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Uganda: Journalist arrested and beaten

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/58844

International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) has received disturbing news of the arrest of journalist, filmmaker and talk show host, Kalundi Serumaga, on 11 September 2009. It is reported that he has suffered severe beatings, requiring hospital treatment. PEN urgently calls for the release of Kalundi Serumaga, who appears to be detained solely for having spoken on recent clashes in Kampala and nearby Kayunga.
International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) has received disturbing news of the arrest of journalist, filmmaker and talk show host, Kalundi Serumaga, on 11 September 2009. It is reported that he has suffered severe beatings, requiring hospital treatment. PEN urgently calls for the release of Kalundi Serumaga, who appears to be detained solely for having spoken on recent clashes in Kampala and nearby Kayunga.

Kalundi Serumaga was arrested at 11 pm as he left the the studios of WBS Television in Kampala where he had participated in a debate in which he had been critical of Ugandan President Museveni. Eyewitnesses report that he was bundled into a waiting car and taken away. Two hours later it was disclosed that he was being held in the Kampala Central Police Station. He is thought to be facing charges of sedition and inciting violence.

On 14 September, it was reported that Serumaga had been transferred to the International Hospital in Kampala to receive treatment for injuries he sustained under severe police beatings. He told reporters that he expects to stay in hospital for a least a day, but that he would be returned to police detention.

Violence broke out when the government banned the King of Buganda, one of the four tribal regions in Uganda, to the neighbouring Kayunga district. Over 20 people are said to have been killed, and 550 others, including Serumaga, have reportedly been arrested to face trial.

Serumaga is a respected writer and journalist and popular host of a daily radio talk show, "Spectrum". On 14 September the allAfrica.com website published an article by Serumaga on the disturbances entitled ‘Things fall apart - Again...' Here he discusses the background to the riots. He opens his piece: "Most people are familiar with the proverbial last straw that broke the camels' back. However, rarely does anyone get to see the actual straw, and the moment it is laid on. The final stages of the breakdown of the always troubled relationship between Buganda and Uganda's NRM-led central government, may provide just the opportunity for such a rare sighting." He describes police in Kayunga town a few days earlier "... found themselves hard pressed to contain rampaging bands of Baganda youth, who were torching kiosks, arming themselves with makeshift weapons and forcing passers-by to sing Buganda's national anthem. As shopkeepers closed their doors, the initial police response was to fire live rounds just above the rioters' heads while waiting for the arrival of the anti-riot squads, backed up by solders in armoured vehicles and club-wielding goons. As the trouble spread, a group of soldiers scaled the wall of the tower hosting the Buganda Kingdom's main radio station transmitter, and ordered it turned off." For the full article see AllAfrica News.

Three other radio stations were also closed. Reporters Without Borders reported on 13 September: "Information minister Kabakumba Matsiko announced the suspension of three privately-owned radio stations - Suubi FM, Radio Sapienta and Radio Two Akaboozi Kubiri - on 11 September for inciting riots and "criminal mobs engaged in acts of theft, violence against persons, and destruction of property." The previous evening the authorities had closed CBS, a station owned by the Kingdom of Buganda, one of Uganda's traditional kingdoms."

Emerging from the crisis of capitalism

Or emerging from capitalism in crisis?

Samir Amin

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58806

cc flickr.comThe current global crisis, writes Samir Amin in this week's Pambazuka News, is neither a financial crisis nor the result of myriad systemic crises, but rather derives from the risk of a challenge of the power of the imperialist capitalism of the world's oligopolies by those marginalised. While global powers seek to restore the system to its pre-crisis state, the current crisis in fact allows us to conceive of a 'possible integrated front' involving all the social and political forces which collectively represent the victims of the exclusive power of the oligopolies, Amin contends. Challenging historical capitalism represents the core element in the emancipation of the oppressed, a challenge that will only be met when the peoples of the global South and North struggle together, and without which capitalism will ultimately be overtaken by the destruction of civilisation, and perhaps even life on our planet, Amin concludes.

CAPITALISM – A BRACKET IN HISTORY

The principle of infinite accumulation, which defines capitalism as synonymous with exponential growth, and the latter, like cancer, results in death. John Stuart Mill, who understood this, imagined that a 'stationary state' would put an end to this irrational process. John Maynard Keynes shared this optimism of the Reason. But neither was equipped to understand how the necessary overcoming of capitalism could come about. Karl Marx, in giving its full place to the new class struggle, could, on the contrary, imagine overturning the power of the capitalist class, which is currently concentrated in the hands of the oligarchy.

Accumulation, which is synonymous with pauperisation, forms the objective framework of the struggle against capitalism. But the latter is principally expressed through the growing contrast between the wealth of dominant societies which benefit from their imperialist dividend, and the poverty of marginalised societies. This conflict has become the central axis of the choice between 'socialism or barbarism'.

'Real and actual' historical capitalism is associated with successive patterns of accumulation by dispossession, not only at its origin ('primitive accumulation') but at all stages of its manifestation. Once established, 'Atlantic' capitalism became part of global conquest and re-shaped it on the basis of permanent dispossession for the conquered areas, which, as a result, became the oppressed margins of the system.

This 'victorious' globalisation has proved incapable of maintaining sustainability. Half a century after its triumph, which seemed at one time to have begun the 'end of history', was itself challenged by the revolution in semi-marginal Russian and the (victorious) liberation struggles in Asia and Africa which constituted the history of the 20th century – the first wave of struggles for the emancipation of workers and peoples, the first wave of the 'awakening of the South'.



Accumulation by dispossession continues in front of our eyes in the late capitalism of contemporary oligopolies. In the dominant areas the monopolistic dividend from which the oligopolistic plutocracies benefit is synonymous with the the dispossession of the whole of the productive base of society. In the marginalised areas, this pauperising dispossession is manifested in the expropriation of the peasantry and the plunder of natural resources from the regions concerned. Both of these practices form the necessary pillars for the expansion strategies of the late capitalism of the oligopolies.

On this analysis, I situate the 'new agrarian question' at the heart of the challenge for the 21st century. The dispossession of the peasantry (of Asia, Africa and Latin America) is the major contemporary form of the trend towards pauperisation (in the sense that Marx gave this 'law') associated with accumulation. Its pursuit is inextricable from the harnessing of the imperialist dividend by the oligopolies, with or without agro-carburants. I deduce from this that the development of struggle in this arena and the future responses of peasant societies in the South (which make up nearly half of humanity) will broadly depend on the capacity or otherwise of workers and peoples to bring about advances along the road to constructing a genuine civilisation, freed from the domination of capital, and which I can only call 'socialism'.

The pillage of the South’s natural resources demanded by pursuit of the model of wasteful consumption to the exclusive benefit of the wealthy societies of the North does away with any development perspective worthy of the name for the peoples concerned and forms the other face of pauperisation on a global scale. On this analysis, the 'energy crisis' is not the product of scarcity of the resources necessary for energy production (oil, of course), nor the product of the destructive effects of the energy-devouring modes of production and consumption currently in force. This description – an accurate one – does not go beyond the immediate and obvious evidence. The crisis is the product of the collective desire of the imperialist oligopolies to ensure they have the monopoly of access to the planet’s natural resources, however scarce they may be, so as to appropriate the imperialist dividend, whether the use of resources remains as at present (wasteful and energy-devouring) or whether it comes under the new correctives of 'ecological' policies. I also deduce that the pursuit of expansionist strategies by the late capitalism of the oligopolies will necessarily collide with the growing resistance of the nations of the South.

The present crisis is, therefore, neither a financial crisis nor the summation of multiple systemic crises, but a crisis of the imperialist capitalism of the oligopolies, whose supreme and exclusive power risks being challenged, once again, both by the joint struggle of the working classes and by that of the oppressed peoples and nations of the peripheries, however 'emergent' they may appear. It is simultaneously a crisis of United States hegemony.

Oligopolistic capitalism, the political power of the oligarchies, vicious globalisation, financialisation, United States hegemony, the militarisation of the management of globalisation at the service of the oligopolies, the decline of democracy, the pillage of the planet’s resources and the abandonment of the development perspective of the South are all inseparable.

The really challenge is, therefore, as follows: Will these struggles succeed in converging to open up the path – or the paths – on the long road to the transition to global socialism? Or will they remain separate from each other, or even come into conflict, rendering them ineffective and leaving the initiative to oligopolistic capitalism?

FROM ONE LONG CRISIS TO THE NEXT

The financial collapse of September 2008 probably surprised the conventional economists of 'benign globalisation' and took aback some of the fabricators of liberal discourse, who had been bathed in triumph since 'the fall of the Berlin Wall', as we are accustomed to say. In contrast, the event did not surprise us – we were expecting it (without having predicted its actual date like Madame Soleil)[1] – simply because for us it was a natural development of the long crisis of late capitalism set in motion in the 1970s.

It is good to look back at the first long crisis of capitalism, which formed the 20th century, as there is such a striking parallel between the developmental stages of these two crises.

The triumphant industrial capitalism of the 19th century was in crisis from 1873. Profits slumped, for reasons made clear by Marx. Capital reacted with a double move – both becoming more concentrated and expanding globally. New monopolies seized profits at the highest possible value, derived from the exploitation of labour. They accelerated the colonial conquest of the planet. These structural transformations allowed profits to take off anew. They led to the 'Belle Époque' – from 1890 to 1914 – a period of global domination by capital of financialised monopolies. The dominant discourse of the period was a paean of praise to colonisation (the 'civilising mission') making globalisation synonymous with peace, a discourse to which working-class European social democracy rallied in turn.

However, the 'Belle Époque', hailed as the 'end of history' by the prominent ideologues of the time, ended with the world war, as only Lenin had foreseen. And the period which followed up to and after the Second World War was one of 'wars and revolutions'. In 1920, the Russian revolution (the 'weak link' in the system), having been isolated after the defeat of hopes for revolution in central Europe, financialised monopolistic capital restored, against the tide, the system of the 'Belle Époque'. This restoration, which was denounced by Keynes at the time, was the origin of the financial collapse of 1929 and the depression which it set in motion up to the Second World War.

The 'long 20th century' – 1873–1990 – is thus both the century that set in train the first deep systematic crisis of late capitalism (to the point where Lenin thought that this monopolistic capital constituted the 'final phase of capitalism', and also the century of a first triumphant wave of anti-capitalist revolutions (Russia, China) and of anti-imperialist movements by the people of Asia and Africa.

The second systemic crisis of capitalism began in 1971, almost exactly one century after the first, when the dollar went off the Gold Standard. Profit levels, investment and growth collapsed (never to recover their previous levels between 1956 and 1975). Capital responded to the challenge as in the previous crisis, with a double move both to concentration and to globalisation. It also put in place structures which were to define the second 'Belle Époque' (1990–2008) of financialised globalisation, permitting the oligopolistic groups to take their monopolistic dividend. The same discourse accompanied these moves: the 'market' guarantees prosperity, democracy and peace; this is the 'end of history'. The same rallying of European socialists to the new liberalism. However, this new 'Belle Époque' was accompanied from the beginning by war, of the North against the South, starting in the 1990s. And as the first financialised globalisation gave rise to 1929, the second led to 2008. We have now arrived at the crucial moment which heralds a probable new wave of 'wars and revolutions'. And this despite the fact that the powers that be envisage nothing other than the restoration of the system as it was before its financial collapse.

The analogy between the developments of these two long systemic crises of late capitalism is striking. Nonetheless, there are differences of significant political import.

EMERGING FROM THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM OR EMERGING FROM CAPITALISM IN CRISIS?

Behind the financial crisis lies the systemic crisis of the capitalism of the oligopolies

Contemporary capitalism is first and foremost an oligopolistic capitalism in the full sense of the term (which it was only in part until the present). By that I mean that the oligopolies are in sole control of the reproduction of the production system in its ensemble. They are 'financialised' in the sense that only they have access to the capital markets. This financialisation gives the monetary and financial market – their market, i.e., the one within which they compete among themselves – the status of a dominant market, which shapes and controls in turn the labour markets and the exchange of goods.

This globalised financialisation is expressed in a transformation of the bourgeois ruling class, which has become a shareholding plutocracy. The oligarchs are not only Russian, as is too often stated, but even more from the United States, Europe and Japan. A decline in democracy is the inevitable result of this concentration of power to the exclusive advantage of the oligopolies.

The new form of capitalist globalisation, which corresponds to this transformation, in contrast to that which characterised the first 'Belle Époque', is equally important to unpack. I have expressed this in one phrase: the transition from imperialism conjugated in the plural (i.e., that of the imperialist powers in permanent conflict with each other) to the collective imperialism of the Triad (United States, Europe and Japan).

The monopolies which emerged in response to the first crisis of profit levels had a basis in the reinforcement of violent competition between the major political powers of the period, and led to the major armed conflict begun in 1914 and followed, by way of the Treaty of Versailles, and the second war up to 1945 by what Arrighi, Frank, Wallerstein and I myself have called since the 1970s the 'Thirty Years War', a term which has been taken up by others.

In contrast, the second wave of oligopolistic concentration, begun in the 1970s, had an entirely different basis, in the context of the system which I have labelled the 'collective imperialism' of the Triad (United States, Europe and Japan). With this new imperialist globalisation, the dominance of the major powers was no longer exercised through a monopoly of industrial production (as was the case prior to this), but by other means (control of technology, financial markets, access to the planet’s natural resources, information and communications, and weapons of mass destruction). This system that I describe as 'apartheid on a global scale' implies permanent war between the states and the peoples of the recalcitrant peripheries, a war begun in the 1990s with the establishment of military control of the planet by the United States and their subordinate allies in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

On my analysis, the financialisation of the system is inseparable from its confirmed oligopolistic character. There is a fundamental organic relationship between the two. This is not the prevailing point of view, not only in the voluminous literature by conventional economists, but also in most of the critical writing about the present crisis.

SYSTEM AS A WHOLE WHICH IS NOW IN DIFFICULTY

The facts are established: the financial meltdown is already in the course of producing not a 'recession' but a real deep depression. But in addition, other dimensions of the crisis in the system have been revealed to public awareness even before the financial collapse. We know the big labels – energy crisis, food crisis, ecological crisis, climate change – and numerous analyses of these aspects of the current difficulties are produced daily, some of the best quality.

Nevertheless, I remain critical towards this type of treatment of the systemic crisis of capitalism, which keeps too distinct the different dimensions of the problem. I redefine the diverse 'crises' as facets of the same problem, that of contemporary capitalist globalisation (whether liberal or not) based on the drain on resources which the imperialist dividend operates on a global scale, to the advantage of the oligopolistic plutocracy of the collective imperialism of the Triad.

The real battle is taking place on the decisive terrain between the oligopolies -which seek to produce and reproduce the conditions which would permit them to appropriate the imperialist dividend – and all their victims – workers in all the countries of the North and the South, oppressed, marginalised people condemned to give up all hope of development worthy of the name.

Emerging from the crisis of capitalism or emerging from capitalism in crisis?

This slogan was proposed by Andre Gunder Frank and myself in 1974.

The analysis that we put forward of the new grand crisis that we believed had begun led us to the major conclusion that capital would respond to the challenge by a new wave of concentration on the basis of which it would proceed to massive relocation. Later developments have largely confirmed this thesis. The title of our intervention in a colloquium organised by Il Manifesto in Rome at that date ('Let’s not wait for 1984', in reference to the work by George Orwell brought off the backburner for the occasion) invited the radical Left of the period to stop coming to the aid of capital by seeking 'ways out of the crisis', but to get engaged in strategies for 'ways out of capitalism in crisis'.

I’ve stuck to this line of analysis with an obstinacy which I don’t regret. By this means I have conceptualised new forms of domination by the imperialist powers, based on new models of control substituting for the form monopoly of industry, which the rise of countries since labelled 'emerging' confirmed. I dubbed the construction of a new globalisation as 'apartheid on a global scale', pointing to the militarised management of the planet, perpetuating under new conditions the polarisation inseparable from the expansion of 'capitalism as it actually exists'.

THE SECOND WAVE OF POPULAR EMANCIPATION: A REMAKE OF THE 20TH CENTURY OR BETTER?

There is no alternative to the socialist way.

The contemporary world is governed by oligarchies, financial oligarchies in the United States, Europe and Japan, which dominate, not only economic life, but also the politics of daily life. Russian oligarchies cast in their image which the Russian state tries to control. State rule in China. Autocracies (sometimes hidden behind the appearance of an electoral democracy 'of low intensity') forming part of the global system elsewhere in the rest of the planet.

The management of contemporary globalisation by the oligarchies is in crisis.

The oligarchies of the North are confident of remaining in power after the crisis is over. They do not feel threatened. By contrast, the fragility of the autocratic powers of the South is very clear. For this reason, the globalisation we are currently experiencing is itself fragile. Will it be threatened by the revolt of the South as in the previous century? Probably. But sadly. For humanity will only go down the socialist route – the only humane alternative to chaos – when the oligarchic powers, their allies and servants are put to rout at one and the same time in the countries both of the North and of the South.

LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONALISM OF THE PEOPLE IN THE FACE OF THE OLIGARCHIES’ COSMOPOLITANISM

Can the capitalism of the financialised and globalised oligopolies be re-established?

Capitalism is 'liberal' by nature, if by 'liberalism' one means not the benign adjective that the term has given rise to but the full and complete domination by capital, not only of labour and the economy, but over all aspects of social life. There is no 'market economy' (the vulgar term for capitalism) without a 'market society'. Capital obstinately pursues this one objective: money. Accumulation for its own sake. Marx, and after him other critical thinkers like Keynes, understood this perfectly. But not our conventional economists, including those of the Left.

This model of capital’s exclusive and total domination was obstinately imposed by the ruling classes during the whole of the long crisis preceding 1945. It was only the triple victory of democracy, socialism and popular national liberation which permitted, from 1945 to 1980, the substitution for this permanent model of the capitalist ideal with the confrontational coexistence of the three social models of governance of the Welfare State and social democracy of the West, the actual socialism of the East and the popular nationalisms of the South. The loss of impetus followed by the collapse of these three latter models made possible a return to the exclusive domination of capital, known as neoliberal.

I linked this new 'liberalism' with a set of characteristics which appeared to me to deserve the appellation, 'senile capitalism'. The book of this title, published in 2001, probably counted among those rare writings of the period which, far from seeing the 'end of history' in globalised and financialised neoliberalism, analysed this system of late capitalism as unstable and destined to collapse, precisely because of its financialised dimension (its 'Achilles’ heel', as I called it).

Conventional economists have remained obstinately deaf to any questioning of their dogma. Even to the point that they were incapable of foreseeing the financial meltdown of 2008. Those presented by the dominant media as 'critics' hardly deserved this label. Joseph Stiglitz remains convinced that the system as it is – globalised and financialised liberalism – can be returned to a safe footing, with a few corrections. Amartya Sen draws a moral without daring to acknowledge the present form of capitalism for what it necessarily is.

The social disasters which the institution of liberalism – 'Capital’s permanent utopia' as I called it – brought about have given rise to much nostalgia for the recent and distant past. But this nostalgia does not allow a response to the challenge. For it is the product of an impoverishment of critical theory which gradually came to stand in the way of understanding the internal contradictions and the systemic limitations of the post-war period, whose decline, lack of direction and ultimate collapse appeared as unforeseen cataclysms.

Nonetheless, in the void created by these failures in critical thought, the way was paved for an awareness of new dimensions to the systemic crisis of civilisation. I refer here to the ecologists. But the Greens, who claimed to be radically distinct from the Blues (conservatives and liberals) and the Reds (Socialists) created an impasse for themselves, due to their failure to integrate the ecological aspects of the challenge with a radical critique of capitalism.

Everything was in place to ensure the triumph – ephemeral in fact, but experienced as 'definitive' – of the alternative known as 'liberal democracy'. A pathetic thought – actually, not a thought at all – which ignores Marx’s decisive remarks about the kind of bourgeois democracy that does not realise that those who make decisions are not the same people as those who are affected by them. Those who make decisions today, enjoying liberty reinforced by control over property, are the plutocrats of oligopolistic capitalism and the states which are their debtors. As things stand, the workers and the peoples affected are nothing but their victims. But such nonsense could actually appear believable for a short time, because of the systemic failings of the post-war period, whose origins were not understood by the pathetic dogmatists. Liberal democracy was able, therefore, to seem to be the 'best of all possible systems'.

Today, the powers that be, who had foreseen nothing, are busy restoring the very same system. Their ultimate success, like that of the conservatives in the 1920s – denounced by Keynes without any support at the time – can only worsen the contradictions which are at the bottom of the financial collapse of 2008.

No less serious is the fact that economists 'of the Left' have for a long time taken on board the essentials of the vulgar economics and accepted the (erroneous) idea of the rationality of the markets. These economists concentrated their efforts on defining the conditions for this rationality, abandoning Marx, judging 'obsolete' his discovery of the irrationality of markets from the perspective of the emancipation of workers and peoples. In the perspective of these economists, capitalism is flexible, adjusting itself to the exigencies of progress (both technological and social) if forced to do so. These 'leftist' economists were not in a position to understand the inevitability of the crisis that broke out. They were even less well prepared to confront the challenges confronting peoples as a result. Like other vulgar economists they sought to repair the damage, without understanding that, in order to do this successfully, it is necessary to set off on another road – one which outruns the fundamental logic of capitalism. Instead of seeking to emerge from capitalism in crisis, they think they can emerge from the crisis of capitalism.

CRISIS OF THE UNITED STATES HEGEMONY

The recent meeting of the G20 (London, April 2009) did nothing towards a 'reconstruction of the world'. And it is perhaps no coincidence that it was followed hard on its heels by a meeting of NATO, the armed wing of contemporary imperialism, and by the reinforcement of its military involvement in Afghanistan. The permanent war of the 'North' against the 'South' has to continue.

We already knew that the Triad governments – the United States, Europe and Japan – are pursuing the single goal of a restoration of the system as it was before September 2008, and we shouldn’t take seriously the interventions of US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the one hand, and those of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the other, all playing to the gallery. The supposed 'differences' between them, of which they are accused by the media, without any real substance, are nothing but an attempt by the leaders concerned to give weight to their naïve opinions. 'Re-establish capitalism', 'reform the financial sector' – grand words to evade the real questions. This is why the restoration of the system, which is not impossible, will solve no problems, but rather aggravate them. The 'Stiglitz Commission', set up by the United Nations, is signed up to this strategy of constructing an optical illusion. Of course, we would expect nothing else from the oligarchs who hold the real power or from their political debtors. The point of view that I have elaborated, which emphasises the links between domination by the oligopolies and the financialisation necessary for its management of the global economy – inseparable from each other – is well supported by the results of the G20.

Of more interest is the fact that the invited leaders of the 'emerging countries' have kept silence. Only one intelligent sentence was uttered during the course of this three-ringed circus, by the Chinese President Hu Jintao, who noted 'in passing', without emphasis and with a (sardonic?) smile that we will have to envisage the creation of a global financial system which is not founded on the dollar. A small number of commentators immediately made the connection – a correct one – with Keynes’s proposals in 1945.

This 'remark' calls us back to the reality, that the crisis of the capitalist system of oligopolies is inseparable from the crisis of United States hegemony, on its last gasp. But who will take over? Certainly not 'Europe', which doesn’t exist beyond the Atlantic treaty area and which does not aspire to independence, as the NATO meeting demonstrated once more. China? That 'threat' invoked by the media ad nauseam (a new 'yellow peril'), doubtless in order to legitimise the Atlantic alignment, is baseless. The Chinese leaders know that their country does not have the means and they themselves do not have the will. China’s strategy is to work for the promotion of a new globalisation without hegemony. Which neither the United States nor Europe considers acceptable.

Therefore, the chances of a possible development in this direction rest fully with the countries of the South. And it is no coincidence that UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) is the only institution within the United Nations family to undertake very different initiatives from those of the Stiglitz Commission. It is no coincidence that its director, the Thai Supachi Panitchpakdi, considered until now a perfect liberal, has dared to propose in the organisation’s report, 'The Global Economic Crisis', dated March 2009, realistic advances aligned with the perspective of a second moment of 'the awakening of the South'.

For its part, China set in motion the – gradual and controlled – construction of alternative regional financial systems, free of the dollar. These initiatives round out, at the economic level, the promotion of political alliances among the 'Shanghai Group', the major obstacle to NATO’s war-mongering.

The NATO assembly, meeting at the same time in April 2009, ratified Washington’s decision not to commence its military disengagement, but, on the contrary, to increase it, on the fallacious pretext of the struggle against 'terrorism'. President Obama is no doubt employing his talent in trying to save the Clinton followed by the Bush programme for military control of the planet, the only means of prolonging the existence of the threatened American hegemony. Obama scored points and obtained the unconditional capitulation of Sarkozy’s France – the end of Gaullism – which reintegrated NATO’s military command, always difficult while Washington spoke with Bush’s voice, lacking in intelligence, but not in arrogance. Moreover, Obama, like Bush, took it on himself to lecture, with little respect for the 'independence' of Europe, when it was invited to accept the integration of Turkey into the European Union!

TOWARDS A SECOND WAVE OF VICTORIOUS STRUGGLES FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF WORKERS AND PEOPLES

Are new advances in peoples' emancipation struggle possible?

The political management of the global domination of oligopolistic capital is necessarily extremely violent. For, in order to retain their positions as wealthy societies, the imperialist Triad are constrained to reserve, for their own benefit exclusively, access to the planet’s natural resources. This new requirement is at the bottom of the militarisation of globalisation which I have dubbed, 'The Empire of Chaos' (the title of one of my works, published in 2001), an expression since taken up by others.

In the wake of Washington’s undertaking to gain military control of the planet and carry out for this purpose 'pre-emptive wars' on the pretext of a struggle 'against terrorism', NATO took for itself the title of 'representative of the international community', and in doing so marginalised the UN, the only organisation entitled to speak under this description.

Of course, the real objectives could not be acknowledged. To conceal them, the powers concerned chose to instrumentalise the discourse of democracy and granted themselves a 'right of intervention' to impose 'respect for human rights'!

In parallel, the absolute power of the new oligarchic plutocracies has hollowed out the content of practice of bourgeois democracy. Whereas governance in former times required political negotiation between the different classes in societies making up the hegemonic bloc necessary for the reproduction of the power of capital, the new political governance of society under the capitalism of the oligopolies, set in train by means of systematic de-politicisation, has instituted a new political culture of 'consensus' (modelled on that of the United States), which substitutes consumers and political spectators for active citizens, the basis of authentic democracy. This 'liberal virus' (to take up the title of my work published in 2005) abolished the possibility of alternative choices and substituted a consensus based only on respect for procedural electoral democracy.

The origin of this drama is the strangulation followed by the destruction of the three models of social governance evoked above. We have turned the page on the first wave of struggles for emancipation, but have not yet opened the book at the second wave. In the twilight world that separates them is 'the time of monsters', as Gramsci writes.

In the North, these developments are at the root of the loss of sense in democratic practice. This step backward is masked by the claims of the discourse known as 'post-modernist', according to which nations and classes have already left the stage to cede their place to 'the individual' who has become the active subject of social transformation.

In the South, other illusions take the stage. Whether they take the form of the illusion of an autonomous national capitalist development, signed up to globalisation, which holds sway among the ruling and middle classes of 'emerging' countries, comforted by the immediate success of recent decades, or backward-looking illusions (quasi-ethnic or quasi-religious) in the countries left to fend for themselves.

More serious is the fact that these developments give comfort to the general adherence to 'the ideology of consumerism', the idea that progress is measured by the quantitative growth of such consumerism. Marx showed that it is the means of production that determines that of consumption and not the reverse, as vulgar economics claims. The perspective of a superior humanist rationality, the foundation of the socialist project, is, therefore, lost to view. The gigantic potential that the application of science and technology offers to the whole of humanity, and which ought to allow the genuine flourishing of individuals and societies, in the North as well as the South, is wasted under the exigencies of its submission to the logic of the endless pursuit of capital accumulation. Yet more serious is that the continued progress of the social productivity of labour is associated with a staggering usage of the mechanisms of pauperisation (visible on a global scale, among other things by the general offensive against peasant societies), as Marx understood.

Adherence to the ideological alienation produced by capitalism does not only attract the opulent societies of the imperialist powers. The peoples of the peripheries, largely deprived, it is true, of access to acceptable levels of consumption and blinded by aspiring to consumption like that of the North, have lost sight of the fact that the logic of the development of historical capitalism makes it impossible for the model in question to be generalised to the whole planet.

We can understand, then, the reasons for which the financial collapse of 2008 was the exclusive result of the sharpening of the internal contradictions that belong to the accumulation of capital. Only the intervention of forces bringing with them a positive alternative allows us to imagine a way out of the simple chaos produced by the sharpening of the internal contradictions of the system (it was in this spirit that I have opposed 'the revolutionary path' to the model of bypassing a system rendered historically obsolete by 'decadence'). And, in the present state of affairs, social protest movements, despite their apparent increase, remain on the whole incapable of challenging the social order associated with the capitalism of the oligopolies, lacking as they do a coherent political project fit to meet the threat.

From this point of view, the present situation is very different from that of the 1930s, when the forces of socialism on the one hand and fascism on the other confronted one another, producing the Nazi response in the latter case and the New Deal and the Popular Fronts in the former.

The deepening of the crisis cannot be avoided, even supposing eventual resuscitation – which is not impossible – of the domination of oligopolistic capital. In these conditions the radicalisation of struggles may not be impossible, even if considerable obstacles remain.

