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Nkrumah at 100

Ama Biney

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58958

© Africa WithinCommemorating the centenary of Pan-African ‘political prophet’ Kwame Nkrumah on 21 September, Ama Biney pays tribute to ‘a titan of the anti-colonial struggle and African history that all people of African descent – both young and old – should be proud of.’ But what would Nkrumah make of ‘retrogressive developments that have taken place during the last 50 years of Africa’s history’ if he were alive today?

In commemorating the centenary of Nkrumah on 21 September 2009, we are remembering a titan of the anti-colonial struggle and African history that all people of African descent – both young and old – should be proud of. Why? Nkrumah was among those many Africans, who, to use the language of the 44th President of the United States of America, the first African American to occupy such a position – had the ‘audacity of hope’ to challenge Europeans in an era long before the generation of Obama. Nkrumah encouraged Africans and people of African descent to have the audacity to dream of political freedom and to organise for it at a time when the vast majority of African people across the globe were ruled by Europeans and white supremacy was considered the natural order of things. Nkrumah instilled hope in Africans. He inspired Africans to have dreams. As the late great Pan-Africanist, Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem once succinctly said in relation to a debate on whether Pan-Africanism was an essential vision or a fantasy: ‘If you have a dream, you must keep it alive.’

The world of Nkrumah was a very different one from the world that President Obama presently confronts. Despite this, there are some parallels that can be drawn between the skills and backgrounds of the two men during their political campaigns. Firstly, both men came from humble non-distinguished backgrounds. Whilst Nkrumah came from the small ethnic group, the Nzimas in south-western Ghana, Obama was born to a white mother from Kansas and an African father, who descended from the Luo ethnic group of Kenya. Both leaders were able to use their backgrounds to transcend division. Obama was able to appeal across racial lines in America to a wide section of voters: whites, Latinos, African Americans and other minorities. Similarly, Nkrumah was an unknown entity when he left Ghana in 1935 and returned 12 years later with the same status.

Secondly, both men possessed brilliance in oratorial skills that enabled them to connect with ordinary people.

Thirdly, both men discerned the necessity for building organisations. It was Nkrumah’s mantra and practical implementation of ‘organisation decides everything’ that led his party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) to win three electoral victories and ultimately independence. He organised by foot, from village to village in the then Gold Coast, taking his message to ordinary people and to market women, the youth, farmers and the chiefs. It was their money that funded the CPP.

Nkrumah was an organisational genius in being able to take the initiative in setting up a newspaper for the CPP, the Accra Evening News, as a mouthpiece for his party. Similarly, Obama waged a campaign that drew in people who donated whatever small sums of money they had (as well as big business, banks and the wealthy). He travelled up and down the length of America to win votes in swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. His campaign used the Internet to communicate with his supporters.

Fourth, both communicated aspirations for individuals. Nkrumah showed it was possible to move from being a prison graduate one day and Prime Minister the next. He also communicated the ambition to ordinary people of the Gold Coast that a free Ghana could become an economic powerhouse and paradise under self-rule. Obama’s mantra: ‘Yes we can!’ inspired African Americans and all people of African descent to believe once more in the American dream. As one Congolese rapper from Paris put it: ‘Obama tells us everything is possible.’

Fifth, both leaders were able to give hope and confidence to ordinary people and particularly the youth. Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 and radicalised the youth of the country – the ‘verandah boys’ – by setting up the Committee on Youth Organisation that later broke away from the elitist United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and became the CPP. Obama’s campaign also had a very strong radicalising impact on America’s youth – black, white, Latino, Chinese, and Asian – who had become disaffected. Many were enthused to vote for the first time in their lives and they genuinely believed their vote could make a difference.

Finally, both Obama and Nkrumah, at the time of their political campaigning, represented political change: Nkrumah represented a fundamental break from British colonial rule and Obama represented a change from eight years of an administration that had lost America respect around the world. Both promised to resolve the most pressing national problems of the day.

However, it is my contention that whilst Nkrumah is a visionary, Obama is not. Obama does not spell out a radically transformed vision of America in an altered world, because the problems of America are rooted in its ideological commitment to free market enterprise and serving the interests of the American empire abroad.

Nkrumah was brilliant in a number of ways. He was the first successful leader in post-war Africa to lead his country to independence in March 1957. Ghana became a beacon and a trailblazer for others to follow. Secondly, Nkrumah was the first modern African leader to achieve international recognition on a world stage.

Thirdly, Nkrumah was not only a nationalist and Pan-Africanist but also an internationalist. He is most widely known as the prophet of Pan-Africanism but Nkrumah was also concerned with the whole of humanity and took positions on pertinent issues of his time such as the Cold War, which led him and others to adopt ‘non-alignment’ and ‘positive neutrality’. He was opposed to the nuclear arms race and challenged Charles De Gaulle’s testing of an atomic weapon in the Sahara in the early 1960s and dubbed it ‘nuclear imperialism’. He supported an end to the Middle East conflict; he was in favour of world peace and wanted to help end the Vietnam and American war. As a result, he sought to facilitate peace in this region of the world by accepting the invitation to visit President Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. It was on this mission that the coup d’etat took place and toppled his government on 24 February 1966.

Nkrumah was determined that Ghana and Africa should escape the fate of being a hewer of wood and drawer of water for the industrially rich nations of the world. In the centenary of Nkrumah’s birth, I have often wondered, what would he make of our globalised world, particularly the grave issues of today? If he had lived to be a hundred years old, he would have bitterly lamented some of the profoundly retrogressive developments that have taken place during the last 50 years of Africa’s history.

To mention a few, we have seen severe brutality carried out by Africans against Africans, aided by the proliferation of small arms by European companies that prolonged wars and conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Many of these conflicts involved child soldiers and gang rape of women. In terms of trade, many African countries have seen worsening terms of trade for minerals and agricultural crops. In addition, the treacherous impact of the Cold War years saw the contradictory nature of imperialism in Angola, whereby the Angolan Marxist government was protected by Cuban soldiers and the Soviet Union, whilst its oil was extracted by American oil corporations with the American government supporting the rebel led movement, UNITA. The tragic consequence of that war has left many landmines and amputees in that country.

Yet, overall, the blame for Africa’s continued impoverishment lies squarely with the system of neo-colonialism that Nkrumah analysed. It is a system by which a segment of Africa’s corrupt leadership colludes with Western governments and multi-national companies to bleed African countries of their resources for their own political and economic class interests. It is a system in which anti-people African governments have looted their nations, or, as Winnie Mandela once eloquently said, ‘the elite of the oppressed and the elite of the oppressor are united against the people.’

Yet Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet, and its wealth continues to develop other nations to the detriment of its own people. Nkrumah’s recognition of this class alliance was not articulated until the late 1960s in his book Class Struggle in Africa published in 1970. Here he openly embraced internal class enemies in Africa as a hindrance to unity and the development of Africa’s resources for the majority rather than a minority of interests.

Nkrumah was a political prophet who warned as far back as the Conference of Independent African States in April 1958 of the new forms of colonialism i.e. neo-colonialism that would engulf Africa in spite of political freedom. Nowadays it appears it is no longer acceptable to talk about imperialism or neo-colonialism, particularly in Western academic circles, which seem to consider the terms obsolete and totally irrelevant to discourse on Africa. Similarly, some Africans remain uncomfortable with the terms because they cannot publicly condemn the hand that feeds them. Fundamentally, neo-colonialism and imperialism are current realities that manifest themselves in highly exploitative and sophisticated forms on the African continent and Nkrumah was vehemently opposed to both.

In his book Neo-colonialism – The Last Stage of Imperialism, published in 1965, it led to a break in relations with the United States of America, as Washington recalled their Ambassador. In the introduction, Nkrumah wrote, ‘The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it, is in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside… More often, however, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere.’[1] Those words are as valid in 1965 as they are today, for neo-colonialism continues to be a serious threat to the future of African unity.

The book remains highly important and relevant in speaking of the hegemonic mechanisms employed by the West to economically entrap African countries despite political independence. Nkrumah’s prescience was remarkable in that he seemed to warn of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and entire international aid architecture that emerged on the back of Live Aid.

Aid, in terms of long-term government-to-government loans to Africa by Western countries, is now an industry that provides careers for Europeans. It simply perpetuates the economic subservience of African economies; it by no means provides the engine to trigger economic growth and independence of African economies. Western countries have no interest in eradicating the economic underdevelopment of Africa because, as Walter Rodney pointed out, the continued development of Europe rests on the continued underdevelopment of African countries.

Therefore, African cocoa, coffee, cotton farmers will continue to loose out to subsidised American and European farmers as European and American governments continue to subsidise their farmers, engage in protectionist trade policies, whilst denying African countries genuine opportunities to develop a manufacturing base for the production of raw their materials.

The current neo-colonial trend in Africa is ‘land grabbing’ by developed countries who wish to ensure their own food security as a consequence of the savage system of capitalism that is now in fundamental crisis. As far back as 1945 when Nkrumah published his little book Towards Colonial Freedom – as the Second World War came to an end, he contended that colonial economics was fundamentally concerned with the exploitation of the colonial subject and the resolution then was the organisation of the colonial masses to overthrow colonialism.

Today we have seen an implosion of the financial markets in the West and a transfer of wealth at a phenomenal rate from the public i.e. taxpayers money to bail out the bankers at the expense of ordinary people. As the Brazilian president said, it is ‘white blue-eyed bankers [who] have brought the world economy to its knees’. Yet, surely in the present economic crisis in which capitalism is being discredited, it raises questions as to what kind of economic system is desirable to provide the maximum benefit to the majority of the people? It is not neo-liberal capitalism but one that genuinely redistributes wealth in the interests of the majority.

If Nkrumah had lived to be a hundred, he would have considered the roots of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) as deriving from America’s lack of even-handedness in its position on the Arab-Israeli conflict; America’s decades of silence in the light of Israel’s flouting of numerous Security Council Resolutions and the recent announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build more Jewish homes in the occupied territories in the West Bank; as well as America’s duplicitous need to secure Iraq’s oil fields. It is the perceived bias of America in support of Israel’s unjust occupation and oppression of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and in Afghanistan that provides foot soldiers for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Similarly, would not Nkrumah have sided with the 30 year-old journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush, in Dec 2008? The Iraqi reporter expressed the height of his political indignation by throwing his shoe at Bush who was speaking at a joint news conference in Baghdad with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri-al-Maliki. Despite the shoes narrowly missing its intended target, al-Zaidi has currently been released after serving nine months in jail for assaulting a foreign head of state. For ordinary Iraqis al-Zaidi is no criminal but a hero who challenged the neo-colonial hegemony instigated by the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

If Nkrumah had lived to be a hundred what would he have made of AFRICOM established by George W. Bush, and inherited by President Barack Obama? Lest history forget, the concept and vision of an African High Command was Nkrumah’s. During the Congo crisis in August 1960 both Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba signed a secret Joint Communiqué in which they agreed to work together to set up a Union of African States and a Combined High Command. Nkrumah then wrote to a number of his contemporaries including President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, President Sekou Touré and others proposing the formation of the African High Command.[2] Its initial purpose was to intervene effectively to bring about a speedy withdrawal of foreign troops in the Congo. It would be comprised of the Chief of Staff of the Independent African States (IAS). It would meet periodically to review the common defence of Africa in the case of aggression against any part of the continent. Nothing came of Nkrumah’s call for an African High Command during the tragic Congo crisis, despite the fact that it was supported by the radical Casablanca countries, including Ghana.

Yet, Nkrumah continued to champion its rationale and realisation more fervently after his emotional devastation on hearing of the assassination of his ideological ally, Lumumba in January 1961. In his book, Challenge of the Congo, published in 1967 Nkrumah became far more uncompromising in his demand for an African High Command. He warned in this book that if African countries did not unite and combine military forces for common defence they would be drawn into making defence pacts with the former colonial powers which would endanger the security of all in the face of neo-colonialism.

Nkrumah pointed out that the financial waste that individual states spent on their individual armies was a drain on much needed resources, when the weight of this burden could easily be shared by all in a joint defence structure. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the African High Command would be a necessary corollary in the setting up of a common economic policy that would co-ordinate Africa’s entire economic and human resources for the benefit of African people in a Continental Union Government for Africa. For Nkrumah Pan-Africanism was and remains the solution to combating neo-colonialism and imperialism.

Forty-seven years after Nkrumah’s proposal of an African High Command, the then President of the USA, George W. Bush, announced in February 2007, the establishment of an African Command, otherwise referred to as AFRICOM. Despite the rhetoric of US officials that AFRICOM is a new hybrid organisation of both civilian and military organisations including the US Department of Defence, the State Department, USAID into a functional Unified Command, with the aim of assisting Africans in capacity building, the objectives and vision of AFRICOM are to fundamentally serve the interests of the American empire in the 21st century.

Those interests are bound with what some have called America’s ‘grand strategy’, which involves a preservation of America’s future oil supplies, particularly as Nigeria and Angola and other African countries are projected to provide a quarter of US oil imports by 2017.[3] America is also intent on challenging China’s increasing economic presence on the continent and confronting the threat of the GWOT in the Horn of Africa. Hence, there is a small US presence in Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, as well as naval operations in the Gulf of Guinea.

However, on the one hand, it is clear that apart from Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, no African country is rushing to provide a headquarters for AFRICOM, because not only were Africans not consulted, but African civil society organisations have remained very critical of AFRICOM.

Yet, African governments have quietly and disturbingly accepted the numerous range of military training programmes that the Americans have provided under the auspices of AFRICOM.[4] It seems in the aftermath of decolonisation, the former colonial powers of Portugal, France, Britain and Belgium encouraged the newly independent states to establish military pacts and training programmes to safeguard Western economic interests in the ex-colonies. Today the US has now taken up that role in the ostensibly benevolent guise of AFRICOM.

As Daniel Volman contends, by consolidating the internal security capabilities of neo-colonial African states, such states can perform the role of ‘surrogates’ in protecting US interests on African soil.[5] Presented as a benign force for peace, the military nature of AFRICOM represents not only the militarisation of Africa but also a reconfiguration of imperialist and neo-colonial interests in Africa under the guise of what the Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Theresa Whelan, describes as ‘helping Africans build greater capacity to assure their own security.’[6]

It is astute that Obama sidelined any extensive mention of AFRICOM in his address during his July visit to Ghana. However, it is necessary to speculate on how the Obama administration will implement the objectives of AFRICOM. AFRICOM is simply a thorough negation of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist vision and therefore it is imperative that Africans continue to resist the very notion of it as well as its operations on the continent itself.

In reflecting on the legacy of Nkrumah, Ali Mazrui is incorrect in his contention that Nkrumah is responsible for introducing the authoritarian template of single party rule. He claims: ‘By a strange twist of destiny, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was both the hero, who carried the torch of Pan-Africanism, and the villain who started the whole legacy of the one-party state in Africa (emphasis is mine).’[7]

The criticism that Nkrumah instituted a one-party state in the face of the challenge of building a nation-state is a valid one. That his concept of the state was on account of his own intellectual concept of the nature of the state and its functions influenced the nature of state formation in Ghana.

However, Nkrumah reached the same conclusion as his contemporaries Sekou Touré, Houphouet-Boigny, Leopold Senghor, Modibo Keita, Julius Nyerere and Jomo Kenyatta. Whilst the Ivory Coast and Senegal purported to be multi-party states, they were de facto one party states in which other parties had no chance of winning state power. These various African states were all attempting to grapple with the same issues as Nkrumah: How does a nation-state prevent descent into a religious and ethnic fragmentation of society?

Setting aside ideology, Houphouet-Boigny and Jomo Kenyatta were publicly committed to capitalist economics whilst Nkrumah adhered to what he termed ‘scientific socialism’ from 1962 onwards. All resorted to similar political methods to deal with the societal problems of building a united nation – that is they all created a single party state and Nkrumah was therefore, by no means the progenitor of what Mazrui calls ‘the whole tradition of Black authoritarianism in the post-colonial era.’[8] The legacy of authoritarian rule is one that characterises post-independence politics in Africa and is shared and started by all leaders of this era.

Integral to Nkrumah’s vision and legacy are five intellectual and political strands that have relevance to Africans in both the continent and diaspora. Firstly, there is the legacy which lies in is his vision of African unity. We still have along way to go to realise African union despite the metamorphosis of the Organisation of African Unity into the organisational entity known as the African Union in 2002.

Secondly, all Africans must understand, challenge and eradicate the vestiges of neo-colonialism in all its reconfigurations, and that requires challenging an African neo-colonial elite and AFRICOM.

Thirdly, in his book entitled Handbook for Revolutionary Warfare (1968) Nkrumah called for greater South to South cooperation in the formation of the Organisation of Solidarity with People’s of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAL). Such a bloc which would also need to include the Caribbean nations would counter Western imperialist domination and be the beginnings of a new economic world order based on genuine cooperation and a more egalitarian economic system. In the latter years of his life, Nkrumah expressed the view in Class Struggle in Africa that the destruction of the capitalist economic system would eliminate neo-colonialism and contribute positively to the creation of a united Africa under a socialist government.[9]

Fourth, in his book Consciencism, he argued that Africa must seek to synthesise the three cultural currents of Africa’s history: Africanity, Islam and Euro-Christianity. In short, if the Japanese can make use of technology and still retain their Japanese identity in a globalised world – Africans can do the same and re-assert an African Personality on the world stage.

Lastly, Nkrumah connected Africa and her children in the diaspora in concrete ways, not only by employing them in his government when he was president, but urging them to return to Africa and contribute their skills and talents. He also unequivocally asserted that: ‘all peoples of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.’[10] Therefore, with such a proclamation, it is no wonder that under Nkrumah’s leadership, Ghana became what Malcolm X aptly called after his own visit to Ghana: ‘the very fountainhead of Pan-Africanism’. Since Nkrumah’s death, Ghana continues to be a Mecca for Africans born in the diaspora. Sadly, the other African leader of recent times who articulated the connection of the African diaspora to the continent with drama, passion and unrelenting commitment to Pan-Africanism in a similar charismatic manner, was the late Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. He died tragically and ironically in this year of the centenary of Nkrumah, on 25 May, Africa Liberation Day. To paraphrase Kofi Hadjor slightly, both ‘Nkrumah [and Tajudeen] are a reminder not of what Africa is, but of what Africa must become.’[11]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article is an extended version of a piece which first appeared on Nyansapo, published by Ligali, a Pan-African human rights organisation based in the UK.
* 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] K. Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, 1965, p. ix.
[2] K. Nkrumah, Challenge of the Congo, 1967, pp. 115-116.
[3] Guardian, UK, 9 Feb 2007.
[4] D. Volman, http://concernedafricascholars.org/africom-and-the-geopolitics-of-african-oil
[5] Ibid.
[6] Cited in Volman.
[7] A. Mazrui, Nkrumah’s Legacy and Africa’s Triple Heritage: Between Globalization and Counter Terrorism, 2004, p. 3.
[8] Ibid, p. 4.
[9] K. Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa, 1970, p. 87.
[10] Ibid, p. 87.
[11] K. Hadjor, Africa in an Era of Crisis, 1990, p. 162.

