter-governmental organisations and the UN for better promotion and protection of all human rights.

FORUM-ASIA presently has 46 member organisations across Asia and it has offices in Bangkok, Thailand and Geneva, Switzerland.

Summary of the Programme
FORUM-ASIA is a founding member and host organisation of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN). The APRRN is a growing network of more than 100 civil society organisations and individuals committed to advancing the rights of refugees in the Asia Pacific Region through information sharing, mutual capacity building and joint advocacy. The APRRN Steering Committee, under the leadership of the Steering Committee Coordinator, provides strategic and policy direction to the APRRN.

Duties and Responsibilities
The Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Officer shall report to the Steering Committee Coordinator of the APRRN, and shall:

Common Tasks
• Implement the plans of the APRRN, providing administrative support for its activities
• Organise the annual/biannual Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights
• Maintain and improve effective, regular and secure communication amongst APRRN members (including email lists and monthly bulletins)
• Build and maintain the membership of the APRRN, creating consultative mechanisms to assist the Steering Committee in decision-making as well as ensuring up to date records of membership
• Facilitate the development of common advocacy positions and collaborative activities on key issues in the region for joint advocacy
• Liaise with external partners and stakeholders of the APRRN, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
• Coordinate strategic interventions in regional and international refugee policy-setting arenas
• Develop capacity building programmes and shared resources to support the work of APRRN members in advocating for refugee rights
• Write, submit and implement funding proposals for key activities of the APRRN
• Maintain the public relations of the APRRN, including serving as a focal point for queries, maintaining the website, coordinating press releases and organising public events

Basic Qualifications and Criteria Education:
1. Bachelor’s degree or higher, preferably in law, politics, international relations, development or social science disciplines
2. Some formal training in human rights and/or refugee rights

Competence:
1. Mature personality; ability to work in a multicultural setting and in a demanding working environment with cross programme coordination
2. Diplomatic, tactful, and thoughtful in speech and conduct; good social and communication skills; builds rapport easily
3. Reliable, self-motivated, disciplined, positive in outlook
4. Able to work under pressure and to manage a team in order to meet deadlines
5. Flexible in thinking an action; able to respond to unexpected demands and challenges
6. Strong technical aptitude and expertise with MS office tools (including knowledge of Microsoft Office suite of products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
7. Able to train and supervise new associates (interns/volunteers) with clarity regarding output quality and deadline.
8. Ability to work as part of a team under the direction of team leaders to meet agreed upon goals

Experience:
1. Minimum three years work experience in promoting and protecting the human rights of forced migrants (refugees, internally displaced persons and/or stateless persons) and/or providing humanitarian assistance to these populations, preferably both at the national level in the Asia Pacific region and in regional/international contexts
2. Experience in developing advocacy positions and/or conducting policy research
3. Experience liaising with the UNHCR, international human rights and humanitarian NGOs, and working closely with national NGOs and community-based organisations focusing on the rights of refugees and other forced migrants
4. Experience in consulting with multiple partners in different contexts in order to design and implement coordinated responses
5. Understands the overall socio-political situation as well as human rights situation in the Asia Pacific region.
6. Experience writing funding proposals and managing the implementation of funding agreements.

Skills:
1. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills both in oral and written English, and preferably an Asian language
2. Strong communication, research and analytical skills and the ability to rapidly analyse and integrate diverse information from varied sources
3. Strong ability to harness and maintain good relations with external stakeholders, the UNHCR, and other relevant institutions and civil society organisations
4. Strong project management and coordination skills; able to manage projects involving a number of stakeholders in different countries

Application Procedure
Those who are interested in the job are requested to fill in the Job Application Form and return the form by email together with a self-introduction letter and names and contact details of two referees with knowledge of your recent work experience who may be contacted immediately without further notice.

More information on FORUM-ASIA can be obtained at www.forum-asia.org
Kindly send your application to:
applications@forum-asia.org with a copy to refugee@forum-asia.org before 18 September 2009
The successful candidate will be contacted for an interview after 18 September 2009 and the interview may include a written or practical test.

Zimbabwe: Programme assistant - Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN)

2009-09-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/58626

The Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) is seeking a competent, experienced and self motivated individual for the position of Programme Assistant – Gender HIV & Aids (GHIVA) Programme. WRCN is offering a competitive package for the candidate with the right qualifications and experience. Applications with certified copies of certificates, CV and other relevant documents must clearly state the position applied for and should be submitted no later than 6th September 2009.
The Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) is seeking a competent, experienced and self motivated individual for the position of Programme Assistant – Gender HIV & Aids (GHIVA) Programme.

ZWRCN is an information-based organization with a focus on research, collection, analysis, processing and dissemination of information on gender and development. The organization’s strategic interventions aim to empower women, strengthen inter-organizational networking of gender and development agencies and promote the women’s movement in Zimbabwe. ZWRCN’s programmes are aimed at reducing gender inequalities and promote gender sensitive national policies and programmes for the improvement of the welfare of women and girls in Zimbabwe.

The following are the Key Performance Areas for the Programme Assistant (GHIVA):-

* Organize both internal and external meetings and workshops; production of reports of such meetings and workshops, and ensure their timely distribution; assist in narrative donor reports
* Establish and maintain an up to date database of reference, local and national frameworks
* Assist with research and writing on gender and developmental issues
* Service network partners through information provision of programme activities; distribution of publications and following up on impact of information
* Attend meetings, workshops and seminars on behalf of the organization;
* Logistical arrangements of all programme meetings and workshops; liaison with partners on community mobilization
* Undertake all administrative and secretarial duties of the programme
* Any other duties as may be assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

* Recognized professional expertise with a minimum of a first degree in Social Sciences, Development Studies, Gender and Public Health, Public Policy, Project Management and Planning or any other related field.
* At least 2 years experience of working in a fast paced NGO environment
* Recognized professional expertise and experience in research and advocacy on gender, HIV and AIDS and sexual and reproductive health issues
* Excellent written and oral communication in English and Shona
* Computer skills (spreadsheets, databases, word processing, internet, electronic communication etc)
* Proficiency in Ndebele will be an added advantage

ZWRCN is offering a competitive package for the candidate with the right qualifications and experience. Applications with certified copies of certificates, CV and other relevant documents must clearly state the position applied for and should be submitted no later than 6th September 2009 to:

The Caretaker Director’ ZWRCN, 288 Herbert Chitepo, Harare, Zimbabwe or via email to vacancy@zwrcn.org.zw Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Fahamu