In the countries of the Triad such radicalisation would require the expropriation of the oligopolies to be on the agenda, which appears to be excluded for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the theory that despite the turbulence stirred up by the crisis, the stability of the Triad countries is not under threat should not be ruled out. The risk of a 'remake' of the wave of emancipation struggles of the last century, that is, a challenge to the system confined to the peripheries is serious.

A second stage of the 'awakening of the South' (to re-use the title of my 2007 work, a reading of the Bandung period as the time of this awakening) is on the agenda. On the best hypothesis, the advances made in these conditions could force imperialism to retreat, and to give up its insane and criminal project of the military control of the planet. And on this hypothesis the democratic movement in the countries of the dominant could make a positive contribution to the success of this neutering process. Moreover, the retreat of the imperialist dividend from which the societies concerned are benefiting, brought about by an international rebalancing in favour of the South (and of China in particular) could very well help to awaken a socialist consciousness. But on the other hand, the societies of the South could be faced with the same challenges as in the past, resulting in the same limitations on their advancement.

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM OF WORKERS AND PEOPLES IS NECESSARY AND POSSIBLE

Historical capitalism is anything but enduring. It is only a brief bracket in history. A fundamental challenge to it – which our contemporary thinkers, by and large, imagine to be neither 'possible' nor 'desirable' – is nonetheless a necessary condition for the emancipation of oppressed workers and peoples (i.e., the people of the margins, 80 per cent of humanity). And the two dimensions of the challenge are inseparable. There will be no way out of capitalism by virtue of the struggle of the people of the North alone, or of the oppressed people of the South alone. There will only be a way out of capitalism when, and to the extent that, these two dimensions of the same challenge align with one another. It is not 'certain' that this will happen, in which case capitalism will be 'overtaken' by the destruction of civilisation (beyond the sickness of civilisation, to use Freud’s terms), and perhaps of life on the planet. The scenario of a possible 'remake' of the 20th century remains within the bounds of the requirements for an engagement of humanity on the long road of transition to global socialism. The liberal disaster demands a renewal of the radical critique of capitalism. The challenge is that of a permanent construction/reconstruction of internationalism of workers and peoples, in the face of the cosmopolitism of oligarchic capital.

Construction of this internationalism can only be envisaged through successful new revolutionary advances (like those begun in Latin America and Nepal) offering the perspective of overtaking capitalism.

In the countries of the South, States’ and nations’ fight for a negotiated globalisation without hegemonies – the contemporary form of de-linking – maintained by organising the demand of the working class can constrain and limit the oligopolistic powers of the imperialist Triad. Democratic forces in the countries of the North must support this fight. The 'democratic' discourse being proposed, and accepted by the majority of the Left, such as it is, the 'humanitarian' interventions carried out in its name as also the miserable practices of 'aid' remove from their consideration any real confrontation with this challenge.

In the countries of the North, the oligopolies are already clearly part of 'community property' whose management cannot be confined to special interests alone (the crisis of which has demonstrated catastrophic results). An authentic Left must have the courage to envisage nationalisation, the first unavoidable stage in their socialisation by the deepening of democratic practice. The current crisis allows us to conceive of a possible integrated front of social and political forces bringing together all the victims of the exclusive power of the present oligarchies.

The first wave of struggles for socialism, that of the 20th century, showed the limitations of European social democracies, the communisms of the Third International and the popular nationalisms of the Bandung era, the stifling and annihilation of their socialist ambitions. The second wave, that of the 21st century, must learn the lessons, in particular the association of socialisation with economic management and the increased democratisation of society. There will be no socialism with democracy, but equally there will be no democratic advance outside of a socialist perspective.

These strategic objectives invite us to consider the construction of 'convergence in diversity' (to use the expression of the World Forum for Alternatives) of forms of organisation and struggles of the oppressed and exploited classes. And it is not my intention to condemn in advance any of these forms which, in their own way, may renew links with social democracy, communism or popular nationalism, or may distance themselves from any of these.

From this perspective I believe it is necessary to reflect on the renewal of a creative Marxism. Marx has never been more useful or necessary in understanding and transforming the world, today even more than yesterday. To be a Marxist in this spirit is to begin from Marx and not to end with him or with Lenin or Mao, as the historical Marxisms of the previous century conceived and practised it. It is to render to Marx what belongs to him: the intelligence to have begun a modern critical way of thinking, a critique of the capitalist reality and of its political, ideological and cultural representations. Creative Marxism must have the objective of enriching without hesitation this critical way of thinking par excellence. It must not be afraid of integrating the results of reflect in any domain, including contributions which were wrongly considered to be 'alien' by the dogmas of the historical Marxism of the past.

NOTES
[1] Translator’s note: Madame Soleil was a famous French astrologer who reputedly advised former French president, François Mitterrand.

* Samir Amin has been the director of IDEP (the United Nations African Institute for Planning), the director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal, and a co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives.
* The theses presented in this article were developed by the author in his work, 'La crise, sortir de la crise du capitalism ou sortir du capitalism en crise' (Le Temps des Cerises, Paris 2009).
* Samir Amin is a contributing author to Pambazuka Press's new book 'Aid to Africa'.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

* This article was kindly translated by Fiona Campbell.

Land grabs: Another scramble for Africa

Ama Biney

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58809

cc JamsAma Biney writes for Pambazuka News on the rush to acquire land in Africa by foreign governments and private investors, fuelled by fears for global food security in the face of climate change and volatile food prices on the international market. Warning that the ‘political and economic risks of these land purchases are colossal and outweigh any gains,’ Biney argues that ‘African governments must make food security and sufficiency for their own people paramount.’

How is it possible that in the 21st century the world has the capacity to feed every single human being on the planet, yet the majority of people in Africa and the rest of the Global South, who are poor – whilst obesity soars in the West – go rampantly hungry? In addition, why has there been a recent ‘land grab’ in Africa by rich countries? The short answer to the first question lies in the unequal distribution and control of global wealth and its ownership, which lies in a few hands. The answer to the second question is tied to the first and is the focus of this article.

The recent haste i.e. within the last 12 months, to buy land in Africa, has its origins in a number of factors related to global food security concerns, particularly the increase in world grain prices between 2007-2008 which led to food riots in over 20 countries around the world, including Haiti, Senegal, Yemen, Egypt and Cameroon.

Contributing to this state of affairs has been the volatility of food prices in the international market and speculation on future food prices. The food growing nations imposed tariffs on staple crops to minimise the amounts that left their countries. The consequences of this were that it escalated the situation further. For the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar (which control 45 per cent of the world’s oil), they are finding that they can no longer rely on regional and global markets to feed their populations. They have rushed to grab land in Africa and are the pioneers of this agri-colonialism to secure food supplies for their own populations. The geopolitical ramifications of this is that food is likely to become the next coveted commodity like oil.

Other factors include failure to deal with environmental trends such as climate change, which has led to water shortages and drought in several places around the world. The impact of drought in places such as the Rift Valley for the Masai people in Kenya and Punjabi farmers in Pakistan has been totally disastrous. In short, these global developments have led countries such as China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which are short of arable land, to seek agricultural investments in Africa. They are joined by Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain, India, Sweden, Libya, Brazil, Russia and the Ukraine. As the world’s population is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050, the capacity of the world to produce as much abundantly as it has done is beginning to be squeezed. The world must change how food is produced, how much is eaten in the richer parts of the globe, and slow down its negative impact on the environment. Otherwise the crisis in food security because of a rising demand will be catastrophic in years to come, as food production fails to keep pace with rising demand. It appears for countries like Saudi Arabia that can no longer feed their own populations, they are aggressively seeking to do this by buying land in other countries.

IS ‘LAND GRABBING’ JUST SCAREMONGERING?

In the last 4 months a spate of articles in the Western media, with headlines such as: ‘The food rush: Rising Demand in China and West Sparks African Land Grab’,[1] ‘The World Wide Land Grab’,[2] and ‘Africa Investment Sparks Land Grab Fear’[3] – have given publicity to this emerging trend. Setting aside the sensationalist headlines, the trend is a profoundly disturbing one for the political and economic implications it suggests.

The cause for alarm among Africans is justified when the trend is being dubbed a ‘neo-colonial system’ by the head of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf. The deputy director of the FAO, David Hallam, claims: ‘This could be a win-win situation or it could be a sort of neo-colonialism with disastrous consequences for some of the countries involved. There is a danger that host countries, particularly the more politically sensitive and food-insecure, will lose control over their own food supplies when they need it most.’ Others such have also referred to it as ‘the new colonialism’ and ‘agrarian colonialism’. The reality is that in the last year millions of hectares of land have been leased for bio fuel and agricultural production by countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Tanzania, Kenya and Sudan. For example, Saudi Arabia has approached the Tanzanian government in April 2008 to lease 500,000 hectares of farmland for rice and wheat production.[4]

The pros and cons of these new large-scale land acquisitions have recently been presented in a paper entitled Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa, published in June by the FAO, the Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The liberal position of the authors is that their ‘aim is not to come up with definitive answers, but to facilitate bold debate among government, private sector and civil society interest groups.’[5] They point out that ‘there is a big difference between announcing plans [to sell or lease land] and actually acquiring land – let along starting to cultivate it.’ They maintain that some of the land purchases are unprecedented and significant. They concur with the Economist that ‘investment in foreign farms is not new.’[6] What is unprecedented, is firstly, the scale of the land deals that have been transacted. The Washington DC think-tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRI) estimates the deals to be worth between US$20 – $30 billion and involving between 15 – 20 million hectares of farmland in poor countries in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and the Philippines. According to the FAO report, such huge deals could be ‘the tip of the iceberg’. Already 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of farmland in five sub-Saharan African countries have been bought or rented in the last five years at a total cost of $920 million (£563 million).[7]

The second important characteristic of these new land acquisitions is that they are focused on staples (e.g. wheat, maize, rice, jatropha) or bio fuels. For example, in 2002 Sudan signed the Special Agricultural Investment Agreement with Syria. It involves a 50-year lease by the government of Sudan to the government of Syria. According to the FAO paper, ‘the Saudi Arabia company Hadco reportedly acquired 25,000 hectares of cropland in Sudan with 60 per cent of the project’s cost coming from the governmental Saudi Industrial Development Fund.’[8] In Ethiopia, the government of Meles Zenawi has recently accepted a deal of US$100 million for farmlands permitting Saudi Arabia to cultivate barley and wheat.

Thirdly, in the past, foreign farming investment was pursued by private investors. Now, several new deals are government-to-government. At times the acquirers are foreign companies. The sellers are host governments dispensing land e.g. Cambodia leased land to Kuwaiti investors in August 2008. In the same year the Sudanese and Qatari governments set up a joint venture in Sudan. The land is usually leased or made available through concessions but sometimes bought. Adding to the complexity of the land buying deals is the fact, pointed out by the FAO paper, that ‘there is no single dominant model for financial and ownership arrangements but rather a wide variety of locally specific arrangements among government and the private sector.[9]

A WIN-WIN SITUATION FOR ALL INVOLVED?

The FAO paper seeks to manoeuvre between extolling the advantages of the land deals and offering a critique of them. The authors write, ‘This fast-evolving context creates opportunities, challenges and risks. Increased investment may bring macro-level benefits (GDP growth and government revenues), and create opportunities for raising local living standards. For poorer countries with relatively abundant land, incoming investors may bring capital, technology, know-how and market access, and may play an important role in catalysing economic development in rural areas. On the other hand, large-scale acquisitions can result in local people losing access to the resources on which they depend for their food security and livelihoods.’[10]

What these deals do not spell out is the environmental tab of highly intensive farming – that is devastated soils, dry aquifers and ruined ecologies from chemical contamination. This will be the cost to the host country to pick up – no different from the environmental wreckage of exploitation carried out by Anglo-Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.

Dr Vandana Shiva, Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India, questions the current zeal for biofuels in the West that not only require millions of hectares of land, but, as she points out ‘are very centralised and industrial.’[11] They were a hidden factor behind the 2007-8 increase in global food prices, however, Shiva points out that the production of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels is forcing many farmers to switch their production on land that would otherwise be used to grow food.

In central India, the region of Chattisgarh has seen several jatropha fields ripped up by villagers (jatropha produces oil sees that can produce biodiesel). One woman who was imprisoned for doing so, forthrightly said ‘the problem we have with jatropha is that we can’t eat it. We can’t burn it; we can’t use it for anything. The poor have to make their living from the land. Jatropha is only useful for fuel. As we don’t have a vehicle it is of no value to us. Also, a big problem is that if our animals eat jatropha they die.’[12]

Recently, it is alleged that land in northern Ghana has been offered to a Norwegian bio fuel company to create a massive jatropha plantation. The people of northern Ghana should heed the experience of the dispossessed villagers of Chattisgarh who wish to be self-sufficient in food production yet their land has been given over to the exploitation of jatropha for profit.

Walden Bello rightly contends that at independence many African countries were self-sufficient in food production and were exporters of food. That situation has dramatically changed. The policies of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) dictated by the IMF and World Bank during the 1980s and 1990s helped to destroy African agriculture through the imposition of conditionalities as the price for receiving IMF and World Bank assistance to service debt. African governments were obliged to withdraw government controls and support mechanisms and in addition ‘lifting price controls on fertilisers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced application, lower yields, and lower investments.’[13]

As the IMF and World Bank insisted that their policies would lead to foreign direct investment ‘in country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment.’ In short, ‘as in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment.’ Currently African governments such as that of Ethiopia and Sudan are using the argument of seeking foreign direct investment as the reason why they have invited rich countries to purchase land in their countries. Even before these unprecedented land purchases, farmers in Africa had been forced to grow crops that the market demanded if they were to make a living. Few farmers had genuine options. They often get into debt in order to purchase or hire machinery, acquire credit to purchase seeds, fertilisers, or abandon farming altogether in order to migrate to urban areas in search of an alternative means of living.

Overall, the political and economic risks of these land purchases are colossal and outweigh any gains. The reasons are many. Firstly, the unequal power relations in such deals jeopardise the livelihoods of the poor. In essence, the foreign investor has the might of power in money to buy off local and government elites in their favour. In this way, smallholders will be legally trampled on, displaced, if not dispossessed of their land. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, a researcher at the IFPR claims, ‘The bargaining power in negotiating these agreements is on the side of the foreign investor, especially when its aspirations are supported by the host state or local elites.’

Often these smallholders have little formal education and do not understand the full implications of the small print in legal documents. In addition to this, the UN and other agencies caution that many African farmers often do not have formal rights to the land they farm and therefore will be pushed off in favour of the investor.

Secondly, many African countries do not have in place the legal mechanisms or procedures to protect the rights of such smallholders. Compounding the matter is that there is often lack of transparency and checks and balances in such contract negotiations. This creates a fertile ground for corruption, particularly as there are often huge gaps between what is on the statute books and the reality on the ground that can be manipulated in particular interests.

Is it just a case of greater transparency or a necessary code of conduct? The July meeting of the G8 group of rich countries in north eastern Italy pledged to develop a proposal on principles and best practices on purchase of land in developing countries. This code of conduct is being support by the IFPRI and the African Union (AU).

The win-win language of Western agri-businesses conceals the fact that as Raj Patel points out, ‘as lands have fallen before the banks, repossessed and repurchased, suicide rates for farmers across the world have soared.’[14] Whilst records of suicides amongst African farmers are unknown, according to P. Sainath, between 1997 and 2007 the official numbers of Indian farmers who have committed suicide has reached 182,936. He writes, ‘Those who have taken their lives were deep in debt – peasant households in debt doubled in the first decade of the neoliberal “economic reforms.”’[15] Meanwhile, it is ironic that whilst Indian farmers commit suicide, the Indian government is seeking to purchase land for growing food in Ethiopia and Sudan.

The barometer of social distress is reflected in the increase in suicide rates in countries such as Sri Lanka, China and South Korea. As Patel points out, ‘these are not only individual tragedies, but social ones.’[16] They tell the story of political and economic powerlessness of a community. They are an acute symptom of a society’s inability to ensure not only food sovereignty but economic security in the hands of a people. They are also indicative of the absurdity of the capitalist free trade logic of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that dictates that competition is good and will weed out the inefficient producer. Meanwhile, farmers in the West continue to receive agricultural subsidies that give them a head start in the capitalist game and they are able to out price African farmers.

WHY LAND GRABBING IS A CRITICAL TOPIC FOR AFRICANS

For the majority of Africans land remains both an emotive and political issue. One only has to look at the history of settler-colonialism in Africa, in countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa to see that land is not only an issue of economic resources, and therefore livelihood, but is also tied to identity. The continued purchase of African land is a critical topic for Africa because it is an integral dimension of the neo-colonial partnership that exists between the elite in African countries and Western governments and trans-national corporations.

Such a class continues to perform the role of gatekeepers of the rentier state, that is, renting out the resources of the state, whether it be oil, diamonds, coltan or land, that should be utilised for the benefit of the African majority, in order to consolidate their own political and economic base and to shore up their illegitimate regimes in terms of defence and security. Frantz Fanon aptly described such an elite as considering themselves as having ‘nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neo-colonialism.’[17]

In cognisance of this masque, we should ask: To what extent are the leaders of Sudan and Ethiopia different from the African chiefs and kings who during the days of colonialism signed away their land not knowing exactly what they were signing away? Today, unlike the African chiefs of the colonial era, African leaders such as Meles Zenawi and Omar Bashir sign such contracts with deliberation and calculation. Moreover, to what extent would Europe, Britain or the US have developed in the way they currently have, if they had sold or leased huge hectares of their land to other countries? This outsourcing of African land is a profoundly negative feature of globalisation and it is necessary that we stop our rulers voluntarily making us a colony again. Such neo-colonial partnerships are indirectly a re-colonisation of Africa’s resources, which is unlikely to benefit all parties equally.

For example, the European Union (EU) paid developing countries £125 million in 2008 to allow modern European fleets to fish the waters of developing countries. The deals proved controversial and continue to be. For years European trawlers from around the world and particularly Europe have fished off the coast of Senegal, some are legal and some are illegal. Every year about 25,000 tons of fish is exported to the EU. Many big trawlers fly Senegalese flags and are allegedly Senegalese ships. Yet as Moussa Faye from Actionaid, who campaigns against overfishing, candidly remarks, ‘They are cheating the Senegalese government and the Senegalese people, because they are actually European enterprises who come for our resources and who export the fish and the profit they make. I think that this issue should serve Senegalese people and should be a source of livelihood for the people here. There is also a serious limitation on the numbers of trawlers authorised to fish. We rely mainly on fish as source of animal protein in Senegal, which means we have less animal protein available for people who cannot afford to buy meat. The result will be malnutrition.’[18]

Like European trawlers engaging in fish farming in African waters for their own people, there is no doubt that the countries involved in land purchases in Africa, the Gulf States, India, South Korea and China, are seeking to ensure cheap food for their own citizens. Similarly, during the slave trade and colonial period in Africa, European nations managed to maintain a tacit social contract with their working classes: The ruling class would maintain low levels of hunger and deprivation where possible, by ensuring sufficient quantities of food was available. This contract was maintained on the backs of millions of African slaves in the New World and colonial subjects in the African colonies, who produced cheap sugar, tea, cotton, rubber, tin, palm oil, that were shipped to the colonial metropole. Then – as now – the cheap sugar and other agricultural products were intended to pacify the bodies of European workers. In the light of the riots that occurred in over 20 countries in 2007-8, the spate of new land deals perform a similar role in pacifying such citizens at the expense of the African poor and African farming communities in particular. In such a situation, who will feed Africa’s hungry?

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Malagasy farmers have recently given farmers worldwide an example of what is to be done. In fact their example requires wider media coverage in the dissemination of globalising resistance and victories against such land deals. The farmers of Madagascar recently resisted the neo-colonial deal between South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics and the government of Marc Ravalomana. The announcement of the deal led to the toppling of Ravalomana’s government when the people of Madagascar were informed that the Ravalomana government had entered into a land deal to lease 1.3 million hectares in a 99-year lease in east and west Madagascar to the South Korean Company Daewoo Logistics. The contract gave Daewoo Logistics the right to grow and export maize and oil palm to South Korea to the tune of US$6 billion.

The 34 year-old new president of Madagascar said that land was not for sale in his country. The Malagasy Farmers Confederation (Fekritana) mobilised its workers to resist the contract. Its programme officer, Rihatiana Rasonarivo said that it was not in the interests of Madagascar to lease land for food. He said: ‘We don’t agree with the idea of foreigners coming to buy land in Madagascar. Our concern is that first of all the government should facilitate the access to land by local farmers before dealing with foreigners. One of the biggest problems for farmers in Madagascar is land ownership, so we think it’s unfair for the government to be selling or leasing land to foreigners when local farmers do not have enough land.’

Similarly, in the Philippines, a poor South East Asian country of 90 million people, the politician Rafael Mariano, who represents Filipino farmers introduced a resolution calling for an immediate enquiry into what he characterised as the ‘great foreign land grab.’ He said: ‘It is the height of stupidity for our country to bargain our lands for the sake of other nation’s food security, while being dependent on importation for our very own food security needs.’ Therefore, it is necessary to question how it is possible that Ethiopia, a country which is largely associated with famine and Live Aid, is able to have signed land deals with Saudi Arabia, when it cannot feed its own population but is promising to feed the people of Saudi Arabia? Similarly, why is the Kenyan government considering leasing parcels of the rich coastal lands in the delta of Kenya’s Tana River, which is home to farming and pastoralist communities, when Kenya is currently facing not only huge food shortages and high prices but a third consecutive year of drought?

Other protests which have received little media coverage in the West and in Africa is the campaign led by the militant Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and International League of Asia Wide Peasants Caravan for Land and Livelihood from July 2009 to November 2009 in ten Asian countries. The theme of the Peasant’s Caravans is ‘Stop Global Land Grabbing! Struggle for Genuine Agrarian Reform and People’s Food Sovereignty.’ This grassroots movement is seeking to bring to light the plight of poor peasants whose livelihoods have been worsened by neo-liberal policies of trans-national corporations, the WTO and large-scale corporatisation of farming. Their objectives are ‘to popularise peasant victories and success stories in the struggle for genuine land reform that will inspire’ and lead to agrarian change in the interests of Asian farmers.

In addressing what is to be done, there are a number of actions and sites of struggle to be initiated. Firstly, African governments must make food security and sufficiency for their own people paramount. Agricultural investment is a necessity and number one priority, as is the need to help small farmers produce greater yields to stem both rural and urban hunger. African farmers need to be paid a decent wage to produce for the nation and not for foreign investors. Secondly, civil society, including African farmers unions and co-operatives need to educate local people, and small-scale farmers, that such land deals are not in their interests, however well-meaning or couched in ‘win-win’ terminology they appear to be. Thirdly, resistance along the lines of the Malagasy farmers’ union and the Asian Peasant Coalition needs to be shared by farmers unions in the Global South not only in a spirit of solidarity but also as concrete evidence of collective change being both a possibility and reality against such land deals. Ultimately, we need to fight for African people’s right to control land and other critical resources and these must be placed in the interests of African people.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Dr Ama Biney is a Pan-Africanist and scholar-activist who lives in the United Kingdom.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] The Guardian Fri 3 July 2009.
[2] http://farmlandgrab.org/6623
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/8150241.stm
[4] Christian Science Monitor, July 8 2009.
[5] P.16.
[6] May 21 2009.
[7] Guardian Fri 3 July 2009.
[8] FAO paper, p.39.
[9] Ibid, p.35.
[10] Ibid, p.15.
[11] Future of Food, British Broadcasting Corporation, Channel BBC2 documentary, presented by George Alagiah, 24 August 2009.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Walden Bello, ‘Destroying African Agriculture’ in Global Research, June 5 2008.
[14] Raj Patel, Stuffed & Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, Portobello, 2007, p. 15.
[15] P. Sainath, ‘The Largest Wave of Suicides in History’ in CounterPunch, February 12, 2009.
[16] Raj Patel, Stuffed & Starved, p. 27.
[17] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 122.
[18] Future of Food, British Broadcasting Corporation, Channel BBC2 documentary, presented by George Alagiah, 24 August 2009.

Making sense of the food rebellions

Raj Patel and Eric Holt-Giménez

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58799

cc Asian Farmers'Food sovereignty, the democratisation of food systems and the trouble with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa are among the topics touched on by Raj Patel and Eric Holt-Giménez, in a lively interview with Pambazuka News about their latest book, Food Rebellions! Drawing together wide-ranging diagnosis of the causes of recent ‘food riots’ around the world, with ‘an understanding of the politics of resistance that they bear witness to’, the authors describe the text as a ‘working book, for real social change’. Food Rebellions! is published by Pambazuka Press.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How did Food Rebellions! come about? And why now?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: The book was driven by Eric’s vision for a text that could interpret and contextualise the wave of protest around the world that the media had referred to as ‘food riots’, but which were the confluence of factors far more complex and urgent than most journalists could acknowledge. Although the academic publishing industry is now cranking out waves of anthology about the crisis, there isn’t an accessible text that brings together both a wide-ranging diagnosis of the causes of these rebellions, and also an understanding of the politics of resistance that they bear witness to. Also, a number of organisations in the food movement wanted a text that could inform a people’s campaign for solving the food crisis – we also wrote the book with them in mind. This is a working book, for real social change.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What were the primary materials and experiences informing your work?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: At Food First, we’ve been following the food crisis for over 30 years, during which time many many people from the social movements have taught us where the true roots hunger and environmental destruction lie. We have included their insights and their testimonies, inspiration and vision for food justice and food sovereignty in this book.

More frivolously, one of the experiences that mattered most in the writing of this book was Eric’s back injury – he couldn’t lie down or stand up for a month, and over Christmas he spent the entire time reclined in a chair writing, turning a good manuscript into a great one.




PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How would you define the term 'food sovereignty'?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: Food sovereignty seems to mean all things to all people, and that’s no accident. The widely accepted definition speaks of ‘people’s right to control their food and agriculture policy’. What it calls for is a democratisation of the food system. This turns out to be revolutionary: What, after all, is real democracy? It’s a situation of radical equality in which every person, regardless of income, race, gender, class or, ultimately indeed citizenship, can shape the politics and policy of the food system.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: A major theme of your book is the need to genuinely democratise both food systems and the decisions taken around them. You discuss the tension between calls for a 'green revolution' from international organisations like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and those of the continent's grassroots movements for African agroecological alternatives. How would you describe these competing views on developing agriculture?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa starts from the unimpeachable observation that African agriculture needs investment. But from that point, it rather rapidly goes off the rails, developing a model of agriculture that is driven not by the needs and successes of the world’s poorest farmers, but by the world’s richest foundations. The rise of ‘Philanthropy capitalism’ is necessarily at odds with democracy – in the latter, people decide their own fates. In the former, the fates of the world’s poorest people are shaped by the richest men. For instance, the ‘We Are the Solution’ campaign seeks to address the food perspective from a genuinely African perspective (not merely parroting policy written in Seattle, relying on foreign dollars). The farmer federations and women’s organisations launching this campaign see the solutions to hunger in Africa as addressing both the structural causes of hunger as well as advancing African agroecological practices to production.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: As a challenge to the often-assumed superiority of top-down and executive knowledge around agriculture, what will be the key means of promoting grassroots voices and ensuring the centrality of local expertise in the future of the global food system?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: AGRA, like the original Green Revolution, is a campaign for the corporate colonisation of African food systems. African farmers and civil society are mounting a counter-campaign, based on food sovereignty and agroecological solutions to hunger, rather than genetic engineering. One of the misconceptions around food sovereignty is that it is in some way anti-science, that it mistrusts expertise. On the contrary, if we are to overcome the ecological disasters that industrial agriculture has wrought, we’ll need a great deal of science, research and expertise. Ensuring that this expertise is democratically controlled isn’t some political pipe dream – it’s already happening. Eric’s work on the Campesino a Campesino movement in Central America is a study of a living example of this democratic exchange of expertise, but it’s happening in Africa too, from Mali to Malawi.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Your chapter on Africa touches on the need to 'cultivate farmers' enthusiasm' in the effort to mobilise the continent's agricultural majority and ensure that smallholders themselves develop their own sustainable methods.

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: Enthusiasm is that quality which can’t be bought, but without which there is no social change. All [Bill] Gates has is money, but what he can’t buy is enthusiasm. We need to amplify the voices of the farmers’ federations and the women’s organisations who are enthusiastically advancing genuinely democratic solutions to the food crisis.

With the dominant role of international NGOs and the imposition of external knowledge over the last 30 years or so however, the experience for many African people has been a sustained loss of confidence in their own knowledge and capacity for solutions. If people are accustomed to looking outside for help, how can they be encouraged to trust in local knowledge and look first to themselves?

We need to be careful about a reactionary impulse to head to ‘100 per cent African’. Capital can hide its power behind local faces – take AGRA, for example, in which ‘African owned’ might mean ‘owning the Africans’! Luckily, there are so many examples of both successful traditional and agroecological approaches to food production in Africa that people don’t have to look any farther than the continent to find the solutions to their problems. Of course, international solidarity matters, but the terms of that solidarity need to be mutual, not unilateral. What we try to do is tell the stories of agroecological success more broadly, in the face of outside intervention in African agriculture. We’re not opposed to exchange, but we’re concerned to broaden the number of people who set the terms of that exchange.

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: What would you say are the changes required in the immediate future to tackle the food crisis and move towards a sustainable end to world hunger?