A thief calling 'thief!': Meles Zenawi and climate change

Rezene Hagos

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58966

cc TreestuffWhile Western countries' role is not to be underplayed, we should be extremely wary of the moral assertions of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi around climate change, argues Rezene Hagos in this week's Pambazuka News. The Ethiopian government's record on both the environment and human rights is abysmal, writes Hagos, and Meles's demands for vast sums from donors in support of Africa's battle against climate change should be viewed with a great deal of scepticism.

Last week we read in the news that Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was warning that African delegates may walk out of the upcoming UN World Summit on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen in December unless they are assured of a huge sum – hundreds of billions a year – by the countries of the West. A number of things may come to one’s mind on reading such warnings. For the sake of this article however, we will only focus on whether or not African leaders, and Meles in particular, have the moral high ground to issue that warning. We believe not.

Let’s unambiguously state from the outset that Western countries, and the US in the main, are largely to blame for the world’s climate change and that they bear the highest responsibility for the consequences that occur globally thereof. That said however, nobody is free from blame either; it is only the degree of the blame that differs. It is true that Africa is on the receiving end of the environmental crisis resulting from climate change. But, Africa also has its part in contributing to the climate change. The cause for climate change is not just the emission of greenhouse gases, it is human activity in general as well as some natural changes occurring within and around earth. Nobody is to be spared of responsibility from the consequences of human activity in general. However, the degree of greenhouse emissions as a result of human activity differs from activity to activity. One thing for sure is that emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) since the industrial revolution have greatly increased and the global temperature has also risen. Industrialisation as one human activity is the biggest culprit in this respect. Other human activities that result in emissions of CO2 also contribute to climate change. These are fossil fuel burning, deforestation purposes and other forms of environmental degradation. Now, the industrialised countries are undoubtedly the first to blame for CO2 emissions as a result of industrialisation. In this regard, the greatest polluters at the moment are the US, China and India.

The non-industrialised countries are not to be spared from blame either. They have their share of the blame too. In fact, from the angle of the prevalence of poverty and under-development, their mistakes are as detrimental to the existence of their own communities as we are going to see in the case of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government in Ethiopia. In Africa as a whole, the degree of deforestation that results in soil erosion, the drying of lakes and the reduction of soil fertility and other forms of environmental degradation is extremely high. Until a few years ago, Africa was well-known for its tropical forests and wild animals. Today, it has been observed that the forest land coverage in Europe is much larger than it is in Africa. That means, Europe has more forests and trees than Africa. This is because Europe resorted to massive reforestation while Africa is still in the process of destroying its forests. Europe resorted to policies of massive reforestation while African governments resorted to massive deforestation or displayed utter insensitivity and complicity in face of massive deforestation. Now, here is the crux of the matter: government policies. What have African governments done to conserve the environment and their forests in particular? Let’s focus on the records of Meles’s government in Ethiopia and examine if Meles really has the moral high ground to accuse Western governments on grounds of polluting the world.

Environmental protection or the conservation of nature are absolutely crucial for Ethiopia as the greater part of its social formation is constituted by activities of the natural economy, as well as the fact that more than 85 per cent of its population live in rural areas and depend on what nature provides. The rural population’s survival depends on the environment and it goes without saying that the sustainable use of the environment is the crucial link to food security. From the point of economic growth, social development and indeed of social change, the protection of the environment is crucial for Ethiopia as it is connected with issues of rural development. Social development in rural Ethiopia cannot take place just by 'boosting production through the hard work of the peasantry', but by creating the legal, social and political environment that enables the peasantry to diversify its livelihood system. In other words, development and economic growth that in turn begins with the accumulation of wealth also begins with disengaging the peasantry from land and enabling it to be engaged in other livelihood systems. To enable the peasantry accumulate wealth through production surplus, it is crucial to ensure that its production target succeeds, which in turn requires the availability of rain or irrigated water and the conservation of the soil. And this is what protecting the environment all is about. It is indeed crucial to realise the environment–rural production–accumulation nexus.

In an impoverished country such as Ethiopia which has no capacity to replace nature with technologically advanced alternatives accessible to a large population, once the environment is destroyed and eroded it is nearly impossible to recover it. In the face of an increasing population which still depends on nature and works on it for survival, the sustainable use of nature is indeed a very serious issue that requires not only seriousness of purpose on the part of governance but also intellect and capacity. Here, a number of crucial issues are interwoven and interdependent: protecting the environment, strategising rural development, population control and ensuring food security in the immediate term, and a comprehensive environmental policy to address these issues. The need for such a policy is to prevent the further erosion of the environment, ensure food security and generate rural development. In all these, the record of Meles Zenawi’s government is abysmal.

Now, what are Ethiopia’s environmental problems that have a direct bearing on the prevalence of continued environmental destruction, poverty and under-development? First of all, massive deforestation. Trees and forests have a special function in preserving moisture and water and, above all, soil and its fertility. The preservation of forests and trees is absolutely crucial for Ethiopia’s survival. Unfortunately, due to the utter neglect of successive governments in the country, massive deforestation has occurred. Records show that Ethiopia’s forest coverage by the turn of the 20th century was 40 per cent. By 1987 (under the military government), it had gone down to 5.5 per cent and in 2003 (under Meles’s government) it had gone further down to 0.2 per cent. In terms of area, Ethiopia’s rate of deforestation was between 150,000 and 200,000 hectares of land a year.

Deforestation has led to massive soil erosion. One of the most important functions of trees is to keep the soil intact from erosion by running water as a result of rain or from being blown away by strong wind. When soil is preserved, its nutrients are also preserved, meaning its fertility is also preserved. Trees also absorb and maintain water and moisture and play crucial role in balancing the ecosystem, which has strong bearing on agriculture. When deforestation takes place, all these crucial roles of trees are lost, exposing the land to further erosion of its top soil, with a huge negative impact on agriculture. A study by M. Constable suggests that the highlands of Ethiopia contain one of the largest ecological degradations in Africa.

Soil erosion in turn contributes to the drying of lakes. In the last few years alone, three Rift Valley lakes have dried up: Lake Alemaya, Lake Adele and Lake Lange. When soil is massively washed into the lake, silt develops underneath, pushing the water upwards and expanding the area of water coverage. This gives the impression that the lake has more water and in fact makes it look as if flooding takes place. The reality is exactly the opposite, however. The water is pushed to a larger surface and exposed to massive evaporation, drying up at the end.

The same process is repeated at Lake Awassa. A study by one international NGO concluded that Lake Awassa is threatened by the same process through which the other three lakes dried up. The regional government of Meles Zenawi refused to accept the report and argued that they are actually noticing that Lake Awassa threatens a flood situation because they see more water in a larger area. (So much for the capacity his officials in the region.) Undoubtedly, the issue of water in general is crucial for Ethiopia as an agricultural society as it is often hit by drought, resulting in a situation of perennial food insecurity. There was no visible sign of seriousness or alarm on the part of Meles's government when the three lakes dried up completely. The town of Harrar, probably the fourth or fifth largest town in the country, which depended on Lake Alemaya for its water supply, was left to suffer from acute water shortage for weeks when the government watched the lake dry and did practically nothing noticeable until the last minute. This brings us to the policy of Meles’s government.

In 1967, G.C. Last, advisor to the Ministry of Education, warned the imperial government of the alarming environmental destruction occurring in the country at the time. He wrote, 'As you are probably aware, this is a most serious issue [the conservation of nature] in Ethiopia. In some ways the problem has already reached crisis proportion with regard to: a) the loss of soil through erosion, b) the destruction of forests, c) the destruction of wild life, d) the rapid diminution of utilizable water supplies … there is sufficient evidence to show that, unless serious steps are taken, not only will desert conditions develop rapidly in various parts of Ethiopia, but important national resources will disappear…The question of conservation is usually the subject of a great deal of talk but very little action. It is clear also that really effective measures must be based on a wide spread understanding of a spirit of co-operation among the population'. It has become the scourge in Ethiopia that the role of experts is to warn the successive government of an impending catastrophe, and the same warning is repeated again and again. In the same vein, when Meles Zenawi threatens Western leaders, he seems to be forgetful of the most serious warnings made by Ethiopian environmentalists, particularly those made in 2004. In much the same way that Haile Selassie’s government ignored G.C. Last’s warning, Meles’s government also ignored the warnings of Ethiopian environmentalists. Now, to the policies of his government.

To start with, Meles’ and his Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had no idea about the environment, sustainable development and the relationship between the two when they entered Addis Ababa in 1991. The awareness came after a government delegation led by Tamrat Layne, who had attended the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. In 1995, they set up the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and much later made two proclamations, namely the Environmental Pollution Control Proclamation (2002) and the Environmental Impact Assessment Proclamation (2002) and ratified a number of UN and international conventions on the environment.

Apparently, the problem of Meles’s government is the problem of perception. They have an ossified position on their Stalinist–Maoist understanding of revolution that has no room for environmental preservation and the independent role of the peasantry. This constitutes the main gap. The second gap is the lack of seriousness around protecting the environment. As on the issue of gender, they pay lip service to environment because of pressure from donors (whom he is now threatening!). The third gap is lack of a legal framework to protect the environment. The EPA is under the leadership of a world-class scientist in Tewolde G. Egziabher, but it is a toothless institution and made toothless deliberately. Meles often resorts to a well-known excuse for his government’s failure: the problem of implementation. On the environment, the problem is not any lack of implementation but a lack of seriousness. No wonder why the state of the environment in Ethiopia is one of the most alarming in the world – it is alarming because 85 per cent of the population depends on nature for its survival. Official neglect on this matter should constitute the most serious crime, if not genocide. No wonder why the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other environmental organisations of international reputation have continuously reported on the alarming state of environmental destruction in Ethiopia.

The negative role of Meles’s government on the environment also includes its hostile attitude towards environmental NGOs who try to educate the public and conduct policy advocacy campaigns. Like all other development NGOs, environment NGOs are seen by Meles as undesirable. The recent NGO law that literally outlaws advocacy NGOs also would undoubtedly outlaw environment NGOs or obliterate their role. Indeed, Meles’s policy on the environment should be seen from this light. We have witnessed for the last two decades his government leading the country to a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The International Crisis Group, an institution established and led by ex-politicians and world leaders of international reputation, recently came up with a devastating report on the possible consequences of the Ethiopian government's ethnic politics. This comes as a definite blow against Meles's efforts to restore his tarnished image following the 2005 elections.

Meles is extremely sensitive to his international image. Because more than 62 per cent of Ethiopia’s annual budget comes from aid money, the EPRDF government heavily depends on the donor community for its survival. To keep the flow of aid money, Meles has to keep up his image. His government devotes a lot of money for propaganda purposes and controls the main means of communication in the country. He is extremely wary of the activities of the Ethiopian diaspora and engages in polemics with diaspora groups as well as foreign journalists and human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Meles's recent diatribe in response to the devastating report by the International Crisis Group can be cited as an example in this regard (visit the EPRDF’s aigaforum.com for these articles).

It is for no strange reason that Meles’s government has almost always been at loggerheads with international human rights organisations. His regime has been as repressive and as genocidal (as in the cases of Gambela and Ogaden) as that of his predecessor, Mengistu H. Mariam. This became glaringly obvious during and after the 2005 elections when his government massacred protesters in their hundreds and imprisoned opposition leaders and around 17,000 people. He closed down private newspapers and is now in the process of closing down NGOs. He recently introduced a new 'anti-terrorism' law that gives him the 'legitimacy' to clamp down on anyone. He has literally closed all avenues for the emergence and development of a civil society, without whose participation poverty eradication and development will not be possible. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations have always exposed such violations of human rights. To keep the outside world blind to the reality in Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi did everything he could. In his endeavour, he has the ingenious support of the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, who still seems to think that Meles is an ally in the fight against terrorism. Gordon Brown never seems to ask whether or not the Ethiopian people as a whole are being terrorised by Meles’s regime.

In 2006, a draft bill in the US Congress named the Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Advancement Act, was passed by the House International Relations Committee and was supposed to be passed by the US Congress. As the Daily Nation of 6 September 2009 reported, 'To counter this effort, the Ethiopian government hired a well-established law and lobbying firm, DLA Piper, to protect its interests in Washington at a cost of $2.3 million.' Yet drought and food insecurity threaten around 20 million Ethiopians this year alone.

Now we have a dictator threatening the donor community that he will walk out of the Copenhagen summit on climate change unless Africa leaves the summit with US$200 billion annually, as if to suggest an excellent record in preserving the environment and ensuring respect for human rights and freedom. It has been proven through the experience of the last 40 years that aid money has been mismanaged and extorted by politicians manipulating political power in Africa. Meles’s government has been one of the largest recipients of aid money in Africa. It is indeed because aid money has been mismanaged and stolen that some African economists are compelled to question the validity of aid money in the first place. Some even go to the extent of holding aid money accountable for Africa’s poverty, as one Zambian economist argues strongly. Then, what is this noise about threatening a walk out from Copenhagen? Isn’t this like a thief calling 'thief!'?

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* Rezene Hagos is based at Addis Ababa University.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa's leaders undermine the ICC

Dieu-Donné Wedi Djamba

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58965

cc D BConcerned by African leaders' reluctance to support the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrants, Dieu-Donné Wedi Djamba argues that the failure to cooperate severely undermines global efforts to tackle impunity. While Africa's leaders consistently present the ICC as a tool of Western oppression which purely targets Africans, their lack of support actually reflects a fear of being the next arrested and a desire to offer mutual protection to allies, Wedi Djamba concludes.

One of the challenges faced by the global South in general and African countries in particular is the culture of impunity. And the ratification of the Rome Statute by 30 African countries seemed to send a message to the world about the commitment of African leaders to close the impunity gap. But the reaction of African leaders after the indictment of the Sudanese president by the International Criminal Court (ICC) raises some concerns from the international community as a whole.

Reacting to the arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir issued by the ICC for crimes against humanity and war crimes on 4 March 2009, the African Union decided not to cooperate and appealed to the United Nations to delay the case. It accused the International Criminal Court of being a Western tool to oppress others, set up only to target Africans.

In this regard, Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, Ghana's foreign minister said, 'We have been a little unhappy about the whole process, how this matter came before the ICC', adding 'The AU actually addressed a resolution to the security council asking the UN Security Council to defer the warrant for one year, and it was virtually ignored. That we thought was a slap.'[1]

As the ICC does not have a security force with which to arrest any accused, the cooperation of states becomes a core element to the success of the fight against impunity. Thus, by withdrawing their cooperation with the ICC to arrest and surrender the Sudanese president, African leaders are threatening the international effort to end impunity.

The African leaders’ argument raises two questions however: Is the ICC a Western tool to oppress others? and; Was the ICC set up to target African people only?

IS THE ICC A WESTERN TOOL TO OPPRESS OTHERS?

The above thesis connects to two elements, namely the creation and the composition of the ICC.

The creation of the ICC

The Rome Statute, which is the document founding the ICC, was submitted for ratification to come into force, with 30 African countries among those who ratified it. The ratification of the Rome Statute by 30 Africans against 50 Africans shows how involved African countries were and the degree to which they were willing to fight impunity. Moreover, the ratification was made without any restriction on anyone. But when a state party in a country such as Senegal accuses the ICC of being a Western tool, one can ask how reliable such a statement should be taken to be.

The composition of the ICC

The court is composed of four organs. These are the Presidency, the Judicial Divisions, the Office of the Prosecutor and the Registry.

Presidency

The Presidency is responsible for the overall administration of the court, with the exception of the Office of the Prosecutor, and for specific functions assigned to the Presidency in accordance with the statute. The Presidency is composed of three judges of the court, elected to the Presidency by their fellow judges, for a term of three years.

Judicial Divisions

The Judicial Divisions consist of 18 judges organised into the Pre-Trial Division, the Trial Division and the Appeals Division. The judges of each division sit in chambers which are responsible for conducting the proceedings of the court at different stages. The assignment of judges to divisions is made on the basis of the nature of the functions each division performs and the qualifications and experience of the judge. This is done in a manner ensuring that each division benefits from an appropriate combination of expertise in criminal law and procedure and international law.

Office of the Prosecutor

The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for receiving referrals and any substantiated information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the court, for examining them and for conducting investigations and prosecutions before the court.

Registry

The Registry is responsible for the non-judicial aspects of the administration and servicing of the court. The Registry is headed by the registrar who is the principal administrative officer of the court. The registrar exercises their functions under the authority of the president of the court.[2]

As observed, the architecture of the ICC is made in such a way to ensure due process for all accused, recognised by international law. It is in regard to the positions held by Africans and their number within the court that things become more interesting. Indeed, the African continent boasts five of the total 18 judges, with Judge Fatoumata Dembele Diarra (Mali)[3] as the first vice-president. Equally, in the Office of the Prosecutor an African, Fatou Bensouda[4], the deputy prosecutor, is the one in charge of the Prosecution Division of the Office of the Prosecutor.

Once again, is the ICC really a Western tool?

WAS THE ICC SET UP TO TARGET AFRICAN PEOPLE ONLY?

The second thesis made by African leaders to justify the position towards the ICC is the fact that to date all those arrested by the ICC have been African. But what we should bear in mind is that four of those five cases were referred by the African countries themselves, while the other was referred by the UN Security Council.

The first case referred to the ICC was by Uganda. In 2004, Uganda invited the ICC to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony. After the investigation, the ICC issued five warrants of arrest against the rebel Joseph Kony and his four commanders, namely Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya.[5] To date, Joseph Kony and his rebel group still operate in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The second case referred to the ICC was by the DRC. In 2004, the DRC invited the ICC to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by armed groups against the population of Ituri, in eastern Congo. From the investigation, the ICC issued four warrants of arrest against Thomas Lubanga, Mathieu Gujolo, Germain Katanga and Bosco Tangada for war crimes and crimes against humanity.[6] Among the five indicted only Bosco Tangada is still walking free in eastern DRC.

The third case referred to the ICC was by the Central African Republic (CAR), which in 2005 invited the ICC to investigate allegations of atrocities committed in the country by the Congolese former vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba and his rebel group. After investigation, the ICC issued a warrant of arrest against Bemba and he was arrested in Belgium last year.[7]

The forth one was referred by the UN Security Council in 2005 asking the ICC to investigate allegations of atrocities committed in Darfur, Sudan. Following the investigation, the ICC has issued four warrants of arrest to date against Ahmad Muhammad Harun ('Ahmad Harun'), former minister of state for the interior of the government of Sudan and minister of state for humanitarian affairs of Sudan; Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman ('Ali Kushayb'), alleged leader of the Janjaweed; Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, chairman and general coordinator of military operations of the United Resistance Front; and Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, president of the Republic of Sudan.[8]

Thus, one may ask, who really targets African people?

REASONS FOR REFUSAL TO COOPERATE

Looking deeply into the reasons made by African leaders to justify their refusal to cooperate with the ICC, two main reasons can be pointed out: the fear of being the next arrested and the protection of allies.

Fear of being the next arrested

Before the creation of the ICC, undemocratic African leaders used to protect themselves from any prosecution after their term as head of state through two means: a blanket amnesty or a golden exile to another anti-democratic country.

Since the creation of the ICC however, the possibility of enjoying the benefice of a national amnesty has become uncertain as the national amnesty does not operate before the ICC. Indeed, for the same reason exile even to a friendly country does not secure against possible prosecution for crimes under ICC jurisdiction. Knowing that once they commit a crime under ICC jurisdiction they will be arrested, they choose to cooperate with an institution which can arrest them anytime.

Thus by refusing to cooperate for any arrest and surrender of a fellow president, African leaders try to create solidarity between them and to expect to be protected in case they are also accused by the ICC.

The protection of allies

The Rome Statute preamble commits all state parties to a legal obligation to cooperate over the arrest and surrender of any person accused of a crime under the ICC's jurisdiction. In this regard, one can recall how cooperative African leaders were when referring cases to the ICC and arresting the accused. But maybe this was just the best way to target their opponent, rather than a commitment to end impunity.

Indeed, the Ugandan president would be happy to see Joseph Kony and his commanders caught, the DRC president to see Thomas Lubanga, Mathieu Ngunjulo and Germain Katanga to be in the Hague, while François Bozizé, the Central African Republic president who referred the Bemba case to the ICC, does not care if Bemba spends the rest of his life in jail or not.

In this regard, while the Central African Republic president was very concerned by the process of prosecution of the Congolese former president Bemba and ally of Ange-Félix Patassé – the former CAR president – the peace talks which were held between the two sides (Bozizé and Patassé) seem to put aside Patassé's potential prosecution, intensely claimed by Bozizé. The ICC process can wait as long as Patassé is an ally.[9] For victims of those human rights violations committed by Patassé and his ally Bemba, they are not of course a priority for Francois Bozizé. They can wait, even forever.

Furthermore, while the Congolese government cooperated with the ICC and arrested Thomas Lubanga, Mathieu Ngujolo and Germain Katanga, the arrest warrant issued against Bosco Tangada seems to be met with less concern from the government since the accused cooperated in ending the rebellion in the country's east led by Laurent Nkunda Batware. In this regard, to confirm its position, the Congolese government has made it clear that its priority is peace.[10] Therefore, the arrest of Bosco Tangada, their current ally, can wait.

CONCLUSION

The fight against impunity is a primary concern for the international community. But the attitude of African leaders towards the ICC, the international court symbolising that fight, raises concern. The refusal of these leaders to cooperate with the court over the arrest warrant issued for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – accused by the ICC of crimes against humanity – has created real concern within the international community as it threatens global efforts to end impunity.

The argument made by African leaders to justify their refusal to cooperate with the ICC is based on the fact that the court targets only African people and that it was set up by Western countries as a tool to oppress others. But are these the real reasons? Or should the real reasons for their refusal be found elsewhere? This article has tried to show the real reasons of the refusal of African leaders to cooperate with the ICC, namely, the fear of being the next arrested and the protection of allies.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Dieu-Donné Wedi Djamba is a lawyer at the Lubumbashi Bar Association, a human rights activist and a transitional justice and human rights researcher.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES

[1] France 24, ‘AU votes against cooperating with ICC arrest warrant for Bashir’ <http://www.france24.com/en/20090703-african-union-votes-end-cooperation-over-bashir-indictment-sudan-icc-darfur, accessed 27-08-2009
[2] ICC: Structure of the Court,<http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Structure+of+the+Court/>, accessed 23-08-2009
[3] Idem
[4] Idem
[5] ICC: Situations and cases <http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Situations+and+Cases/>, accessed, 20-08-2009
[6] Idem
[7] Idem
[8] Idem
[9] Reuters Blogs, ‘More Power-sharing in Africa?’ <http://blogs.reuters.com/global/2008/12/22/more-power-sharing-in-africa/>, accessed 28-08-2009
[10] Radio Okapi, ‘RDC : Bosco Ntaganda et la CPI, Amnesty international écrit à Joseph Kabila’ <http://www.radiookapi.net/index.php?i=53&a=23225>, accessed 23-08-2009

US foreign policy and the Niger Delta conflict

Sabella Abidde

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58961

cc Security WatchThe four-decade situation in the Niger Delta is a ‘crisis that will not go away,’ Sabella Abidde writes in Pambazuka News, which ‘if not properly addressed may reverberate across international systems.’ Given that the Nigerian government has proven itself 'incapable' of solving the problem, Abidde argues the case that ‘the time is now for the international community – especially the United States of America – to step in.'

The history of the Nigerian Niger Delta crisis is well known. We know that this is not a crisis that came about because a group of men and women got bored and then decided to take on the Nigerian government for the fun of it. No. This is a crisis that has been brewing for decades. And for several decades, the Nigerian government thought it could simply massage cosmetics over deep wounds. The multinational oil companies also thought they could buy off a group of elites and all would be well. The international community also acted as if the conflict was a local issue to be confined to the backwater.

In any case, no one is interested in the blame game. The time is now, the hours are here for political will and other tangible resources to be applied to a crisis that, if not properly addressed, may reverberate across international systems. The Niger Delta crisis, as the world has now realised, will not soon go away. There is a limit to which people will endure abuse, exploitation and rape. Because the Nigerian government has proven incapable of solving this problem, the time is now for the international community – especially the United States of America – to step in.

A once localised condition has now become a global imperative, and as such, we urge the United States to take a leading role in this matter: Fashion or refashion policies to address the crisis. Appoint an envoy or a ‘czar’ for the region. There is precedence for such a foreign policy initiative. And this needs to be done because the Yar’Adua government, as events and records have now shown, is clueless and disingenuous.

A critical examination of America’s foreign policy in the last two decades proves that it is concerned with environment issues and with matters dealing with social dislocations, international health challenges and uncontrollable migration that are likely to constrict its resources; and that it is also concerned about activities that are likely to cause the unplanned disintegration of friendly nations. Above all, it is concerned about terrorism. We see all these as some of the end results of the Niger Delta crisis. It is in light of this that we urge the US to formulate or readjust its foreign policy to accommodate the ongoing quagmire.

In 1976, human rights were at the centre of President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy paradigm. Some ethical and moral choices were made. Today, we expect the United States government, under the tutelage of President Obama, to make the same choice: Actively participate in finding solutions to the Niger Delta crisis. It is in the interest of the US to do so, a utilitarian choice that is in the interest of all parties. Indeed, America will gain prestige by doing what is right for Nigeria and for the people of the region.

As of today, we cannot say that the policy toward the region is just, virtuous or ethical. At a time when there has been untold amount of inhumanity, neither the State Department nor the White House, has made unequivocal foreign policy statements that side with the oppressed. Insofar as the Niger Delta is concerned, we do not see America’s moral principles in motion. She is absent, silent, and seems irrelevant.

During President Obama’s visit to Ghana, and Secretary Clinton’s visit to Nigeria and other African countries, African governments, amongst other things, were advised to adopt democratic principles rooted in justice, good governance and strong institutions. We have not seen these in the oil-producing communities or in the country as a whole.

A country’s foreign policy practices are generally rooted in well-established principles and values – principles and values that are vital for the survival and wellbeing of its people and national interest. Jerel Rosati tells us that Foreign Policy is the ‘scope of involvement abroad and the collection of goals, strategies, and instruments that are selected by governmental policy-makers.’ Foreign policy instruments include trade and trade embargoes, military intervention, veto power, aid, and lending policies.

In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, a number of factors determine the scope and nature of foreign policy. And whatever those factors may be, the end game of foreign policy is the furtherance and sustenance of the national security interest of the state. A country’s foreign policy may, in addition to the interest of self, also benefit friends and alliances while at the same time deterring foes and antagonists from engaging in actions that might otherwise cause harm or derail specific goals.

Foreign policies are not always directed at nation-states alone. The 1646 to1648 Peace of Westphalia – which ended both the thirty and eighty years’ wars in Europe – ushered the modern era where nation states became the primary focus of global politics. In addition to nation states, foreign policies may be directed at non-state actors, i.e. non-governmental organisations, multinational corporations, regimes and institutions, terrorist groups, and oppressed ethnic nationalities.

For instance, the United States had a policy that protected the Kurds of Northern Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s deleterious policy. What’s more, the US, in collaboration with the United Nations and Portugal, championed the political independence of East Timor. Occasional missteps aside, Washington has a long history of championing noble causes: Helping to free nations and aboriginal groups from the grip of subjugation; spreading democratic values; preaching free markets and the inalienable rights of peoples to design their own destiny.

As noble and humane as its foreign policy may be, America has, on occasions, misread global events and/or misplaced its priorities. At other times, it simply chooses the wrong cause or the wrong side. This is rare; but we see this misplacement, misreading and false choice in its relationship with Nigeria vis-à-vis the rich but ravaged and underdeveloped Niger Delta. The Obama administration also seems to be committing the same blunder President Clinton committed in not forcefully dealing with General Sani Abacha in perhaps the darkest hour in Nigeria’s tumultuous history. His carrot and carrot alone policy allowed Abacha to run amok. And Obama, it now seems, is about to make the same mistake with Yar’Adua.

What we have in the Niger Delta region is a tragedy and travesty, a grave injustice; and an unacceptable expression of man’s inhumanity to man. Sadly, this has been the case for over four decades – with the situation becoming desperately pronounced in the last decade. Through it all, Washington has been silent; turning blind eye to a condition that calls for it considerable power and influence. It is not too late to do so.

And so we implore the United States government to employ its considerable power and influence: Call the Nigerian government and the multinational oil companies to order in their treatment of the oil-producing communities. Indeed, the intervention of the US is urgently needed in this matter. The Yar’Adua government can no longer be trusted to find a sustainable solution to the crisis. The government needs help.

There are several reasons why the White House should get involve in this crisis:

First, it is simply the right thing to do. The US is not and cannot always be the world’s policeman. Nonetheless, situations such as the low intensity conflict in the Niger Delta deserve America’s attention – especially since we know the root cause of the conflict. And we also know who the predator and the victims are.

Second, ecological degradation – such as the one we have on almost every inch and space in the Niger Delta – is not just a local problem, it has global implications. Quite a few scientific findings have shown that environmental degradation negatively impacts global security and prosperity.

Third, there are systemic studies that indicate that poverty, hopelessness and cruelty leads people to violence and terrorism. Because the three variables are present in the region, elements and groups within the region may be amenable to outside forces looking to recruit terrorists. In a spider web-like world, terrorism has no boundary.

Fourth, if the economic, political and institutional underdevelopment continues, the crisis may become too complex and too perilous to resolve. In time, the cost of oil exploration and distribution may become very costly. And in fact, the cost of some commercial activities may become exorbitant as the region is directly tied to the global economy.

Finally, the continuing crisis may trigger the violent disintegration of Nigeria, with consequences that may overwhelm the West African sub region. Should this happen, the United States and Europe will have to contend with refugees and internally displaced people. The resulting social challenges may even become a burden on a continent that is ill-equipped to handle minor crises.

Chief Ojo Madueke, the foreign minister, and the minister of Niger Delta affairs, Obong Ufot Ekaette, had on several occasions voiced Yar’Adua’s opposition to outside help. Frankly, we think the government should rescind its opposition. No amount of military armament from Israel or elsewhere can solve this crisis. The Israelis themselves live in constant fear of the unknown: Military supremacy in the region has not assured them a stress-free sleep. President Yar’Adua should demilitarise the Niger Delta and then come to the table with clean hands and a clear conscience – with the United States as the referee.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Sabella Abidde is a public intellectual who has written and commented extensively on African affairs.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Separating religion from public life

The Global Solidarity Movement For Secular Society

Nawal El Saadawi

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58960

cc Tom MarukoIn this week’s issue of Pambazuka News, activist Nawal El Saadawi writes about the inter-relationship between the power of the military, the police, capitalist markets and media, and religion, both at a global and local level. El Saadawi recently founded the Global Solidarity Movement for Secular Society, ‘to save women and men, globally and locally, from unjust laws forced on them under the name of God or religion.’ Religion is ‘a very personal individual private matter’, argues El Saadawi, and should be ‘totally separated from public life.'

We live in the 21st Century but we still live in a jungle, in a world governed globally and locally by the brutal power of the military, the police, the capitalist market and its media, and the power of religion.

We know from the past and the present that all those powers are connected, that they work together and help each other to dominate and exploit the majority of men and women in every country.

The big economic military nuclear powers in the USA, Europe and Israel need religion to establish their control over the world. They need God to justify injustices and double standards.

The USA is a Jewish-Christian country: To gain the presidential elections you have to submit to the Jewish-Christian groups and flatter the church. The educational systems and media are dominated by these religious powers in society and in the state. 65 per cent of Americans are religious. Even people who stopped going to church are still linked to their church politically or socially or both.

In Europe the church still dominates in many countries. In Norway for example they have Lutheranism as state religion: According to the law, the King and the prime minister have to be Christian Lutheran, 50 per cent of the ministers have to be members of the state church, all children are forced to be taught about Lutheranism as the best most natural religion.

The violent political religious groups are not as visible in Europe as in the Islamic countries – they are hidden under a false layer of secularism or democracy.

The violent political Islamic groups in our countries were hidden also with no political power, but they were encouraged, financed and trained militarily by the capitalist global and local regimes. Al Qaida of Arabia was used by the USA during the 1980 s to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, bin Laden and George Bush were twins, after the collapse of the Soviet Union they became enemies. The USA does not need bin Laden any more.

Islamic Hamas in Palestine was encouraged by Israel to fight the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), after the collapse of the PLO they became enemies. Israel does not need Hamas any more.

There are no principles or ethics under a capitalist colonial military patriarchal system.

A religious state cannot survive if not surrounded by similar religious states. Israel as a Jewish state needs Christian or Islamic states around it. It needs religion to create religious wars, to dominate and divide the nations in the region.

Israel is used by American and European colonialism to dominate the region and exploit its resources, mainly the oil.

All colonial wars in the past and the present are veiled by a thick religious cover, to hide their economic goals.

Most African, Arab or Islamic dictators were and are supported by external colonial and neo colonial powers. Under the words democracy, peace, civilisation and human rights, the most brutal massacres and colonial wars erupted in our region.

Saddam Hussein, the King of Saudi Arabia, Sadat of Egypt, the Shah of Iran and many others worked with external colonial powers against the interest of their people.

Sadat (with the help of USA) encouraged the Muslim Brothers during the 1970s to fight the socialists and Nasser groups in Egypt and other countries in Africa, Asia and the the Arab world.

Religion is used to strengthen the capitalist patriarchal system, to instil fear of hellfire from birth to death, to cover up colonial wars by words of God, from the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Quran.

Israel used a verse from the Old Testament to invade and colonise Palestine with the help of USA and Europe. Israel is a colonial/neo colonial project working and fighting under the name of God.

The existence of a religious Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world pushed other countries to be religious, to use Islam to fight Judaism, to hide the economic conflict with a religious conflict. This is the plan of old and new colonialism and their allies in local Arab regimes.

We live under a post modern slave system, dominated by religion and nuclear power. Religion can be more dangerous than military weapons. It can veil the minds of people, make them blind to contradictions, make them submissive to corrupt authorities. We see how people are killed under Islamic states for no reason except exposing injustices, or expressing opinions different from rulers. A novelist or a poet can be killed or put in prison just because of writing creatively.

A girl may be killed just because of going to school or not covering her head. A war can erupt between different sects or groups in the society just because of different interpretation of one verse in God’s Book.

In Iraq today under American occupation religious conflicts are encouraged – different Islamic sects (Shiias and Suniis) are killing each other.

The Islamic and Judaeo-Christian fanatic political powers represent a real danger to the majority of women and men in many countries in the East and in the West.

Religion is a very personal individual private matter and should be totally separated from public life, from the constitution, from the state, from education, culture, media and from all laws including family law.

Religion should not be inherited from fathers or mothers. Children should not be forced in schools to adopt the religion of the state as the best religion or absolute truth. Education should be based on creativity and critical thinking and not submission and blind obedience to religious or political authority.

Religious family laws discriminate between men and women. In all religions women are inferior to men. This is reflected in the family code. Double morality and double standards are the basis of all religious family laws.

We started the Global Solidarity Movement For Secular Society to save women and men, globally and locally, from unjust laws forced on them under the name of God or religion.

We need to expose crimes committed under the name of religion. We need to prevent those crimes from being repeated. We need to uncover the political economic and military powers under religion. We need to link the global powers to local regimes. We should not be silent because silence means approval of what is happening. Silence is a crime.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Nawal El Saadawi is a novelist, a psychiatrist, and a writer. She is president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and a founder of the Global Solidarity Movement For Secular Society.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Genuine democracy could cost Zuma his position

William Gumede

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58962

cc W E FThe battle to oust Thabo Mbeki from ANC leadership brought ‘two diametrically opposed groups’ together in support of Jacob Zuma, William Gumede writes in Pambazuka News. Now though, President Zuma finds himself walking a ‘tight-rope’ between the opposing groups, with one side seeking genuine party reform in favour of the people, and the other simply wanting its own place at ‘the feeding trough’. Will Zuma take the side of democracy? That depends on whether he wants to secure another term for himself, or to ‘rescue’ the ANC’s ‘democratic legacy’.

The fierce battle to oust former President Thabo Mbeki and his allies at the ANC’s seminal December 2007 national conference in Polokwane, brought together into an alliance, two broad but diametrically opposed groups. Both groups wanted Mbeki out.