The immediate concern is local and sustainable purchasing of food aid (which the US doggedly resists, and which the EU dances around), but the shift toward sustainability requires changes both in the international agricultural trade environment – specifically, agriculture needs to be removed from the WTO so that countries can develop their own policies around how to feed themselves – and in the relationship between science and the public. At the moment, agricultural science is increasingly privatised, and for solutions to be sustainable, they need to be socially and democratically owned.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What do you see as the connection between the arguments laid out in Food Rebellions! and Raj Patel’s now famous book Stuffed and Starved?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: We see them as very complementary. Stuffed and Starved was finished at the beginning of 2007, and it was aimed at people who might not have thought about food and the food system before. It’s very much an introductory book. What Food Rebellions does is take the ideas in Stuffed and Starved to the next level, with more theoretical rigour and more up-to-date information from struggles around the world.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: And where to from here? What are your plans for moving this campaign forward? Does the new Obama administration offer hope?

RAJ PATEL/ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ: Food First is working to look behind the myths of a green revolution in Africa. Bending the Obama administration to a sensible agriculture position is going to take a lot of work, though. They’re very much in the thrall of conventional agricultural interests. Obama was, after all, the Senator from Illinois, an agribusiness hub – he writes about his regret at having to stop flying in the Archer Daniels Midland jet (though he did get to meet ‘the people’ when he flew commercial first class).

We’re working on another book that will invite representatives from social movements around the world to think strategically about how we implement the promising and sustainable solutions which are currently on the margins of international food policy, so that they can become the mainstream. This book talks about the root problems and solutions, and in the next book people will discuss how exactly we’re going to get there.

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* Eric Holt-Giménez is the executive director of Food First. Raj Patel is an honorary research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and works with the South African Shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
* Food Rebellions! is available from Pambazuka Press for just £12.95.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

False pledges to Africa in the crisis

Lee Wengraf

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58797

cc Nick HobgoodWith the prospects for development across the African continent severely undermined by the effects of the global financial crisis, Africa has seen Western countries break promise after promise, writes Lee Wengraf in this week's Pambazuka News. While the US continues to be nowhere near fulfilling its commitment of 0.70 per cent of national income towards foreign aid, it has had no trouble finding funds for militarisation programmes, with some US$500 million available for AFRICOM alone. As imperial competition heightens in the spectre of a global financial crisis, Wengraf writes, it is ordinary Africans who will continue to suffer under a system based on profit.

Barack Obama made his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president in July, speaking in Accra, Ghana, on the heels of the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy. The G8 meeting highlighted – like last year's summit in Hokkaido, Japan – the continued failure of the world's wealthiest nations to live up to their promises of aid to Africa.

This failure is all the more glaring in light of the brutal impact of the global economic crisis on the world's poorest continent. And Washington's agenda holds more crushing debt and militarisation in store.

The 2005 G8 meeting at Gleneagles was dubbed the '100 per cent debt relief summit', embraced by Tony Blair and George W. Bush alike. Pledges were made to double aid to Africa by 2010 and to forgive Third World nations' debt. But according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), G8 leaders will fall short of their 2005 promise by as much as US$23 billion. And as the European Network on Debt and Development notes, any debt forgiven was cut from those nations' aid packages.

This betrayal is in keeping with 40 years of empty promises. In 1970, developed nations voted on a UN resolution to devote 0.7 per cent of their national incomes to foreign aid. European nations such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Luxemburg have exceeded this target, but no G8 country has come close. Today, US aid is only 0.16 per cent of gross national income, the lowest percentage among donor nations.

The L'Aquila summit touted a US$20 billion aid package, but as Pambazuka News points out, this sum is for three years, to be shared between 53 African countries. This total amounts to an average of about US$132 million each, a drop in the bucket by any measurement.

Pointing out that past G8 pledges – not yet delivered – could save more than 3 million lives, Oxfam's Emma Seery denounced these failures, saying, 'The Africa discussion was relegated to an insultingly token session. How can we take the G8 seriously when all they offer Africa is broken promises and photo opportunities?'

In a statement on the L'Aquila meeting, the organisation predicted that Africa would lose US$245 billion in revenue this year – almost seven times the amount it receives in global aid – as a result of the global economic crisis, but will receive only about $5 billion in additional support. AIG's executive bonuses alone, they concluded, could pay for enough teachers for 7 million children in Africa.

Aid for Africa has been short-changed across all areas. For example, the G8 proposed 2010 as a target date for universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment. According to Africa Action, at the current rate of progress, less than half of all people on the continent needing medication will be receiving it by 2010. Nearly 70 per cent of Africans living with HIV or AIDS lack access to treatment.

The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's HIV/AIDS initiatives in Africa are under-funded by the US, despite high-profile declarations of support by both Bush and Obama.

Despite the decades-long trail of broken-promises, Obama's speech in Accra was marked by finger-wagging and reprimands, by an insistence that African nations' own mismanagement and lack of democracy are to blame for their economic and social problems.

Obama told the Ghanaian parliament:

'Yes, a colonial map that made little sense bred conflict, and the West has often approached Africa as a patron, rather than a partner. But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants… No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.'

Obama's comments turn the reality of African poverty and its root causes on its head. Decades of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank loans and structural adjustment policies have placed an economic stranglehold on African and other Third World nations.

Hobbled by the underdevelopment of the colonial era – when Africans were stripped of their land and livelihoods, and Africa's rich resources and labour were exploited mercilessly for the profits of a handful of foreign investors backed by military force – post-colonial nations scrambled to compete in the world economy. New African states were compelled to accept harsh terms for loans, including low tariffs, privatisation, single-commodity export production and cuts to domestic spending.

Using the IMF–World Bank as a battering ram, neoliberal policy forced its way across Africa and the rest of the globe, leaving in its wake decimated social programmes, a debt crisis and conditions favourable for US investment. Each Ghanaian, for example, owes approximately US$350 to international financial institutions. And pious calls for 'good governance' notwithstanding, from the post-colonial era to the present, the US has historically relied on political forces in the best position to back their economic and strategic interests, be they dictatorial regimes or proxy forces.

Behind the rhetoric of 'democracy,' deeper economic penetration drives US interest in Africa. The past decade has witnessed a boom in the oil and minerals industries, many of them US-based. In 2008, the United States imported 24 per cent of its oil from Africa, and that figure is expected to rise.

In addition, 80 per cent of the world's supply of coltan, a key component in cell phones and electronic goods, and 80 per cent of the world's supply of cobalt, used for batteries in hybrid cars, comes from Africa. A surge in the price of oil and other commodities earlier this decade led to record growth rates on the continent.

Today, however, prices have fallen drastically. Food production geared for an export market has created shortages, exacerbated by IMF bans on subsidies for African farmers imposed as a condition for loans.

The Carnegie Endowment predicts that African economies will likely suffer about US$578 billion in lost export earnings over the next two years – five times the aid to the region over the period – concluding, 'At this pace, many countries will not be able to afford even basic commodity imports such as food, medical supplies and agricultural inputs.'

Oil-exporting nations will suffer the biggest revenue decline: 42 per cent in 2009 and 43 per cent in 2010, a whopping total of US$420 billion in revenue over the next two years. Meanwhile, investment funds have dried up and unemployment has risen. All told, the continent's growth rate is expected to fall from around 6 per cent in 2008 to approximately 1 per cent for this year, according to the IMF.

In recent years, investment in extraction industries have fuelled a new scramble for African resources, and some of the largest global firms like Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco and Freeport-McMoRan are major players in Africa. China is now the United States's main competitor, and trade between Africa and China grew to more than US$100 billion by 2008.

But the global economic crisis has undermined China's involvement as well. As the New York Times put it:

'[J]ust a year ago China appeared to be upending the decades-old order in Africa, stepping into the void left by large Western companies too timid to invest in the continent's resource-rich but fragile states as the market for copper, tin, oil and timber soared to new heights…'

Today, China's quest for commodities has not stalled. State-owned companies are bargain hunting for copper and iron ore in more stable places like Zambia and Liberia. But Chinese companies are now driving harder bargains and avoiding some of the most chaotic corners of the continent. African governments facing falling revenues are realising that they may still need the West's help after all.

Tough-love talk of 'responsibility' aside, US policy will only destabilise and further impoverish Africa in this global recession. Obama is turning to the World Bank and IMF to help spur economic growth in Africa. At this year's G8 meeting, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's proposed tripling the International Monetary Fund's resources from their current level of about US$250 billion, with US$100 billion coming from the US.

From 1970–2002, Africa received some US$540 billion in loans, yet paid back US$550 billion in principal and interest. Even with the level of urgency on the rise, debt forgiveness 'ha[s] not been translated into Obama administration policy', as Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) puts it. Rather, the latest dose of neoliberal medicine will spell disaster for many in Africa.

'The situation will be exacerbated through these new loans by the IMF', says Michael Stulman of Africa Action. 'The loans still carry conditions that have the potential to subvert economic growth, and urgent action is needed more than ever to see that all debt is cancelled to Africa as it faces this current financial crisis.'

While the IMF has directed industrialised nations to enact stimulus plans and bank bailouts, Africa and other Third World regions are compelled to accept spending cuts and other harsh conditions for loans. In fact, says Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network, 'Because the money promised … for poor countries is in the form of new loans, rather than grants or debt relief, the IMF may be contributing to a renewed Third World debt crisis.'

The financial crisis is already undermining the fight against AIDS, for example. Currently, many nations on the continent have less than one health worker for every 1,000 people, well below the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum. Yet typically, the IMF has barred nations from hiring doctors and nurses while privatising public health programmes.

Despite the economic crisis, the Obama administration has had no difficulty funding another prong of Bush's Africa policy: militarisation. Next year's congressional budget doubles the budgets for the new military command centre for Africa, AFRICOM, and for counterterrorism initiatives on the continent, with US$500 million for AFRICOM operations alone. Horn of Africa nations – a region with both high levels of instability and critical strategic US interests – are slated to receive considerable financial support to fight 'Islamic terrorists'.

New funding will be used for everything from naval operations off the Gulf of Guinea – near the oil-rich Niger Delta region – to arms sales and computerised watch list systems for easy identification of terrorist group members.

Obama's recent high-profile announcement allocating US$10 million to back up Somalia's government against al-Shabab Islamist forces will only fuel a conflict that has driven 160,000 people from the capital, Mogadishu, since May, 2009, alone. Driven by the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of late 2006, more than one million people now live in refugee camps and the UN estimates that more than 3.25 million people currently need food aid.

Obama's plans for Africa are by no means identical to his predecessor's. He also aims to strengthen 'soft power' approaches by increasing support for the State Department and programmes such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) worldwide. Foreign assistance will jump from US$1.5 billion to US$2.73 billion in the coming year, with US$450 million for Africa.

But these numbers pale in comparison to the US$800 million 'security' budget for Africa, according to FPIF estimates. The global economic crisis will only heighten imperial competition and military conflict in the region. The Gulf of Aden off the Horn of Africa, for example – a crucial shipping lane to the Suez Canal – is now the site of US, Chinese, Indian and Japanese naval patrols, all seeking to protect their investments from Somali pirates.

Other regional conflicts – from battles for the mines in the Congo to the insurgency in the Niger Delta oilfields – are superpower wars for resources, and millions of ordinary Africans are paying the price.

The new scramble for Africa has immiserated millions while enriching a tiny minority, both African and foreign powers alike. Oxfam predicts that by 2015, oil revenues in African oil-exporting countries will exceed the amount needed to meet key social development goals by US$35 billion a year. The resources exist to more than meet human need. The biggest obstacle is a global system built on profit.

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* This article was originally published in the International Socialist Review (67, September–October 2009).
* Lee Wengraf is a New York City-based organiser active in global justice and human rights campaigns. Her writings on African political economy have appeared in International Socialist Review and Socialist Worker.org.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Curse of monarchical tendencies in African politics

Okello Oculi

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58801

cc Tom MarukoThere are many African rulers that hang onto power, coming very close to the practices of a monarch, writes Okello Oculi in this week's Pambazuka News. This is a dynamic exacerbated by the involvement of the World Bank and NGOs in Africa, who supplement the income of these kleptocrats and who sustain themselves through refusing to condemn the practices of corrupt leaders. We must fight the creativity of leaders like Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville in hiding the sources of their wealth, Oculi urges, and support a common legal norm to bring those that are breaking the law against human dignity and development to justice.

When in the 1960s Ali Mazrui warned of emerging ‘monarchical tendencies in African politics’, his critics dismissed it as his supposed hatred of African revolutionaries and socialists in government. The fact that he had targeted Kwame Nkrumah but ignored the pro-French Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Ivory Coast, and mauled Mwalimu Nyerere but had been mute about criticising Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s emerging brutal termination of the opposition, helped his critics to demand some level of tolerance in his accusations. This tolerance would however give military coup plotters the excuse they needed to terminate the tentative road to anti-colonial nationalism and the search for democracy. When military rulers turned to murder of opposition groups inside and outside the military as a tool of governance, people began to accept mere subsistence-level peaceful civilian administrations. Rulers like Omar Bongo in Gabon had the murderous antics of Idi Amin in Uganda and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire as evidence of the need to maintain their own rule under civilian one-party dictatorships. Even Kamuzu Banda in Malawi was preferable to the blood-drenched rule of Jaafar al-Nimeiry in Sudan. The longer they stayed in office the more they began to look like pre-colonial monarchies, or what in Nigeria were termed favourably as ‘traditional rulers’ by their supporters. They would soon move towards temptations of also joining the practice of passing power to their children after them.

That they remained as a minority is clear. The list of Africa’s ‘founding fathers’ who did not hand over power to their children is a long and most commendable one. Mwalimu Nyerere and Léopold Sédar Senghor left power voluntarily. Kenneth Kaunda treated Zambians to the exemplary experience of having a ruler who stood for elections, lost and yet willingly and with much dignity handed over power to the challenger who had trounced him. Ahmed Sékou Touré, Houphouët-Boigny and Jomo Kenyatta died in power. A galaxy of figures has passed by who avoided the lure of handing power to their children. The campaign to drill it into the global political ‘noisephere’ that nothing good has come out of Africa in the last four decades of anti-colonial nationalism has cynically buried this grand political legacy under the mud. In fact CBS television in the United States overdid itself in this game when they wished to cover up the historic moment when a packed stadium of Tanzanians burst into collective weeping in 1985 because Mwalimu Nyerere had turned down their plea to stay in power since his first election in 1961.

Except for Nyerere these ‘founding fathers’ had bequeathed longevity and the strategy of building networks of clients whose loyalty and support became linked to sharing out contracts and state funds handed out from state ‘security votes’. Moreover, African empires had easy lessons to teach in the running of royal courts. In places like Nigeria, the Sokoto Caliphate, the Benin Kingdom and the Oyo Empire gave the sons of new politicians and public administration officials training in patronage politics. Jomo Kenyatta, Houphouët-Boigny and Senghor each selectively turned to rooting loyalties for their regime around Mouride religious leaders, administering oaths and clan mutual-support mechanisms. They may not have handed over power to their sons after them, but they left behind lessons of holding power, which lesser minds would vulgarise into creating new ‘dynasties’.

The emergence of military rulers who held onto power with the use of the gun blinded Africa from holding up long-serving civilian rulers as models that civil society could insist on. Moreover, we lost sight of the importance of the fact that these rulers had been highly educated intellectuals without the burden of inferiority complexes. Kenyatta was a university graduate who had published a much-celebrated scholarly study of the Kikuyu political system. Senghor had been a star student in an elite French school and became a distinguished poet and scholar of French language and grammar. Nyerere studied European political philosophy for a master's degree at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland’s most prestigious centre of learning. They would not degenerate into the psychotic kleptocracy of Omar Bongo, Mobutu, Idi Amin, Sassou Nguesso, and many of Nigeria’s civilian politicians from post-military regimes.

Elliot Associates and Global Witness have recently reported that Sassou Nguesso and his family own 23 properties in Paris and hold 112 bank accounts in Paris. Sassou Nguesso, a military officer turned politician, shared with Frederick Chiluba (a lowly educated ex-trade unionist turned politician) a psychotic hunger for high-class European clothes. Chiluba was accused of spending UK£50,000 on a wardrobe. Sassou Nguesso is accused of spending US$35,000 on clothes for his wardrobe in 2005.

Omar Bongo was accused of having had 66 bank accounts and 45 homes in France. The tragedy for Africa is that such corruption has created two frontiers for the exploitation of Africa. The first, as stressed by Dambisa Moyo, is that over 100,000 people consisting of World Bank employees, European and North American NGOs and their African allies earn their living by giving and administering ‘aid’ to African countries. As James D. Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank stressed in a television interview, these people fight anybody who opposes giving more aid to corrupt African leaders. They keep themselves in employment by making Africa’s debts boom, while sustaining rulers in power who do not care for aid reaching their oppressed people.

The second frontier for the exploitation brought to Africa is the marauding ‘Vulture Funds’. These are groups of Euro-American pirates who at very low prices buy debts that African countries cannot repay when creditors come calling. They then haunt these countries to re-pay both the capital and interest on these funds. Elliot Associates are currently hunting down President Sassou Nguesso who, like a patriotic crook, has devised ways of hiding companies that he uses to sell crude oil exported from Congo-Brazzaville. The vultures from Elliot Associates want to fleece him. He is playing difficult to catch. Moreover, he has become usefully creative. He has shown a new frontier of mobilising politicians in the African diaspora to fight these vultures. Representative Maxine Walters, a member of the Black Congressional Caucus in the US Congress, is fending off these vultures. It would be nice if we could get Maxine Walters to fight both these vultures and the corrupt African rulers whose corruption gives birth to these international economic maggots.

As Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem would urge, we must go from mourning these crimes to fighting back. We must expose and denounce psychotic traits in African rulers and not wait to defend them when racists use them to attack Africans and peoples of African descent as a whole. We must denounce emerging monarchical tendencies that first showed their head during the elections in Togo. In Gabon the beneficiaries of Omar Bongo’s 40-year-old corrupt and dictatorial patronage network are hanging onto his legacy by cooperating with France to rig elections and impose his son Ali Bongo on the angry people of Gabon. In Egypt and Libya there are signals of sabotaging the emergence of democratic politics by the imposing of the sons of President Hosni Mubarak and Muammar al-Gaddafi while repressing opposition parties. Finally, we must create support across the continent for a legal norm on the crime against national development and people’s human dignity.

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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.

Do as they do, not as they say

Africa should follow the West’s example not its advice

William Gumede

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58808

cc WikimediaTo survive the devastating impact of the global financial crisis, William Gumede tells Pambazuka News, African countries must learn one simple lesson they appeared not to have heeded since the end of colonialisation and apartheid: Do not listen to the advice of global financial institutions and leading Western nations. For that matter, do exactly what these Western nations do.

Western countries are now bailing out commercial banks and strategic industries with public money. They are once again lifting tariff barriers for products from African and developing countries. Yet, they discourage African countries from doing the same.

Western countries more often than not do exactly the opposite of what they tell African and developing countries to do. Global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, while instructing African and developing nations to pursue mostly irrelevant, if not destructive policies are silent when industrial nations implement the opposite.

Importantly, African countries must stay away from the World Bank and IMF. If it is absolutely necessary to borrow, do so judiciously, and from sources other than these international organisations.

The success of the East Asian developmental states since the Second World War has much to do with ignoring the advice of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and leading Western nations; and actually doing exactly what Western nations did to grow their economies.

Meanwhile, African countries slavishly followed what they were told by Western and former Soviet bloc or Chinese communists, rather than actually studying carefully what these countries actually did, and then using the best and most relevant from both.

Most African countries since independence while pursuing foreign investment, as suggested by Western nations and global financial institutions, sold off state-owned assets cheaply. They made it easy for global companies based in their countries to repatriate their funds abroad. Supposedly to make it easy for foreign investors to do business in their countries, African governments waived minimum labour and environment standards and did not insist on minimum levels of skills transfer.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, until the late 1980s, foreign investors were not allowed to have majority ownership in local companies, except in very restricted circumstances. Foreign investors were restricted to sectors in which South Korea did not have the capacity, but which the country had identified as crucial to develop. In such instances, foreign investors were compelled to transfer new technology not easily accessible by locals and to extend their international marketing contacts to local companies, in return for being allowed to invest in the country.

In the 1970s and 1980s, almost every African country slavishly followed the World Bank/IMF and Western nations’ injunctions to privatise their state-owned companies. Meanwhile, very few of these Western nations actually pursued whole-scale privatisation. These African privatisations spawned corruption, as companies were sold off to political cronies, ethnic buddies and foreign companies that bribed local officials. In East Asia developmental states set up developmental banks, run by the best brains in their countries, which financed the industrialisation of their countries, by providing easy credit, loans and expertise to their growing industries.

East Asian developmental states pro-actively identified sectors to be developed, and then built them up – rather than waiting for it to spontaneously develop. These governments used a combination of taxation, fiscal policy, research support, tariffs and judicious foreign borrowing to develop new industries.

At the same time, the import of products that could be manufactured at home and of luxury consumer was heavily discouraged. Companies using locally produced material were rewarded with tax rebates.

The global financial crisis has turned economic convention upside down.

African countries must not be caught napping again: Use the policy space opened by the global financial crisis to do exactly what Western nations are doing and what the East Asian developmental states are doing again.

They must pursue relevant industrial policies; and make sure that those who manage the implementation of the policies are the best talent available. Furthermore, African governments must cut out corruption, and act in the broadest public interest, rather than narrow factional, ethnic and selfish interests.

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

Socio-economic development in Southern Africa

Challenges and prospects

Henning Melber

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58805

cc World BankMainstream models for socio-economic development in Southern Africa focus on elites, Henning Melber tells Pambazuka News, but if the interests of the majority of the people are to be served, fundamental new approaches are needed.

The following reflections are based on the assumption that the current mainstream model for socio-economic development in Southern Africa is elite oriented and therefore inadequate. To serve the interest of the majority of the people, fundamental new approaches are required. Considering the global challenges, this is not only a task confined to Southern Africa. Given the number of unknown or at least little predictable variables concerning both internal and even more so external dimensions, it borders on reading tealeaves. Local, sub-regional and global dynamics are difficult to predict and not pre-determined.

The following assessment might therefore appear as a kind of ‘wishful thinking’ for how a people-centred development in the region might be promoted. However, visions of this nature are also ingredients to policymaking.

In Namibia, ‘Vision 2030’ was initiated at the turn of the century by President Sam Nujoma to become the guiding document for the country’s development strategy. It diagnosed a very true dilemma the SWAPO government has to reckon with, if it wants to retain its legitimacy and credibility among the electorate, when stating: ‘The goals of the Namibian struggle for Independence were framed in terms of social justice, popular rule and socio-economic transformation, thus the legitimacy of the post apartheid system of governance rests on its ability to deliver trans­form­ation or, at any rate, to redirect resources to address the socio-economic causes of poverty and potential conflict. […] Continued prevalence of widespread poverty would, in the eyes of those affected, imply government’s unwillingness to change the status quo, or its inability to improve their economic conditions.’ (Office of the President 2004: 174 and 175).

In line with this conviction, which defines the challenge not only for the Namibian government but also for most former liberation movements when moving into political power, my presentation is motivated and guided by the following goals a strategy should pursue in the Southern African sub-regional context:

- Reduce social inequality and poverty;
- Create meaningful opportunities for employment or work;
- Secure an ecologically sustainable development, which adapts to climate change;
- Provide a maximum of human security for all people in the region through a responsible state and government policy seeking to promote and satisfy basic needs in all spheres of life (including the political domain, based on the values and norms of a democratic culture embracing the full protection and promotion of civil liberties and human rights).

The point of departure is the conclusion that hitherto dominant and largely unquestioned growth based models of economic development and social reproduction become increasingly dubious and come at a far too high price for the majority of the people.

They are also anchored in what could be termed a ‘pact among elites’, transgressing national, regional and continental boundaries. It is a class-based model of accumulation and (self-)enrichment at the expense of the majority of the people. Walter Rodney (1973) showed this in his seminal work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Since then, local compradors were eager to have their share in the externally dominated structures shaping African economies.

Already more than a decade earlier Frantz Fanon (1961) pointed to the ‘Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ in a chapter of his equally fundamental critique relating European colonialism to the role of the new elites appropriating African nationalism for their own gains after Independence. Moeletsi Mbeki translated this into the current social, economic and political realities not only confined to post-Apartheid South Africa in his scathing critique of the present African elites as a ‘rentier class’ in the following way: ‘These elites have no sense of ownership of their country and are not interested in its development. They view the country primarily as a cash cow that enables them to live extravagantly on imported goods and services as they attempt to mimic the lifestyles of the colonialists. It is this mindset of non-ownership that largely accounts for sub-Saharan Africa’s non-development and, as a consequence, its poverty. With the lack of a sense of ownership goes the pillaging of resources, neglect of the welfare of the people, corruption, capital flight and, ultimately, brutality against dissenting voices.’ (Mbeki 2009: 174). My own critical analyses of both the socio-economic as well as political ‘limits to liberation’, with particular reference to the Namibian case, concurs to a large extent with the approach by Mbeki (cf. Melber 2007, 2009a and 2009b).

CURRENT POSITION

Southern Africa (considered to be composed of most of the SADC countries in this context) has since the mid-1990s achieved full political Independence and ownership by (more or less) democratically elected governments in most (though not all) of its countries. This does however not mean true sovereignty and ownership over all internal matters. The sub-region remains closely linked to external interests and influences and has some of the most open economies. What David Sogge (2009: 22) recently stated in conclusion for Angola, applies to all countries in the region: ‘politics remain entwined with powerful outside actors and are still politics of limited access to assets and privileges. State/party elites pursue their interests on the basis of understandings with foreign extractive and banking corporations, and with foreign governments […] elites harbour social and economic ambitions, but those do not now include a developmental state pursuing a socially inclusive agenda.’

He also points to the fact that the world economic crisis ‘has exposed the massive regulatory deficit in national and global governance’ (ibid., 23). The ‘new scramble for Africa’ triggered since the turn of the century through increased competition of industrialised and industrialising countries outside of the continent a race to secure access to and control over the vast natural resources of some of the countries (cf. Southall/Melber 2009). But the resource boom (which in the sub-region benefited among others and in different degrees Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia) has been short lived and reproduced a deeply entrenched structural pattern not in support of locally owned sustainable development. Exceptionally high annual economic growth rates did not translate into poverty reduction, employment, local ownership or value-adding activities. Instead, South Africa registered a massive deindustrialisation.

The economies of the sub-region remain dependent more than ever on a few basic raw materials for export and outward oriented trade regimes securing revenue income and gains from international trade under preferential schemes, such as the US-American African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) or some other bilateral agreements such as the South African Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. The collapse of the growth-based global economy in 2008 once again underlined that the economies in the region remained at the receiving end. Their own economies ended in recession due to the massive dependencies on the world market and the skewed exchange relations.

One is tempted to conclude that recent trends testify to the bankruptcy of the established outward oriented economies. This outward orientation looked beyond the region and missed opportunities to consolidate a regional architecture geared towards homemade development, based on mutual interests among neighbours. The massive internal discrepancies among SADC countries might add to the challenge but do not render systematic efforts futile or doomed to failure.

If the currently dominant approaches to running the economies prevail, the deterioration of the socio-economic conditions seems to be more likely than any gains. The resource curse needs to be addressed. Replacing one commodity with another where possible (like in the case of Namibia, where the collapse of the diamond market was to some extent compensated with the increased production of uranium oxide) is not an answer but adds to the problem. As long as such growth-based models do not benefit the majority of the people as a means to transform the economic basis in the medium to long term perspective, they are merely more of the same and no cure from the disease.

‘Business as usual’ will add to the deterioration of the living conditions for the majority of people in the region and would ignore the fundamental challenges which go along with climate change and the need for climate adaptation. As a report for the Commission on Climate Change and Development stated in no uncertain terms: ‘achieving an approach to adaptation that reflects the human dimension of climate change will require a significant departure from the status quo. It will require a far more critical perspective regarding traditional development models, which must be recognised for their contribution to current levels and distributions of poverty and to vulnerability to climate change impacts.’ (Christoplos et. al. 2009: 31)

A forward looking perspective would therefore need to address among other issues alternatives to the hydrocarbon-based model, the challenges this brings for energy production and consumption, as well as the need to find ways dealing with the predictable water stress as well as droughts and floods, which will increasingly be risks for the majority of people and once again affect the poor most of all. These challenges should be met with regional rather than national efforts to find solutions. The primacy of the so-called nation state and its government needs to be supplemented (if not replaced) by collective regional efforts.

IMMEDIATE TASKS

There are several immediate tasks which ought to be tackled in pursuance of the search for true alternatives seeking to secure survival of the poor majority of the Southern African population. The point of departure would require that Southern African countries would decide on a way forward, which strengthens the regional component and collaboration. The current disorientation is indicative of a lack of common vision in terms of a regional strategy.

In terms of emerging economic exchange patterns, the architecture requires clarification over the house to be build: Is it an apartment block in which all tenants have a say and can participate in the maintenance and expansion of the assets, no matter how big or small their own flat is? Or is it a collection of individual houses – from huge mansions and posh villas to farmsteads and huts – with their own gardens and plots in very different sizes cultivated to the liking of the owner and his/her individual means alone – if necessary even at the expense of the neighbourhood?

The regional architecture requires urgent attention and policy-based solutions also for the economic interaction and dimensions. The future of SACU (Southern Africa Customs Union) as much as of SADC is at stake and requires determined initiatives to solve the crisis. The positioning with regard to the external partners such as the EU‘s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) but also the emerging actors related to the acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and beyond (including South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico and others competing for access to global markets) requires a systematic approach.

The same applies to preferential access to selected markets like the regulations under AGOA – is this a trade act, which induces true economic growth based on a model really benefiting the majority of the people? Or is the ‘trade as aid’ paradigm not rather more of the same, entrenching external dependencies even deeper? While in the context of Namibia, the short bonanza and ultimate closure of the textile outlet Ramatex was a warning light, maybe the same can be said for seedless table grapes produced for the US-American and European pre-Christmas season? Who benefits from such ‘windows of opportunity’?