For very different reasons, both groups rallied behind Jacob Zuma in his battle with Mbeki, and so lifted him into the presidency. Both groups surfed the wave of discontent among the ANC rank-and-file and ordinary South Africans over Mbeki’s dismissive, aloof and conspiratorial government. Zuma also turned the grassroots anger in his favour by equating his own dismissal by Mbeki, as part of the general marginalisation of the grassroots by the Mbeki leadership.

Both groups, including Zuma, successfully used the popular discontent to their advantage. At the heart of the popular discontent was a strong feeling by ordinary ANC members that the leadership, party, government and democratic institutions had become unaccountable, uncaring and unresponsive. Ordinary ANC supporters expected the dividends of democracy – jobs, houses and a crime-free environment – to accrue to them also, not only to a small elite, whether black, associated with the ANC leadership, or white, the apartheid elite, who are doing well in the democratic dispensation.

Within the Zuma coalition, one group saw the wave of discontent among the ANC rank-and-file as a genuine cry for the ANC and government to become more transparent, accountable and pro-poor. This group wants all the corrupt, unaccountable public representatives to be brought to book and for service delivery to be speeded up, and for the ANC itself to be modernised into a more internally democratic organisation. They are the new modernisers. Some were opposed to the Left rallying behind Zuma in the first place, but ‘pragmatically’ accepted Zuma as a conduit or transition point for the modernisation of the ANC post-Polokwane.

Yet, the other group, within the coalition, used the rhetoric of transparency, accountability and pro-poor policies to grab power for personal, factional and ethnic reasons. This group also want to purge all levels of government of public representatives, not necessarily because of mismanagement or corruption, but to take their place and become rich themselves.

They have a very narrow view of democracy, and basically want things to remain the same as under Mbeki. The only change would be that they and their allies are now in charge. This group’s intentions were to replace the Mbeki connected elite: their plush cars, large VIP entourages with bodyguards and hangers-on, access to tenders and senior positions. This group is careful to colour their purges under the flag of wanting to get rid of corrupt, uncaring, loyal Mbeki-supporting public representatives. This group could be called the opportunists.

Polokwane was not an ideological battle between the Left and the Right wings of the ANC. Among the opportunists were people with seemingly impeccable Left credentials, who had attacked Mbeki from the left flank, and who had called for the democratisation of the ANC, independent institutions and government. Now that Thabo Mbeki and his allies have been overthrown, both groups are pressing President Zuma for change – often diametrically opposed change.

The crisis of conflicting claims is played out at local level in the current wave of community protests against poor government service delivery. Some people genuinely want change at the local level – want corrupt local councillors, local ANC leaders and indifferent public servants to be brought to book. Others just want to replace them and want their turn at the feeding trough.

The battle is going on across government. In some instances departmental directors-general, boards and CEOs of parastatals and democratic institutions are under pressure. Again, some want to genuinely bring new accountability to institutions by appointing a better calibre of persons to lead institutions. Yet, others only want themselves, their friends, in the pound seats.

The extraordinary early discussion among some sections of the ANC to have the top six leadership, including ANC general secretary Gwede Mantashe being replaced, or re-elected in 2012, even though the new government has hardly found its feet, is a manifestation of the battle for supremacy between the opportunists and the new modernisers. These two groups have uncomfortably stood next to each other in the trenches in their fight against Mbeki. Now that Mbeki is gone, the glue that held them together has come unstuck.

How Zuma will walk the tight-rope between these opposing groups within his coalition will define his legacy to posterity. Taking the side of the genuine democrats in every coming conflict will be politically risky for Zuma. It could mean unravelling his coalition, creating new enemies, who will turn against him.

Furthermore, in the most extreme scenario, this battle between new modernisers and opportunists, unless creatively resolved, may actually split the ANC again. Zuma strategists may calculate the safe solution would be to strategically please every group just enough: To on occasion give concessions to one group; and on other occasions, to the other group. This will mean that the cause of democracy will in some instances be boosted; and in other instances be undermined. It will be a case of one step forward; and then one-step backwards.

This will also mean that the Zuma coalition remains together in an uncomfortable embrace. The outcome of this compromise scenario may mean muddled policies to please both sides. The one danger is that the battle between these opposing groups – opportunists and new modernisers – could keep government in paralysis and Zuma’s presidency in continual log-jam.

Yet, in the long-term, neither the ANC nor the country can afford muddling along; or continually taking on step forward, and then one backward. This moment calls for clear vision at the centre, decisive leadership and democratisation of party and government.

The better response, in terms of long-term consolidation of democracy within the ANC and the country, is for Zuma to take the side of democracy at each and every internal conflict of the ANC. This will bring genuine democracy to the ANC and the country. Yet it will create formidable enemies for Zuma, and may lead to him staying on for only one term, or even less, in government. Yet, this strategy will seal Zuma’s legacy as a democrat; and rescue the ANC’s democratic legacy.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Abahlali baseMjondolo: Reclaiming our dignity and voices

Interview by Sokari Ekine

Mnikelo Ndabankulu, Zodwa Nsibande and David Ntseng

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58979

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

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

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

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Thank you both, the two of you for coming and meeting with me today. Mnikelo and Zodwa can you tell me a little bit about your backgrounds, and how you came to live in the settlements?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: For me, I came to live in the settlement, it was 2003 because I had finished my studies, I had to come to Durban and my mother was already staying in the informal settlement so I had to stay with her.

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: I came to this city after I was over 18 years of age, usually in South Africa when moving from childhood to adulthood, you have to look for employment in order sustain or start your own family. That requires someone to move from rural areas to urban areas, because the urban areas have more job opportunities then the rural areas.



PAMBAZUKA NEWS: So that’s how you came to stay on Kennedy road is it?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: Actually I am staying in another area called Foreman Road Informal Settlement.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Mnikelo, you were one of the founding members of Abahlali. And as I understand, the decision to form the movement was taken in October 2005, following the march on Quarry Road. What was the vision you had at that time, and what were your goals during those initial months?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: Well, actually there was not an official conference or any gathering which was called where the people said, we must form an organization. It was not like the way NGOs [non-governmental organisations] are formed whereby people meet or have courses and decide to form a non-governmental organisation. The organisation was formed because of frustration and the loss of patience by the shackdwellers to the non-fulfilment of the promises, particularly the land and housing delivery promises to the people who live in the informal settlements.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What in particularly happened during the Quarry Road march that kind of spurred on the idea of the movement?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: Actually the organisation was formed before even that march, the first protest march that the organisation staged was before it was officially called by the name of the organisation. It was when the Branch (which is one of the first branches to form the organisation) was promised a certain piece of land close to where they were staying. It started when they saw some Caterpillars clearing their land, people said: ‘Oh God at last, since 1994 we have been promised houses, here is the construction to start building houses.’ Then people started to approach the Caterpillar driver to ask: ‘What is really happening here?’ The Caterpillar driver said ‘no’, he is working for a private company that is going to build a big industrial plant next to the informal settlement. People were so frustrated and said: ‘No no no no, you cannot do such things, this is our land we have been promised it by the country, in no way can you come in and make business out of the land that was earmarked for housing, for us!’ The people started to mobilise one another and blockaded the road by burning tires, and around 40 people were arrested. They appeared in court and were set free; nobody is behind bars now. We then started to mobilise more communities, because we found out that there is a lot in common between the settlements, we started to organise to read the constitution and follow the protocol about what do you do before you stage a protest, and then the movement moved forward to today.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What was your vision, what were you thinking at that time, what was the long-term goal that you had in mind? In terms of your demands, but also in terms of the bonding of the movement itself?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: The thing that unites us is the non-fulfilment of the promises that were made to us. In the near future we need the shackdwellers to be respected in dignity, to be consulted about the things that involve them. Talk to us and not about us. We don’t want the government to sit in the parliament and decide that we will do this for the people. We want to be consulted from the beginning of the process because if we people have never been consulted, then they might not know what people think is good about them. Because the people are not pro any party, they are human beings, they have their own ideas, so they need to have an input in something that involves their lives.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Abahlali has been described by its elected president S'bu Zikode as a living movement, a kind of ‘living politics’. What do you understand by that term – living movement, living politics?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: The reason why it has been described as ‘living politics’ is because this politics that we are standing for is the politics that is made by the people, through the people. It is also the politics that can be understood even by an old granny, without having to go and learn about politics. It’s a politics that everyone has a say in, for this reason the term ‘living politics’.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Zodwa, you are the general secretary of the Abahlali Youth League. Why was there a decision taken to form a separate branch of the movement for youth?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: As we have seen, the movement has been growing and growing, and although this is the case, as it is growing, the main founders are growing in age. The people are getting poorer so we will continue to grow. While still in action the young have to be trained because we believe that this struggle will still continue.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What sort of work do you do with the Youth League?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: We normally encourage the youth to participate in the development issues, because most of the youth think development issues have nothing to do with them, it's for people that are old. We also encourage the youth to learn; especially in the settlements you don’t see the youth learning. Although you are living in a settlement, there is a life there and so you must sustain yourself.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: As a woman and as the general secretary of the youth league and as a living member of Abahlali, you have multiple roles. How do these three roles integrate with each other? Also, could tell me a bit more about the participation and contribution from women comrades in the movement?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: As a woman of the movement – as well as the youngest woman of the movement – we respect the views of each and everyone. As I’m the youngest woman of the movement but have been part of its formation, it gives hope to other women: ‘No matter how old or young you are you can still participate in the making of the change’. It is not important whether you are a woman or a man. It’s not only men that can make a change, it is also women that can make a change. With this African culture, we believe that it’s only men that can make a change and the only place for a woman is in the kitchen – outside the kitchen, you don’t have to do anything. We as women have to be an example to other women and give them the chance to participate.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: One of the problems in South Africa today is violence against women and as a movement that campaigns for equality and respects everybody, how has the Abahlali movement managed deal with the issue of violence against women? Is this something you have had to address within your own communities? I am talking about domestic violence, rape, harassment, and so on.

ZODWA NSIBANDE: South Africa has a high rate of domestic violence but within the settlements, what we are encouraging is to form what are called citizen security communities that are able to encourage security. It is because it is easier for a person within a settlement to report a crime to someone they know and trust. Furthermore the members of the security communities lead as a good example. The security communities work hand in hand with the local police stations so that the crimes can be handled in a rightful manner.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Recently Abahlali has chosen to form an alliance with other land rights movements in South Africa. Could you tell us a bit more about why you decided to do this and how that works?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: While we were addressing the shackdweller’s concerns we found out that everyone in his own corner is facing the same problem so we felt the need to unite our struggles. We amalgamated our struggle with the Rural Network which is an organisation standing for the land rights and the farm workers rights. As well as the Anti-eviction Campaign from the Western Cape, which stands for the rights of people not to be evicted from their houses. As well as the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), which stands for the rights of the landless people. It worked for us – for instance when Abahlali took the government to court, we only had enough resources to organise one bus to take us there. However, as we are allied with the LPM, the comrades came to the court in a show of solidarity. The media, the government and the judges can see that this is somebody’s bother, and can see that we are upstanding for the rights of the people by crowding the corridors of court houses with lively people that are standing up.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: David, you are from the Church Land Programme, could you give us a little background about how that organisation started? And also why you chose, as an organisation to build the alliance with the other land rights movements?

DAVID NTSENG: The Church Land Programme was formed in 1997 by two key NGOs in Pietermaritzburg, Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa. One being the Association for Rural Advancement and the other one being Pietermaritzburg Association for Christian Social Awareness, for the reasons: To look at land issues, land struggles and how rights of communities are secured on farms, especially on mission farms owned by the Catholic, Lutheran and other missionary churches.

Later in the year, having worked a great deal in the land reform sector, we continued to look at how these rights are protected to an extent that we realised, nothing much is moving in so far as the realisation of the dream to have a home, dream to have land to call your own without insecurity of tenure. Nothing was moving around that and as an organisation we started raising questions: Why does it take so long?

Part of the findings in asking that question was that its not about the pace of the land reform but the direction that the land reform is taking. The direction being that it is serving the neoliberal agenda. For land reform to take place, there has to be the willingness of the farmer to sell the land, or the willingness of the church to sell or donate the land. If there is not that, there is not much movement.

Secondly, when land is dealt with there has to be a convincing business plan by communities wanting land to produce or develop some entrepreneurship once they get the land. Now that underlines two things: One, people want land because it is part of their history, people want land because its part of restoring their dignity, people want land because it is who they are whether you want to proceed to entrepreneurship and become a commercial farmer or a small scale farmer. But this is people’s history, this is people’s lives. This is the extent of the mismatch as far as the land reform is concerned.

When discovering that, we said ok, Church Land Programme not only defines itself as an organisation working on land issues – we work with the people, we work with the land, and we work with the church. Because there is so much mismatch, it has to be talked about. It has to be raised in all corridors were we make presentations or we dialogue with people.

Now Abahlali formed in 2005, which is eight years after our existence as an organisation, and we only managed to draw links with them towards the beginning of 2006. Since then our relationship, when we work around it as an organisation, is that we have to employ a different kind of politics in relating to people’s formations. It has to be based on how they want that relationship to be, they being the movement, not how we as an organisation/NGO want it to be. So in a lot of instances we support them with resources and with presence of organisational personnel. But ensuring in whatever way that it appeals to what the movement is looking and asking for. There are spaces where we are asked to share an opinion on specific issues that the movement is faced with.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Although you are an NGO, an organisation, what do you think of the connections historically and also in the present between rural land rights and the urban shackdwellers’ movement?

DAVID NTSENG: There are very strong connections, one of them is based on the fact that both people affected in these areas are not given space to express their demands and both people in these areas are represented or over-represented either by what the state believes they want or what some of us as NGOs believe they want.

In doing that representation we are silencing their voice and in addition to silencing their voice, we are hitting them. This happens in both areas, in rural areas and in urban areas. In both instances they are neglected in a sense that they are first to live in conditions that do not allow their dignity to prevail and their humanity to prevail.

In both instances, what they are forced to go through is dehumanising and as an organisation we see the need to be part of the imagined politics in both these contexts. Where in rural areas people are saying we cannot allow ourselves to be subjected to the injustices that some farmers are putting us through but also what the government is putting us through by being insensitive to our issues. In the urban areas there are instances were even city officials demonstrate, openly the unwillingness to pay attention to the demands of people represented within Abahlali baseMjondolo.

This for us is immoral as an organisation that is uncalled for. We then try to draw the attention of the church leaders to this fact that we cannot fold arms when people are tortured in this way and in a so-called democratic society. Where is our conscience? What do we say about their humanity? What do we say about their right to reclaim their position as citizens of the country of South Africa?

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: There has been quite a bit of discussion amongst academics and activists on the nature of Abahlali’s demands. Whether these demands are simply about service delivery? Whether your vision is actually far more complex then that and much broader then simply the delivery of services? For example: You went to court regarding the Slum Elimination Bill, which is much deeper then just talking about service delivery. Could you expand on that?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: It is not about the service delivery as the media puts it, it is the way of the community of reminding the those in power, this is what you promised the people, so do it, when are you going to do it? And then the media says that it is just a service delivery protest. It is not about service delivery, it is also about human dignity of the community. It is the community saying, what you promised us, bring it back to us. You have to listen to us, you are accountable to us, you don’t only have to give services but human self-respect, dignity and life.
Power.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Why do you feel so strongly about the Slum Elimination Bill?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: It is because this act is bringing back one of those apartheid ideas, which take anybody’s rights in the nation. For instance, the constitution of South Africa states that no one may be evicted from their house without an order of a court. But this act talks about evicting people, but it does not clarify under what criteria, it does not show that it is going to follow a protocol.

This act is going to make it and offence and a crime to resist evictions, which is not something that can happen in a democratic society. Resisting eviction in South Africa is a democratic right for every citizen, to say no to something they don’t like. This act says that if you resist eviction you might be fined for ZAR20,000 or you might spend 10 years in prison. The act was passed by a department that is not even a relevant department because it is a housing department; their job is to house. They don’t have the power to pass land rights, that’s the Department of Land Affairs and even they could not pass the bill if it was not hand in hand with the constitution because we will not allow that.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Abahlali also chose to boycott the elections, not to vote. Why was that decision made and what did you hope to achieve?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: We are too patriotic about our country and we respect the heroes and heroines, which died for the liberation of South Africa, which gave every citizen a right to vote. Everyone was happy to vote, especially in 1994 for the first time. We voted, with the big hope that South Africa would change for the better.

The people’s government said that it would do one, two, three, and four for the citizens when it came in to power. After 14 years of patience we never got what had been promised by the people in government when they get into power. That frustrated us because we were voting because we hoped that something might happen after voting. Then when they don’t do the things that they promised us before elections, after the elections, it frustrated us.

We said to the government: ‘government, this time around we have voted more then once, with the one promise of housing and land for the slum dwellers, and you have never delivered onto that promise. This time around we will boycott our vote to show that we are no longer going to participate in something that does not work out for us.’

When we are saying, ‘no land, no house, no vote’ its not that we did not have the willingness to vote, its just that we wanted our government to be accountable to us and wanted our government to show respect to us. Because we said, ‘we do know that you cannot build houses within a short period of time’, but what did the government do to help?

Maybe they should conceive a memorandum of understanding our argument, to the people and the government, that in two years’ time, or one year’s time or five years’ time, we will build houses for you because this thereby promises that they build free houses for all. Nobody is accountable for these promises that are made on radio and through the media, there are no records in black and white that make someone accountable if the promise is never delivered.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: So what do you think are the real motives behind the government’s forced removals and the fact that they want to move you to the outskirts of the city?

DAVID NTSENG: It’s multiple issues but the most important one is that in every instance where there is a threat of eviction or an ongoing eviction, there is a development in terms of infrastructure, be it roads and whatever – big, big multimillion projects coming or going on.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: So are you saying there is a relationship between the government’s eviction policy and development of other projects in the area?

DAVID NTSENG: Very much so in terms of practice and what we have observed. In one area around Durban, a community of about 500 people was evacuated and forced off their land to make way for a highway. As we speak there is a big debate of about another threat of eviction pending for a community of about 10,000 families in northern Zululand, because there is a big development of a pipeline supported by a big company coming from Dubai to establish a mega shopping, entertainment centre that has never been seen on the continent of Africa, which will take in the region of ZAR55 billion to put up.

Now, that is not just evictions for the sake of evictions, it is evictions because there is a big mega million project coming. Varying in scale, ya? In some instances, in rural areas in particular, when these evictions take place it’s because farmers want to set up game farms and amalgamate their smaller farm plots. This is relatively speaking, when I say small. When they are put together they just fence their whole land off and introduce some game farming. Those who may have seen that a continuum of commercial farming is not taking them anywhere, they change land use from live stock or cash crop farming to game farming because they know northerners, and other people are still fascinated to see some wild life roaming around Africa.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Remember the huge out-spring of xenophobia in South Africa? Abahlali, unlike the government, chose to actually intervene by speaking out and opposing the xenophobic attacks. Why did you feel as shackdwellers, that it was important for you to intervene in those xenophobic attacks?

ZODWA NSIBANDE: As the movement, we feel that our brothers and sisters from other countries are becoming the victims because of the government. They were the nearest targets to the locals but the end frustration was directed to the government because of the slow pace of service delivery, and because of the not fulfilling the promises to the community.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: To end up, what I would like to ask all of you – I know this is quite a difficult question – what do you think is the most transformational achievement or success that you have had as a movement, and David, as an organisation, over, say, the past three/four years?

MNIKELO NDABANKULU: A long time before Abahlali were born, everybody thought that people from the informal settlements, also have informal minds. We showed them that we can be poor in life, but God does not automatically make us poor in mind.

Before Abahlali was born there was nothing on the news about the shackdwellers, even the media did not pay any attention, it was a forgotten society. It was only important during elections, for politicians to go into the settlements to catch their votes, and then forget about them. But now there is a lot of on coming news from the shackdwellers.

Before Abahlali, I never thought that an ordinary shackdweller can stand and say; ‘government you are wrong!’ and take the government to court. Although we are still waiting for the results of the Slums Act to see whether we are winning or not, we have 99.9 per cent hope that we are going to win because we know that the constitution is on our side. We have won numerous cases of evictions when the municipalities just went and demolished and evicted in the settlement without an order of court. We took them to court with our lawyers, and have won 10 out of 10 of these cases against the government!

Also when the government tried to ban our protest march we took them to court and we won! We never had the situation of losing a case against the government because in most cases, the poor people are honest and are victims of the violation of their right. They have never done anything, which is outside of the law of the country. This is a big achievement because in the history of South Africa, never have ordinary people taken the government to court and enjoyed a victory over it, a victory like we are hoping to enjoy when the results of the Slums Act case come out.

DAVID NTSENG: I will quote the words of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement’s president S'bu Zikode. Three words come to mind: ‘Reclaiming, humanity, action’. That’s how he describes the work of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement and that reflects the project to transform the society. When the movement starts off, as Mnikelo says, forgotten citizens, that concientise people about who they are, what they are about.

I also quote our catholic brother, Philipo Mondini who is back in Italy, when he said in one of the gatherings: ‘When I see people from the shacks, I see God, because not only are they made in the image of God but in them lives God. Whoever smashes their homes, smashes God’s homes, whoever puts them in prison, is putting God in prison.’ This talks about a bigger thing, that addresses who our society is? When you ask who our society is, what does the movement see as the responsibility of those that our leading our society? Now, if anything sounds, proves to be inhumane and dehumanising, this organisation stands it’s ground to reclaim humanity in action.

ZODWA NSIBANDE: We have achieved a lot because the main idea, was to reclaim the dignity of the people that are living in the informal settlements. This has been a success and the dignity of the people in the settlements has been reclaimed their voices have been brought back.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Mnikelo Ndabankulu is a founding member and spokesperson for Abahlali baseMjondolo.
* Zodwa Nsibande is the general secretary of the Abahlali Youth League.
* David Ntseng is with the Church Land Programme, an NGO based in KwaZulu-Natal province.
* Sokari Ekine conducted this interview for Pambazuka News.
* This interview was transcribed by Steffen Fischer, who is an intern with Fahamu.

Ethiopia’s 2010 election and Zenawi’s new game

Etyopian Simbiro

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58976

cc WikipediaEtyopian Simbiro discusses Ethiopia's political situation and argues that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's resignation is long overdue. Although Zenawi seems to be holding onto power endlessly, Simbiro perceives certain cracks in the framework of power. Firstly, Simbiro argues that Obama’s Africa policy has changed significantly from that of the previous administration, meaning that the governments of Africa are going to have to be more democratic before receiving aid and entering into an open alliance with the US. Secondly, the author argues that the Forum for Democratic Dialogue (FDD) is a promising opposition coalition that stands a chance against Zenawi in the 2010 elections. Finally, Simbiro argues that the Ethiopian people have had enough of Zenawi’s rule and the way he treats the population.

‘Sinetewaweq Enitenaneq!’ is an Amharic saying, which means, ‘You can’t fool me! We both know each other well.’

President Obama has clearly stated, particularly in his speech in Ghana, that African rulers cannot fool his government easily and he will not openly support their perpetuation of ‘strongmanship'. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s trip to a select few African countries also seemed an endorsement of that message, though it happened in accordance with America’s foreign interest in the region.

Both Obama’s speech and Clinton’s trip have made it clear that African rulers must first champion free and fair elections, respect the rule of law and win the trust of their population should they want any kind of open alliance with the Oval Office. With Ethiopia one of the US’s foreign aid recipients, the message from the White House must have intimidated Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s administration.

During Bush’s administration, the ‘War on Terror’ rhetoric worked really well in favour of Prime Minister Zenawi, who enjoyed unlimited support from the United States. Today however, he is having a hard time securing Washington’s undivided attention.

The Obama administration has carefully reserved itself from openly engaging Zenawi’s government due to the post-2005 election violence and other negative human rights records. There is also a huge presence of Ethiopians in the Washington D.C. area who are preventing Zenawi from having a smooth ride with Obama. Most of the diaspora Ethiopians heavily criticise and oppose Zenawi’s rule because of his party’s monopoly over the economy and politics. Just recently there was a March 4 Freedom demonstration right in front of Capitol Hill, condemning the government in Addis Ababa and accusing it of ‘genocide’.

When Zenawi was recently asked about current Ethio-US relations, he defended his government’s position by saying, ‘I don’t agree with everything under the sun, let alone with Obama. Do we express our disagreements openly when we disagree? Yes, we do. Does that create a feeling of tension from time to time? Perhaps it does. Does that mean that the relationship is fundamentally weak? No. And there is nothing new to the strains that you seem to notice; there is nothing specifically related to the Obama administration. If anything, the coming of the Obama administration may have eased some of the strains.’[1]

Given the current political insecurity in Ethiopia, having an open alliance with Prime Minister Zenawi will be a disadvantage for President Obama. President Obama, before he took power, promised millions, including the Ethiopian diaspora who voted for him in droves, that he would bring change to Washington’s foreign policy, which affects millions of poor people around the world. Breaking that promise means becoming another hypocrite – a typical politician who betrays people’s trust.

ZENAWI AND HIS HEGEMONIC PARTY

Zenawi’s loyalists may consider him a ‘renaissance man’ but for those who oppose his government he is just another ‘tyrant’. Those who oppose him are worried that his party, if not he himself, will cling to power for as long as possible through undemocratic means. They accuse his government’s senior, junior and low-ranking officials of corruption and exploitation, two unfortunate obstacles of progress that existed in Ethiopia even before Zenawi was born.

The fact is that poor Ethiopians are tired of whatever kind of authoritarianism: 40 plus years of Haile Selassie, 17 years of Mengistu and now 18 plus years of Meles Zenawi. The ongoing political chaos has weakened their spirit. It is too much to endure, although the people are partially to blame for the mess. After all, the rulers did not ascend directly from hell. Although the elites are to 99.99 per cent loyal to Western ideologies, they come from within the society and are shaped by its culture. The sad reality is that the burden is always placed on the poor people. The disempowered elites run away to safe havens when the worst comes to worst, leaving the country and the defenceless people to fend for themselves, while the powerful ones who remain behind exploit the people unrepentantly.

Today’s political fight in Ethiopia is still based around ideology, and remains fundamentally similar to the time when Meles was a militant student. Economically, the country still heavily depends on foreign aid, forcing some to conclude, ‘it’s addicted to aid.’ Although Zenawi argues that he will turn Ethiopia into a ‘middle-income economy’ soon, a growing number of children are exported to foreign countries as ‘orphans’. Most people in today’s Ethiopia are as poor as they were yesterday, if not more so. People with a ‘middle-class’ status barely exist. You are either on top of the pyramid or at the very bottom of it. So many young people die crossing deserts or deadly seas in search of a better life. The number of people who apply for the Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery to fulfil their American dream doubles every year. Many students who graduate from American or European universities rarely go back home. Most of those who graduate inside the country remain unemployed. There are few entrepreneurs; the concept of micro financing, which has changed lives in Asia, scarcely exists. A few, associated with the government, monopolise businesses. Doesn’t this disturbing fact eat Zenawi’s brain every time he goes to bed?

Twenty years from now, long after I am done with school, I wish to see an aid-independent, democratic Ethiopia where fair politics reign, and where people wake up every morning wanting to do something positive in their homeland instead of dreaming about foreign countries. I also wish my future children to grow up in a respected country, enabling them to be proud of their Ethiopian and African identity, not to mention their ethnic heritage and where they are free to express their thoughts and to criticise their leaders fearlessly, using their constitutional rights.

Ethiopia still has a huge chance to become a democratic and prosperous nation in the Horn of Africa. A significant number of South Africa’s population, for example, is still poor; however, South African politicians and lawmakers have transformed the country from apartheid to a genuine democracy with the result that South Africa’s economy is thriving and their democratic tradition is blossoming. There is no reason why Ethiopia cannot follow the South African path should there be dedicated leaders from both the ruling party and the opposition. If Zenawi and his party open up the space for a genuine multi-party system and establish a truth and reconciliation commission, historical antipathy between the various competing ethnic elites will surely be curbed and the poor will finally have their peace.

Zenawi, 54 years old, had been giving mixed signals for months that he might retire from office. However, because his party’s members ‘love him so much’ and because they see him as ‘irreplaceable’, they have ‘urged’ him to stay in power longer, until his 60th birthday. What a birthday present to a dedicated comrade, one may say! However, behind this love affair, there exists a calculated risk.

Zenawi, no doubt, is the political mastermind of the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), supposedly a coalition of four regional parties – the Oromo People's Democratic Organisation (OPDO), the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Southern Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Movement (SPDM) and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). However, the TPLF, as the founder of the other three pseudo-independent parties, monopolises everything. Considering the EPRDF’s present obstacles – Obama’s administration, human rights organisations, growing public discontent, global economic meltdown, and opposition parties – the presence of Zenawi as prime minister is crucial for the party’s survival. Thus it was the right decision for the EPRDF to keep its strongman in power. Zenawi explained the party’s decision to journalists, saying, ‘In order to ensure policy continuity, and success in the implementation of the party’s platform, the party felt that there was need for some additional time.’[2]

The EPRDF is determined to win in 2010. Given the difficult situations major opposition parties face, there is no doubt it will win.

2010 ELECTION

For EPRDF politicians, the 2010 election is expected to be tougher than the 2005 election, which was disastrous, resulting in the government and the opposition forces blaming each other for the chaos. It was reported that about 200 people were killed and many injured during the crisis. Opposition leaders, their supporters, journalists and some employees of NGOs were thrown into jail and accused of ‘treason’. After that election, most opposition parties were crippled because of their internal litigations and government interference. Many political prisoners, including the first Ethiopian female opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, still languish in notorious prisons.

Recently a promising coalition of opposition forces has emerged, the Forum for Democratic Dialogue (FDD). This coalition seems by far the best candidate to challenge the EPRDF peacefully. Opposing ideologues have joined hands to address national and ethnic questions as one voice. This has already given a headache to the government, which sees itself as the only ‘genuine’ force in the country that ‘cares’ about ‘ethnic self-determination’. The FDD, no doubt, embodies the nature of the current Ethiopian political dynamics; nevertheless, a book cannot be judged by its cover but by what it delivers. If this new coalition avoids internal fighting and competitiveness and withstands the EPRDF’s intimidation, then it will definitely become a formidable opponent in the upcoming election.

People for sure will vote for the FDD if it listens to their heartbeat. Otherwise, if it acts in a ‘I know better than you and here I come to rule you’ manner like the EPRDF, then they may be inclined to say the following: ‘Kemayaqut Melak, Yemiyawkut Seytan Yishalal,’ which means, ‘A devil you know is better than an angel you don’t know.’

Opposition parties, unsurprisingly, have several challenges, imposed mostly by the ruling party. Professor Beyene Petros, the former leader of the United Ethiopia Democratic Front (UEDF), briefed the media, ‘Our participation in the coming election depends on whether the government is willing to discuss on the binding law of election. So far the government isn’t interested to sit and talk with us. It just wants to kill time; and at the eleventh hour, they might say now we can talk. This is their usual tactic.’[3] Bulcha Demeksa, leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM), further questioned, ‘How can we get ready for an election when we can’t get close to our people and talk to them on what they want? We don’t have money, we don’t have offices, and there is dispute everywhere. This doesn’t allow us to get ready for anything.’ A member of Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party, Temesgen Zewde, repeated the same frustration: ‘The ruling party purposely comes up with laws that draw a line to our right of participating in [a] democratic election.’ In addition to their internal problems, opposition parties face such undemocratic strategies of the government, which threatens their existence.

The fact that EPRDF prefers to intimidate its opponents rather than to open a political space for democratic elections says a lot about its fear of the inevitable challenge. One of the coalition members, Seyee Abraha, a former defence minister, wrote to a local newspaper recently saying, ‘The events in Mekelle, Debremarkos and Adama are clear demonstrations of how petrified the EPRDF is of peaceful struggle rather than armed struggle.’[4] According to reports, government cadres and security agents in major cities prevent the opposition systematically from reaching out to the public. Earlier, Negasso Gidada, the former president under the EPRDF, wrote a letter accusing the government of harassment after a mob disrupted a public meeting, which the UDJ organised on 16 August 2009.

But the prime minister, responding to the allegations, recently argued, ‘Those parties that apparently are concerned about harassment are not concerned enough in the devising of the code of conduct that is designed to put an end to it if it exists or prevent it from happening if it does not. My feeling is that the intent of some of these individuals is not to contest the elections in a serious manner. The intent is to discredit the election process from day one, not to participate in it in any meaningful way.’

THE NEW GAME

In the mean time, Prime Minister Zenawi has engaged himself with a new hobby after realising that ‘the war on terror’ rhetoric may not hold water anymore. Fellow African rulers have anointed him to represent the continent in the upcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen.

It is difficult, however, to trust Zenawi’s genuineness and to believe his seriousness concerning the environment. Where is he when the very few factories in Ethiopia poison lakes and rivers with toxic waste? Various parts of Ethiopia are still prone to famine and drought despite the foreign aid coming into the country. There is a new law in Zenawi’s office that severely restricts NGOs’ humanitarian and environmental activities. Many indigenous communities suffer from diseases caused by contaminated air and water. The sufferers still cry for help, though no one listens to their cry. And now Zenawi is a champion of climate change?

Isn’t it an insult to tell poor Ethiopians that their ruler is going to ‘fight for Africa’ when they suffer from fluoride poisoning, cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), lung cancer, deforestation and other serious environmental disasters, which his administration has unsatisfactorily addressed? How will Zenawi make the case for Westerners to pay for ‘raping Africa’ when his own government gives a free ride to foreign companies in Ethiopia to exploit arable lands and to destroy the environment, disregarding the cries of vulnerable communities? How many trees are cut down each year to welcome Chinese, European, Indian and Arab investors? How many of those trees are replaced?

It is obvious and essential that a poor country like Ethiopia needs foreign direct investment and improved infrastructure to become self-sufficient; Zenawi should be commended for opening Ethiopia’s frontiers to investors and for improving the country’s infrastructures. However, Zenawi’s record doesn’t show that he has scored high on promoting sustainable development. Though his government prides itself for having very well-researched environmental policies, it rarely implements them to hold investors accountable for damaging the environment and for exposing communities to deadly diseases and homelessness.

Zenawi’s new game seems to be just pure hypocrisy. But hypocrisy doesn’t bother Zenawi as long as he can convince the West that he still is a ‘progressive African leader’. I will not be surprised if the Obama administration and other Western leaders fall for this trap. This is not, however, to say that Africans must not demand compensation from the industrialised world for suffering due to climate change. I am only saying that Zenawi may not be the right candidate to represent Africa’s interest in Copenhagen because he first needs to clean up his domestic issues.

It is already decided that Zenawi will represent Africa in Copenhagen, and may even become ‘Africa’s champion of climate change’ after the summit, but that will not pacify the public discontent inside Ethiopia. It is typical of Ethiopian rulers to act as ‘internationalists’ or ‘pan-Africanists’ when domestically they treat their people like commodities. The poor Ethiopians are used to such pretension and mistreatment; they are tired of it! Zenawi still needs to open a stage in Ethiopia for a genuine democracy, which he claims he fought for as a student and later as a leftist guerrilla.

Your Excellency, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as a young person who wishes not to grow old and bitter, seeing Ethiopia go astray, and as a citizen, I demand the following: give power back to its rightful owners, the people!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Etyopian Simbiro is an Ethiopian student based in the US.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] Media quotes are from www.jimmatimes.com, www.addisfortune.com and www.ethiopianreporter.com.
[2] See [1].
[3] See [1].
[4] See [1].

The life of Juan Almeida

Interview by Tidiane Kassé

LLusif Sadin Tassé

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/58974

© WikimediaJuan Almeida, the only Afro-Cuban to hold the title of Revolutionary Commander, died on 11 September. The second person after Che Guevara to be elevated the this rank, he remained the Cuban revolution’s ‘Number Three’ behind Fidel and Raul Castro throughout his life. Llusif Sadin Tassé, Cuba’s ambassador to Senegal, spoke to Pambazuka News about the life of this hero, who is credited for the famous battle cry: ‘Nobody here is going to surrender!’

Juan Almeida passed away on 11 September. He was 82. Almeida, an Afro-Cuban, was the only black to hold the title ‘Revolutionary Commander’. He was the second person after Che Guevara to be elevated the this rank, and forever remained the revolution’s ‘Number Three’, behind Fidel and Raul Castro. In his homage to Almeida, Fidel Castro described him as a ‘companion of exemplary conduct in the course of over 50 years of heroic and triumphant resistance’. Almeida, the son of a labourer, was part of the revolution right from the beginning. He was part of the attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago, on the 26th of July 1953, as well as all the other battles that led to the eventual triumph by Castro’s forces. Facing the onslaught of Batista’s superior troops, he is credited with the famous battle cry, ‘nobody here is going to surrender!’ He was a member of the new Cuban Communist Party’s Politburo at its inception in 1965. H.E. Llusif Sadin Tassé, Cuba’s ambassador to Senegal, spoke to Pambazuka News about the life of this hero.