There is an urgent need for a regionally defined and owned agenda, even though this is a difficult endeavour. Some of the internal dynamics remain a huge challenge to assess and handle: Will South Africa decide to act as a benign hegemonic leader? Will Angola emerge as the competing hegemonic power seeking a dominant role? Will Zimbabwe recover and resume a more constructive regional role in the near future? What will be the possible effects of such trends for the smaller economies?

A catalogue of imminent issues and tasks for such a collective agenda setting would also need to address a series of issues already identified by Sogge (2009: 23). These include:

Domestic and regional inequalities; distribution of productive assets, in particular land; the role of domestic markets for locally produced goods (in contrast to the primacy of foreign markets and dependency on imports); distribution of public goods (which include not only water, sanitation and health listed by Sogge, but also energy, housing and education); and finally the development of means for conflict resolution and the protection of basic rights.

The promotion of coherence and the entrenchment of common normative frameworks will be essential aspects for the implementation of such a strategy, which would pursue the interests of individual countries through a rigorous advocacy of and respect for the regional interests. The economically related topical issues on such an agenda would include among other things the expansion of regional material infrastructure (roads, railways, harbour utilisation); mobility of goods and people (including matters of migration and citizenship); securing means for reproduction of all people through addressing the issues of land utilization, water resources and energy production and use. A ‘Most Favoured Nations Policy’ ought in this context remain limited and restricted to member countries in the sub-region instead of extending special rights and privileges to those who claim old bonds of friendship (and by doing so kind of imply that this is now pay back time).

CHALLENGES FOR AN ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT PATH

These tasks require the de-linking from structurally entrenched global trade relations, an inward looking economic policy with domestic and regional components, efforts to secure an ecologically sustainable (renewable) resource base (solar and wind energy) and a local and regional water management policy seeking to provide access to clean water for all people. It would emphasise the promotion of local food production and stimulate decentralised economic activities for local and regional markets with the aim to reduce the dependency from external factors such as FDI, commodity prices, income from overseas tourism based activities, access to external markets beyond the region.

In the first place, however, this draws attention to the role of the current political and economic elites and beneficiaries of the past, as well as the role of a developmental state and its bureaucracy. As Sogge (2009: 24) suggested: ‘a realistic way forward in the short term is to promote a “minimally responsive state”, one that would act as chief duty-bearer towards a rights-holding citizenry’. This ultimately becomes once again a question of class interests – domestically, regionally and globally. Given the massive challenges facing human reproduction not only but also in Southern Africa, the time to accept such a challenge is ripe: ‘At a time of unprecedented economic and ecological crisis, the means and imperatives for an in-depth debate have intensified. Important tenets of capitalist growth are being critically re-visited. Alternative models appear more viable and even necessary. It is time to adopt a new compass and chart another way forward.’ (ibid.)

While this paper formulates a strategy directed towards the governments in the sub-region, it should not be taken for granted that those occupying the commanding heights in politics and in local control over parts of the economy would be willing listeners and learners when it comes to such appeals. Social change in the interest of the majority of the people hardly ever (if at all) came voluntarily from the top. It almost certainly was in nearly all cases enforced through popular pressure and demands from below. Hence the decisive local aspect in the Southern African region will remain the force of the people and the strength of the social movements. As the modified African proverb says: Don’t focus too much on the elephants (no matter if they are fighting or making love) – the future lies with the grass.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Dr Henning Melber is Executive Director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Sweden.
* This is a revised paper presented at the conference Southern Africa 2020 Vision: Public policy priorities for the next decade hosted by The University of Namibia and The University College London.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.


REFERENCES

Christoplos, Ian/Anderson, Simon/Arnold, Margaret/Galaz, Victor/Hedger, Merylyn/Klein, Richard J.T./Le Goulven, Katell (2009), The Human Dimension of Climate Adaptation: The Importance of Local and Institutional Issues. Stockholm: Commission on Climate Change and Development/Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Fanon, Frantz (2001), The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin (first published in French, Paris 1961)

Mbeki, Moeletsi (2009), Architects of Poverty. Why African capitalism needs changing. Johannesburg: Picador Africa

Melber, Henning (2007), ‘Poverty, politics, power and privilege. Namibia’s black economic elite formation’, in Henning Melber (ed.), Transitions in Namibia. Which changes for whom? Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute, 110-129

Melber, Henning (2009a), ‘Namibian sellouts: Cashing assets in for crumbs’, Pambazuka News. A Weekly Electronic Forum for Social Justice in Africa, no. 442, 16 July
Melber, Henning (2009b), ‘Southern African Liberation Movements as Governments and the Limits to Liberation’, Review of African Political Economy, no. 121, 453-461

Office of the President (2004), Namibia Vision 2030. Policy Framework for Long-term National Development (Main Document). Windhoek: Office of the President

Rodney, Walter (1973), How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications and Dar-Es-Salaam: Tanzanian Publishing House

Sogge, David (2009), Angola: ‘Failed’ yet ‘Successful’. Madrid: FRIDE (Working Paper 81)

Southall, Roger/Melber, Henning (eds) (2009), A New Scramble for Africa? Imperialism, Investment and Development. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press

AFRICOM: Stop in the name of the law!

An open letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder

Mark P. Fancher

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58812

cc Army.milIn an open letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) sets out the organisation’s concerns about US military operation Africa Command (AFRICOM), and calls for it to be dismantled. While officials insist that it is ‘a force for peace’, says NCBL, AFRICOM is ‘perceived as a military command that is designed to facilitate warfare’. The US has a ‘history of using military advisors to guide and direct troops in other countries to no good end’, says NCBL, and AFRICOM’s agenda ‘makes it possible for more lawsuits to be filed in the future, challenging US involvement in Africa’s conflicts.’

The following open letter was recently sent to US Attorney General Eric Holder by National Conference of Black Lawyers' Africom Task Force members Mark P. Fancher, Jeffrey L. Edison and Ajamu Sankofa.

Dear Attorney General Holder,

The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) takes this opportunity to speak frankly to you about Africa Command (AFRICOM), a US military operation that has been almost universally rejected throughout the African continent. Likewise, criticism of AFRICOM has been sharp in Africa’s diaspora. It is this widespread concern that prompts us to communicate with you in an open letter.

We believe that President Obama, as Commander-in- Chief, should dismantle Africa Command and permanently retire the AFRICOM concept. As one who has the president’s ear, particularly with respect to matters of law, we feel it is important that we share with you some of the legal and policy concerns that lead us to that conclusion.

AFRICOM says its mission is ‘...to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of US foreign policy.’ According to AFRICOM’s public statements, the mission is built upon the proposition that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist forces are operating in Africa and presenting military challenges to African governments that they are unable to meet without US assistance.[1] President Obama’s embrace of a faulty mission to fight terrorists who are probably not even in Africa leads us to fear that he has been very badly advised on this issue. To all appearances, he has been persuaded to adopt as his own the idea that Africa needs US military support. In our opinion, the rationale for AFRICOM’s existence was manufactured by the Bush Administration for the purpose of giving the US an excuse to use military means to achieve dominance over African oil resources and at the same time stem the growing influence of China and other countries on the African continent.

For their part, the people of Africa are being asked to embrace a US military command for reasons that are illogical, and perhaps even nonsensical. In addition, AFRICOM appears against a historical backdrop of the US government having repeatedly intervened in Africa’s affairs in ways that have caused severe destabilisation and underdevelopment. This history includes US complicity in a series of unsavoury operations that include: The overthrow of Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah; plans to the assassinate Congo’s Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba; support for counter-revolutionary forces in Angola and Mozambique[2], and much more.

Africans’ suspicions about AFRICOM’s plans to provide military ‘advisors’ are compounded by the fact that the US has a history of using military advisors to guide and direct troops in other countries to no good end. In some cases US advisors have directed foreign government troops. In other cases they have supported insurgents and mercenaries trying to overthrow foreign governments. In all cases, the consequences for everyday people in affected countries have been devastating. Over the years, a number of respected public servants have made known their objections to the use of military advisors. Members of Congress sued President Reagan because of his administration’s use of military advisors to support a brutal regime in El Salvador and counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua.[3] Although for technical reasons the courts were not inclined to inject themselves into those controversies, AFRICOM’s agenda makes it possible for more lawsuits to be filed in the future, this time challenging US involvement in Africa’s conflicts. For its part, the National Conference of Black Lawyers will not hesitate to speak in defence of any Africans who may be harmed by illegal acts committed by AFRICOM.

We urge that you not wait until the Administration receives threats of viable legal challenges to AFRICOM’s activities, but that you instead affirmatively counsel the president to immediately and continually comply with the law and uphold its principles. With that in mind we note that certain core international law principles that have been incorporated into the United Nations Charter have significant implications for AFRICOM, and should be considered. Specifically:

Article 1(2) of the UN Charter affirms the right of countries to exercise rights to self-determination. Sovereign countries must be allowed to govern their own affairs and make their own decisions about their national destiny. The very concept of AFRICOM offends the most basic notions of self-determination. To appreciate how offensive AFRICOM can be to governments attempting to shake off the lasting effects of colonialism and establish true independence, imagine how the US government would react if the African Union were to announce that it had plans to gratuitously send military advisors into US urban centres to instruct the US National Guard on how to maintain order on those occasions when there are civil disturbances. Such ‘assistance’ would be unsolicited, unneeded, and highly insulting. It is no less so when AFRICOM intrudes into matters that are the province of sovereign African states.

Articles 1(1) and 2(3) of the UN Charter call for the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means. Regardless of how much officials may insist that AFRICOM is a force for peace, it is not perceived as a diplomatic delegation or a Peace Corps-type operation. It is perceived as a military command that is designed to facilitate warfare. In the context of African politics, the mere presence of AFRICOM will be perceived as an act of aggression that will decrease, not increase, the likelihood of peaceful resolution of conflicts.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter requires that member states refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country. AFRICOM’s mere existence is a continuing threat of force. Whether intended or not, AFRICOM effectively communicates to African countries that they risk military consequences if they stray from the political, military or economic path that the US prefers that they follow. Even a few US military advisors in Africa are representatives of a super state that has the capacity to attack – with proxy African troops – whenever necessary to protect its interests.

As AFRICOM attempts to carve out for itself an advisor role, it does so at great risk. Africa has an unfortunate history of foreign private and public interests instigating for their own benefit bloody internecine conflicts that have taken the lives of countless innocents. As AFRICOM advisors train and equip individuals who may have pre-existing personal scores to settle; or who wish to reignite old hostilities, the US must bear morally, if not legally, the weight of any resulting war crimes, crimes against humanity or serious human rights violations.

The Rome Statute (which guides the work of the International Criminal Court) reflects generally accepted international law principles related to war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It speaks directly to the types of atrocities that AFRICOM may very well facilitate, and it contemplates the culpability of aiders, abettors, conspirators and others who are not direct participants in crimes. Even though the US has unfortunately declined to submit to the court’s jurisdiction, and the US cannot be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, it obviously would not reflect well on the Administration for admitted terrorists to be able to effectively deflect condemnation of their own crimes by credibly demonstrating that AFRICOM aided and abetted war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that prosecutions would be warranted if only the court had jurisdiction over US military personnel.

We note in closing that through our work, we are in touch with the mood and the thoughts of the black community. We know that there are many in our community who believe that care must be taken to avoid public statements and actions that appear critical, and as a consequence, compound the Administration’s political challenges. However, at the same time, we also know that the plight of Africa and her children, born and living in practically every country in the world, is too desperate for us to be anything but forthright.

With that in mind we remind you that because neither you nor President Obama would have your positions had it not been for the sacrifices of our ancestors you are heavily indebted to them. In fact, the debt is so great that this Administration is compelled to honour obligations to the ancestors even if it means departing from the Presidency’s institutional custom of ignoring what is owed to those who were enslaved and their descendants and to first and foremost protect corporate power. AFRICOM is offensive to everything our ancestors fought and in some cases died for. Contrary to President Obama’s recent plea for Africa to become self-reliant, AFRICOM perpetuates a state of dependency. It perpetuates not only a state of dependency, but a military dependency that is potentially destructive in its own right, and which facilitates foreign theft and exploitation of the very resources that are the source of Africa’s potential for political and economic redemption. For these and many other reasons, we believe AFRICOM must be dismantled, and the AFRICOM concept permanently retired.

Thank you for considering our thoughts on these matters. We certainly welcome the opportunity to speak with you or members of your staff about any questions, concerns or views that you might wish to convey.

Sincerely,

Mark P. Fancher
Coordinator, NCBL Africom Task Force

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Mark P. Fancher is coordinator of the National Conference of Black Lawyers Africom Task Force.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] See transcript of April 17, 2009 interview by Al-Jazeera with General William E. Ward, commander of U.S. Africa Command.
[2] The Assassination of Lumumba, Ludo De Witte (Verso 2001) p. 78; In Search of Enemies, John Stockwell (W.W. Norton 1978).
[3] Crockett v. Reagan, 558 F.Supp. 893 (1982).; and Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan, 568 F. Supp. 596 (1983).

Why does South Africa support 'two-state solution'?

An open letter to President Jacob Zuma

Dr Haidar Eid

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58810

In an open letter to President Jacob Zuma, Hadar Eid, expresses his deep ‘disagreement and dissatisfaction’ with South Africa’s Middle East policy, in particular Zuma’s support for a ‘two-state solution’ for Israel and Palestine. Drawing parallels between Israel’s relationship with Palestinians and apartheid-era South Africa, Eid argues ‘The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland?’

Dear Mr President,

I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) – a racist organisation by any standards – as well as the content of your speech at that forum.

I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.

I would like to take issue with the manner in which you express your support for the two-state solution: ‘It is a solution that fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, adjoining, and viable state of Palestine’ (emphasis mine). Allow me, Mr President, as a resident of Gaza, to express my shock with the fact that – only 8 months after the Gaza massacre, in which 1500 civilians, including 434 children, were brutally murdered – you still believe that there are two symmetrical sides. You even call it the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict!’ Was that your belief in the 1970s and 80s; that there were ‘two-sides’ to the South African ‘conflict’? Were there two equal parties, namely White and Black, with equal claim to the land and equal historical responsibility for the-then status quo? No doubt, this sounds like a bizarre interpretation of South African history and one which we Palestinians find equally astounding when applied to our history and our reality today.

Mr President, these words of yours are even more disturbing, given your own involvement in the commendable struggle against the brutal, anti-human apartheid system and the notion of ‘independent homelands’, which were based on the separation of human beings. Your struggle as Black South Africans was morally superior to apartheid because it was inclusive where apartheid focused on separation; it was embracing where apartheid focused on division; it was life-affirming where apartheid was violent and murderous.

The South African anti-apartheid goal, adopted by anti-apartheid activists all around the world was unequivocal: The end of the racist system and ideology of apartheid. There could be no ‘toenadering’ (rapprochement) with apartheid ideologues; no creation of homelands and puppet leaders: The system had to be dismantled in its entirety. Many South Africans supported by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign, sacrificed their lives to bring down the Bantustans euphemistically, called independent homelands by the apartheid regime. Mr President, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, the Mxenges, the Slovosac to mention but a few anti-apartheid heroes must have listened to the speech to the JBD and wondered what happened to the universal values and human rights espoused by the ANC.

Comrade Jacob (if I may),

I would like to brief you on the nature of the powerful party, i.e. Israel – with whom your post-apartheid government still, amazingly, maintains exceptional diplomatic and economic ties.

Unlike the new post-apartheid South Africa, which you helped to create, in the State of Israel all human beings are NOT equal. There are fundamental artificially created and selectively rewarded levels of citizens in the state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. It, therefore, creates a bizarre distinction between ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’. Almost 22 per cent of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who are excluded from such a definition. Israel thus, by definition is NOT the state of its citizens, but rather that of ‘The Jewish People’, most of whom, like the members of JBD whom you were addressing, have no birthright connection to it. The question which begs an answer is what the status of those Palestinian citizens in a Jewish state is? The answer is, as every single – to use a word you must abhor – ‘non-white’ South African knows: Racism.

The delegates at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish, but at the same time, South African citizens ‘enjoy full rights’ in Israel, rights that apartheid Israel denies to us, the indigenous people of this land. They also call us ‘Israeli Arabs’, ‘Jerusalem residents’, ‘Arabs of the territories’, not to mention the refugees living in the Diaspora, whose mere mention always spoils any party, and whose right to return and compensation is sanctioned by International Law (UNGA resolution 194).

Israeli nationality, therefore, is non-existent. Instead, there is ‘Jewish Nationality’. To make such a bizarre term comprehensible, think of ‘White Nationality’ as opposed to South African. In your speech before the JBD, you state very eloquently that ‘(m)uch as we are conscious of who we are culturally and otherwise, it must not take away the national identity, as we should be South Africans first’.

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes of Apartheid, Article 2, Part 3, clearly defines apartheid as:

‘[a]ny legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work... the right to education, the right to leave and return to their country the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence.’

This definition, in its entirety, clearly applies not only to the Palestinian people residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also those living in Israel itself. This is precisely the reason that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Territories, a fellow South African, John Dugard, concluded that ‘the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices’.

If you were born to Palestinian parents living in Israel – a fate you have been spared, Mr President – you too would be denied the rights of ‘Jewish Nationality’ and been forced to submit to institutionalised inferiority or choose to resist it.

Furthermore, ICSPCA (quoted above), Article 2, Part 4, makes it crystal clear that:

‘[t]he term “the crime of apartheid”’, shall apply to ‘any measures including legislative measure, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate measures and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups The expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof...’

Comrade Jacob, the word apartheid never appears once in your speech before the JBD! A listener would never know that you were speaking to an audience who actively support apartheid in another country.

Did you know that racist laws used to forbid black property ownership in white areas in apartheid South Africa are in force in apartheid Israel? Indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are not only prohibited from living on land owned by ‘Jewish institutions’, but are also not allowed by force of ‘law’ to reside in any areas designated ‘Jewish’ either.

I, myself, Mr. President, a resident of Gaza, like so many Palestinians, have legal title to my parents' land in Israel, but have no ‘legal’ right to it because my parents' property, like that of millions of other Palestinians, was taken away from us and given over to Jewish ownership. The facts are that Jews owned only 7 per cent of Palestine before 1948; today 93 per cent is considered ‘state land’ and can only be owned by Jews or Israel.

This is only one example, Comrade Jacob, of the nature of the state your government deems ‘democratic’ and ‘friendly’ despite its past strategic ties with apartheid SA. In your presidential campaign, you were quoted singing ‘kill the Boer!’ And yet, in your speech, you ‘unequivocally’ condemn ‘all forms of violence from whatever quarter’, particularly where civilians are targeted!

I fail to understand this contradiction. Is this a reflection of the difference between comrade Jacob and President Zuma? Do you, as president, think that Palestinians have no right to resist their occupation and dispossession? You even equate our resistance with the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity committed by the Israeli Occupation forces in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza.

Is it too much, comrade Jacob, for us, representatives of Palestinian Civil Society organisations to ask your government to sever all diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel, and endorses – not to say leads – the growing global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel? Is that really too much to ask a democratic post-apartheid South Africa for?

Is this the embodiment of Fanon's prophecy about the ‘Pitfalls of National (Racial?) Consciousness?’ Is it because the black middle class which your government represents and which has taken power from the white middle class is underdeveloped? Fanon, whom you must have read while on the run from the apartheid police, says that this national middle class ‘has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace.’ Is this why you are prepared to kowtow to the South African Jewish community, which ‘has been called one of the most tightly-knit in the world, overwhelmingly united in its support for Israel?’

Your government, Mr President, turns a blind eye to the war crimes of its own citizens against Palestinians. The South African war criminal David Benjamin was allowed to freely move around South Africa and share his tactics of support and defence for the Israeli Occupation Forces in its recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip with impunity. There are seventy other South Africans that are known to have links with the destruction of the Israeli Occupation Forces who enjoy the same impunity. It is left to individuals and civil society organisations in South Africa to take action against these criminals that should rightly be the task of the government.

Your post-apartheid government, Mr. President, unashamedly, supports the two-state solution: One for Palestinians (Muslim and Christians), and one for Jews. In other words, you support the re-birth of Bantustans, albeit in the Middle East this time. The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland, every single inch of it?

Mr. President,

A politics based on narrow-minded, selfish pragmatism was rejected by all anti-apartheid forces, locally and internationally during the years of the anti-apartheid struggle. What was promoted, instead, was adherence to universal principles of equality and dignity.

I truly hope you will reconsider. I know that it is my constitutional right as a citizen of the New South Africa – which I am proud of – to address you directly. I do so to express my deep disagreement and dissatisfaction with your government's Middle East policy and its continued support for the apartheid policies of the Israeli government, given that this support undermines and actively harms the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.

Sincerely,

Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine

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* Dr Haidar Eid is associate professor in the department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
* This letter first appeared in the Palestine Chronicle.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Larger Zambian parliament is costly

Henry Kyambalesa

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58798

cc L UnniZambia cannot afford to increase the number of its MPs, Henry Kyambalesa writes in this week's Pambazuka News, when many constituencies remain unable to generate sufficient tax revenue to meet the cost of maintaining existing parliamentary representatives.

The Zambian National Constitutional Conference’s (NCC) proposal to increase seats for members of parliament from 158 to 280 makes for very sad reading. This is especially so given that it comes at a time when tens of thousands of grade 7 and grade 9 students continue to spill out onto the streets every year, the healthcare system cannot meet the basic needs of the majority of citizens, the majority of Zambians have no access to clean water and electricity, and a critical shortage of decent public housing has compelled so many of our fellow citizens to live in shanty townships nationwide. This is along with deficient public infrastructure and services, civil servants who are still not adequately compensated for their services, widespread crime and unemployment, and, among many other socio-economic ills, taxes and interest rates that remain very high.

It seems the huge allowances which members of the National Constitutional Conference are receiving have intoxicated them so much that they have become incapable of thinking about the catalogue of socio-economic woes which the government has proven unable to address, mainly due to the lack of financial and material resources.

Zambia cannot afford to implement the proposal they have recommended. There is really no wisdom in seeking to increase the number of constituencies when some of the existing constituencies cannot even generate enough tax revenue to meet the cost of maintaining their MPs.

Rather than increasing the number of MPs, we should actually have been considering the prospect of reducing the number and restricting their functions to legislative matters. Parliament would still be representative and able to function effectively as the legislative organ of our national government, with only 72 elected MPs, for example, so that 1 MP could be elected from each of the existing 72 districts.

If we cannot reduce the number of MPs, we need to continue to have a parliament with 158 members.

And MPs should not be involved in the implementation of development projects; this should be the function of government ministries and local authorities. Besides, the provinces are already saturated with such portfolios as district commissioners, provincial ministers and provincial permanent secretaries, all of whom are supposed to complement the executive branch of the government in the implementation of development projects. To reiterate, we need to restrict the role of parliament to legislative functions — that is, law-making.

Our country’s meagre tax revenues will not be sufficient to maintain such a large parliament and a highly bloated cabinet. And we cannot continue to borrow until we push the country back into the debt trap. Besides, donor countries too are not likely to continue extending a helping hand while we continue to misuse our meagre resources.

There is a need for NCC members and the government to realise that countries receiving donations like Zambia do not have unlimited resources. They have to make do with scarce resources by going through public expenditures line by line, programme by programme, agency by agency, department by department and ministry by ministry in order to eliminate the unnecessary application of public funds.

We need to start doing the same in order to wean our country from its current addiction to loans and its over-dependence on donor funding, as well as to attain economic independence and sustained socio-economic development, predominantly with our own local resources.

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

It is unspeakable to order people to speak or not speak a language

Vincent Nuwagaba

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58804

cc WikimediaAppalled by President Yoweri Museveni's order that the 'Bafuriki' in Bunyoro speak Runyoro, Vincent Nuwagaba chastises Uganda's premier for a grave 'human rights' violation. If such sharp ethnicisation is not to get out of hand, Nuwagaba stresses in this week's Pambazuka News, Uganda and the global community at large must guard against government restrictions on political and cultural participation along ethnic and cultural lines.

I read with consternation President Yoweri Museveni’s order to the so-called 'Bafuruki' in Bunyoro to speak Runyoro. Ironically this comes at a time when some of us think that the president would be contrite and apologise over the letter he wrote to Minister Beatrice Wabudeya concerning ring-fencing all the key leadership positions to keep out the non-ethnic Banyoro. From the outset Mr Museveni’s order that the Bafuruki speak Runyoro is utterly wrong and is a grave human rights violation. It is against the right to self-determination and an affront on human dignity, which is a hallmark of human rights. I am also worried that after Bunyoro, the president may turn to Ankole and to those whose grandparents migrated from Kigezi to stop them from contesting for leadership positions.

Like I have argued above, the president’s order points to stark contempt over a multiplicity of ethnic groups settled in Bunyoro; the Bakiga-Banyankole call it ‘akamanyiro’. It is a huge sign of disrespect and I am sure that in developed communities such an order would lead to resignations because it is scandalous. I am sure whoever cares to know knows very well why Thabo Mbeki resigned in South Africa. Public leaders such as the president should exhibit exemplary decency. It is absurd that in Uganda indecency has been elevated to a norm rather than an exception. This is shameful for the African continent and to the global pan-African movement to which Mr Museveni is a patron. Accordingly, I call upon all genuine pan-Africanists wherever they are to show concern for the developments in Uganda because if they are neglected they may lead to ethnic cleansing. We cannot as Africans begin to divide one another along socially and politically constructed issues such as ethnicity or tribalism. As I have stated before in the previous issue of Pambazuka, ethnicity or tribes are social constructs and as such they are artificial. This is why I personally take all the occupants of Bunyoro to be Abanyabunyoro.

To people who toe Museveni’s line of thought, I wish to re-echo the words of Martin Luther King Jr : ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’. I wish the president would take note of this. I am actually amazed to have read that the president continues to naively argue that what he is doing is constitutional. It may be provided for within the constitution, but when it impinges on a certain section’s fundamental rights and freedoms, it is unconstitutional and some of us will not hesitate to challenge the constitutionality of the president’s actions.

It is interesting to know how the president intends to enforce his order. Is he going to arrest people who are not speaking Runyoro? I would rather the president concentrates on winning the 2011 elections genuinely since after the 2006 Supreme Court ruling, Kizza Besigye said that he would never go to court over poll theft. More importantly, he stated that Museveni and all genuine Ugandans should be prepared for anything – including the very worst – if Museveni tinkers with the electoral process again. You can fool some people for some time and indeed you can fool all the people for some time but you cannot fool all the people all the time; the time comes when they say enough is enough. Accordingly, the violence that happened in the aftermath of the botched Kenyan polls may not spare our pearl of Africa. Nonetheless, the president’s miscalculations might be good for the opposition in the long run, although in the short run I know they are extremely bad for believers in human dignity and indeed human rights.

By pitting ethnic communities against one another, Museveni is using the divide-and-rule strategy which implies that although the colonialists left, their unholy habits have stayed. It takes a lot of convincing that Museveni went to the bush to liberate and unite Uganda. I am sure the president has lost remorse. I am fully convinced that the reason for the president saying what the Banyoro tribalists want to hear is to divert the attention from the fact that Bunyoro communities are planning strategies for sharing oil proceeds. He knows very well that the adage 'a house divided against itself cannot stand' holds true. I would rather the various Bunyoro communities put all their heads in one thinking-basket and lay out strategies on how to harmoniously live together and profitably benefit from the oil proceeds. I am sure Bunyoro has enough to satisfy all its occupants’ appetite but does not have enough to satisfy all their greed.

Finally, it is in Museveni’s interest to revisit his hard-line comportment because Bunyoro is occupied by multiple nationalities that have roots and relatives across the entire country. It would be naive to think that if the president turns guns against the Bakiga, Acholi, Alur and Langi in Bunyoro, those nationalities living elsewhere will not feel enraged. Accordingly, I know it is a big joke when Museveni says he is winning over northern Uganda with the return of peace, when he is busy opening a can of worms elsewhere. To borrow Mahmood Mamdani’s phraseology in his book ‘Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda’, instead of focusing on the national question, we are remorselessly busy focusing on the nationality question. Ultimately, instead of looking at each other as Ugandans, we glorify our petty issues that divide and do not unite us. Hence we look at ourselves as Baganda, Bakiga, Banyoro, Acholi, Langi and so on, instead of looking at ourselves as Ugandans. We have ultimately promoted human indignity rather than human dignity. We must guard against that and be the change we wish to see in this world.

From a sociological perspective the president is trying to de-culturalise the ‘non-Banyoro’ communities and I would wish to be informed on whether that constitutes part of his mandate. The president is supposed to be a fountain of honour, but I am sure if he does not reverse what he is doing he will surely be the subject of shame and ridicule. I wish to aver that those who give sound advice to the president are his staunchest friends. Sadly, he has chosen to trust sycophants and flatterers!

This is unfortunate indeed, for the president will be famous for idiosyncrasy and eccentricity and this will cost him the local and international reputation he has garnered over the years. The former beacon of hope may soon become an architect of hopelessness and despair. We must not tire in telling the president that it takes ages to make a name but microseconds to destroy it.