Fidel Castro reflected that he had no idea just how much pain Almeida’s passing would cause the Cuban people. Almeida, who passed away on 11 September, is more than just an icon. He is part and parcel of the country’s history, its revolution, and all that gave his life meaning.

Almeida was the second of twelve children. At a very young age he was forced to join his mason father to make ends meet. In 1952 when Batista staged his coup d’Etat, he joined the progressive voices, especially the students, who took up arms. His political conscience made him keenly aware that Cuban democracy was under threat, and it was only through armed conflict that it could be safeguarded. It was at this point that Almeida joined the revolutionary forces. He took part in the assault on the Moncada army barracks on 1952. The ill-fated assault landed him in prison, along with Fidel, Raul and a number of other key revolutionaries.

Under public pressure, a general amnesty was declared, and Almeida was one of those who were exiled to Mexico. There, the core revolutionary group formed, with the arrival of Che Guevarra and others. He remained very close to Fidel, even after they returned to Cuba. He was aboard the Granma, and on the frontline of all subsequent battles leading up to the fall of Havana in 1959.

His revolutionary pedigree does not however detract from another facet of this man – Almeida the poet, writer and artist. His works chronicled the nexus moments of the revolution, from a first-person perspective. Almeida the writer and revolutionary was one of only three people to achieve the rank of commander in the course of the Sierra war. He ranked third behind Che and Raul.

He owed this distinction to his extraordinary qualities. As Fidel stated, he was one of those fighters who was always ready to fight with one, and for one, to the death. Every time he went into combat he was ready to die. He was a living example. He is credited with the battle cry ‘nobody here is going to surrender!’ He uttered this when his fellow fighters, surrounded and outnumbered by Batista’s troops, were losing hope.

Almeida carried all his battle glory with unbelievable humility. He headed the veterans’ association, all the while remaining an artist and a creator of beauty. A number of songs he composed won international accolades. One of these songs, La Lupita, which went on to become a Cuban classic, was composed aboard the Granma. It is a sad song of loss and separation, and it has been said that Almeida was singing of a lost love. In reality Lupita was about all the friends and loved ones that the revolutionaries left behind on their way to the battlefront.

After the triumphant revolution, all his prestigious appointments did not prevent him for running the association for veterans of the Cuban revolution. The association represented not only those who fought in Cuba, but also on other fronts like Angola and elsewhere. He forged strong links with the great leaders of the Luso-African revolutions.

As the only Afro-Cuban to hold the title of Revolutionary Commander, Almeida’s dedication over-shadowed the race issue. He was dedicated to the fight against poverty and social injustices, which were undoubtedly even starker when one was black and poor in Cuba at the time. His dedication is thus a reflection of his sensitivity towards others and to their suffering.

Almeida asked to be buried at the Mausoleum at Santiago de Cuba in Oriente, built in memory of those members of the 3rd front that he led. He lies there among his fellow combatants, after all the military honours according him, and the homage of the country’s population

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* His Excellency Llusif Sadin Tassé is Cuba’s ambassador to Senegal. His reflections were recorded by Tidiane Kassé, editor of Pambazuka News, French Edition.
* Translated by Josh Ogada
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Rwanda’s Commonwealth application

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58964

cc J HarneisWith Rwanda's application for membership of the Commonwealth likely to be on the agenda at this year's Commonwealth heads of government meetings, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) expresses serious reservations about the country's credentials. Evidence pointing to the suppression of freedom of speech and a climate of fear represent significant causes for concern, the CHRI argue in this week's Pambazuka News, and ultimately point to the need for an independent body designed to assess applicants' and existing members' records on democracy and human rights.

Rwanda’s application for membership of the Commonwealth is likely to be on the agenda at this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Port Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. Traditionally, because of its origins, the membership rules for the Commonwealth were informal. In recent years, interest in membership has been shown by states with no previous constitutional link to the Commonwealth or its members. This led to specific criteria being developed from CHOGM, 1997 onwards, the chief of which is that an aspirant member state must abide by the Principles set out in the 1991 Harare Declaration. Rwanda has no constitutional link to any Commonwealth country. Only one country without a constitutional link has previously been admitted in this way – Mozambique in 1995 – and that was before there were formal criteria. Given this, Rwanda represents an important test case. Among the key Harare Principles are commitments to the protection of human rights and to democracy. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) believes that overwhelming evidence, conveniently ignored by leading Commonwealth states, demonstrates that the government of Rwanda is not sufficiently committed to these values.

The situation with regard to human rights within Rwanda has been an ongoing concern for many international agencies and human rights organisations. The provisions of the 2003 Constitution against ‘ genocide ideology’ , and consequent laws, prohibiting the raising of any doubts about the extent of the killing of Tutsis in 1994, and any discussion of retaliatory killings of Hutus, have been used to suppress freedom of speech and have created a climate of fear in civil society. Censorship is prevalent and the government has a record of shutting down independent media outlets and newspapers, and harassing journalists. General civil society is also severely hampered by restrictive laws governing independent associations. There remain serious concerns about the level of political freedom and the fact that the independent body in charge of registering political parties is still controlled by the ruling Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). Rwanda’s judiciary has systemic weaknesses and there are troubling questions about the failure of the judiciary to investigate and prosecute members of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) for their involvement in human rights abuses and proven involvement in war crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

There are some serious human rights concerns about the operation of the Gacaca courts, set up to deal with the majority of those accused of involvement in the genocide. They do not adhere to basic presumptions of innocence or fair trial procedures. President Kagame has used his power to give immunity from prosecution to some of those suspected of being the most serious perpetrators of human rights abuses. The Rwandan government’s ongoing activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its support of Tutsi militias in Kivu have raised grave concerns, and indeed recommendations that senior figures in the RPF ought to be brought before international and foreign tribunals.

CHRI acknowledges that Rwanda has what appears to be a well-deserved reputation for governmental efficiency and for being less corrupt than a number of other countries – but its claims about the lack of corruption appear hollow when considering its complicity in the illicit economy of the region, and its plunder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) natural resources. Furthermore, such attributes are not sufficient for membership of the Commonwealth. Indeed, the capacity for efficient government ought perhaps to indicate that a country should be able to govern without major human rights abuses, contrary to the situation in Rwanda. The Rwandan government has excellent public relations machinery. Its leaders are astute, and effectively play upon the conscience of the world, particularly Western states, by invoking victimhood of genocide (while cleverly hiding the fact that thousands of Hutus were killed by its armed forces, the total political destabilisation it has constantly engineered in the DRC, and the heart-rending suffering it has brought to the Congolese and other communities). It has succeeded in persuading the key members of the international community that it has an exemplary constitution emphasising democracy, power-sharing, and human rights which it fully respects.

The truth is, however, the opposite: It uses the constitution opportunistically as a façade, which hides the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime; relies on power structures that sometimes run parallel to, and sometimes cross-cuts, the formal government; and in which the army plays a central role. (Sometimes Rwanda is described as ‘an army with a state’, and at other times the army is described as ‘soldats sans frontières’, or ‘soldiers without borders’). Rwanda has relied heavily for its revenue (to fund its institutions and elites) on the plunder of the mineral resources of the DRC – and extraordinarily generous development assistance from the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and some other Western governments. It bears the primary responsibility for the political and economic instability in the Great Lakes Region (including the overthrow of the Congolese government), which is functional to its mode of extraction of wealth and its dominance of the region. It practises, and has contributed to, a complex, regional regime of illegal economic transactions, evasion of United Nations sanctions, arming of militias and criminal business organisations, and disregard of neighbours’ borders and fiscal systems, which has greatly impoverished the people of the region.

The RPF has used an extraordinary amount of violence, domestically and internationally, in the pursuit of its illegitimate aims. It is responsibile for killing almost 500,000 persons, whether citizens or not, and is responsible for the deaths of many times more through displacement, malnutrition and hunger. It has denied hundreds of thousands of children of the opportunity to go to school, and deprived millions of prospects of family and community life. The UN has voluminously documented these practices and repeatedly chastised Rwanda (as the extracts from UN reports in the appendices demonstrate).

CHRI also observes that the membership criteria, including adherence to the Harare Principles, are not a basis for entitlement to membership; they are just a minimum threshold. Again, CHRI has no wish to underplay the fact that the Rwandan people have suffered gross human rights abuses and endured the most horrific mass atrocities since the end of the Second World War, but this cannot provide a justification for their membership of the Commonwealth as long as basic human rights in the country remain in such an unsatisfactory state. It does not make sense to admit a state that already does not satisfy Commonwealth standards. This would tarnish the reputation of the Commonwealth and confirm the opinion of many people and civic organisations that the leaders of its governments do not really care for democracy and human rights, and that its periodic, solemn declarations are merely hot air. The admission of a state below standard will lower the ‘average’ , as it were, of the Commonwealth commitment to democracy and human rights. And, it would weaken the Commonwealth when it comes to making decisions on sanctions against defaulting existing members, increasing the number of states who have shown little regard for human rights. Such admissions of new members with poor records would drive a wedge between the governments and peoples of the Commonwealth, reducing the organisation to a mere trade union of governments. The fact that there are a number of members of the Commonwealth which gained their membership by virtue of their post-colonial heritage are themselves human rights abusers, should not be a factor in Rwanda’s application for membership. If anything, this provides the grounds for making the criteria for continued membership of the Commonwealth on human rights observance more stringent.

CHRI believes that the procedure for admission to the Commonwealth must include a full and comprehensive review of the state of human rights in the applicant country. CHRI recommends that, at the 2009 CHOGM, an independent commission be set up to examine the entire question of membership, and that the nature and future of Commonwealth membership should be considered afresh, independently of political concerns and current membership applications. In addition, it recommends that an independent commission of eminent Commonwealth persons, and experts on the applicant country should be set up to review each application, beginning with Rwanda, and report to the Heads of Government. This would subject the applicant country to rigorous scrutiny of its record on human rights and democracy and engage with its civil society, trade unions, political parties, universities and so on to obtain a sense of public opinion. The latter commission should have resources to prepare background materials to inform the people of the applicant state about the history and significance of the Commonwealth and the rights and obligations of membership. And a process must be set up whereby a state wanting entry to the Commonwealth can indicate that the government has consulted with the people, and it must be able to objectively demonstrate their support.

Supporters of Rwanda’s admission claim that Commonwealth membership will provide it with the incentive and the opportunity to improve its human rights record. It would learn about the importance and practice of human rights from other members, and at the same time, it would come under pressure to improve its own standards. With all due respect, this is extremely unconvincing. Several member countries in the rest of the Commonwealth violate human rights with near total impunity as far as the Commonwealth is concerned. Rwanda would feel very comfortable going to CHOGM retreats, secure in the knowledge that no one will raise questions about its gross violations of democratic principles, the rule of law, and human rights. Cameroon, which was admitted in 1995, has yet to meet the basic Commonwealth requirements in spite of endless Commonwealth Secretariat efforts and expense. The Commonwealth machinery for enforcing human rights and disciplining errant states is rudimentary, ineffective and marked by a lack of political will. In general, Commonwealth states have come under greater pressure from non-Commonwealth countries. The major brokers of peace, restoration of democracy and human rights are the United States of America and the European Union: in Kenya’s worst political crisis since independence, with thousands killed and hundreds of thousand displaced, the silence and inactivity of the Commonwealth was astounding.

Our conclusion is that the state of governance and human rights in Rwanda does not satisfy Commonwealth standards. Rwanda does not therefore qualify for admission. It has been argued that neither do several existing members. Unfortunately, that is certainly true. But there is an important difference between these states and Rwanda. They became members by virtue of their past history of British colonialism and the convention of more or less automatic membership. Until the Harare Declaration, there were no formalised standards of Commonwealth values. Governments of member states which deviate seriously from these standards are now subject to disciplinary measures, including suspension or even exclusion (although the last option has not been exercised so far, on the assumption that exclusion would be unfair to the people of the state, who may themselves be victims of violations). Suspension is lifted only when the deviant practices have been abandoned. If the Commonwealth admits a state below its standards, it would have to welcome the new member, if it is to stand firm on its self-proclaimed values, by criticising its democratic and human rights record and considering sanctions.

It is important that the Commonwealth, several of whose members are associated with the non-aligned movement, should not be swayed by the interests of some of its members, who have for long supported the present Rwandan regime, despite its gross and well-known violations of human rights. Nor must it, as a predominantly anglophone association, rejoice in the present regime’s rejection of francophonie (which in large part may be opportunistic), just as the French assistance to the Habyarimana regime in 1990, when the RPF invaded Rwanda, was inspired by the devout wish to retain Rwanda within the francophone community – and to worst the ‘ Anglo-Saxons’, successors to ‘les Anglais’. That would be puerile and beneath the dignity of the Commonwealth.

While CHRI takes into account the extreme violence and suffering that Rwanda’s people have been through, it acknowledges the economic and administrative progress that has been made under the present regime, recognises the potential within its constitution to nurture a democratic polity and accepts that Rwanda has traditional and growing ties with some Commonwealth members in its region. CHRI therefore proposes that CHOGM should not reject Rwanda’s application outright, but deal with it in the fashion of the European Union, when considering applications for membership. The Commonwealth should reiterate its values, identify areas where Rwanda falls short, and ask it to remedy deficiencies while offering assistance to resolve these. Once it is satisfied that appropriate laws and, most importantly, practices have been instituted, Rwanda should be welcomed to the Commonwealth. The admission of Cameroon was made subject to its satisfying Commonwealth values and standards as was the re-admission of Fiji after the first coup of 1987.

RECOMMENDATIONS

CHRI puts forward two recommendations – one is general relating to the process for admission of new members, and the other specific to Rwanda.

I(a). This report comments on the lack of a mechanism to establish that the people of an applicant state in reality seek or support the bid for membership, and that the state in fact satisfies the test of Commonwealth values. CHRI considers that now is the time to deal with this lacuna, before further applications are received. We therefore urge the next CHOGM to address these two issues before it proceeds to the consideration of Rwanda’s application. We propose that an independent commission of eminent Commonwealth statespersons, representatives of leading pan- Commonwealth NGOs, and experts on the applicant country should be set up to review the application and report to the Heads of Government. It would subject the applicant to rigorous scrutiny of its record on human rights and democracy, and engage with its civil society, trade unions, political parties, universities and so on, to obtain a sense of public opinion. The commission should have resources to prepare background materials to inform the people of the applicant state about the history and significance of the Commonwealth and the rights and obligations of membership. If necessary, it should commission studies on the country’s legal, economic and social systems (to educate the Commonwealth about the potential new member and enable its communities to assess the eligibility of the applicant) – in a rudimentary form. Unless this is done, there is the danger that the Commonwealth could slide into debased standards, and lose both its attraction to the people of the Commonwealth and its own the reputation.

I(b). With the prospect of new applications this is the right time for renewed debate on the nature and future of the Commonwealth. The world has changed very significantly in recent decades. There has been a large growth of new regional and international organisations. What is the relevance of these developments for the Commonwealth? What will the Commonwealth gain from aspirations to become a universal organisation? What will be the effect of the admission of states without a history or understanding of the Commonwealth? These and other questions should be addressed in the first instance by a commission established jointly by Commonwealth governments and civil society. Its report should be disseminated widely and debated by the public.

II. This report makes it clear that Rwanda does not satisfy the test of Commonwealth values. There are considerable doubts about the commitment of the current regime to human rights and democracy. It has not hesitated to use violence at home or abroad when it has suited it. Consequently, its admission would send the signal, loud and clear, that the commitment of the governments of the Commonwealth countries to its values is shallow. We therefore suggest that the next CHOGM make no decision on the applicant other than to set up a procedure to examine Rwanda’s eligibility for membership and the consequences for the Commonwealth of expansion in its members. In consultation with Commonwealth civil society, it should set up the commission as proposed in recommendation I(a), to initiate this discussion. The commission should report within a year of its appointment. The report and recommendation should be the basis of negotiations with Rwanda, and Rwanda should be informed accordingly.

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* This article comprises the 'Executive Summary' of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's publication entitled Rwanda’s Application for Membership of the Commonwealth: Summary Report of a mission of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Zenawi, save Lake Koka and then save Africa

Environmentalism at home and abroad

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58963

cc M FranklinBefore Meles Zenawi starts campaigning for reparations from the West for climate change, perhaps he ought to start closer to home by offering compensation to the families affected by industrial pollution in Ethiopia’s Lake Koka, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam in this week’s Pambazuka News.

BLUSTER OF THE CON ARTISTS

Last week Ethiopia’s arch dictator was in tears – crocodile tears that is – over the unfair and shameful treatment of Africa by the heartless Western imperialists on the issue of global warming and climate change. Frothing at the mouth and brimming with moral indignation, the dictator threatened to go all out Gandhi on the West at the December climate change talks in Copenhagen. With sanctimonious and self-righteous rebuke, he railed:

‘If need be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of the continent… While we reason with everyone to achieve our objective we are not prepared to rubber stamp any agreement by the powers… We will use our numbers to delegitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position… Africa will field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all member states of the African Union… The key thing for me is that Africa be compensated for the damage caused by global warming. Many institutions have tried to quantify that and they have come up with different figures. The sort of median figure would be in the range of US$40 billion a year.’

Meles Zenawi’s sidekick on climate change, African Union chairman Jean Ping, (the long-time and one of the closest advisers of Omar Bongo, Gabon’s 42-year dictator who died recently) took an even harder line:

‘It is my expectation that such financial resources must be from public funds and must be additional to the usual overseas development assistance… What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above minimum unavoidable levels… We will therefore never accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter what levels of compensation and assistance are promised to us. ‘

THE MORAL PROFUNDITY OF TYRANTS: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL!

It is truly refreshing to hear words and phrases that signal latent moral awakening in the ‘conscience’ of tyrants. Use of such phrases and words as ‘not prepared to rubberstamp’ (in contrast to a rubberstamp parliament), ‘rape of a continent’ (in contrast to the rape of Ethiopia), ‘delegitimise’ (in contrast to delegitimising rigged elections), ‘walk out of negotiations’ (in contrast to walking opposition parties through make-believe negotiations), ‘compensation for damages’ (in contrast to compensation for damages to families of victims of extrajudicial killings, victims of excessive and unreasonable use of deadly force under colour of law and victims of illegal arrests and detentions) give new meaning to the expression, ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast.’ Mahatama Gandhi could not have been more proud of such resolute declarations of profound moral outrage against the wily Westerners who have been exploiting Africa for centuries.