We need to put the following issues into consideration as we analyse President Museveni’s order:

1) Most of us have bought land in Buganda and are indeed settled in Buganda either by choice or by circumstance. What I mean by circumstance is that most of us work in Buganda given that Kampala, Uganda’s capital, is located therein. It houses the administrative centre, commercial centre, health centre (exemplified by Mulago Hospital, which has sunk into the doldrums) and educational centres such as the country’s top schools and universities led by the mighty Makerere University (which the government is slowly but surely killing by denying it funds for research and other scholarship needs). Despite the fact that all nationalities converge in Buganda, none has been forced to speak Luganda. At least among the issues over which the Buganda agitate, there has been no demand that all residents or occupants of Buganda speak Luganda by necessity. I am sure the president would have vowed to crush anyone making such a demand for he is deeply attached to his language, Runyankole. Besides, this would mean that his children would never get to understand let alone speak Runyankole. None would like such a scenario. Accordingly, Museveni has done what in Runyankole-Rukiga dialect we call ‘okurenzya enkari orwigi’, an expression which metaphorically and figuratively means going overboard.
2) We speak Rukiga in Ankole, the Bafumbira speak a dialect related to Kinyarwanda in Kigezi, the Banyankole-Bakiga settled in the Rwenzori sub-region speak their dialects and not Rukonjo or Rutooro, and we have people in Mbarara and Bushenyi (Ankole) who comfortably speak Luganda. Should all the people be forced to speak the native languages or dialects of the localities wherein they are settled?
3) Assuming that forcing the various Bunyoro communities to speak Runyoro was to be legitimate (which it is not), would the non-Bantu communities settled there not find it difficult if not impossible to speak Runyoro? Would they be charged with certain offences and thereafter prosecuted?
4) When does one cease being labelled ‘a mufuruki’ (an immigrant) if the people born in Bunyoro and their children and grandchildren are still regarded ‘Bafuruki’? Does it mean that the descendants of Banyakigezi settled in Ankole are also ‘Bafuruki’? If so, is the president not a mufuruki wherever he is? History shows that he or his parents shifted from Rukungiri (which is in Kigezi) to Ntungamo and later to Mbarara, an area that has been named Kiruhura thanks to Museveni’s creation of minute districts for political expediency?
5) In 2002 when President Museveni coerced Fred Ruremera (an ethnic Mukiga) to step down for an ethnic Munyoro after the former had won the Kibale district chairmanship, I raised the following questions and I wish to put them in black and white now:
• Do the Bakiga settled in Bunyoro have rights to vote? If so, why don’t they have rights to be voted for?
• Fred Ruremera was given a job by the president after the president coerced him to step down. Accordingly, I asked, if Fred Ruremera was rewarded with a job what was to be given to his supporters who had voted for him expecting a turnaround or improvement in their welfare? Is a leader supposed to deliver services directly or be used as a conduit for the delivery of services to their followers?

As far as my understanding is concerned, none of the two questions were answered and I still find them relevant now.

Finally, there was a headmaster in a certain rural school in Bushenyi who spent 11 years working for the school. In his first five years his performance was superb and he was looked at as a super headmaster. In the next three years his performance began to dwindle as the law of diminishing marginal utility set in. During his final three years he would stock firewood when there was no paraffin for the lanterns to aid the students to read and he started defaulting on teachers’ Parent–Teacher Association (PTA) allowances even when students cleared all their dues. This reminds me of the Bakiga-Banyankole saying which goes ‘nowahinga ahorobi ayinuka’, literally meaning even if one was tilling a very soft ground, they must retire. Finally, as Joe Oloka Onyango put it, ‘10 years in power, you are an elder; 15 years in power, you are a veteran; 20 years in power you are nearly extinct; and 20-plus you are a liability.' Accordingly, we can tell what ‘leaders’ who have been in power for more than two decades are.

The directive by the president to ‘ring-fence’ leadership positions in Bunyoro and ordering the non-Banyoro communities to speak Runyoro is an affront to the right to self-determination and human dignity, the hallmarks of human rights which the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has vowed to defend over the years. It is also distasteful to continue labelling people ‘Bafuruki’ and to lock them out of political participation in their own country. We are likely to have an equivalent of the French Revolution here in Uganda.

Finally, if Ugandans, pan-Africanists and all well-wishers including the international and donor community fold their hands and cross their legs, the situation will surely get out of hand. All of us have a role to play to nip the looming crisis in the bud. For God and my country!

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* Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Pambazuka News 114: L'Union africaine entre l'histoire et l'avenir

2009-09-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/58782

Have you ever wished you were not Tanzanian?

Chambi Chachage

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/58803

You could see it in their eyes, that strong urge to prove something wrong, to show that ‘yes, we can’ be successful Tanzanians. Surely Tanzania can be a success story.

As I listened attentively to them my mind drifted away. It went as far as Europe and America. I wondered how many times Africans or Tanzanians have to prove themselves to the world.

There were three of them. Each came to tell her story in our workshop on ‘Women as producers of knowledge’ at the recent Gender Festival. A ‘herstory’ that will re-centre women.

The first one, Mwandale Mwanyekwa, spoke of how it is possible to be a successful woman sculptor in a domain dominated by men. Then Modesta Mahiga showed how it is possible for a young woman to manage her own successful company. Finally Belinda Mlingo talked of possibilities to successfully compete globally in the not-so-free market of fashion and design.

As a man I could only indirectly relate to how proud they feel to be women, Tanzanian women for that matter. But as a ‘Tanzanian African’ I could directly relate to how it feels to be Tanzanian. What I sensed is that common, persistent feeling of bruised African pride.

This is the feeling that haunted Frantz Fanon when he lamented why we should only derive our basic purpose from the African past. It is what troubled Mwalimu Julius Nyerere when he warned us about being the ‘permanent source of the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the educated of this world’ if we don’t enter ‘the honourable competition for knowledge’.

Since that tragic encounter between Africa and the West, which keeps repeating itself in many ways, ‘the Africans’ have never ceased to attempt to prove themselves. As this encounter is rehearsed time and again, they are asked over and over again to question their pride as an African. ‘What do you have to show to the world?’ ‘What have you contributed to civilisation?’

In the case of post-Ujamaa Tanzania, I think our wounded African pride is sorely festering. Why? Because of what the late Seithy L. Chachage referred to as our ‘collective imbecilisation’.

Note, for instance, the following anecdote from Modesta Mahiga: ‘It saddens me therefore that when a foreigner speaks to a confident and well-presented Tanzanian they immediately ask where that person is from because they couldn’t possible be Tanzanian.’

‘Unfortunately,’ she concludes, ‘we are not associated with excellence. I will never forget that during training overseas a former CEO I served under said “Putting the words ‘Tanzanian’ and ‘excellence’ together would be an oxymoron." Even when convinced that you are indeed a Tanzanian they attribute your confidence and drive to foreign exposure. I find this insulting.’

If you can’t identify with that anecdote then try recalling something similar to what Belinda Mlingo’s hears during her numerous attempts to explain to the European–American mindset where the heck Tanzania is: ‘Ooh Kilimanjaro’; ‘Aah Zanzibar’; ‘Yeah Nyerere’; ‘Wow Serengeti’!

It is these encounters coupled with ‘our collective imbecilisation’ in the areas of grand corruption (Ufisadi), contradictory policies (Sera Ndumilakuwili) and what a runaway Tanzanian refers to as the ‘celebration of mediocrity’ that sometimes make us wish we were not Tanzanian.

As the Kiswahili saying goes ‘lisemwalo lipo kama halipo linakuja’, that is, ‘what is said is there and if not then it is coming.’ Due to certain historical circumstances, there is a lot that is said about us that is ‘really’ true. But, even if it is not true, it is coming because of our own making.

Surely we don’t have to make history work against us. After all we have claimed these times to be the times of the ‘African Renaissance’. We have proclaimed that today it feels good to be African.

It is about time now that we make our own history and herstory. As Mwandale Mwanyekwa alerts us, ‘Africa has already awakened!’ Why then, should Tanzania remain in slumber?

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* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist and policy analyst based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
* Chambi Chachage © 2009.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

African nuclear treaty is a step toward a safer world, with church support

World Council of Churches

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58792

By Jonathan Frerichs*

With recent action by Africa a majority of the world's countries have now banned nuclear weapons from their national territory for the first time. The change happened when an all-Africa treaty entered into force in July. International civil society organizations including the World Council of Churches (WCC) played a catalytic role.

Taking a shared approach to a safer world, Africa became a nuclear-weapon-free zone when Burundi recently became the 28th state to ratify the Treaty of Pelindaba. A WCC delegation visited the central African country in March 2009 to encourage the step. The addition of 54 countries in Africa means that 116 nations are now within treaty zones banning nuclear weapons.

The WCC Central Committee salutes Africa's new nuclear-free status in a September 2009 statementand invites further church support for such actions. The committee also urges Russia and the United States "to join China, Britain and France in ratifying the treaty protocols that give Africa added protection" from nuclear attacks.

Burundi's role in this transnational success story is instructive. In regions where governments avoid nuclear weapons, states large and small can share responsibility for security. Where national nuclear arsenals exist, however, in regions like Northeast Asia and the Middle East, collective security is not an option.

What is more, Burundi and other states like Malawi, Mozambique and Ethiopia which have ratified the treaty recently acted at a time when major powers are still struggling to break out of a decade of deadlock in disarmament and non-proliferation, notwithstanding positive signs in recent months.

"We in Africa know the value of disarmament," Burundi's First Vice-President Yves Sahinguvu told WCC delegates in March. Although Burundi is not directly threatened by nuclear weapons, it is engaged in a long recovery process after decades of armed conflict.

"You are the church and you have come here to speak of peace," President of the National Assembly Pie Ntavyohanyuma told the WCC. "We thank you all the more because churches here have done a lot for peace," he added, acknowledging the work of Burundian Anglican Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi, a member of the three-person delegation. Churches provide "ethical reference points" for positive change, he said.

"Countries like Burundi are making Africa more secure by putting this treaty into effect, and churches support the treaty because it helps to build peace," Archbishop Ntahoturi said of his government's action.

Top Burundi officials said the Pelindaba Treaty would help Africa with security and governance. President of the Senate, Dr Gervais Rufyikiri, a scientist who has researched radioactive pollution in agriculture, said Burundi would benefit from better international controls on nuclear materials used in medicine, agriculture and energy production.

Solutions need to work across national borders

With foreign companies and governments increasingly looking to Africa for its uranium, another key issue for Africa is stewardship of resources. A WCC delegation visited uranium-rich Namibia late last year to urge ratification of the Pelindaba Treaty there as well.

"We want this God-given resource to be used only for peaceful purposes," Namibian Prime MinisterNahas Angula told the WCC during a follow-up meeting in April. "That is our dream, our wish and our hope". Africa's new treaty, the most advanced of all the regional treaties banning nuclear weapons, is a tool for realizing such hopes.

Developed after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of apartheid, the Treaty of Pelindaba is an example of the collective capacity to work toward a world without nuclear weapons.

First, Pelindaba is the place where the white-minority government of South Africa developed the only nuclear arsenal in the southern hemisphere, which the new black-majority government then abandoned.

Second, many states in Africa bear the scars of Cold War conflicts fueled by foreign rivalries and fought with imported weapons. The treaty now in force bans the import, development, deployment, testing and use, anywhere on the continent, of the most destructive weapons in existence.

Like managing climate change, effective control over nuclear weapons requires solutions that work across national borders. "In threatening life on our planet, [climate change and nuclear weapons] pose a unique challenge to people of faith," says a 2008 report on WCC work in this field. Meeting each of those threats will require a more human-centered understanding of international security."

The church initiative for the Pelindaba Treaty stems from a 2006 WCC Assembly recommendation to support Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones. WCC member churches have been united in their opposition to nuclear arms for more than 60 years.

The Geneva-based WCC cooperates with international disarmament organizations there and abroad including, in this case, the Africa Peace Forum, the Institute for Strategic Studies in South Africa and the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament.

"Other regions have done the same thing as Africa. We look forward to the day when Europe, Asia and North America are freed from nuclear weapons too," Archbishop Ntahoturi said.

Africa is now linked with other nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Central Asia, and with the nuclear-weapon-free state of Mongolia. The first zone was established in Latin America in the 1960s in response to the Cuban missile crisis.

Today's zones cover the southern hemisphere and adjacent areas up to the southern border of the United States, the southern shores of the Mediterranean, the six countries located between Russia and China, and along China's southeastern border. Treaties also protect Antarctica, the entire seabed and outer space from the placement of nuclear weapons.

* Jonathan Frerichs, WCC programme executive for nuclear disarmament and the Middle East, is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Full text of the "Statement of hope in a year of opportunity: seeking a nuclear weapon free world":
Churches engaged for nuclear arms control
WCC Assembly minute on the elimination of nuclear arms
International Ecumenical Peace Convocation

Kenya: Why we reject the TJRC as formed and composed

Kenyans Against Impunity (KAI)

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58796

SEEKING SUPPORT FROM ALL TO FIGHT THE WAR AGAINST IMPUNITY

Introduction

In Africa, Kenya is one of the countries where impunity appears to be taking toll and the management of public affairs is being decided by a tight clique within the executive. Very serious public appointments meant to move the reform agenda forward and ensure social-political and economic justice are being circumvented by a few, to retain the status quo, be it in the commissions of inquiry, police force, anti-corruption initiatives among others. The parliament, being the representative house of the people has not taken its work serious in terms of making watertight laws.

Impunity has now become the order of the day even where public outcries are outwardly seen and explosive. The don’t care attitude of senior public officers is leaving a lot to be desired on the path the country is taking, even with the grand coalition government that was meant to be the best government to serve Kenyans. Public outcries and opinions are being shunned.

However, all is not lost. Proactively Kenyans are taking actions. For instance there have been concerns on the reasons why Kenyans Against Impunity (KAI) vehemently reject the TJRC as formed and composed.

Historically Kenya has been riddled with gross violations of human rights. Of course these violations had victims and survivors, many of whom have lived to tell. We also do acknowledge and appreciate the role many Kenyans have played in ensuring that the country gets democratized based on principles and values of human rights and good governance.

To enhance this process, we note that among the agreed issues on Agenda No. 4 was the formation of a credible, independent and impartial Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) to look into past violations of human rights and injustices.

Of course the victims and survivors of human rights violations in Kenya have since 1994 pushed for the establishment of the TJRC, but successive governments never saw it fit to do so, until after the chaos that followed the 2007 elections. Although delayed, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act of 2008 has since been enacted but it is full of flaws.

As victims of human rights violations, we strongly feel that the individuals to be selected to the TJRC should have been subjected to a rigorous vetting by the public, and specifically so by the victims of gross violations of human rights and all concerned Kenyans.

Here below we present the reasons why KAI rejects the TJRC as formed and composed:-

· Section 10 of the TJR Act of 2008 states that, “no person shall be qualified for appointment as a commissioner unless such a person ………is of good character and integrity; has not in any way been involved, implicated, linked or associated with the perpetrators or supporters of the acts, crimes or conduct under investigations; shall be impartial in the performance of the function of the Commission under this Act and who will generally enjoy the confidence of the people of Kenya”.
· The Chairperson, Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat was a Permanent Secretary twice and an Ambassador in former President Moi’s government, which committed almost 60% of the gross violations of human rights which the TJRC is supposed to investigate and address. He was a senior government official between 1980 and 1990 when these gross violations of human rights occurred. The Chairperson therefore has burdens of violations on his shoulders in all forms one looks at the issues.
· All the other commissioners are relatives and or close associates of members of the cabinet and therefore are neither fit nor the right persons to be Chairperson or Commissioners to the TJRC due to obvious conflicts of interests.
· Many of those named to the Commission ought to be either witnesses in the TJRC hearings or subjects of investigations for their conduct during the period in focus.
· As constituted now, the TJRC seems meant to cover up the same truth, justice, peace and reconciliation being sought by Kenyans for all the commissioners go against Section 10 as pointed above in point 1.
· Further while the Kenyan law requires that official appointment be published in the Kenya Gazette, this was not done in this particular Commission. Kenyans ought to ask why such anomaly?
· The Chief Justice who is the interpreter of the law, administered oath of office to strangers and or friends who were not gazetted to be Commissioners in accordance with the law. Where is the rule of law in Kenya?
· Sec. 6 of the First Schedule of the TJR Act of 2008 provides for the appointment of four Kenyans as Commissioners to the TJRC not six! We wonder, was the TJRC meant to give jobs to friends or relatives of the Executive or to help Kenyans rewrite their history based on the truth for justice and reconciliation to take place?
· The TJR Act is replete with lacuna in that Section 17 (4) does not exist yet it is referred to for the removal of Commissioners as per the proviso in Section 9.
· The law leaves out a very important period in the Kenyan history! The pre-colonial period yet we have many Kenyans who suffered under the colonial government and also want to tell their story for the nation to know its roots, injustices and seek redress for justice to be seen to be done. Who will address the plight of the colonial human rights violations?

We know that Kenya is a strategic country for many competing interests. Though weakly formed and composed the TJRC is being supported by some of these interests. It was supported even before Kenyans could know and make comments on who were in the Commission. It is no wonder therefore the drafting of the TJR Act of 2008 remained a mystery to many Kenyans up to the end where some of these lacunae’s could have been noted and corrected!

While our argument here only involves the six commissioners selected from the Kenyan short list, the efficacy of the other three selected by the Panel of Eminent African Personalities is outside the knowledge of the Kenyan society. For us, it is important that these three have their CVs made public to know who they are and their backgrounds for matters of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation of our country cannot be circumvented yet again.

As the victims, we totally reject the composition of TJRC as it is currently constituted. We are concerned that the executive, the parliament and the Chief Justice embraced a contradictory and conflicting Act, a legal instrument that gives life to such an important national exercise and commission.

Our demands
a) That the Commission be suspended until the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act of 2008 is amended and its provisions synchronized.

b) That the appointment of properly qualified persons, scrutinized by the people of Kenya and mostly the victims be made, in order for the country to avoid a process that will be a sham and a whitewash.

c) That Kenyans stand firm and speak out against this extension of impunity through a very touchy issue around key principles of democracy and human rights like the truth, justice, rule of law, peace and reconciliation for the nation’s governance and development.

d) That we all fight IMPUNITY in all its manifestations now.

Conclusion
We reiterate our total rejection of both the TJRC in its present form and the embodying Act and warn everyone that if the process and the commission as constituted are allowed to proceed, Kenya will end up with worse chaos and mayhem than was witnessed after the 2007 elections.

It is time the nation commits itself to the principles and values of human rights, democracy and open governance in words, actions and practices, to correct its past, deal with its present and design its future with objectivity and impartiality.


NB; The case against the TJRC is being heard on 8th September 2009, 9am at the High Court, Nairobi. Welcome all we join hands for a good and worthy course!!



Prepared by
Stephen Musau
Executive Coordinator, RPP

For and on behalf of Kenyans Against Impunity
Email: [emailmusausteve@yahoo.com[/email] or rpprights@gmail.com

Tanzania: Loliondogate 2 has become a police project

Oloiseer Mbattiany

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58811

The eviction of pastoralists from their homes which was conducted by Tanzania police (field force unit) with assistance of private guards, the anti-poaching unit and the Ottello Business Cooperation (OBC) from 14th July to date. The eviction become a source of income for police, those who are conducting the operation and those at Loliondo headquarters.

Communities are still suffering, violation of human rights is still going on, Maasai bomas and houses are still burning, sticking of innocent people, communities began to become poorer because of the loss of their livestock/cattle due to lack of water and pasture, the woman who was raped, and her husband are worried of their lives, this is because the have been told by the government people to never testify if they want to survive. Two days ago, the woman refused to tell me anything, saying “tung’wayioki mayieu madamu, kayiew altau lai, emeekure akata ayie oltungani laitadamu, netero orkiyioi, Niache sitaki kukumbuka, nataka niishi, sitaki mtu yoyote tena aniulise, akaanza kulia” (“leave me alone, I don’t want to remember, Ineed to survive, i don’t need any person to asked me ever,” then she started crying)

Since mid August, the eviction of pastoralists has taken a new form where one to two people are taken every day and locked up. You can only get released by the police or told no case to answer if you give money to them, most people are giving money to police not because they have done anything wrong but because they fear for their safety.

Two people were arrested while walking but released after paying 70,000 T.sh to police.
The numbers of people arrested from 11th August to 17th August are twenty-seven, as follows:

On August 11th, 2009 at Olorien/Magaiduru village seven people arrested, 5 of them jailed for six months and one released and one fined 50.000 T.sh.
1.Leken Olosereka
2.Simat Parkisuaa
3.Kiaro Senet
4.Tiambati Mbario
5.Saitoti Morise (all five sentenced to six months but after several weeks of prison they got a legal help from Legal and Human Right Center to appeal and they won the case.)
6.Mosongo Orminis (released)
7.shaangwa Lilash (charged and fined of Tsh 50,000)

On 16th August 2009, at Olorien/ Magaiduru eleven people arrested and charged was as follows:

1.Oldapash Merika
2.Leng'oone Oliaripu
3.Looseli Ledidi
4.Otumoi Morinde
5.Oloomu Seneti
6.Oloomoni Ngoile
7.Ritei Parshuku
8.Mosolwa Kokoi
9.Meikang'a mbeyo (all released at Loliondo police station after paying money)

10.Lemao Morise
11. Ole Koipa (the case adjourned)

On 17th August 2009 at Soitsambu village nine people were arrested.

1. Kinyanjui Kimeriai
2. Noonyuat Soit
3.Oloning'o Sung'e
4.Nengoone Piando
5.Lemama Yaile
6.Seretui Olorkijape
7.Tumate Rotiken
8..Ngoriaki Kaura
9.Nooliat Koipa ( all nine released by police after two-day lock up, they paid the police T.sh 600,000 to avoid court and/or jail.

The number of people arrested for first week of September (1st -8th September) is eleven, as follows:

On 1st September 2009 two people arrested at Arash village. The case postponed and they are attending court
1.Loeku Moti
2.Ngoitorito Ngelea

On 4th September, 2009 four people arrested at Ololosokwan village, The police release them after giving money.
1.Kerimas Siololo
2.Sanaet Rotiken
3.Ngidash Parmwat
4.Mangoe Rotiken.

On 6th September, 2009 three people courted at Soitsambu village, they are still attending the court.
1.Munga Rotiken
2.Lengai/Sayadi Mbusia
3.Meipuki Rotiken

On 8th September 2009, two people arrested at Soitsambu village and they are still in police custody since 8th to 10th morning.
1. Karatina Mbusia- a 70yr-old man. He was walking home when arrested.
2. Ole Kaigil – a young boy.

A 7 year-old boy from Olesadera ran away and hid in the bush for two days on August 8th.

The police have a duty to obey the law and allow our peaceful demonstration

Kenyans for Justice and Development

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58814

On Friday, September 11, 2009, in a flagrant abuse of the immense power the people of Kenya have given them, the police at Central Police Station refused to receive our re-notification for peaceful demonstrations on Monday, September 14, 2009. They insisted and continue to insist that they have banned the peaceful demonstrations for security reasons, which they do not specify. This is in spite of the fact they know that we are non-violent agitators for self-determination. In fact, to eliminate any doubts that during the demo we will be peaceful to the tinniest detail and won’t pose any security threat whatsoever, we volunteered to have the police handcuff us to each other, in a long human chain, for the duration of the procession. We are even ready to pay for a police band to lead us.

It is within our constitutional rights to hold the said procession. We will not give in to police oppression because Kenya is a democratic Republic not a police state. We are sovereign citizens not anybody’s subjects. Hence, nobody will deny us, or any other Kenyan, our residual sovereign right to exercise direct democracy, especially now that representation through both the Executive and the Legislature has failed us dismally.

The fact that the MPs, the Prime Minister, and the President are not representing our interests is borne out by the fact that they are gleefully implementing the neo-liberal agenda of dependency contained in the Kenya Vision 2030, yet what the country needs to deal with the many challenges facing us is a developmental state.

It is not beyond the failed authorities to allow Kenyans the democratic space to engage and surface issues on the all important political space on the Kenyan street. If we don’t push issues affecting ordinary Kenyans to the surface, our politics will inevitably remain personality driven, where we discuss self-seeking and visionless individuals, at the expense of the mind-boggling challenges we face as a country, and the good policies we need to solve them.
We state categorically that the People’s Government, which we represent here, does not want confrontation but collaboration with the Kenya Police. We recognise the vital role the police are supposed to play in the polity and we want them to equally recognise the role peaceful social movements like ours play in advancing democratic society. But the Police can only play their all important role if, doctrinally, they convert from being a REGIME POLICE into a STATE POLICE.

A regime police facilitates the oppression and exploitation of the people by illicit political and business interests. A state police on the other hand enforces the law of the land, bearing in mind constantly the concept of equality enshrined in the constitution and the basic tenet of the rule of law: ‘Be you ever so high, the law is above you’.

So tomorrow, Monday, at 10 am our representatives will march from the National Theatre to the Central Police Station, to re-notify the Police of our intended peaceful demonstration to petition President Mwai Kibaki, Premier Raila Odinga, and National Assembly Speaker Kenneth Marende against the irregular reappointment of Justice (Rtd) Aaron Ringera, to head the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission for another five year term, and his two deputies Dr. Smokin Wanjala and Ms Fatuma Sichale. We also intend to soon begin picketing Integrity Centre to block Justice Ringera, and his two deputies, access to the KACC offices.

Should the police insist on abusing their power, yet again, by purporting to ban the peaceful demo, or to interfere with the picketing, we will proceed to the law courts for protection, because the courts have the duty and the power to uphold the constitutional safeguards that protect individual rights.

In the spirit of Jamhuri Sasa!, our clarion call that Kenyans should demand the restoration of Republic of Kenya, where the rule of just law is the overriding imperative, we will not engage the police in a senseless street fight. Instead, we will file a public interest litigation challenging and seeking damages from the Central Police Station OCS Mureithi, the Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere, the Internal Security Minister Prof. George Saitoti, and the Attorney General Amos Wako, for violating our constitutional rights. 



Dated: Sunday, September 13, 2009

Okiya Omtatah Okoiti – Director

Zambia needs RTI legislation to combat corruption

Lawrence Carter, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58795

The government of Zambia’s decision to further delay the tabling of the proposed Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill and its failure to guarantee the introduction of the Bill in the next parliamentary session represents a huge setback in the nation’s fight against corruption. Indeed, the failure of parliament to enact or even debate this crucial piece of legislation appears astonishing when we consider the revelation of the Ministry of Health corruption scandal earlier this year.

The devastating impact of such large-scale corruption, especially in the healthcare sector, demands systemic reform. Rather than simply react to each crisis as it occurs, the government must take proactive measures to ensure that it is as difficult as possible for future scams to succeed. The budgetary shortfall of the Ministry of Health due to the suspension of donor payments poses a grave threat to the lives of ordinary Zambians and must not be allowed to reoccur.

In order to tackle corruption it is essential to put systems in place that function to ensure transparency and accountability. While the Zambian government’s recourse to forensic auditing is commendable, it is alarming that the enactment of the FOI Bill has not formed part of its response. Surely one of the most effective ways to reduce corruption is to open up government institutions to public scrutiny, enabling citizens to monitor the performance of those whom they have entrusted with power and public resources? Why then, has the Bill been postponed yet again?

According to the Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services, Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha, the Bill has been delayed because the government is still making consultations regarding its content in various countries, such as the United Kingdom. The pretext is that there it is better to wait and refine the law than pass a flawed piece of legislation. While this is certainly a logical conclusion, the fact is that the Bill was first withdrawn from parliament in 2002 for exactly this reason. The government has thus had seven years in which to make all the necessary consultations.

Indeed, a succession of Information Ministers have stated that it would be wrong to rush the law and that further consultations are needed. In 2006 Mike Mulongoti argued that ‘the government is not in a rush to pass the Freedom of Information Bill as Zambians have previously lived without it,’ conveniently ignoring the fact that Zambians have also been forced to live without democracy in the past but nevertheless called for its immediate implementation. Similarly, during an FOI Bill fact-finding mission in Africa and Europe in 2008, Vernon Mwaanga stated that ‘we do not want to rush this law.’

While such a vital piece of legislation should certainly not be rushed, its implementation must at least be carried out with some urgency. To delay recognizing the public’s right to information (RTI) without cause contravenes international human rights law. For example, Article 19 of the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Zambia acceded to in 1984, protects the freedom ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.’

The importance of RTI is also recognised in both the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, 1981 and the African Union’s Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, 2002. The latter document asserts that ‘public bodies hold information not for themselves but as custodians of the public good and everyone has a right to access this information, subject only to clearly defined rules established by law.’ While in Zambia, the Mung’omba Constitution Review Committee concluded that the Constitution should guarantee the ‘freedom to receive or impart information or ideas.’

The importance of RTI is by no means limited to its role as an anti-corruption tool. Opening up government institutions to public scrutiny also functions to strengthen democracy since citizens are more fully informed and therefore better situated when it comes to choosing politicians to represent them. It also enables citizens to more accurately assess the performance of politicians, which increases the pressure on those in power to deliver on their election promises. In this way, RTI facilitates the development of participatory democratic institutions that are responsive to the will of the people and which consequently entrench democratic stability.

RTI also has a significant role to play in the promotion of people-centred social and economic development. If the government and private companies are obligated to provide information, the public are better placed to assess whether projects will meet their own development priorities. They are also able to determine why development projects might have failed and, as we have already seen, are in a stronger position to uncover corruption scandals such as the one that enveloped the Ministry of Health.

The implementation of effective RTI legislation then, is much too important to be held back further. Whether the delay has occurred as a result of genuine concern over the contents of the Bill or from a lack of political will, seven years is clearly a sufficient period of time in which to consult other nations and refine the contents of the legislation accordingly.