Indeed as Gandhi taught, ‘Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.’ Therefore, never cooperate with the malevolent Western overlords on issues of fair play, equity, and certainly environmental justice! That is the essence of the bluster of a ‘walk out’ and ’delegitimisation’ of the Copenhagen climate talks. Gandhi argued that the only way to get the British to abandon their evil ways in South Africa and India was to actively resist their colonial rule through civil disobedience, particularly through a campaign of non-cooperation. He encouraged Indian workers, policemen, soldiers and civil servants to go on strike. He called for massive boycotts of public transportation and English-manufactured goods. Gandhi used the moral weapon of Satyagraha (satya, meaning ‘truth’ and agraha, meaning ‘holding firm to’) to campaign against the myriad crimes and abuses committed by the British colonial masters. He aim was to use ‘satyagraha to convert the wrongdoer, to awaken a sense of justice in him, to show him also that without the cooperation direct or indirect of the wronged, the wrongdoer cannot do the wrong intended by him.’

Remarkably and commendably, that is the intrinsic logic of the Zenawi’s outburst of moral outrage. By exposing the hypocritical West on climate change to the light of Truth and by threatening to visit moral condemnation upon them, they could be persuaded to change their evil ways. Indeed, by a resolute act of non-cooperation, the West could be held to account for its reckless abuse of nature and make Africans whole by paying them monetary damages. In short, the West could be named and shamed into doing right by Africa. But is the Zenawi’s pronouncement of moral outrage sincere and made in good faith? Or is it a veiled threat of naked political extortion?

BLOOD MONEY, CARBON MONEY AND THE SCRIPTURE-CITING DEVIL

Shakespeare wrote, ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.’ Or a villain shedding crocodile tears? The bluster about ‘walking out’ and ‘delegitimising’ the Copenhagen talks etc, is nothing more than a cynical and beguiling appeal to lofty moral virtues to guilt-trip and shakedown Western countries into paying billions of dollars every year as ‘blood money’. That is certainly the conclusion of the Economist magazine, which in its recent issue stated that the wrath of the African ‘leaders’ is aimed at:

‘…making the rich world feel guilty about global warming. Mr Meles has made it clear he is seeking blood money – or rather carbon money – that would be quite separate from other aid to the continent. If the cash were not forthcoming, the African Union (AU) might take a case to a court of arbitration and ask it to judge overall culpability for climate change. In a rare fit of African unity, it was decided at a recent flurry of leaders’ meetings that the United States, the European Union, Japan and others should pay the continent the tidy sum of US$67 billion a year, though it was unclear for how long.’

In the end, all of the climate change pontification is about African dictators extorting a $67 billion payola (hush money) every year to line their pockets. It has absolutely nothing to do with remedying the environmental degradation of Africa. It has everything to do with Africa’s tin pot dictators striking gold in a modern day El Dorado (also known as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Western donors, etc). They know there is a huge pot of glittering gold at the end of the climate change/global warming rainbow. Africa’s dictators are drooling – literally slobbering at the mouth and licking their chops – at the prospect of putting their grubby hands on that US$67 billion delicious golden pie and sinking their teeth into it.

SAVE LAKE KOKA FIRST AND THEN SAVE AFRICA

Let’s face hard facts: Ethiopia is facing an ecological disaster! Not from catastrophic climate change (that is macro-climatic changes resulting from variations in solar radiation, deviations in the Earth’s orbit, changes in greenhouse concentrations, etc), but from man-made causes. Ethiopia is facing an ecological catastrophe caused by deforestation, soil erosion, over-grazing, over-population, desertification and loss of biodiversity, and chemical pollution of its rivers and lakes. Hundreds of square miles of forest land and farmland are lost every year.

According to the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute[1], ‘Ethiopia loses up to 200,000 hectares of forest every year and warned that if the trend continues the country would lose all of its forest resources by the year 2020.’ Other data show that ‘between 1990 and 2005, Ethiopia lost 14 per cent of its forest cover (2,114,000 hectares) and 3.6 per cent of its forest and woodland habitat. If the trend continues, it is expected that Ethiopia could lose all of its forest resources in 11 years, by the year 2020.’[2] The wild animal population is disappearing at an alarming rate due to deforestation and loss of natural habitat, and hundreds of plant and animal species are facing imminent extinction.

Dr Gedion Getahun, Research Scientist at the Environmental Radioanalytical Chemistry in Mainz, Germany writes[3]:

‘According to the UN, Ethiopia’s forests are depleted, at present less than three per cent of the entire country is covered with trees… In Ethiopia, biodiversity is treated in very awful manner. The destruction of natural habitat as well as a threat to the flora and fauna and other biological resources diminish the economy of the country. This affects the country’s wealth and with it, the existence and the well being of the nation. ‘

The Lake Koka environmental disaster – a topic of special coverage by the Al Jazeera Network[4] – a few kilometres outside Ethiopia’s capital is only the tip of the iceberg of Ethiopia’s environmental nightmare. As one resident of the Lake Koka community put it[5]:

‘The main problem here is the water. People are getting sick. Everyone around here uses this water. There is no other water. Almost 17,000 people… come from 10 kilometres away and use this water. The water smells even if you boil it; it does not change the colour. It is hard to drink it. The people here have great potential and we are losing them, especially the children. I am upset but I don’t have the ability to do anything. I would if I could, but I can’t do anything.’

Another local resident lamented the polluted Lake Koka water in apocalyptic terms:

‘It is better to die thirsty than to drink this [Koka] water. We are drinking a disease. We told the local authorities our cattle and goats died due to this water, but nobody helped. We are tired of complaining.’

Nothing has been done to hold criminally accountable the polluters of Lake Koka, or ‘compensate for damages’ the people living in that community for the devastating health problems they continue to face from using the toxic water of the lake.

Almaz Mequanint, who has struggled for years to bring attention to the devastating environmental pollution caused by the Wonji/Shoa and Metehara sugar factories, wrote six years ago:

‘I feel helpless and in despair when I think of my whole family and the 100,000 voiceless residents who have been living around the sugar factories of Ethiopia…. I now suffer from asthma because of the air pollution at that time. My teeth are decayed and I have knee and other joint problems. My kids are suffering from tooth decay, cavities and staining.’[6]

Nothing has been done over the past six years to improve the health conditions of the tens of thousands of people who worked in the sugar factories or community residents, nor has any action been taken to ‘compensate them for the damages’ they suffered as a result of industrial pollution of criminal magnitude. Just this past week, a website was set up to call attention to the plight of these victims.[7]

Africa’s knights in shining armour should take care of business in their own backyards – lakes, rivers and factories – before mounting their steeds on a crusade to save Africa from global warming.

WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER

If truth force (Satyagrha) could be used against nasty Western rapists of Africa, there is no reason why it could not be used against the rapists of Ethiopia. Does it not logically follow that Ethiopians should ‘use their numbers to delegitimise’ any regime ‘that is not consistent with minimal positions’ under universally accepted standards of justice and international law such as protection of basic human rights, respect for the rule of law, free elections, free press, etc? Aren’t Ethiopians entitled to resist anyone who ‘threatens to (perpetuate) the rape of’ their country? Are they not entitled to ‘field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all’ the people against a one-man, one-party dictatorship? Is it not true that what is good for the goose is good for the gander?

Doesn’t it make more sense to save Lake Koka FIRST before saving the whole continent of Africa?

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* Alemayehu G. Mariam is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES
[1] http://www.geocities.com/akababi/ethiopia_loses_200.htm
[2] http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Ethiopia.htm
[3] http://www.geocities.com/akababi/gedion.htm
[4] http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2009/02/200922114211921697.html
[5] http://www.ecadforum.com/content/137.html
[6] http://www.newint.org/issue363/dirty.htm
[7] http://wsmppa.com/www.wsmppa.com/Welcome.html

Naomi Klein does reparations movement a disservice

Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/58970

cc Rele TompAn article by activist and writer Naomi Klein on the UN’s April conference on racism, which was recently published in Harpers Magazine, ‘does a disservice’ both to ‘movements for reparations and redress for crimes against people of African descent and for self determination for the Palestinian people’, Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno argue in this week’s Pambazuka News.

On its face, Naomi Klein’s article, Minority Death Match[1], does a disservice to both the movements for reparations and redress for crimes against people of African descent and for self determination for the Palestinian people. But, given her reputation as an anti-imperialist thinker and recent high-profile visit to Palestine, where she endorsed the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, we want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

It is no mean feat to publish an article in a corporate magazine that includes any reportage that exposes Israel’s lies. She reports well on the case for reparations. She provides an insightful narrative on aspects of the African reparations movement. She recognises the synergy of interests between the US, Israel and Europe. She points out that Obama betrayed black people by waffling on reparations and boycotting the UN’s anti-racist efforts in Geneva.

But the critical failures of the article sabotage her good intentions. At first glance, one might forgive the title ‘Minority Death Match’ as an editor’s attempt to sensationalise Klein’s material. Unfortunately, the theme of ‘Jews against Blacks’ – or more precisely ‘Blacks must choose between Jews and Palestinians’ recurs throughout Klein’s article. This theme takes different forms in Klein’s account of the April 2009 UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Geneva. But regardless of the form, the conclusion is the same: Ahmedinejad, Muslims and by implication Palestinians – not Israel, the US and other Western Countries – have primary responsibility to preventing the UN from holding a conference that would advance a pro-reparations/anti-racist agenda.

Here are the steps Klein takes to let Israel, US and Western imperialism off the hook.

First: She presents Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and main organiser of the Conference, as a naive champion of African peoples’ struggle against racism. Pillay, according to Klein, attempted to negotiate a shifting array of demands from the United States – most in direct conflict with pressure from Muslim countries – while a phalanx of pro-Israel pressure groups did their best to sink the gathering.

Yet, with the assistance of her lieutenants – none of whom were African or from the African diaspora or accountable to an African constituency – long before the Conference convened, Pillay capitulated to all the demands of the US. For example, Yuri Boychenko, Pillay’s right-hand man and chair of the Intergovernmental Working Group secured Muslim – including Iranian –capitulation to US demands. He told one of the authors of this article that the Obama Administration had nothing to fear from the endorsement of either the 2001 Programme of Action or the 2009 Consensus Document. The 2001 commitment to reparations was ‘vague’, Boychenko emphasised and, moreover, Obama could have easily signed the Consensus document with ‘conditions’ that would exclude the US from commitment to the 2001 programme on the grounds that the US never signed it in the first place.

Klein also neglects to mention Zionist influence within Pillay’s High Commission Office. For example, Pierre Hazan, a staff member of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, author of a pro-Israel book on the Six Day War and fellow of the Congressionally-funded US Institute of Peace, mocked the Durban Review Conference as ‘an immense ritual of collective atonement and social purification’.

While only a handful of European countries followed the lead of US and Israel, the threat of a wider boycott accomplished another objective. On 17 March, Conference organisers announced their attempt to appease Israel, the United States and their fence-sitting allies by revising the Draft Outcome Document. They removed all references to Israel as a perpetrator of racial discrimination, cut out any mention of the Palestinians’ Right to Self Determination and also excised all language related to reparations, any acknowledgement that the Transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity; and a proposal to strengthen the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. But fearing open rebellion from Non-Aligned Countries, African countries and other Islamic Countries – who repelled Zionist and US machinations to break their solidarity – Conference organisers balked at Obama’s final demand to totally renounce the hard-won Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) of 2001.

Second, Klein makes the superficial observation that there was a ‘synergy of interests between Ahmadinejad, US, Israel and Western Europe’. Here she embraces the ahistoric and false assumption that settler colonial states and Ahmadinejad all shared an equal stake in derailing a serious anti-racist agenda. While Ahmadinejad represents an oppressive regime, within the context of the history of colonialism and imperialism, he has both materially and politically, supported Palestinian liberation and other struggles for self-determination of African peoples. Also, this observation falsely implies an equal and independent status of each of these four forces. Although she recognises the stake of settler colonial regimes in rejecting reparations and other measures to rectify the crimes of slave trade etc, by equating Iran and the US, she obscures the main contradiction and provides an argument against solidarity among African, Palestinian and all people oppressed by settler colonial regimes.

Third, Klein fails to identify Israel as a settler colonial regime that is occupying Palestinian land and, in several places, equates anti-zionism and anti-semitism. This weakness in her understanding of Israel’s role in relation to Palestine and, historically, in support of oppressive regimes, is the most basic problem with her article.[2] She refuses to acknowledge that Zionism is racism. Instead, she hedges. First she states, ‘There is a strong argument to be made that Israel’s legal system…meets the international definition of apartheid’ (p. 59) And then she concludes the same paragraph with the Zionist red herring – that the 2001 Durban document, in spite of its explicit renunciation of anti-semitism and the holocaust, ‘carried an unmistakable whiff of denialism’. In the next paragraph, in an inexcusable display of victim-blaming, Klein blames the Islamic states for ‘upstaging African demands’ and giving the US government a perfect excuse to flee the scene.

But she contradicts herself because she has already recognised there was no level of appeasement the Obama Administration would accept. The very Islamic states she blames for upstaging African demands had allied with African countries on every issue and had given up their main demands for a repudiation of Islamophobia. As Obama has shown in his pattern of pandering to Wall Street, health insurance companies, and the US military establishment currently leading policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, he needs no excuse to sell out black and other oppressed people.

In her most extreme capitulation to the Zionist narrative, Klein excuses the two-year comprehensive campaign waged by Israel and its Zionist supporters against the UN Conference. She excuses it as an ‘illusory correlation’. According to Klein, ‘Zionists’ –which she sometimes uses interchangeably with ‘Jewish people’ were so traumatised by the anti-semitism at the 1st UN Conference in Durban, and the possibility that Israel might be treated like apartheid South Africa on the international stage, combined with the ‘shock of September 11’, that they acted irrationally when it came to the 2nd UN conference. Here she never mentions the creation and manipulation by the Israeli state and its US backers of this ‘illusory correlation’. The well-organised, military style organisation of Zionist activists that invaded the Conference and gloated over their disruption of any sincere discussion of racism is reduced to the presumably misguided actions of traumatised Jews. The well-documented Israeli campaign to protect its status as a settler colonial nation doesn’t seem to matter in Klein’s psychological framework.[3] In fact, Israel launched a campaign using similar tactics against the 2001 Conference in Durban.

And just to emphasise her denial of the critical geo-political role Zionism plays in maintaining settler colonialism in Israel and US hegemony in the Middle East, she implies that all the Zionist mobilisation against the UN Conference was about to fizzle for lack of a psychological enemy. (p. 62) Such psychological reductionism that conveniently echoes the Zionist narrative leads Klein to conclude that Ahmadinejad saved the day for the Zionists and others opposed the UN’s anti-racist agenda – at least in the PR arena. (It is telling that she misreports the order: The Zionist activist clowns disrupted Ahmedinejad’s speech, at least ten minutes before some of the European representatives walked out.)

Again, Klein succumbs to victim blaming. As she must know, corporate media echo and reinforce the dominant narrative. Whether they define the enemy as ‘communists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘anti-semites’, ‘welfare queens’ or ‘criminals’ – they are never at a loss to demonise oppressed people and find justifications for perpetuating the status quo.

Without question the corporate media won the propaganda war over the UN conference. But that should hardly be the main take-home message for progressives. Klein concludes that after the brouhaha over Ahmedinejad, the press left and ‘inside the main Assembly Hall low-level bureaucrats were delivering meaningless speeches to an empty room.’ (p.64) This statement, along with the characterisation of the Black Liberation Movement as merely a ‘civil rights movement’, is arrogant, insulting and myopic. Like the corporate press Klein often criticises, this article succeeds in ignoring the real accomplishments of the Conference.

At least 145 UN member states endorsed The Outcome Document by consensus. The very first paragraph reaffirmed the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action as it was adopted at the World Conference against Racism in 2001. Moreover, delegate after delegate reiterated the praise that the South African Foreign Minister and spokesperson for the Africa Group gave to the DDPA:

‘The DDPA is viewed as an inspiration that would define the 21st century as the century that restored to all their human dignity. It provides a solid and concrete basis for every country to develop its own measures to combat all forms of racism, and to strengthen the protection regime for victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.’

In the end, only 10 countries – all European or European-settler States – boycotted the DRC. At least 17 State delegates[4] expressed disapproval of the boycott in their official statements. Despite the diplomatic language, they clearly denounced the boycotting countries for their lack of commitment to overcoming racism. More than 100 remaining delegates implicitly criticised the boycott orchestrated by Israel and the U.S.

Yet, pressure from the US and Israel did succeed in preventing serious strengthening of the 2001 DDPA. For example, most delegations from Africa and the Africa diaspora had been working for the DRC to adopt measures to provide effective tools for implementing a commitment to reparations[5] and establishing a ‘racial equality index’ and timetables by which specific progress could be assessed. They also called for a Permanent Forum for People of African Descent, not simply a ‘panel of experts’. But in the end, perhaps in order to prevent the majority of European countries from following the boycotters, the Outcome Document was silent on these issues. Moreover, Ban Ki-Moon and Navi Pillay explicitly repudiated Ahmedinejad’s speech which had affirmed Palestine’s right to self-determination. Pillay admitted in her press conference on 24 April that she believed her denunciation of Iran was the price the EU demanded not to join the boycott. Except for Argentina, the 15 countries that explicitly denounced Iran were all European.[6]

Some 18 countries – none of them European – explicitly supported the Palestinian people’s right to self determination and criticised to varying degrees, Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.[7] Most of these, plus Azerbaijan and Pakistan, were among the 15 that called for stronger measures against Islamophobia. Finally, 16 countries – all from the Global South (except Japan) – expressed concern for protecting migrants against racist attacks and the final Outcome document included protections for migrants that most European countries had opposed.[8] In sum, about half the delegates took progressive stands in their speeches on the most controversial issues of the Conference. Their stands demonstrate the endurance of North-South/oppressor-oppressed relations.

Israel is a bastion of ‘European civilization’, a settler colonial state, on the edge of the African continent. To survive as a Jewish State – by definition, an apartheid state – Israel is perpetually consolidating and expanding its narrative that turns the reality of its racist colonial project on its head. The global hegemony of US-led imperialism is cracking. US and European complicity with Israel demonstrates how white supremacist states will continue to join forces, and viciously attack when their positions and privileges are threatened.