The dangers of corruption to the lives of Zambians has been made clear by the recent scandal. In Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index Zambia scored 2.8 out of 10, with a score of zero being ‘highly corrupt’ and ten ‘highly clean’. While this score constitutes a slight improvement on 2007, the figures do not take into account this year’s health scandal. Moreover, a score as low as 2.8 clearly demands that efforts to counter corruption be further intensified. The Zambian government may have taken positive steps towards establishing greater accountability and transparency but without legally recognising that the public have a right to monitor those people whose actions directly impact upon their lives, the fight against corruption cannot be won.

Call to donate books to a community library

Sibongile Ndashe

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58817

Dear Friends and soon to be friends,

We are asking for hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages. We are starting a community library. We are looking for books, computers and of course, money. Don’t give the money just yet!

WHERE IS THIS?

Esibayeni (Block ‘C’) – Duzane naka Freza
Komatipoort
Nkomazi
Mpumalanga
South Africa

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Right now, we are not very picky. We’ll take whatever we can get.
Having said that, we are not looking for books that should be thrown away (outdated, bad condition etc…)
- Books that free the mind, is what we after but that’s a long term project.
- Books that shaped your life – you can buy a copy and mail it.
- Books that make you happy…or
- You can take out a subscription on behalf of our library

BE A GOOD DONOR

Please give high quality books that are in good condition.

Please don’t give books that are in bad condition, outdated, are inappropriate for the intended recipient.

Dealing with donations of books which turn out to be of no use is not cheap. It is expensive to get rid of books.

A donor should look objectively at the books. All books sent should be in good physical condition, clean, recent and useable.

Classics may not necessarily be new, and rightly so, but they do not have to be bad shape either.

WE ALSO NEED WRITERS
We are also looking for writers who’ll be happy to come to Mpumalanga and run writing workshops for our young people in December. We’ll make this experience worth your while. Bring your passport.

If you have books, computers, comments, suggestions or other ways of being helpful please contact the following people:

Jozi Contacts and drop off points:
Sithembiso Ndashe
Fax: 086 5275414
Skype ID: ndash19
(M) 084578 8666

If you have books, computers, comments, suggestions or other ways of being helpful please contact the following people:

Jozi Contacts and drop off points:
Mpumelelo Mkhabela
Mobile: 0822962541

Cape Town Contact and drop off point:
Jomo Nyambi
Mobile: 0825757087

Naas/ Block C Contact and drop off:
Jomo Nyambi
Mobile: 0825757087

Snail mail:
Tincwadzi
P.O Box 205
Komatipoort
1340
Mpumalanga
South Africa

International contact and more info about the project
Sibongile Ndashe
Skype id: Sibongile.ndashe

Not every African émigré longs for home

Anengiyefa Alagoa

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58818

I am not sure that it is the case that every single African who of his own volition departs his home country for a life in the West, necessarily envisages a return to his homeland at some point in the future.

There must be some Africans who have emigrated to Western countries with exactly the same mind-set as of the Polish, Irish and other European émigrés who arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century.

Many Africans have gone in search of a better life for themselves and their descendants, with a desire to remain in their adopted country permanently.

The idea that every single African who in their post-teenage years have left Africa for a life in a land which offers them more opportunity must be sad and depressed, is one that I am unwilling to acknowledge. The cultural and sociological ties that we as Africans have with our continent are no different from those that the south Asians or Chinese have with theirs.

Therefore if every African immigrant is unhappy, then surely the same must apply to the Asians as well, since they too would suffer the elements of racial prejudice that have been suggested.

But this clearly is not the case. There are Africans abroad who feel that they have been let down by their home countries and who as a result feel no compunction about abandoning their homeland. In some cases they have even succeeded in bringing their close relatives from Africa to their adopted country.

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

Review: The Trouble with Aid: Why Less Could Mean More for Africa

By Jonathan Glennie

Lucy Corkin

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58815

That Jonathan Glennie’s contribution to the ‘African Arguments’ series is considerably more coherent than some of its companion pieces is impressive, given the complexity of the topic that he has tackled.

The volume adds its voice to a growing body of literature criticising the global aid architecture and its agents, the rich country donors. What is interesting in Glennie’s account, however, is that included in his analysis is the role of aid advocacy groups and campaigners. This is a bold step, considering his own campaigning background. The message, that blanket calls for more aid should be replaced by calls for less, is consequently all the more poignant, coming from one of their own. Detractors will dub the book as the rambling of a jaded campaigner, however, it would more usefully rather be seen as the insights of an aid practitioner who desperately wants to see the way aid is given changed (wryly admitting that aid activists have supposedly wanted this for years).

An important but simple point, the author notes that whereas some aid organisations admit that the results of aid are not perhaps as positive as they might have hoped, no one admits the possibility that aid might actually have had a net negative effect. The author sets out, in very clear terms, the effects that aid has had on African economies, laying particular emphasis on the indirect impacts, all the more deadly because they are often overlooked in other assessments. Indeed, whether by accident or design, it is the conditions rather than the aid money itself that has the most long-lasting effect on the recipient economy, seldom to its benefit.

Few of Glennie’s arguments are new; the author freely admits that much of what he propounds seems logical except to those in charge of designing aid apparatus. What makes this book unique is the attempt to collect and synthesize the entire range of arguments for and against aid, in a way that lays bare the complexities of the issue. This is no easy task and Glennie is painstaking in his effort to capture the nuances of arguments. That the author, an aid practitioner himself, reaches the conclusion that much aid has been deleterious and should in fact be reduced is compelling. This is particularly given the politics of aid. Denouncing aid means less aid to go around, even to the charities that are doing some good.

Glennie does not for one moment deny that there are aid activists and charities out there with good intentions. He singles out for criticism the bilateral donors, laying bear the ugly Realpolitik of aid and the reason that it is seen as a cheap alternative by developed world governments to making the hard decisions that would effecting long-lasting change in the developing world.

This is a difficult subject to remain objective about, due to its emotive nature and the strength of the hidden agendas involved. Glennie has done an admirable job in keeping the tone of the book balanced, recognising that the importance of conveying a message in a way that, albeit hard to swallow, has a hope of being digested.

Nevertheless, he makes some choice observations (which are ironically nothing new to the African civil society that has been campaigning to be taken seriously for decades). That donors propound the strengthening of institutions and democratic practices, then ride rough-shod over parliamentary processes should they not conform to the donor agenda would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious. The heavy involvement of these donors in the functioning of the state therefore means that a large part of government decision-making is done by rich-country representatives not elected to office in the African country in question. In a further example of a lack of representativeness, donors often set up parallel structures within the host governments in order to see their agendas fulfilled. It seems that donors are convinced of the righteousness of their actions, purely by virtue of the fact that it is they who are executing them. In Glennie’s description of donors’ parallel structures and preferred channels in government, he could easily be describing clientelism.

This is set against the hypocrisy of demanding that developing countries adopt free-market principles for the ‘good of the economy’ while the countries of the donors in questions sustain billions of dollars worth of agricultural subsidies. Such practices are thrown into further relief, in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. Tellingly, rather than practicing fiscal austerity, the dogma of the Bretton Woods institutions, Washington and London has decided to spend their way out of the financial downturn with economic stimulus packages and the nationalisation of many of their banks. Contrast this with the strait-jacketed approach of forced privatisations that many of Africa’s economies, in similar financial situations were obliged to undergo.

The dilemmas surrounding aid are not easy to solve, and will not melt away if enough money is thrown at them. Of key importance is that this message gets to the right people, which is presumably why the author directed his message at the campaigners in a bid to inform their lobbying. If their egos can stand it, this is one book Bob Geldof and Bono should definitely read.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* The Trouble with Aid: by Jonathan Glennie is published by Zed Books. Hardback: £40 (ISBN: 9781848130395), paperback: £12.99 (ISBN: 9781848130401)
* Lucy Corkin is the Macau Hub analyst for Fahamu's China in Africa programme and a research associate at the Africa Asia Centre, SOAS, University of London.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Review: 'The Legacy of Efua Sutherland: Pan-African Cultural Activism'

By Anne V. Adams and Esi Sutherland-Addy (eds)

Ama Biney

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58807

The editors have succeeded in ‘achieving a synthesis of [Efua Sutherland’s] work for Ghana, in particular, and for Africa, in general’ (p.10). A comprehensive overview of the contribution, personality and cultural work and impact of Sutherland’s pan-African cultural activism is gained from these 241 pages.

Divided into three parts, Part I examines ‘Efua Sutherland’s Artistic Space'. It explores her artistic work and work in children’s literature. This section of the overall book examines Sutherland’s ideas as a cultural thinker in the field of African drama and literature. In addition to this, there is the theory and practice underpinning her institutional legacy and which led to the formation of a programme of experimental theatre between 1958–61 in Ghana, i.e., soon after the country’s trailblazing independence. In addition to this, Sutherland also established the Children’s Drama Development programme and the Ghana Drama Studio, which was set up between 1961–63.

Part II ‘Efua Sutherland and Cultural Activism’ is made up of interviews and accounts by colleagues influenced by her work. The final part, entitled ‘Reminiscences and Tributes’ comprises personal memories of Sutherland from admirers and friends.

Born in 1924, Sutherland would die on 21 Jan 1996 after an illness as ‘the first African female playwright/director south of the Sahara’ (p.18). She was grassroots in her approach and considered ‘that theatre has the potential to contribute significantly to social change’ (p. 13). She believed drama and its functions in African societies were not only to create social cohesion, but could be used as a tool to validate African indigenous thought and challenge negative African practices and traditions. One of Sutherland’s many institutional impacts in Ghana is the establishment of the Ekumfi Atwia House of Stories (more commonly known as Kodzidan, based in Cape Coast). It is a national indigenous theatre with the aim of motivating ordinary people to engage in self-reliance. Hence, community development was recognised by Sutherland long before Europeans in their Western NGO outfits and guises and Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal began to champion such approaches. Essentially the Kodzidan programme, involving theatre performances by the people of Atwia, allowed them to explore problems and issues via, for example, storytelling, puppetry and artefacts. As Sandy Arkhurst writes, ‘The Kodzidan programme should not be seen as having been capable of solving the social and economic problems of Atwia. It should be seen as a forum for the rural population to discuss issues and to try to understand their complexities. The critical analysis would lead to awareness and the desire for change. The programme introduced a new method of discussion through the practice of theatre and encouraged the use of this new method by the people themselves’ (p. 173).

Similarly, the article by Penina Mlama entitled ‘Empowerment for Gender Equality through Theatre: The Case of Tuseme’ is one of the most inspiring in the book. It illustrates how theatre as a transforming and engaging cultural process can ‘empower girls to understand the gender constraints to their academic and social development, give the girls a voice to speak out and express their views about the identified problems, find solutions and take initiative to solve the problems’ in Tanzania (p. 56).

Tuseme – which means ‘let us speak out’ – not only involves girls in Tanzania but boys and the male and female teachers of the school in order that they are also actively involved in the process of challenging gender oppression. Through the forms of dance, drama, song, storytelling, rap, recitation and other forms, theatre performances are seen to be influential to social and political transformation in Africa. This needs to be widely supported and implemented throughout Africa and not simply in extracurricular school activity in Tanzania, Rwanda, Senegal, Gambia, Namibia, Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, where it currently operates. It needs to be integrated into the mainstream curriculum.

In short, the legacy of Efua Sutherland is a profound one. Culture, which enshrines a people’s human values and beliefs (in short, their relationship and treatment of one another and others) is a lens on how a people interprets the world and interact with it. It is through cultural activism that a pan-Africanist world can be envisioned. Culture is far from being fossilised and static but is a terrain of struggle that is critical to pan-Africanism.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 'The Legacy of Efua Sutherland: Pan-African Cultural Activism', edited by Anne V. Adams and Esi Sutherland-Addy, is published by Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd (ISBN 978-0954702311).
* Ama Biney is a pan-Africanist and scholar–activist who lives in the United Kingdom.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Correction to 'Understanding Sudan’s saviours and survivors'

2009-09-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58783

Secrets of the Ethiopian Streets

Homage to social workers

Amira Ali

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/58813

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Amira Ali holds an MA in International Relations and Conflict
Resolution. She is a freelance writer, poet and activist.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

“Digital Citizen Indaba 4.0”: Using Digital Media to Promote Social Justice in Africa

Dibussi Tande

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/58788

cc Elvira Van Noort In this week's blog roundup, Dibussi Tande reflects on the 4th annual “Digital Citizen Indaba” (DCI), which was held on September 5-6 2009 at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. The Indaba brought together bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives from Africa and beyond.
“Digital Citizen Indaba 4.0”: Using Digital Media to Promote Social Justice in Africa

A report by Dibussi Tande in Grahamstown, South Africa

On September 5-6 2009, bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives from Africa and beyond came together at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, for the 4th annual “Digital Citizen Indaba” (DCI). The theme of this year’s DCI – which kicks off the Highway Africa conference, the largest gathering of journalists in Africa – was “Digital civil society and journalism in Africa”. During the two-day gathering, participants discussed “the complex interaction between the mainstream media and civil society” and shared stories about “interesting and inventive experiments in digital media activism, and how’ journalistic take-up of the information disseminated during the course of this activism, have taken place”.

Welcome

The Indaba (“gathering” in Zulu”) began with a welcome address by Prof. Jane Duncan of Rhodes University, DCI Coordinator and Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society. Prof. Duncan explained how digital media allowed communities marginalized by traditional medial to tell their own stories, and she described the goal of the DCI as helping to “build citizen skills to use new media”.

Keynote Address

The conference proper began with a keynote address by Cameroonian blogger, Dibussi Tande, which focused on “The state of social justice and digital activism in Africa.” Tande traced the evolution of civil society in Africa and its appropriation of digital media to promote social justice. He explained why the African civil society needed to make its voice heard on the digital public sphere, and analyzed existing challenges to the establishment of a viable digital civil society on the continent. He argued that one of the major challenges facing civil society in Africa was what he described as a “digital disconnect”, i.e., that the digital civil society in Africa was operating in a largely unwired continent, and that the bulk of Africa’s digital activists lived out of Africa and did not share the same geographical space as the people they were either trying to represent or influence. He also proposed a number of “best practices” for digital activists, the most significant being that in order for any online campaign to be successful, online engagement must translate into offline collective action. As he asked rhetorically, “What next after the revolution has been twittered? What next after the violence has been ushahidid?”

Tande’s keynote address is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/dibussi/the-state-of-social-justice-and-digital-media-in-africa

Panel Discussion

The keynote address was followed by a panel discussion on “Digital Media and the Right to Language” moderated by Kafusha Mfula (Copperbelt Health Education Project – Zambia) with Elia Varela Serra (Maneno – Spain) and Eduardo Ávila (Global Voices / Bolivian Voices – Bolivia) as speakers. The discussion focused on ongoing efforts to increase the presence of indigenous languages on the English-dominated Internet.

Serra highlighted the growing practice of crowd-source translation through which a network of volunteers around the world translates online content into different languages thereby “democratizing” cyberspace. She also revealed that the presence of African languages on the Internet was beginning to reach “critical mass”. For example, online content in Swahili doubled within the last year, while Google Search and Google Translate are now available in Swahili.

Serra also introduced maneno.org, a new blogging platform specifically meant for sub-Saharan Africa, which aims to give people who speak indigenous languages an online space to make their voices heard in their own languages. The site already has contributions in Bamanka, Lingala, Swahili and Zulu.

The next speaker was Eduardo Avila, Executive Director at Bolivian Voices, who called for a more diverse blogosphere. He talked about an online resurgence of indigenous languages in Bolivia, thanks to numerous efforts to bring unrepresented groups – such as speakers of the Aymara language – into cyberspace.

Day One ended with a brief introduction of the HIVOS “Citizen Journalism in Africa” project by Brett Davidson (Hivos – South Africa). Hivos supports the development of citizen journalism in Africa.

Day 2

The second day kicked off with a panel on “Gender, Civil Society and Digital Media” moderated by Ashraf Patel (SAFIPA – South Africa), with Maureen Agena (Women of Uganda Network – Uganda) and Nthatheng Mhlambiso (Behind the Mask – South Africa) as speakers.

Agena, the Information Officer of Wougnet, explained how digital media was being used by women in rural Uganda. She revealed that social networking tools had little impact in rural Uganda due to issues of accessibility, availability and cost. She pointed out that the biggest media being used were the radio and telephone because Uganda is a verbal community and because these media allowed citizens to communicate in their own languages. She also talked about the setting up of telecenters in parts of Uganda.

Next was Nthateng Mhlambiso, Managing Editor of Behind the Mask, a website about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Intersex (LGBTI) people in Africa. Mhlambiso touched on the misrepresentation of LGBTI people in the media and discussed how digital media has provided the LGBTI community with a platform to make its voice heard and to challenge inaccuracies and biases in the traditional media and society. “Newsrooms should be open-minded in terms of gay issues. Journalists should ask questions and not just publish what they think they know or speculate about gay issues,” she insisted.

The second panel of the day was “Civil Society Use of Mapping Tools and Mass Media Takeup” moderated by Bobby Soriano (Tactical Tech – The Philippines) with Brett Davidson (Stop Stock-outs – South Africa) and Daudi Were (Mental Acrobatics – Kenya) as speakers.

Davidson explained how the Stop Stock-outs project uses Ushahidi mapping software, SMS and Frontline SMS, to identify and notify the public and media of where medicines are out of stock in five countries –Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Daudi Were gave a demonstration of the mapping software and clarified that the project’s goal was to draw attention to the problem of medicine shortages, thereby forcing authorities to act.

The final panel discussion was on “Technology for Social Change: Land, Environment and Health” moderated by Rebecca Wanjiku (Blogger – Kenya), with Stephan Hofstatter (Freelance journalist – South Africa), Peter Benjamin (Cell-Life – South Africa), Ednah Karamagi (BROSDI – Uganda) and Bobby Marie (Monitoring Action- South Africa) as speakers. They discussed ways in which technology can be used to promote activism around land, environment and health.

Workshops

After the panel discussions, participants had the opportunity for more in-depth discussions during five parallel workshops that took place around the Rhodes University campus.

The workshop on “Multimedia Tools for Journalism” was facilitated by Peter Verweij of the School of Journalism at Utrecht in The Netherlands.

Marlon Parker, lecturer at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, facilitated the workshop on “Digital Voices to Reconstruct Communities” which focused on how digital media can be used to empower distressed local communities. His presentation is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/marlonparker/digital-voices-to-reconstruct-communities-upload

Former BBC Radio 4 producer and founder of podcart.co.za, Jayne Morgan, facilitated another workshop on “Successful Podcasting”. You can listen to Jayne’s interview with Reg Rumney, Director of the Centre for Economics Journalism at Rhodes University, on the whys and hows of podcasting at: http://www.zoopy.com/audio/1kuo/reg-rumney-s-interview-with-jayne-morgan

Peter Benjamin, General Manager of Cell-Life, conducted another workshop on “Using Mobile media for Social Change”. Cell-Life is an organization which seeks to improve the lives of people infected and affected by HIV in South Africa through the use of mobile technology. According to Benjamin, “In Africa, the digital divide is not going to be bridged with PCs and the Internet, it has already been overcome through cell phones. A great majority of people in South Africa and the continent do have this electronic tool.” He argued that “What we’re lacking is not the infrastructure but the imagination to learn the many ways this technology can transform lives and not just transform the bank balances of the few companies that control the technology”.

Benjamin also explained how Mxit, South Africa’s popular text chatting application, can be used to send out cheap messages and provide other services, such as HIV/Aids support chat groups. “For the first time we have mass communication that is interactive,” he enthused.

Benjamin’s presentation is available at: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/o92edJVgDsnBSG

Brenda Burrel of Kubatana.net facilitated a workshop on “Bringing Down the Barriers with Interactive Audio Programming and Mobile Phones”, which focused on the FreedomFone project in Zimbabwe. According to Burrel, “The people who need information the most live on the margins of society without access to the Internet, Email, Podcasting and all the other sexy new innovation in ICT. But technologists and media practitioners keep ignoring the fact that the majority of poor people don't have access to computers and fancy gizmos, and continue to innovate in ICT without the communication needs of marginalized communities in mind. The use of mobile phone in marginalized communities is high. Freedom Fone's interactive audio programming software intends to make the most of it.”

Brenda Burell’s presentation is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/on5UtGl6vXgveL

Resounding Success

This year’s digital citizen Indaba was quite diverse and was a showcase of exciting digital activism projects on the continent. The indaba’s focus on new media at civil society level was timely as delegates discovered the myriad of digital tools at their disposal, and left Grahamstown with a much better appreciation of the possibilities that digital media offers to civil society organizations and activists on the continent. Elvira Van Noort, Coordinator of the DCI, summed it best when she hoped that “when [delegates] return to their community they can find ways of implementing similar projects to assist in digital activism and social justice”.

With contributions from Thandeka Mapi, Gabi Falanga, Annetjie van Wynegaard, Taona Karidza, Lara Salomon, Simphiwe Kanityi and Prabhas Pokharel in Grahamstown.

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, and was a keynote speaker at this year's DCI.

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

Chinese OFDI on the world stage

Why, who and why now?

Barry Van Wyk

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/58816

cc The China AnalystA substantial presence of Chinese OFDI on the world stage essentially dates from 2004 – a short yet vigorous history of barely 5 years. In this brief period, Chinese companies Going Global have become fundamental to the next stage of China’s integration with the global economy. Why is this happening Now, Who is at the forefront of this outward drive, and Where is it heading, asks Barry van Wyk.

The phenomenon of Chinese companies going global has in the course of the present decade become a defining feature of the present stage of China’s integration with the global economy. While China remains a comparatively minor player in terms of global Outbound Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) flows, the financial crisis has afforded some of its largest SOEs unprecedented opportunities to make landmark acquisitions. In the ten months since Lehman Brothers became the defining casualty of the financial crisis, Chinese bidders have announced 50 outbound offers worth USD 30 million or more each, totalling about USD 50 billion. Blighted only by Chinalco’s high-profile shut out at Rio Tinto and Beijing Automotive’s failed bid for Opel, on the backdrop of a global recession Chinese companies have completed twenty-four deals worth a combined USD 17 billion, with twenty-one deals still pending. Since Chinalco’s Rio Tinto disappointment, two-thirds of the offers have been in mining and energy, along with China’s largest oil acquisition to date: Swiss oil explorer Addax Petroleum, bought by Sinopec for USD 7. 24 billion. With operations in Iraq and West Africa, Addax’s oil blocks were considered too risky by some of Sinopec’s Western rivals, yet the Addax deal is indicative of China’s appetite for resource-seeking assets wherever they can be procured, and this has drawn China’s flow of outward investment increasingly into the developing world. Chinese OFDI was virtually non-existent on the eve of China’s economic reform era in 1978, and remained largely insignificant until 2004. Yet by this time China had become the world’s largest consumer of tin, seaborne-traded iron ore, zinc, aluminium, copper, and nickel, and the second-largest consumer of lead and oil – all of which China now has insufficient supplies of for the domestic market. Hence in the face of economic necessity, Chinese companies are officially encouraged to go global, and in 2008, China’s annual OFDI flow topped USD 50 bn (almost double the amount for 2007), while the stock of Chinese cross-border investments is estimated to have reached about USD 170 billion by the end of 2008. Yet why has China embarked on a Going Global strategy, and who exactly are at the forefront of this outward drive? After considering these questions, this article will briefly view the future of China’s OFDI in the perspective of China’s investment experience on the African continent, where Chinese investors are presently making a distinctive impact.

ECONOMIC IMPERATIVES

China can satisfy its considerable demand for natural resources with purchases on international commodity markets, or, as a primary driver of Going Global, it can actually utilise outward investments to secure ownership of the companies that supply these resources. Yet the vastly expanding footprint of Chinese companies in the world is not simply attributable to a desire for resources, but is also inherent to the new requirements of China’s evolving growth model. In the decades after the commencement of economic reform in 1978, China was able to achieve rapid growth by vastly increasing the scale of production in manufacturing and by enabling investment flows. During this time of China becoming the factory of the world, a large number of Chinese companies, mostly based on the eastern coastline and along the river deltas, became successful exporters of a large number of products, gradually outgrowing domestic economies of scale. Yet faced with severe competition in the domestic market, for many of these Chinese firms, increasing comparative advantage and capturing an increased share of the production chain simply meant going abroad. China’s inward FDI stock reached USD 876 billion by 2008, still vastly superior to China’s outward stock of USD 170 billion, and in the decades preceding this many Chinese firms had absorbed foreign investments and gained knowledge and experience from working with foreign partners. In 2001, China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) opened the floodgates for China’s OFDI, which increased by more than six times compared to the previous year. With the proclamation of an official Go Global policy with the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05) and a substantial easing of OFDI regulations in 2004, a new era had officially dawned, and China’s outward flow of investments arrived on the world stage in full force.

WHY? THE PUSH/PULL LOGIC

Chinese companies going global generally engage in four types of strategies: market-seeking, efficiency-seeking, resource-seeking, and strategic-asset seeking. Market-seeking drivers are a logical outcome of China’s export-oriented growth model. In essence, Chinese firms will seek to expand their export channels to enhance market share and sidestep trade barriers. A number of surveys have confirmed market-seeking as the leading motivation for Chinese firms going global, and prominent examples in this regard are home appliance and consumer electronics manufacturers such as Haier, TCL, and Huawei Technologies, which have entered affluent markets like the US where they can operate in closer proximity to end-buyers and build stronger global brands. While inevitably pulled to bigger markets, market seekers are also pushed to expand abroad due to severe competition and overcapacity in their domestic market, as is the case with China’s home appliance sector. Due to the relatively low costs in China, efficiency-seeking OFDI has not been an important driver of Going Global for Chinese firms, yet this may well change in the future. For example, increasing labour costs in China’s Pearl River Delta have made production in neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand more attractive, and Chinese companies have invested in African countries like Malawi and Senegal to benefit from duty-free treatment applied by some developed countries to products imported from these African countries. Fuelled by rapid economic growth, China’s OFDI has perhaps most closely become associated with a spree of resourc-eseeking acquisitions in countries and regions such as Australia, Latin America and Africa. China’s three major state-owned oil companies, CNPC, CNOOC, and Sinopec, are said to have already succeeded in acquiring more than 100 projects between them across the globe, and have remained prominent in seeking acquisitions in 2009. A large number of Chinese players are also active in the mineral resources industry, and companies like Minmetals, Chalco, and Chinalco are investing in countries across the globe to secure assets in minerals and metals. Aimed at the acquisition of knowledge, technology and foreign brands, strategic-asset-seeking OFDI has driven Chinese companies to invest in advanced economies in Europe and North America. While ranking second behind market-seeking as a motive for Chinese companies going global, very few Chinese companies actually engage in pure asset-seeking OFDI because of the challenges in mastering the capabilities to absorb such assets. Hence asset-seeking OFDI is often combined with market-seeking or efficiency-seeking OFDI. In the automotive industry, for instance, Chinese companies have made great effort to acquire reputable brands like the Korean Ssangyong (bought by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, SAIC), and MG Rover (bought by Nanjing Automobile Group Corporation). While a few Chinese firms like Huawei ZTE have made successful investments in Europe by being able to adapt to the local market, Chinese asset-seeking investments abroad have not been particularly profitable. While the acquisition of often financially weak companies with vastly different corporate cultures pose a formidable challenge, Chinese firms’ comparative lack of experience have made it hard for them to build effective working relationships with host country stakeholders, to integrate corporate and national interests, and to integrate home and host country operations.

THE CRITICAL QUESTION OF WHO?

The rapid increase of China’s investment footprint in the world becomes even more impressive when one considers the relative novelty of Chinese OFDI. As a global investor, China remains a comparative lightweight both in terms of FDI flow and total FDI stock. In the period 2000-07, average Chinese outflows accounted for less than 1% of global outflows annually, less than other transitional economies like Russia. In 2007, US investments flows were 14 times larger than China’s, and its FDI stock was about 30 times that of China’s. Yet barely 10 years into the Go Global policy, the rapid growth of China’s OFDI in the midst of the financial crisis has illustrated just how far its Multinational Companies (MNCs) have come in a very short time, yet also their remaining shortcomings. It was only in the late 1980s that the modern Chinese MNC first emerged when a ministerial department was transformed into the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), Sinopec and Sinochem were all formed at this time, and by the late 1990s the typical Chinese MNC – operating in the most strategic sectors of China’s economy like mining or energy –had solidified as large corporations reliant on state political support and financial backing yet engaging in innovative actions such as equity joint ventures with foreign firms and listings on foreign stock exchanges.

Notwithstanding substantial losses from fledgling OFDI projects in the Hong Kong real estate and stock markets between 1991 and 1997, a Go Global policy was first enunciated in 1999 with OFDI being encouraged in processing trade activities to support national exports. The policy was consolidated at the Chinese Communist Party’s 16th Congress in 2002, with a clear objective of encouraging domestic firms to internationalise their activities as a means to acquiring strategic resources and expanding into foreign markets. The overarching goal was to increase the competitiveness of about 180 corporate champions who would with time be able to become true multinationals and enter the Fortune 500, benefiting from preferential tax concessions and political backing.

Authorities also gradually eased approval procedures while shifting responsibility from central to local agencies. Notably in 2004, the regulatory process was reformed and foreign exfrom change controls were eased, leading to a marked upsurge in China’s OFDI. In May 2009, a new regulatory framework was implemented which reduced approval times, lifted value thresholds, and transferred authority to local Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) branches. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), one of the institutions charged with approving overseas investments, also announced that it had eased approval procedures and expanded the foreign exchange reserves available for investments abroad. Where previously the government strictly controlled China’s entire investment apparatus, it now increasingly acts rather as a regulator and arbitrator, yet it retains overall executive discretion over all potential deals.

Resource-seeking and strategic asset-seeking large Chinese MNC champions who play a leading role in China’s outbound investments currently still retain an indelible link with the Chinese government. No official breakdown has ever been published on the share of SOEs and private enterprises in China’s outward investment projects, but the large number (nearly 7,000 by the end of 2007) of Chinese companies that have invested abroad suggests considerable participation by both SOEs and private firms. Yet the bulk of China’s OFDI is clearly performed by large SOEs, and estimates have in recent years put the share of Chinese OFDI flows coming from SOEs under the central government at 73.5% in 2003, 82.3% in 2004, and 83.2% in 2005, with the remaining shares split between investments under the control of regional governments, non-SOEs controlled collectively, and finally, privately-owned companies. This clear dominance of SOEs is hardly surprising, considering that nearly all Chinese companies in the natural resources industry are SOEs, and until 2003, outward investment was principally only allowed for SOEs.

As the main vehicle of the very short history of China’s OFDI, China’s SOEs have encountered a very particular image problem in that they are often perceived as mere government vessels. Chinalco’s failed bid for a larger stake of Rio Tinto and CNOOC’s failed attempt to buy US-based petroleum enterprise Unocal in 2005 were both indicative of the particular challenges China’s SOEs can encounter, especially in developed countries. Indeed, largely in response to the rapid emergence of investors from China and the Middle East, most Western countries have tightened investment regulations in recent years. In short, investment protectionism has increased and Chinese firms have often borne the brunt of politicised review processes in developed countries. This has made the question of WHO a significant issue when it comes to Chinese outbound investment in different parts of the world, and has recently caused China to announce that it will seek to use more home-grown private equity firms to seek overseas deals.

The inevitable lack of experience and confidence in managing complicated cross-border investments in heavily regulated markets has shown Chinese firms to be lacking in the full requirement of the necessary specialised skills. Problems encountered with SAIC’s venture with Korean carmaker Ssangyong and Baosteel’s abandoned steel slab project in Brazil are examples of such missteps. Yet if the rapid growth of Going Global has highlighted the lack of management skills of Chinese firms in conducting large Western-style acquisitions, many of the target countries for Chinese OFDI, particularly in Africa and Asia, are characterised by comparatively weak institutions and incomplete protection of intellectual property rights, high levels of state intervention and varying systems of corporate governance. Where Western MNCs tend to be proficient in operating in stable markets with transparent regulation, Chinese MNCs, by contrast, are experienced in dealing with less straightforward regulatory frameworks and more opaque political constraints. In the developing world, this has served as a distinct advantage, and coupled with the implementation of a new-fangled political rapport with Africa, has made the expanding Chinese presence in Africa a insightful embodiment of the state of Going Global.

GOING GLOBAL GOING WHERE? AFRICA AND BEYOND

Africa’s relatively unexploited energy resources, timber, agricultural products and fishery by 2006 attracted over 800 Chinese companies, doing business in 49 countries. China’s large SOEs, focused on natural resources, have taken the lead in Chinese investments in Africa. CNPC, China’s leading oil MNC, with its involvement in Sudan’s oil industry since 1996 has demonstrated its ability to manage a petroleum extraction operation to international standards while transforming Sudan’s energy sector into the country’s leading exporting industry. China has made similar investments in Nigeria, Angola and Gabon, while often successfully outbidding Western firms by linking their investments to large infrastructure projects and lower labour costs. A host of Chinese SMEs and construction firms are also active across the entire continent.

The activities of Chinese firms in Africa has also attracted a share of criticism, especially in regard to Chinese firms’ systematic underevaluation of labour and managerial costs, which has given them a crucial edge in bidding processes. Allegations of a lack of environmental and social oversight have also affected some Chinese SOEs in Africa, notably in Zambia. Yet there is evidence that large Chinese SOEs like Sinopec and Petrochina are embracing a corporate social responsibility agenda, and as Chinese firms become more fully integrated into the global market, increasingly accountable to shareholders and adhering to governance principles, their business practices will change accordingly.

Chinese OFDI may have found a compatible outlet in an African environment of weak regulatory frameworks and high levels of state intervention, yet as the general economic outlook in China gradually outgrows such features, the nature of Chinese OFDI going forward into the next decade is likely to be increasingly characterised by a similar emulation of Western best practices. China’s goal, in an insightful assessment by the head of CNOOC, one of China’s major oil conglomerates, “is not to overturn the world order but instead to participate in this order and to reinforce it and even to profit from it.”

* Barry Van Wyk is the Editor of The China Analyst
* This article first appeared in the the September issue of The China Analyst
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Tsvangirai hits out at Mugabe

2009-09-18

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/09/200991405132353124.html

Zimbabwe's prime minister has accused the country's president, Robert Mugabe, of violating terms of their power-sharing agreement. Morgan Tsvangirai told thousands of supporters marking his Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) 10th anniversary on Sunday that despite guarantees of political freedoms in the unity deal, Mugabe's Zanu-PF party continued to persecute MDC supporters.

Zimbabwe: One year on and still treading water

2009-09-18

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86146

It was in many ways a shotgun marriage, except that both the parties in Zimbabwe's unity government were equally unwilling. On 15 September 2008 President Robert Mugabe, leader of ZANU-PF, and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway MDC faction, signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA), paving the way for the unity government to be established in February 2009.

Africa: Post-conflict security in need of women

2009-09-18

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48486

Women need to get involved more actively and more equally in the reform of the security sector in post-conflict states, says Ecoma Alaga, a Gender and Security Sector Reform (SSR) expert of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa. Alaga presented a policy paper in a seminar on SSR and the Protection of Women in Africa on Tuesday, which was attended by leading experts in the field of gender, peacekeeping and SSR.

Global: How the EU can support women's political participation

2009-09-18

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3487

How can the EU and other donors support increased women’s political participation in post-conflict situations? What can be done to ensure that this results in meaningful change for women in general? This paper from the Initiative for Peacebuilding recommends practical strategies for the EU and other donors to guide the consideration of gender issues into their post-conflict governance interventions.

Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women

2009-09-17

http://www.learningpartnership.org/en/publications/training/ltc/ltcenglish

Leading to Choices, developed by the Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) in collaboration with its partner organizations in the Global South, is based on a conceptualization of leadership as horizontal, inclusive, and participatory. WLP views leadership as a process that leads to greater choices for all by fostering communication among individuals who learn from each other, create a shared vision, and reach a common goal forged by consensus.

Mozambique: Building awareness to reduce maternal mortality

2009-09-18

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48476

In the Niassa province of northwest Mozambique, one doctor has been working with local communities to overcome the delays responsible for three-quarters of maternal deaths each year. Dr Peg Cumberland, a slim, energetic English woman, has worked in Mozambique for over 13 years. She came to the Niassa region in 2004 when she heard that the community was asking for assistance.

Sexual and gender based violence in Africa

ACAS Bulletin 83

2009-09-17

http://concernedafricascholars.org/analysis/acas-bulletin-83/

This Bulletin began in response to news reports of “corrective” and “curative” gang rapes of lesbians in South Africa. These were then followed by news reports of a study in South Africa that found that one in four men in South Africa had committed rape, many of them more than once. We wanted to bring together concerned Africa scholars and committed African activists and practitioners, to help contextualize these reports.

Cote d'Ivoire: Toxic waste has caused death, illness

2009-09-18

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32072

Evidence indicates that the dumping of toxic wastes caused over one dozen deaths and dozens of illnesses in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, an independent United Nations human rights expert have said.In August of that year, the cargo ship “Probo Koala” dumped 500 tonnes of toxic wastes, belonging to the Dutch commodity trading company Trafigura, at sites around the city of Abidjan, the West African nation’s largest city.

Gambia: Coalition for Human Rights launched

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/58841

A civil society group has been launched in the Senegalese capital of Dakar to advocate for the enforcement of human rights in The Gambia. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia was formed by Gambians living in Dakar and Senegalese and other international human rights, media and civil society groups. These include Amnesty International Senegal branch, The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) Press Union (Synpics), African Assembly for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDHO), Inter Africa Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development (FAMEDEV), Network of Press and Parliament in Senegal (Reppas) and Radio Alternative Voice for Gambians (AVG).
A civil society group has been launched in the Senegalese capital of Dakar to advocate for the enforcement of human rights in The Gambia. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia was formed by Gambians living in Dakar and Senegalese and other international human rights, media and civil society groups. These include Amnesty International Senegal branch, The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) Press Union (Synpics), African Assembly for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDHO), Inter Africa Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development (FAMEDEV), Network of Press and Parliament in Senegal (Reppas) and Radio Alternative Voice for Gambians (AVG).

As part of its immediate activities, members of the coalition on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009, met with members of European missions overseeing The Gambia. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Dutch, Austrian, German, French, Spanish and Swedish Embassies. During the meeting, the coalition’s delegates showcased series of human rights violations that has been taking place in The Gambia. The cases include the recent the incarceration of the six journalists, journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh’s continuous disappearance, arrest of villagers accused of being witches and the issue of Nigerian Mercenary Judges in the country. Documents containing various human rights abuses in The Gambia were handed out to the diplomats.

For their part, the diplomatic representatives reassured the delegation that they have been closely following events in The Gambia and promised that they would do whatever they can to put Gambia’s human rights agenda on discussion tables.

As current president of the European Union, the Swedish representative at the meeting assured the coalition that she would put forward human rights issues in The Gambia before the EU.

This meeting with the diplomatic community is part of the series of strong activities to be conducted by the coalition to mount pressure on the regime in Banjul to respect and promote the rights of Gambians, to release the jailed journalists and to respect freedom of expression and press freedom.

For more information, contact

Libasse HANE
Coordinator
33 867 95 87 ou 77 545 42 97

Rwanda: Ex-tea boss took part in genocide

2009-09-18

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8262368.stm

The former head of Rwanda's tea industry has pleaded guilty to complicity in the 1994 genocide. Michel Bagaragaza admitted playing a role in the massacre at the international Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which sits in Tanzania. He said he allowed a militia to use tea factory vehicles on their rampages.

Tanzania: Albinos find a refuge

2009-09-18

http://www.panos.org.uk/?lid=28497

In Tanzania albinos are still living in fear of being attacked or killed after nearly 50 were murdered in the past two years. It is thought that they are being killed because of the belief that certain body parts of albinistic people transmit magical powers. Witch doctors are willing to pay a lot of money for the body parts to create potions and tinctures for their clients. So far this year at least 12 albinos have been murdered in neighbouring Burundi. Al-Jazeera has reported that one of the murderers received $240 for the body, in a region where the annual wage can be as little as $10.

Uganda: A rough guide to the country's kingdoms

2009-09-18

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86107

Ugandan police have used excessive force during clashes with rioting supporters of a local monarch in which at least 10 people died, according to a human rights watchdog. The clashes erupted on 10 September in the capital, Kampala, sparked off by a planned visit by King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi of Buganda kingdom to the central district of Kayunga on 12 September.

Africa: Italy's migrant crackdown sparks political tensions

2009-09-18

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58H01Y20090918

The deaths of 73 African migrants who drifted for three weeks in the Mediterranean without rescue have heightened concern about Italy's crackdown on immigration, opening cracks in its ruling coalition and a rift with Brussels. Five survivors, picked up off the Italian island of Lampedusa, said their grey dinghy left Libya carrying 78 people. A day later, the motor died: two pregnant girls, raped by traffickers, were among the first to die of thirst and exposure.

Horn of Africa: 16 dead in latest smuggling incidents

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/mrwgrj

Sixteen people died and 49 others are missing and presumed dead in three separate incidents involving smuggling boats in the Gulf of Aden over the last 48 hours, the UN refugee agency has said. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement that the first incident took place early Sunday morning off the coast of Radfan, some 150 kilometres east of the Mayfa'a reception centre.

North Africa: UNHCR visits Sahrawi camp

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/ly5sf9

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) António Guterres visited Sahrawi refugees in the Algerian governorate of Tindouf last week as part of an effort to reunite families separated by the Western Sahara conflict. Guterres, whose five-day tour of Algeria and Morocco ended Saturday (September 12th), said the UNHCR's proposal for a direct, straight-line land corridor between Tindouf and Laâyoune had been accepted as the best solution by all parties.

Kenya: Njeri Kabeberi honoured

2009-09-17

http://www.cmdkenya.org/newsresult.php?nid=44

Njeri Kabeberi is the winner of the inaugural “Prize for Outstanding Commitment to Law and Justice.”Announcing the award, Prof. Lutz Simon, President of the German Chamber of Lawyers said: “The Chamber of Lawyers Frankfurt am Main wishes to honour you for the many years of work fighting for justice, democracy and human rights in disregard of the private and professional drawbacks and threats.”

Global: Freedom at Work Toolkit launched

2009-09-17

http://www.laborrights.org/freedom-at-work/resources/12095

The ILRF has created the Freedom at Work Toolkit to understanding one of the human rights most widely violated in the workplace: the right to associate freely around the world. Only when this right is in place can we say workers enjoy freedom at work.

Global: New developments at ICLR

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/58790

ICLR was founded in 2002 with the mission of supporting workers? and trade union rights internationally. Our resolution was to develop a network of lawyers who could provide quickly respond to the needs of labor movements, no matter where. Today, there are more than 300 Network members spanning more than 75 countries. And we continue to expand into new areas all the time. This is a model that we believe in and are recommitting to as we move forward with our work.
ICLR was founded in 2002 with the mission of supporting workers? and trade union rights internationally. Our resolution was to develop a network of lawyers who could provide quickly respond to the needs of labor movements, no matter where. Today, there are more than 300 Network members spanning more than 75 countries. And we continue to expand into new areas all the time. This is a model that we believe in and are recommitting to as we move forward with our work.

Over the last several years ICLR has worked in close partnership with unions and NGOs all over the world. And we have reached out to members of the network to support this work, seeking the assistance of lawyers in countries including Panama, India, Malawi and Morocco, to help our New York office draft ILO and OECD complaints, analyze domestic labor laws, develop reports on violations of labor rights, and conduct trainings.

In the next phase of ICLR's development, we hope that the Network will be even more central. We will no longer be undertaking programmatic work through our New York secretariat, but hope to use our staff resources to coordinate the Network, and provide logistical support to our members. As we receive requests for assistance from unions and NGOs, we will be reaching out to members with the regional and topical expertise to help. We expect that the work will continue to be a combination of providing small amounts of pro bono advice, and more substantial projects in partnership with organizations with the financial capacity to compensate you for your expertise and time. As always, our office will be available to assist with coordination and logistics.

In addition, we hope that our networks will see our New York secretariat as a resource for their own efforts to address the global dimensions of your work, and to connect them with groups and individuals in other countries. We look forward to the opportunity to create a stronger fabric of support over coming months. We will be soliciting their input, and finding ways to share information across the Network on projects that members are involved in, and issues of importance. To maximize the potential for dialogue among Network members, we will be developing a members-only discussion area on our website to discuss strategies and projects.

This is also an opportunity to update members on changes at our New York secretariat. Ashwini Sukthankar, who has served as ICLR's Director since 2005, will be stepping back from the day-to-day work of the organization, and into a supervisory role on our Board of Directors. She will be checking email only intermittently at her ICLR email address, and can best be reached through her personal email address, ashwini@post.harvard.edu Moving into the role of Program Administrator is Kate D?Adamo (kate@laborcommission.org), who has served as Program Assistant to ICLR for the past two years.

We look forward to watching the ICLR network grow to meet emerging challenges, and expand the depth and breadth of its connections to advocates. As we continue to refine our model, we will keep you informed of developments.

Emerging powers news roundup

2009-09-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/58880

China’s governance

Central Committee meets
Signs of China’s leadership succession may emerge from next week’s annual meeting of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee More...

Thomas Friedman on one-party rule
Prominent New York Times Op-Ed columnist Thomas L Friedman pays China’s political system an unexpected compliment; ‘One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages’. More...


local lawlessness
But Kerry Brown at ‘Open Democracy’ reporting on a month-long tour of China, finds ‘ great swathes of the country under the effective sway of local gangs and thugs ruling according to private interest. After the country’s imminent sixtieth-birthday party this should be Hu Jintao’s top priority’. More...


SOE privatisation
Recent disputes over the privatisation of state-owned enterprises show that ‘...The strikes and protests have highlighted once again the arbitrary and unilateral nature of SOE privatization in China. Workers are not consulted and usually presented with a “take it or leave it” ultimatum’ More...


China’s stimulus continues

Wen Jiabao at Dalian summit
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao outlined China’s continuing economic stimulus programme in his speech to the 2009 Summer Davos meeting at Dalian in North-East China. More...


New port to cope with growing raw material imports
The BBC’s correspondent took the opportunity of the Dalian meeting to report on the massive expansion of Dalian port to cope with raw material imports from all over the world including Africa. Investment continues despite the recession. More...


FDI boom continues
In the first increase for 11 months, foreign direct investment in China rose by 7 per cent in August compared to the same month last year as the economic recovery continued. More...


Procedures to be simplified
Commerce Ministry officials were cautious about the figures however, and predicted that policies will be reformed and simplified to boost FDI further. More...

Goldman raises 2009 Asia growth forecast
Economies in Asia excluding Japan will grow 5.6 percent this year, and 8.6 percent in 2010, Goldman Sachs said, lifting its forecasts. Goldman left its forecast for India's growth unchanged in the current fiscal year, and raised it to 7.8 percent for the 12 months ending March 2011. China will grow 9.4 percent this year and 11.9 percent in 2010, Goldman said. More...


Trading networks to shift as China keeps growing
Shipping industry experts predict that China’s continued growth will lead to a rebalancing of global trade, with implications for shipping lines, air cargo and express parcel operators, as well as port and transport infrastructure developers. More...


Oil and its implications

China’s new model in overseas oil strategy
China has taken advantage of the recession to lock in future oil supplies - not just by the old route of buying up concessions but by a new model of loan-for-oil deals with key states such as Brazil, Kazakhstan and Russia, as risk analyst Fareed Mohamedi explains. More...


US joins the rush to get in to Angola
Angloa’s booming economy, already the recipient of China’s loan-for-oil strategy, is attracting growing US interest as last month’s visit by Hilary Clinton showed. More...


‘They came like animals’ - poor pay the price of Luanda’s urban boom
In a familiar pattern, the population of Luanda’s informal settlements pay the price as the economic booom and soaring property values lead to forced evictions to clear the space for ‘redevelopment’. More...


The dragon and anaconda: China, Brazil and power balance in Americas
In 2007 trade between China and Brazil reached US$29 billion and grew to an impressive $43 billion by the end of 2008. As well as oil and other raw materials the relation extends to sensitive areas such as space technology, aviation and military-related technologies, as Loro Horta explains. More...


African firms eye BP, Shell Zimbabwe assets
Two African oil firms are reported to be lining up to make an offer for BP and Shell’s Zimbabwean assets in anticipation of growth under the unity government. More...


Trade, aid and investment

Investment zone planned in Mauritius
A planned $820 million Chinese trade and development zone in Mauritius is expected to strengthen the island's $9 billion economy as well as being a launch pad for Chinese operations in the region. More...


Standard Bank gets $1bn loan facility from China
Standard Bank has won a $1 billion (R7.4bn) loan facility from four Chinese banks, which will be used to plug a lending gap which had threatened its bid to invest in Africa and Asia. More...


Chinese trade and aid boost Botswana
Standard Bank has just opened a China-Africa SME network in Botswana. A local Minister has praised the role Chinese investors have played in employment and skills transfer, and their donations to local community projects. More...


China partnering, not plundering, in Africa
Beijing is worried about culturally naive Chinese companies damaging its image in Africa, but thinks the perception that it is only after cheap oil and minerals is unfair, according to its Ambassador to Pretoria. More...


Ogun state pitches for investment
Nigeria’s Ogun state has signed a trade agreement with China’s Shandong province as part of a drive to make the state a hub for inward investment. More...

Ghana To Export Palm Oil To China
Ghana is to export 36,000 metric tonnes of palm oil to China next year following the conclusion of a $21.6 million deal between Chyuan Chya Ghana Limited and the China-Africa Economic Trade Limited. More...


India’s growing footprint

Tanzanian PM in India on four-day visit
Co-operation in areas ranging from agriculture to foreign policy were on the agenda as Tanzania’s Prime Minister arrived in India for a four day visit. According to Tanzanian government statistics, during 1990-2006, 118 companies with Indian interests have invested $825 million in Tanzania. More...

Indian firms funded to buy plantations
The state-run Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) will fund Indian firms to acquire plantation estates in African and South American countries, according to a top bank official. More...


India Signs Agreement With Namibia for Diamond, Copper Mines
India has signed an agreement with the Namibian government for access to the country’s copper and diamond mines, according to India’s Mines Minister. More...

Cote d'Ivoire: Display over voters' list posponed

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/lycdck

The National Election Commission (NEC) of Cote d'Ivoire has postponed the publication of the temporary voters' list in the country, scheduled to take place on Tuesday. In a communique, made available to PANA here, NEC stated that the publication had been "moved forward a few days". It did not give further details but merely said that the display was postponed for reasons "beyond its control".

Gabon: Opposition files legal complaint against Bongo win

2009-09-18

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58H07Z20090918

A coalition of candidates who lost to Gabonese president-elect Ali Ben Bongo in last month's election lodged a complaint with the country's top court, the politicians said on Thursday. The group, which includes veteran opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou and former Interior Minister Andre Mba Obame, both of whom scored just over 25 percent, accuse Ben Bongo of rigging the poll to succeed his father as president.

Kenya: Poll violence: ICC prosecutor proposes three-tier aproach

2009-09-18

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/659866/-/umw5et/-/index.html

The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has proposed a three-tier approach to deal with architects of the post-election violence. Mr Moreno-Ocampo, at a meeting with Lands minister James Orengo, proposed the creation of special courts in Kenya to try those who committed atrocities during the violence. The ICC will deal with those who bore the biggest responsibility for the chaos, he added.

Mozambique: Violence at start of campaign

Mozambique Political Process Bulletin

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/58843

Young men in cars covered in Frelimo posters vandalised the MDM headquarters in Bairro 2, Chókwé, Gaza early Sunday morning. In Changara, Tete, young men in Frelimo t-shirts burned the Renamo headquarters and three houses. It was a violent start to the official election campaign, which began on Sunday 13 September.
Young men in cars covered in Frelimo posters vandalised the MDM headquarters in Bairro 2, Chókwé, Gaza early Sunday morning. In Changara, Tete, young men in Frelimo t-shirts burned the Renamo headquarters and three houses. It was a violent start to the official election campaign, which began on Sunday 13 September.

The Chókwè incident started at 7 pm on Saturday when youths went to the party headquarters and took the MDM flag. Then at 2 am Sunday, the same group arrived in two cars, one with its registration number covered by a Frelimo poster, and the other a Toyota with registration MGB 07 54 still visible. The young men then broke in and vandalised the interior, breaking windows and even smashing plates used for food for the campaign team. Three people were hurt, one seriously.

In Changara, Tete, at 6 am Sunday 13 September, 20 youths with Frelimo t-shirts and flying Frelimo banners burned the Renamo headquarters and three houses of Renamo members. Changara was a centre of ballot box stuffing and attacks on the opposition in 2004 elections; Renamo party delegates were forced out of polling stations in 2004.

Violence and damage in brief
Reports from our journalists in the field.

Moamba, Maputo: Renamo party headquarters broken into; Renamo posters on the wall replaced with Frelimo ones. 13 September, 0100.
Marracuene, Maputo: Frelimo members assaulted a Renamo group preparing for a rally, and destroyed campaign material. 13 September, 1230.
Alua, Eráti, Namupla: Renamo militants blocked the road, forcing Frelimo campaign group to use other road to enter the town.
Nampula city: 2 Renamo members under arrest for beating a person who was part of an MDM group.
Dondo, Sofala: Frelimo militants blocked road and location of a Renamo rally, and destroyed Renamo campaign material.
Machanga, Sofala: Teenagers used loud music and dancing to disrupt an MDM rally at its headquarters. Police present but did not intervene.
Nhacapiri,Tete: In a largely Renamo area, Frelimo held a rally with 200 young people, who were given large amounts of alcoholic drink. Worry this will encourage violence.
Use of state cars and other resources
Reports from our journalists and the popular correspondents who are monitoring the improper use of state cars, building and other government resources in the campaign.
Chicualacuala, Gaza: Opening of the campaign used district economic activities Land Cruiser MMH 18-91 and education motorcycle Honda 03-71
Vilanculos, Inhambane: Minibus of the Instituto do Magistério Primário, with registration number covered by Frelimo posters, car MLY 45-64 of Aeroportos de Moçambique, and a grey car MMQ 09-02 of Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique all used by Frelimo in the first day of the campaign.
Mabalane, Gaza. Frelimo in first day of campaign used various state vehicles with registration numbers covered by Frelimo posters, including a Toyota and a double cabin Ford Ranger of the district administration and a motorcycle of the economic activities directorate. Also, a red car MNF 95-18 from economic activities directorate.
Nhacama, Cheringoma, Sofala: Just after midnight Sunday Frelimo opened its campaign with a parade of state cars, all with registration numbers covered, from education, health, and agriculture.
Marringué, Sofala: Frelimo posters in district government office and primary school EPC de Bandar.
Muanza, Sofala: Frelimo using car of the provincial director of health, MMJ 97-79, and of the health directorate, Mitsubishi MLW 79-91.
Búzi, Sofala: Frelimo using motorcycles of the district education, youth and technology services, all covered in Frelimo posters.
Pebane, Zambezia. Frelimo using education Nissan MMJ-76-70 and IDPP Toyota MMI-41-53.
Namialo, Nampula: Frelimo using a car of the district secretariat, Isuzu KB 280 registration MMH-74-24.

Niger: Tandja 'ready to dialogue with the opposition'

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/lsvknk

Niger's president Mamadou Tandja is ready to dialogue with the opposition following a crisis triggered by a controversial referendum which has approved an extra three years for him, the head of a delegation of the Pan African Parliament (PAP), Mr Alassane Sawadogo, has announced. "President Tandja presented himself to us as a man ready for dialogue, anxious for peace, stability and Niger's supreme interest," Mr Sawadogo, PAPMP for Burkina Faso, said at the end of an audience with the Niger president.

Southern Africa: Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique ready for polls

2009-09-18

http://www.sardc.net/Editorial/Newsfeature/09230909.htm

Preparations for elections in Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique are now at an advanced stage with the respective electoral commissions announcing polling dates. Botswana and Mozambique will go to the polls on 16 and 28 October respectively, while Namibia will hold its elections on 27 and 28 November. Botswana is holding general elections to choose new parliamentarians. The Parliament will then act as an electoral college to choose the President.

Kenya: Parliament hailed for elbowing re-appointment of anti-graft boss

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/nbbbym

Kenya's civil society organisations have lauded Parliament's move to annul the unilateral re-appointment of Justice Aaron Ringera as Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) Director. Executive Director Harun Ndubi of HAKI Focus, a civil society organisation, said Thursday the move signified a new era in Kenyan politics where all leaders were held accountable for their actions.

Zimbabwe: Biti says he blocked possible IMF aid abuse

2009-09-18

http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSLG229479

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Tendai Biti said on Wednesday he had blocked possible "unprocedural use" of IMF aid allocated to the country under a global assistance agreement for member states hit by a global crisis. Biti dismissed as "rubbish" reports in state media that he had written to the International Monetary Fund effectively rejecting over $500 million in IMF special drawing rights extended to Zimbabwe because Harare has external debts of about $5.7 billion.

Global: Challenges by new actors in international development

2009-09-18

http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/aid&id=44515&type=Document

Researchers have been keen to assess the impact of emerging donors on the development paradigm. The particular aid policies of China, India, South Africa et al have been carefully considered to garner how emerging donor approaches differ from the ‘traditional’ OECD-DAC (Development Assistance Committee) funders. Yet little consideration has been given to the implications of the new aid actors’ activities for future OECD-DAC donor policy as a whole. This paper seeks to detail implications for donor policy.

Global: Don't forget the poor

2009-09-18

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/europe/article.aspx?id=7822

The World Bank and major non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are calling on leaders who will gather for next week's Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Pittsburgh not to forget the needs of the world's poorest countries, which have been severely affected by the last year's financial crisis.In a report released on Wednesday, the Bank said the global recession, whose repercussions are still being felt around the world, will have resulted in an additional 89 million people living in absolute poverty, or on less than 1.25 dollars a day, by the end of next year.

West Africa: MCC signs $540 million compact with Senegal

2009-09-18

http://www.afrol.com/articles/34188

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has signed a five-year poverty reduction compact granting $540 million to the Republic of Senegal for road rehabilitation and food security initiatives in some of the poorest regions of Senegal. The grant was signed by the Acting Chief Executive Officer Darius Mans and Senegalese Minister of Finance and Economy Abdoulaye Diop, with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal presiding at the signing held at the US State Department in Washington, D.C.

Zimbabwe: Government targets $16bn from mining

2009-09-18

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5996

Zimbabwe's minerals sector could attract investments of up to $16 billion once a more conducive business environment is in place, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said. That could help boost gross domestic product by $3 billion per year, Tsvangirai said.

Africa: Burnt out medics pay the price of HIV care

2009-09-18

http://www.panos.org.uk/?lid=28846

The health systems of Sub-Saharan Africa are being undermined by an exodus of medical staff. A new study from Zambia, led by an international team of doctors and researchers, reveals that staff burnout is fuelling the crisis. It shows that even though access to HIV treatment has rapidly expanded, the number of trained staff has not kept pace, meaning that delivering effective HIV care is proving difficult.

Global: Africa registers 8,000 cases of swine flu, 46 deaths

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/njb6b9

Africa registered 8,000 cases of the H1N1 A flu, called swine flu, 46 of which resulted in deaths, out of the the 164,152 cases reported throughout the world, a researcher with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Sénégal, Dr. Mang Coly, has disclosed. Coly said South Africa was one of the most affected countries in the continent with 5,877 cases of contamination, followed by Tanzania, with 96 cases, Mauritius , 69 cases, and Kenya, 85 cases.

Global: New UN women's agency good news for "feminized" AIDS epidemic

2009-09-18

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86201

AIDS activists around the world have welcomed a new UN General Assembly resolution to create a single agency to promote the rights and wellbeing of women, which they say is good news for women, who are bearing the brunt of the global AIDS pandemic. "This is a historic opportunity to advance the rights of women and girls," said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibé in a statement.

Kenya: Giving young people the skills to say "No"

2009-09-18

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86188

Carrying placards that read, "Huwezi Die Uki Abstain", Swahili slang for "You won't die if you abstain [from sex]", more than 3,000 young people recently marched through Nairobi in an effort to re-energize the campaign to keep teens from having sex too early. But beyond the placard-waving and slogan-chanting, march organizers were also trying to give young people the skills to avoid being pushed into sex before they are ready.

Nigeria: Officials fear cholera resurgence in the north

2009-09-18

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86178

Floods in northern Nigeria’s Adamawa state have left over 2,000 people displaced, many of them with no access to clean drinking water, leaving officials worried about a potential cholera outbreak. Five districts – Fufore, Demsa, Yola North, Yola South and Numan – were flooded in August and early September, when the River Lagdo burst its banks, according to the Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

Swaziland: No easy fixes for world's highest infection rate

2009-09-18

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86161

Average life expectancy in Swaziland has plummeted from around 60 years in the 1990s to just over 30 years today. Few would deny that HIV/AIDS is largely to blame, but the reasons why the epidemic has devastated this tiny, southern African country more than any other are less clear. "Foreign observers look at Swaziland and can't figure out why the numbers [of HIV infections] remain so high," said Harriet Kunene, of The AIDS Support Centre in the central commercial town, Manzini.

Sierra Leone's Thinking Pink Breast Cancer Foundation

Interview with founder Cremelda Pratt

Roland Marke

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/58800

Roland Marke speaks to Cremelda Pratt, the founder of Sierra Leone's Thinking Pink Breast Cancer Foundation, about the need for greater awareness about breast cancer and the future of her foundation.

Breast cancer is a serious problem in Sierra Leone that affects both women and men. But access to medical facilities is not easily available, and is sometimes non-existent. I spoke to the founder of the Thinking Pink Breast Cancer Foundation, Cremelda Pratt, about her organisation. The following extract is from an insightful interview I had with her.

ROLAND MARKE: Mrs Cremelda Pratt, I’m honoured to interview you. How and why was Thinking Pink Breast Cancer Foundation born?

CREMELDA PRATT: Thank you Mr Marke. It’s a privilege to be interviewed by you. Thinking Pink was birthed on 30 November 2007 in Sierra Leone. Present at birth were Isata Conteh, Dr Lynda Foray, Dr Donald Taqi, Mrs Maureen Kay, Mrs Angie Gooding, Daisy Hyde, Noella Paul (by proxy), and Josephine Tucker. These volunteers came together to take up the challenges of breast cancer awareness in Sierra Leone. After my close friends Justice Valarie Nicol and Ms Verna Iscandri lost their battle to this deadly disease, it then became clear that the need for awareness on breast cancer in Sierra Leone was quite urgent. We also have some friends and peers who are survivors working alongside Well Woman Clinic – they help us spread the word on early detection. We are proactive and will not relent until every Sierra Leonean can proudly say I am aware 'It’s our fight too.'

ROLAND MARKE: What is your background and where is the foundation presently located?

CREMELDA PRATT: My background is in business administration. But I’m very passionate about children and women’s issues also. Our headquarters is in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with a satellite office in the United States.

ROLAND MARKE: How is the project financed? What are the challenges and objectives of the project, including the credibility factor?

CREMELDA PRATT: Currently, we are funded by members of the foundation who are very passionate, and they give us their very best. We consider it unacceptable that Sierra Leone lacks basic infrastructure for breast cancer. Data collected during our launching was alarming: 278 participants came forward for a clinical exam – 45 had some form of breast abnormality.

The objectives of the foundation are advocacy and sensitisation; there is an urgent need for breast cancer treatment in Sierra Leone, while our target group includes every Sierra Leonean age 18 years and over. We believe we have a lot of challenges ahead of us, and we are willing to face them. I must say that Well Woman Clinic is doing a good job in a country without an oncologist, and we are working in partnership with them. They work closely with our local OB/GYN for the clinical side of the disease. This is too serious a project to warrant any credibility factor. It truly hurts to see teenagers with breast cancer crying their eyes out with no place to seek treatment. The closest place we can go to for basic treatment is Ghana. Sierra Leoneans need to come together so that we can make this a 'collective battle'.

ROLAND MARKE: How did the recent charity event go? Why is this project personally near and dear to your heart?

CREMELDA PRATT: It went very well. In our midst was Dr Akim Gibril OB/GYN, who understands women’s issues in Sierra Leone very well. We have a Fall Fashion Show coming up at the Mansion at Strathmore on the 3 October 2009 at 3pm. Our goal is to raise money towards a well-equipped mobile clinic to take treatment to the people. Mama Yele and Oseh Brown need to move beyond the taboo that equates breast cancer to ‘witchcraft’; in this day and age of awareness, [this] personally saddens me. The world is moving towards a cure, yet we are still separated by geography (little or no awareness). Being a woman and getting older puts me at risk too. Women represent over 50 per cent of the population in Sierra Leone. This deadly disease undermines our dignity and confidence, thus affecting our overall contribution to society. Sierra Leonean women have suffered too long in silence, yet [are] ashamed to confront this terrible disease. It is time we move beyond the societal taboo.

ROLAND MARKE: Are there other projects probably in the works?

CREMELDA PRATT: For 2009, we have none. I’m quite focused on this project and its success. And I cannot do it alone. We are appealing to Sierra Leoneans to join hands with us, as this disease does not respect anyone. I need every support possible: prayers, ideas and funds – since funding means moving the work forward. We need suggestions, criticism: we need it all.

ROLAND MARKE: What is your assessment of the present healthcare delivery system back home?

CREMELDA PRATT: The health situation in Sierra Leone to say the least is 'depressing'. It’s believed to have reached epidemic proportions. We need help right now, and desperately too.

ROLAND MARKE: What is your vision for this organisation five years from now? Does politics affect the welfare of the foundation in Sierra Leone?

CREMELDA PRATT: My vision five years from now is that this foundation is committed to continue spreading the message that early detection is the key to a cure; we will continue to raise awareness, and hope by then [that] Sierra Leone will have a well-equipped medical facility. We are appealing to our Sierra Leonean oncologists to assist with medical missions: our mothers and sisters need to understand the ruthlessness of cancer and be offered adequate medical care. Politics has no place in this foundation as we are a non-profit organisation. Please visit us online on www.thinkingpinkfoundation.org and make your contribution that would help save the lives of needy and desperate folk in Sierra Leone. Thank you for your valuable help and support.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 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.
* Roland Bankole Marke © 2009.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa: UN-backed partnership promises education for millions more children

2009-09-18

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32060

A United Nations-backed campaign to bring education to millions of children in Africa is expanding to reach millions more after exceeding its initial target by raising more than $50 million.The Schools for Africa partnership, set up in 2004 by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) and the Hamburg Society to raise money to help over 4 million children in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe, signed a memorandum of understanding on the expansion in New York recently.

South Africa: Finally Buyisiwe gets justice

2009-09-18

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=2292

On the day of the sentencing of the seven of eight men who gang-raped Buyisiwe, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) activists and members of the Joint Working Group (JWG), a network of LGBTI organisation South Africa came in numbers in support of the 1 in 9 Campaign. “Though the matter is not directly LGBTI - related, many members of the 070707 campaign have been very involved in the case as members of 1 in 9 Campaign”, said JWG co-ordinator Emily Craven.

Cote d'Ivoire: Attempted coverup of pollution story

2009-09-17

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/trafigura-oil-ivory-coast

The British oil trader Trafigura has offered to pay out in a historic damages claim from 31,000 Africans injured by the dumping of toxic waste in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history, the Guardian can reveal. The compensation deal for the victims of toxic oil waste dumping in west Africa – likely to be confirmed imminently – means the full extent of attempts to cover up what really happened can be spelled out for the first time.

Global: Rich nations urged to repay 'climate debt' through huge emissions cuts

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/ngtntn

Rich countries must repay their climate debt by making big cuts to emissions and providing developing countries with the finance and technology needed, global anti-poverty agency ActionAid said in a release on the World Bank's annual World Development Report."A broad coalition from Bolivian President Evo Morales to the World Bank is united in saying that past emissions matter and that rich countries have to confront this rather than avoid it," Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change, said in a statement.

Global: World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations

2009-09-18

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6836112.ece

The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.

Madagascar: Forest pharmacy under threat

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/pdt3re

Millions of years ago, Madagascar separated from the other continents and evolved separately. Today it has about 12,000 plants most of which can be found nowhere else in the world. Many of these plants have medicinal properties, but their habitat is under threat. In the town of Tolear, people rely on herbs as the nearest hospital is far away. Traditional healers combine plants and a little bit of magic to cure patients.

West Africa: Human right-based approach to climate change adopted

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/lgxeza

Participants attending a regional conference, entitled 'Regional Conference on Protection Challenges to Climate Change in West Africa', have ended their two-day conference in Lome, the Togolese capital, with a call for the use of a human rights-based approach to address climate change challenges in the region.

Africa: Farmland investment fund is seeking more than Dh1bn

2009-09-18

http://farmlandgrab.org/7524

The Gulf’s first agricultural investment fund is due to launch next month, focusing on land acquisitions related to cash-crop farming. The US$350 million (Dh1.28 billion) fund, which will focus initially on rice farming in Africa and cereal cultivation in eastern Europe and former Soviet countries, is actively seeking joint ventures with Gulf family-owned conglomerates and sovereign wealth funds.

Ghana: Land grabs force hundreds off farms, growers say

2009-09-18

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86044

Dozens of farmers in northern Ghana claim they have been forced off their land with no alternative source of income after a multinational firm bought their farms to cultivate jatropha, a non-food crop whose seeds contain oil used to produce biofuel. Biofuel Africa Ltd has acquired over 23,700 hectares of Ghanaian land forcing out the inhabitants of seven villages – all of them farming communities -- in Tamale district.

Kenya: Government begins huge slum clearance

2009-09-18

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8258417.stm

Kenyan authorities have begun to move residents out of Africa's largest slum - the Kibera settlement in Nairobi. Officials expect to take from two to five years to clear the slum, which is home to about one million people. The first people to move are being rehoused nearby in 300 newly built apartments, each paying about $10 (£6) a month in rent. But some residents and landlords have gone to court in a bid to stop the moves as they claim they own the land.

Mali: Libyan land grab of rice-producing land

2009-09-18

http://farmlandgrab.org/7483

Land grabbing of small farmers’ land by large national and foreign companies is becoming an increasingly concerning issue in Mali. After investing in various sectors of the economy in Mali and in Africa, these national or multinational corporations are looking for new avenues of opportunity, namely land.

Sierra Leone: Koya Chiefdom signs 50 year agricultural land lease

2009-09-18

http://farmlandgrab.org/7584

Land owners at Koya Chiefdom together with chiefdom elders and officials of Quifel have signed a 50 years land lease agreement for agricultural purposes. The ceremony took place at the Roman Catholic Hall in Masiaka on Friday 11th September, 2009 in the presence of officials from Quifel and legal practitioners representing both parties to the agreement.

Tanzania: India offers to spur green revolution

2009-09-18

http://farmlandgrab.org/7561

With East Africa reeling under a severe drought, India offered all possible help and assistance in spurring a green revolution in Tanzania. Tanzanian Prime Minister Mizengo K. Pinda, who is on a four-day visit to India, held wide-ranging discussions with the External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, where the issue of agricultural cooperation was discussed in detail.

DRC: Probe death threats against women journalists

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/llnnz5

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the death threats issued against Kadi Adzuba and Delphine Namuto of Radio Okapi and Jolly Kamuntu of the privately-owned radio station, Radio Maendeleo, who were all threatened through an unknown SMS in Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province in the east of DRC.

Liberia: President sues newspaper for libel

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/m2elos

The Liberian leader president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has filed a lawsuit against the New Broom newspaper for libel, amounting to $5 million in damages. The paper recently accused president Sirleaf of receiving US$2 million as kickback to favor a company for control of the Cavalla Robber Plantation in the south eastern region of Liberia.

Uganda: End media clampdown

2009-09-18

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/15/uganda-end-media-clampdown

The Ugandan government should immediately allow radio stations and programming that it closed down after protests in Kampala last week to return to the air and should investigate the arrest and abuse of a prominent journalist, Robert Kalundi Sserumaga, Human Rights Watch has said.

Zimbabwe: MISA concerned by ZANU-PF hate-speech

2009-09-18

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news170909/misa170909.htm

Media watchdog, the Media Institute for Southern Africa – Zimbabwe, has expressed grave concern over the upsurge of hate speech against the private media and perceived opponents, by members of ZANU PF and the state controlled media. Earlier this week army commander, Lieutenant-General Phillip Valerio Sibanda, berated foreign based Zimbabwean radio stations, accusing them of being at war with Zimbabwe and urged the military to ‘guard against them’. This has been widely seen as meaning that journalists broadcasting into Zimbabwe are legitimate military targets because they threaten the state.

Brazil: Bloggers on why there is still racism in the country

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/klbqq7

Two weeks ago, Global Voices Online reported the story of Januário Alves de Santana, a black man who had been beaten and punched by security guards of one of the largest international retailers in Brazil. He was waiting for his family in the car park of a supermarket when he was accused of trying to steal his own car, under the argument that, being black, he would not be able to afford a luxury car.

DRC: Relief workers face attacks in the east

2009-09-18

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32058

The number of incidents against humanitarian workers operating in the volatile North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has surged by 26 per cent in the first six months this year, and the attacks are becoming increasingly violent, according to a United Nations report.

Nigeria: Government gears up for another offensive in the Delta

2009-09-17

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48428

There is mounting evidence that the government of Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'adua is set to launch a full-scale offensive in the Niger Delta when a ceasefire declared by rebels ends on Sep. 15. And this time, Nigerian military forces will be using special warships, helicopter gunships and troop transports, and unmanned drone intelligence planes and ships sold to Nigeria by Israeli, Malaysian, Singaporean, Dutch and Russian companies.

Nigeria: Rebels extend ceasefire

2009-09-18

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/09/2009915233131570342.html

Nigeria's armed group fighting for a greater share of oil wealth has decided to extend a two-month-old ceasefire in the Niger Delta by 30 days but warned a government amnesty programme had not yet addressed key issues. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), with an estimated 10,000-strong force, has been behind deadly attacks on oil installations in Nigeria that have disrupted production.

Somalia: AU base attacked

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/kovqwa

Nine solders serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) were killed Thursday after militant group, the Al Shabaab, hit the main headquarters of the mission, killing peacekeepers and wounding senior force commanders. The African Union (AU) immediately condemned the attacks and asked all the neighbouring countries to impose sanctions against the terrorist elements fighting efforts to restore stability in Somalia.

Africa: Is there Technology Arbitrage in Africa?

2009-09-18

http://tinyurl.com/mavqbb

The term arbitrage traditionally refers to taking advantage of the price differential (the gap) between two or more markets. One example is how search engine marketers use arbitrage to make money off of Google Adwords with keyword buying and landing pages. Another is when traders take advantage of differences in exchange rates on currencies in two separate markets.

Africa: Riding the digital express

Calestous Juma

2009-09-17

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8256940.stm

The first undersea fibre optic cable, Seacom, reached the east African coast in July 2009. This "Digital Express" is the most important infrastructure investment in eastern Africa since the construction of the Uganda Railway which integrate colonial east Africa into the British Empire.

Africa: Text messages highlight stockouts

2009-09-18

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5999

A multi-country campaign in Africa is using cell phone technology to expose stock-outs of essential medicines at public health facilities and put pressure on governments to address the issue. "Stop the Stock-outs" was launched earlier this year in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia by Health Action International (HAI) Africa, a regional network of NGOs, healthcare providers and civil society organizations, in partnership with Oxfam, the UK-based aid and developmental charity, and civil society organizations in several countries.

South Africa: Sumbandila Satellite blasts off into space

2009-09-18

http://www.buanews.gov.za/news/09/09091810151001

South Africa's Sumbandila Satellite blasted off into space on Thursday evening. The blast-off was accompanied by rousing applause and delight by keen South Africans who had traveled to Baikonur, Kazakhstan to witness the event. Among the guests were Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor. She said the launch of Sumbandila which is Venda for "lead the way" has paved the way for bigger and better things.

USA/Somalia: Slippery Slope

AfricaFocus Bulletin Sep 15, 2009 (090915)

2009-09-18

http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/som0909.php

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from several articles with commentary both on U.S. policy and on other aspects of the situation in Somalia. Elizabeth Dickson in Foreign Policy comments on disagreements within the U.S. government about the shipment of arms supplies to the government in Mogadishu. Minnesota Public Radio comments on repeated airport searches of two prominent Somali-American professors at the University of Minnesota.

Global: 10 th annual Africa Conference, 2010

Theme: Women, Gender and Sexualities in Africa

2009-09-18

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/2010/10CallforPapers.htm

The University of Texas, Austin is pleased to announce a three-day conference centered on the theme of “Women, Gender and Sexualities in Africa”. Academic discourses on women, gender and sexualities in Africa have increased by leaps and bounds since the 1980s when they began to establish root as veritable fields of professional, systematic and academic endeavor from March 26-28, 2010. The deadline for submitting paper proposals is November 1, 2009.

Global: Transforming Race Conference - Kirwan Institute

Call for proposals

2009-09-17

http://transforming-race.org/

The Kirwan Institute is hosting its second biannual Transforming Race conference on March 11-13, 2010. The theme of the conference is Crisis and Opportunity in the Age of Obama. It will feature the following three thematic tracks:
* Racial Dynamics and Systems Thinking introducing the theory and application of systems thinking to social and racial justice.
* Race Talk exploring constructive, productive, and inclusive racial dialogues.
* Race, Recession and Recovery focusing on the impact of and solutions to the economic downturn for populations of color. The agenda is still being constructed and we need your input.

South Africa: 13th POETRY AFRICA International Poetry Festival

Durban : 5 – 10 October 2009

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/58852

5 to 10 October promises to be a stirring week of words, rhymes, performance and ideas, as the 13th Poetry Africa international poetry festival ignites Durban with poetry from around South Africa, Africa, and the world. Hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre for Creative Arts, Poetry Africa's intensive week-long programme kicks off with a pre-festival showcase of Durban-based poets at The Workshop Shopping Centre's Amphitheatre on 4 October at 11h00.
5 to 10 October promises to be a stirring week of words, rhymes, performance and ideas, as the 13th Poetry Africa international poetry festival ignites Durban with poetry from around South Africa, Africa, and the world. Hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre for Creative Arts, Poetry Africa's intensive week-long programme kicks off with a pre-festival showcase of Durban-based poets at The Workshop Shopping Centre's Amphitheatre on 4 October at 11h00. The poets performing at the showcase were chosen from a week-long open audition held at the Centre for Creative Arts. Some of the selected poets will also perform curtain-raising poems on three separate evenings at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre as well as battle it out for the Durban SlamJam crown on 10 October at the BAT Centre. The festival week encompasses introductory performances by the full lineup of participating poets at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre on Opening Night, 5 October. Opening Night will also include a Keynote Address by legendary Malawian writer and poet David Rubadiri. The week will thereafter feature 4 poets every evening, through to 4 October, before the perennially rousing Festival Finale at the BAT Centre on 10 October.

The festival's trademark eclectic mix of poetic voices, styles, forms, and cultures includes comedian-slammer Nina Kibuanda (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Kibuanda, who is also an actor, makes the connections between theatre, musicality and poetry explicit in his electrifying performances. The lineup from Africa also includes Poetry Africa returnee Susan Kiguli (Uganda), who last performed in Durban in 2000. Kiguli, an academic and widely recognized as one of the most important poets in East Africa, combines startling lyrical ability with an utterly compelling performing voice. Odia Ofeimun from Nigeria has published numerous celebrated collections of hard-hitting and astute poetry with political bite. Tania Tomé (Mozambique) is a provocative performer, singer and poet who instills a sense of theatre into her poetry. Malawian singer and poet Chigo Gondwe is an “ethno-urban-hiphop-soul-poetess” who revels in promoting the positive aspects of the Africa continent. Leading Zimbabwean protest-poet Outspoken, together with his band the Essence, will be rhyming truth to power as the Festival's closing night act on Saturday, 10 October at the BAT Centre.

The strong South African lineup this year includes poet and novelist Mogane Wally Serote, one of the true giants of South African literature. Serote, the winner of numerous local and international awards including the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and Pablo Neruda Award from the Chilean government, was a key Black Consciousness poet who in 1969 was arrested by the apartheid government under the Terrorism Act. Poet, writer, and playwright Lesego Rampolokeng is perhaps one of the most influential contemporary poets in South Africa. His bitter-sweet and complex writing and performing forms a radically incisive alternative soundtrack to post-apartheid South Africa.

Jennifer Ferguson, one of South Africa 's national treasures, is a multi-award winning performer, composer, poet, and classically trained pianist. She also served as an ANC MP in South Africa 's first democratic National Parliament. Ferguson, who now divides her time between South Africa and Sweden, worked during apartheid as both a protest singer-songwriter and as a Cultural Activist serving on the South African Musician's Alliance (SAMA)'s Cultural Desk. It was during this time that her songs were banned, concerts tear gassed, and she faced intimidation from the South African Security Branch.

Sindiwe Magona is best known as a prolific and multi-award winning author of plays, novels, a memoir, and educational books. Poetry Africa is pleased to be able to launch Magona's first poetry collection, the poignant Please, Take Photographs (Modjaji Books), during the festival. Loftus Marais's stunning debut collection of poems, Staan in die algemeen nader aan vensters has been received with universal acclaim and won both the Eugenè Marais Prize and the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. Ewok, a two-time Poetry Africa SlamJam champion and a well-known face in Durban's theatre, hiphop and slam scenes, is arguably the finest slam poet in the country and injects his rapid-fire bursts of poetry with ingenious wit and political and social impact. Liesl Jobson, an established voice in the South African poetry and literary scene, last year published two exceptional collections, View from an Escalator (poems) and 100 Papers (prose poems and flash fiction), both awash with humor, tenderness and insight. Bongani Mavuso is a poet, radio presenter, and senior producer at Ukhozi FM and has been writing and reciting his urgent and socially conscious poetry for over twelve years, publishing numerous anthologies of Zulu poetry along the way. Mavuso will also launch his latest anthology, Zibuyela Ezimpandeni (Shuter and Shooter) during the festival.

Sunil Gangopadhyay (India) heads up the contingent from outside Africa at this year's festival. Gangopadhyay, an astonishingly prolific writer with well over 200 books to his name, is an immensely popular poet and writer in his native India and has had two of his works adapted for the screen by the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Fellow Indian Anindita Sengupta is a dynamic emerging voice in Indian poetry and her vivid, humanistic poems are bound to impress. Ilyas Tunç is a poet and translator whose resonant poetry is spread over numerous celebrated collections. Tunç has a strong South African connection and has finished work on a mammoth anthology of contemporary South African poetry in Turkish translation. Some of his own poems have also been translated into Afrikaans and Zulu.

Saturday, 10 October sees a full day of activities at the BAT Centre, which includes poetry workshops, open mic opportunities, the Durban SlamJam all culminating with the Festival Finale on Saturday night. Apart from the evening performances at the Sneddon and the BAT, a packed daily programme includes performances, seminars, workshops, poetry competitions, and school visits.

The full programme of activities, plus participant bios and photos, is available on www.cca.ukzn.ac.za Enquiries to 031-260 2506 or 031-260 1704

Organised by the Centre for Creative Arts (University of KwaZulu-Natal), the 13th Poetry Africa festival is supported by the Department of Arts and Culture, Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (HIVOS), National Arts Council, French Institute of South Africa, Pro-Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, African Synergy Book Café and the City of Durban.

South Africa: Art and Social Justice Conference

Durban University of Technology, 21 – 24 March 2010

2009-09-17

http://asjconference.dut.ac.za/default.aspx

The Art and Social Justice conference aims to explore the role and relevance of the arts in addressing issues of social justice. In line with the objectives and principles of the conference organizers, Art for Humanity, the concerns of this conference are primarily directed towards advocacy. The conference serves as a platform for art practitioners and organizations to share experiences drawn from a variety of international contexts to discuss mutual concerns and find solutions to commonly experienced challenges.

The Struggle for Health (in the Shadow of the Hegemon)

Havana, Cuba 4-13 November 2009

2009-09-17

http://www.phmovement.org/iphu/en/havana/announce

The International People’s Health University (IPHU) and People’s Health Movement (PHM) in association with the Medical University of Cuba, the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Cuenca (Ecuador) and the Global Forum on Health Research are pleased to announce THE STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH - A short training course from 4-13 November 2009 In Havana, Cuba.

From The Local To The Global: Key Issues in Development Studies

Pluto Books

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/58791

From The Local To The Global: Key Issues in Development Studies
2nd edition
Edited by Gerard McCann and Stephen McCloskey
Released October 4th 2009
PB / £ 17.99 / 9780745328423 / 215mm x 135mm / 320pp
From The Local To The Global: Key Issues in Development Studies
2nd edition
Edited by Gerard McCann and Stephen McCloskey
Released October 4th 2009
PB / £ 17.99 / 9780745328423 / 215mm x 135mm / 320pp



‘Think globally, act locally’ is a phrase that is often used nowadays to describe the importance of popular activism and an awareness of the issues surrounding globalistion. This book is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the key concepts in development which are central to understanding the causes of poverty, inequality and injustice in developing countries.
With insightful contributions from development experts and activists from the North and the South, this book questions the capacity of governments to regulate markets and harness them to meet social needs.
Critically assessing the role of multilateral organisations -- and in particular the trade and debt regulations of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank -- the contributors examine crucial international topics such as the environment, sustainability, the arms trade, interdependence, human rights, racism and stereotyping, setting them within the broader context of the global economy.


Gerard McCann is a Lecturer in European Studies, St Mary’s College, Queens University Belfast. He is a founder member of the Ireland-Palestine Cultural Links Project. He is author of Theory and History (Ashgate, 1997) and editor of The Rights Debate (WBEF, 2001).



Stephen McCloskey is the Director of the Belfast Development Education Centre. He is the co-editor of The East Timor Question: The Struggle for Independence from Indonesia (I.B. Tauris, 2000).



For further information, to request a review copy or to speak to the author please contact Jon Wheatley at jonw@plutobooks.comor on 0208 374 6424



345 ARCHWAY ROAD, LONDON, N6 5AA
TEL: 0208 3482724 FAX: 0208 348 9133 www.plutobooks.com

People Power:Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity

Pluto Books

2009-09-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/58849

People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity
Edited by Howard Clark
Released October 4th 2009
PB / £ 17.99 / 9780745329017 / 230mm x 150mm / 256pp
People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity
Edited by Howard Clark
Released October 4th 2009
PB / £ 17.99 / 9780745329017 / 230mm x 150mm / 256pp

‘Timely and stimulating... [This Book] will be of great interest not just to students, activists and researchers but to the more general readers seeking alternatives to the violence that permeates so much of the world.’
Professor Paul Rogers, Department of Peace Studies, Bradford University


‘I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in advancing human solidarity and non-violent resistance to injustice and oppression. Each case shows how ordinary people can generate extraordinary change.
Professor Kevin P Clements, Director National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Otago Dunedin New Zealand.

Across the world, nonviolent movements are at the forefront of resistance against repression, imperial aggression and corporate abuse. However, it is often difficult for activists in other countries to know how best to assist such movements.

The contributors to People Power place nonviolent struggles in an international context where solidarity can play a crucial role. Yet they also warn that good intentions are not enough, solidarity has to listen to local movements.
Examining movements from Zimbabwe to Burma and Palestine, the contributors assess various forms of solidarity, arguing that a central role of solidarity is to strengthen the counter-power of those resisting domination and oppression.

Howard Clark is a nonviolent activist and independent peace researcher living in Madrid. He has worked for Peace News and since 2008 has been chair of War Resisters’ International. He is a research fellow of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry University and author of Civil Resistance in Kosovo (Pluto, 2000) and co-author with April Carter and Michael Randle of People and Power Protest Since 1945: A Bibliography of Nonviolent Action (2006)

For further information, to request a review copy or to speak to the author please contact Jon Wheatley at jonw@plutobooks.com or on 0208 374 6424

345 ARCHWAY ROAD, LONDON, N6 5AA
TEL: 0208 3482724 FAX: 0208 348 9133 www.plutobooks.com

The Berghof Policy Brief

Conflict Parties’ Interests in Mediation, Policy Brief No. 1

2009-09-18

http://www.berghof-center.org/uploads/download/bcr_bps_policy_brief_01.pdf

The first issue of the Berghof Policy Brief builds upon a report the two authors had written on request by the UN Mediation Support Unit (MSU). The MSU commissioned the Berghof Center with this task as a part of its preparatory work for a report by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, to the UN Security Council earlier this year.

Fahamu