The UN’s Durban Review Conference once again dramatised a lesson many learned long ago: Appeasing settler colonial, neo-colonial and imperialist powers only emboldens them. The Palestinian Authority and other Muslim States (including Iran) agreed to a ‘consensus’ document that omitted any mention of Israel or Palestine. The African and Caribbean States signed onto a ‘consensus’ document that omitted mention of reparations. But the US never compromised in its unconditional support for Israel and opposition to reparations. Hopefully those NGO’s and others who argued, ‘Let’s just focus on our issues. The Palestine/Israeli conflict is just a distraction from the real struggle against racism’ learned from Israel’s campaign to destroy the Conference.

Just as the US, Europe and others bribed by them are united in their project to maintain their hegemony, African and African diaspora people, Asian and indigenous people – all colonised and formerly colonised people – need unity.

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* Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno both attended the UN Conference against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva, April 2009 as part of the United against Racism delegation.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] Harper’s Magazine. September 2009. pp. 53-67
[2] Klein’s refusal to identify Israel as a settler colonial regime in the widely-distributed Harpers article is especially perplexing in light of her 29 June 2009 speech at the Friends School in Ramallah. There, where her audience was much more critical of Israel, she explicitly explained why she thought Israel was ‘settler colonial’ project.
[3] See http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/the-facts-how-israel-orchestrated-the-real-geneva-%E2%80%98hate-fest%E2%80%99-against-black-and-brown-people/ for documentation of Israel’s two-year campaign to torpedo the UN Conference in Geneva.
[4] Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Organization of Islamic Councils, Indonesia, Iran, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Uruguay. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Navi Pillay and a number of others explicitly criticized the boycott.
[5] Twelve countries explicitly advocated for Reparations: Angola, Barbados, Cuba, Guyama, Haiti, Iran, Jamaica, Libya, Namibia, Suriname, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Many others suggested that former colonial countries had the responsibility to ease poverty, forgive debt and assist in the economic development of the Global South.
[6] Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxenburg, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
[7] Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, League of Arab States, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Palestine (PLO), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates.
[8] Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Ecuador, Greece, Haiti, Honduras, Japan, Jordan, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania and Turkey.

Buganda’s Uganda or Uganda’s Buganda?

Okello Oculi

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/58967

On 11 September 2009, it was reported that 24 people had died from angry protests by supporters of the king of Buganda, Kabaka Ronald Mutebi, for what they considered a sleight to the dignity of their monarch by the ‘national’ government. President Yoweri Museveni had dared to limit the movements of the kabaka within his kingdom. Official figures tend to underestimate the real quantity of casualties inflicted by security forces. Suppressing the image of the government as a murderer its own citizens becomes more important than acknowledging the human dignity of the victims by reporting their death with transparency. We can assume that government forces killed a larger number of protesters.

The tragic deaths could have been prevented by Uganda’s political, religious and social leaders, the Commonwealth and the peer review mechanism of the African Union. We can take a brief look at each site of possible intervention.

To start with the Commonwealth, we must recall that Emeka Anyaoku, the secretary general, got Commonwealth heads of governments to form from among themselves a select group that would intervene in the affairs of a member country to correct a condition of bad governance there. Anyaoku reports that he studied Latin and Greek both at a private secondary school in eastern Nigeria and at the University of Ibadan. We can only speculate the effect of this learning experience on the brain and disposition of a child whose mother tongue emerged from tropical forest ecology. I assume that the slogan 'we shall overcome' would become for him 'we must triumph', a determination to be creative under severely challenging circumstances.

Reading Emeka Anyaoku’s autobiography, one is constantly exposed to the man’s ability to turn difficulty into climbed mountains. It is out of failed governance in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Pakistan, Gambia, apartheid South Africa and other Commonwealth countries that he proposed to his bosses the need for a mechanism that would enable them to intervene in member states to ensure that principles that are dear to the body are honoured in practice. The crisis that led to the tragic deaths in Uganda was planted as a time-bomb by British colonial administrators, and should have assumed urgent priority by the Commonwealth from 1962. That it exploded before memories of a summit of Commonwealth leaders held in Kampala had faded from its streets is condemnable evidence of an organisation that is prepared to toast its leaders while sitting on an active political volcano. In 1966 its host, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s federal prime minister, would be murdered before all those who had attended its summit in Lagos had arrived back in their country’s capitals.

NEPAD’s (New Partnership for Africa's Development) 'Peer Review' mechanism has slower responses than that of the Commonwealth. They use study and research teams to ascertain levels of bad governance before recommending corrective measures. A country must, however, volunteer to be reviewed. Uganda has done so and its ailment has been a long drawn out malaise which should have been tackled.

And what is this ailment which Uganda’s leaders themselves have not been able to sort out since independence in 1962? Milton Obote came into Uganda’s politics from a tradition of what E.E. Evans-Pritchard called 'balanced antagonism', i.e., nobody is allowed to accumulate power and use it over others. If you use a verbal insult against another person you earn an instant counter-insult. Buganda’s monarchism was rooted in the power accumulated around the Kabaka and his chiefs. In Obote’s republican Lango culture, power was dispersed to every homestead. Just as the Baganda could not tolerate the power of Uganda’s prime minister being higher than that of their Kabaka, Obote’s supporters could not tolerate the notion of a supreme king that superseded the nation’s prime minister. Here was the making of a constitutional crisis.

The arrival of Museveni added to this political chemistry that of the legacy of the ‘Blood Lakes region’ that had reigned in Burundi and Rwanda. Cattle herders (whom Taban Lo Liyong once referred to as 'human ticks who are parasites on cattle') used techniques of armed, verbal and social violence against agricultural peoples to extort labour and grains from them. In Burundi and Rwanda the techniques of verbal and social violence had provoked so much hatred from the agricultural Hutu peoples that Belgian social engineers had easily channelled it into horrendous massacres against the Tutsi. In Uganda while the Bahima supported the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), the Bairu supported the opposition Democratic Party. A pogrom against the Bahima was probably prevented by the British rigging the 1962 elections in favour of the Obote-led UPC. The same British colonialists had also gotten Belgian colonial officials to round up peasants from Rwanda and export them to work as cheap labour on farms owned by Buganda’s chiefs. Such labour quickly got treated with an ideology of contempt. That contempt was subsequently splashed over all ethnic groups from western Uganda. Museveni’s presidency has suffered from that legacy of contempt by the people of Buganda. Obote had benefited from a residual goodwill across Buganda out of a long pre-colonial record of both Bunyoro Kitara and Buganda making periodic alliances with Lango to fight each other. Museveni from the onset lacked that social capital. When Museveni refers to rioters in Kampala as 'the criminals', he is fighting for a contempt high ground in the same way as Kabaka Mutebi refusing to take his phone calls.

This legacy has come to haunt politics in Uganda. In 1966 Obote’s troops under one Colonel Idi Amin attacked Kabaka Mutesa’s palace and drove him into exile in London. The country would pay an enormous prize for tickling Idi Amin’s appetite for the use of the gun to get and keep political power. It is a putrid legacy which the African Union and the Commonwealth should have already intervened over with the necessary creativity. Failure to do so continues to leave a horizon of more violence. Paradoxically, Nigeria is one possible model to borrow from. In 1966 and 1967 explosions of pogroms against Igbos all across northern Nigeria were linked to Igbos from a 'republican' cultural legacy being seen to wish to humiliate and dominate a people with ancient ruling aristocracies. The aristocrats have, however, to protect their future by working to defend their share of power in Nigeria at large through muscling for an effective presence in all government agencies and the economy. The constitutional requirements that federal permanent secretaries and the cabinet must represent from each state and that each federal government agency and top executives of political parties must reflect Nigeria’s 'federal character' are creative efforts to achieve this goal.

Another example that the Commonwealth would have aided Buganda to benefit from was the record of Serete Khama assuming the leadership of anti-colonial nationalism in Botswana. It could be said that the political class in Buganda never recovered from their squandering of Kabaka Edward Mutesa’s historic opportunity to exploit the stupidity of British colonial officials when they deported him to Britain because he rejected Uganda joining a proposed east African federation in which European settlers in Kenya would be dominant. The countrywide sentiment around him as a nationalist fighter was wasted by a call for the secession of Buganda from a looming independent Uganda.

Museveni on the other hand would benefit from being helped to abandon the temptation to hold onto the old ethnic formula of turning other Ugandans into larger oppressed Bairu or Hutus. It is a formula which, as the head of the Anglican church has said, leaves the country weak and bitterly divided along ethnic, religious and economic inequality lines. Outsiders, including Sudan, Libya, Egypt and Turkey with imperial ambitions would find it easy-picking. It is a situation in which Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem would have urged all pan-Africanists to intervene to turn Africa's intellectuals, civil society and political and military leaders away from fascistic visions that can only lead to collective slavery under external powers.

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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.

Kenya: Follow the spirit of the law

L. Muthoni Wanyeki

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/58972

We may be mad at the Kenyan parliament for many things. The outrageous remuneration the House has accorded itself. Its refusal to stand up for justice for the families of the dead and displaced during last year’s political crisis. And, just last week, its decision that we should pay for what was already stolen from us.

There are some things that are common sense and obvious, manipulation of the letter of the law to go against the spirit of the law notwithstanding. A supposed legality ensuing from an illegality cannot hold. It is outrageous that, at independence, the Government of Kenya had to compensate British settlers for land it wished to reclaim. It is equally outrageous that, today, Kenyan taxpayers will have to foot the bill to reclaim what the Government of Kenya was meant to be holding in trust for us and failed to do.

Frankly, those in public office at the time – who benefitted from the irregular allocations of the Mau forest in the first instance – should be the ones to pay the compensation. And it beggars belief that any of them still in possession of those allocations should have the audacity to stand up demanding compensation themselves. This is how twisted we have become. Again, this state of affairs is, in no small part, due to the manipulation of the letter of the law to utterly betray the spirit of the law.

And so, last week, parliament stood up for the spirit of the law in its insistence that the President had overstepped his powers with the re-appointment of the head of the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) and his two deputies. In doing so, it came down squarely on the side of public opinion – and earned itself accolades for having done so.

The question is what this means in terms of the letter of the law. It has been argued – and, in fact, was argued during the parliamentary debate – that our Constitution is supreme. Our Constitution gives the President the powers over all public appointments. So it apparently should not matter that the President has assented to legislation that effectively delegates some of those powers. And that the letter of that legislation – in this case, the legislation establishing the KACC – should not matter either (especially when it was explicit only about the appointment process, not the re-appointment process). Which just goes to show the extent to which hairs were split on the matter, re-appointment simply meaning ‘appointment again,’ as pointed out by the parliamentarian from Gichugu, dictionary conveniently in hand.

But it has also been argued – and was argued during the parliamentary debate – that parliament’s breach of the letter of the law was entirely more fundamental. That parliament’s role is that of making law. Full stop. And that is the judiciary’s role – and solely the judiciary’s role – to interpret the law. In effect, the question is whether or not parliament breached the principle of separation of powers. As it has arguably done before, with respect to the role of the Executive in relation to the powers accorded parliamentarians in the legislation establishing the Constituency Development Fund. There the contention is that again, parliament’s role is to exercise oversight over the Executive – not to assume Executive roles itself.

However happy we might all be with the vote in the House, this is a concern that we would do well not to try to argue away legalistically. As we all know, legalese sometimes takes us nowhere except round in circles – especially when the law is being used to essentially justify bad behaviour or score political points – just because it can be so used. There is a principle at stake and we would do well to surface and respond to it.

But, in doing so, we would also do well to surface and respond to the limited options available to the House, as representatives of the people (at least theoretically and sometimes, sometimes in practice) when either the Executive or the Judiciary behaves badly. When the Executive is told it’s behaving badly and refuses to respond, what is the House to do? When the Judiciary’s past decisions, relating to the bad behaviour of the Executive, make the House unwilling to put its faith in it as a control on the Executive, what is the House to do? Withhold approval for expenditure by the same? Is that really all that it can do?

Which brings us back to the core motivations behind the drive for constitutional reform. The desire to end the imperial presidency. The desire for real separation of powers. The desire for real checks and balances among the three arms of government. It is clear that the letter of the law (the current constitution included) is not sufficient in any of these respects. But it is equally clear that those involved in all three arms of government are well aware of this. Hence having a constitutional reform process underway. A public service reforms process. A judicial reforms process. And so on and so forth. It thus behoves those in all three arms of government, especially at this critical point in our country’s history, to act always – and be seen to act – according to the spirit of the law.

Accountability is actually a straightforward concept. Children learn not to do wrong due to their knowledge that there will be consequences for the same – from their parents or their teachers or whatever the case may be. Adult liberal democrats learn, at the very least, that corruption is an opportunity cost. Adult Marxists learn that the world works on dialectics – action, reaction, synthesis. There is no arena of life where there is no notion of consequence. None.

The President is now paying a fairly humiliating price for having not just done the right thing from the start. The humiliation is a consequence – and an utterly unnecessary one had he just gracefully backed down. Ditto the head of the KACC and his two deputies – who had every individual power to say to the President: Thank you for the confidence, we appreciate it but we ask that you follow the letter and spirit of the law to enable us to resume work with full legitimacy. We have to get over this idea that we must hang on to every bad decision for dear life – using the law to try to do so. Because, in doing so, we only erode everyone’s adherence to the law.

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* This article first appeared in The East African.
* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Support the mandate for women's rights at the Human Rights Council

Faiza Mohamed

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58980

Dear sisters and brothers,

This is an urgent call for action.

Informal consultations on the resolution re-eliminating laws that discriminate against women have concluded here (Geneva) at the Human Rights Council (HRC). The resolution must be tabled by the end of the day tomorrow in order to be considered by the full Human Rights Council next week; unfortunately very few African member states have been engaged in the discussion. We know there is a full programme at the HRC and that some missions don't have the capacity to stretch across many important issues. However, not participating in this important discussion to create a new mechanism to accelerate the pace of change of laws that discriminate against women is sending a message that this issue is not of importance to Africa.

Mauritius has engaged positively, but otherwise Egypt and South Africa are opposing, originally on the basis that an expert without local knowledge would not be able to tell whether a law discriminates against women or not. Now their arguments appear to centre around the claim that mechanisms already exist to deal with this issue, although the mandate specified in the resolution is for activities actually building on previous work and adds value to existing mechanisms. No other African member state has spoken at the meetings. We understand South Africa volunteered to act as coordinator to the African group on this issue, which others accepted including for reasons of capacity. That is not an optimistic sign. If consensus is not reached, it may well go to a vote.

Your immediate action is therefore very critical to encourage our governments to join in support of this new mandate. We urge you to press them to co-sponsor based on their commitments within the African Union (AU) and particularly through the AU's gender policy. I have attached relevant excerpts of this to support our arguments. I also attach a non-paper from the ICJ (International Court of Jurists) with some arguments, particularly on duplication.

South Africa has also presented a procedural issue. It is asserting that the idea of creating a special rapporteur on eliminating laws that discriminate against women was an initiative at CWS (New York) in 2005 and so with the Beijing +15 review coming up that is where it should stay. However, there are no moves at CSW to have a resolution and indeed CSW pushed it across to the HRC on the basis that CSW has no special procedures, whereas HRC does. Women's rights must not be made part of a political tennis match, nor must our needs be ghettoised in a place reserved for 'women' (for two weeks of the year) rather than mainstreamed in the Human Rights Council, the main body within the UN dealing with matters of human rights.

In any case, CSW has no special procedures and member states at that time expressed concern about having such a mechanism at CSW; in discussions, the suggestion was that the idea be transferred to its rightful place in Geneva. In addition, the servicing of CEDAW was transferred from NY (DAW) to Geneva (OHCHR) precisely in order to better integrate women's rights into human rights. The idea is to promote system-wide coherence within the UN system by integrating all mechanisms and bodies working on human rights under one office and to have them report to the council.

Please write urgently and in large numbers to the following representatives and encourage them to support the proposed resolution when it is tabled in council next week. This would send a strong message that women across Africa are watching what their representatives are doing (or failing to do) in their name. Most African governments have expressed support for this idea, they are just not speaking up. Please urge them to do so immediately. The best way to show their support would be by contacting the sponsor, Mexico, to offer their co-sponsorship. The sooner they do this the better. Time is running out and we are on the brink of a real concrete tool we can use to achieve at least legal equality for women, an essential first step. I know you will be swamped with work on other issues so I've taken the liberty of drafting a short letter which you may wish to use or adapt.

A list of the missions is attached (and the council members are provided below). I have already given personal contact info for some people who are key on influencing this. Great if you can target them.

Thanks and please give me a blind copy.

Best,

Faiza

Contact details are provided through this link:

http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600582E34/(httpPages)/8CEC446B720477DA80256EF8004CB68C?OpenDocument&expand=1&count=10000

South Africa
Sybil Matlhako
matlhako@bluewin.ch
(She is very against setting up the manadate at the HRC)

Djibouti
His Excellency Mr. Mohamed Siad Doualeh
Ambassador
mission.djibouti@djibouti.ch

Zambia
His Excellency Mr. Darlington Mwape
Ambassador
mission.zambia@ties.itu.int

Angola
Mr. Paulo Vazdac
Paulovazdac@hotmail.com
ambmission.angola@bluewin.ch

Madagascar
His Excellency Mr. Guy Rajemison Rakotomaharo
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
ambamadsuisse@bluewin.ch

Mauritius
His Excellency Mr. Shree Baboo Chekitan Servansing
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
mission.mauritius@ties.itu.int

Burkina Faso
His Excellency Mr. Prosper Vokouma
Ambassador
mission.burkina@ties.itu.int

Cameroon
His Excellency Mr. Anatole Fabien Marie Nkou
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
mission.cameroun@bluewin.ch

Gabon
His Excellency Mr. Guy Blaise Nambo-Wezet
Ambassador
mission.gabon@ties.itu.int

Nigeria
His Excellency Mr. Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
mission-nigeria@bluewin.ch

Ghana
Ms. Mercy Yvonne Amoah
Minister
Deputy Permanent Representative
Chargé d'affaires a.i.
chancery@ghana-mission.ch

Senegal
His Excellency Mr. Babacar Carlos Mbaye
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
mission.senegal@ties.itu.int

Non-council memebrs
Kenya
Botswana
Zimbabwe
Ethiopia

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

Kenya: Update on the plight of activists Samson Ojiayo and Gordon Kamau Wang'oe

Beatrice G. Kamau - Social Reform Centre (SOREC)

2009-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58954

On 18 September I went to Industrial Area Prison to see Gordon Kamau Wang'oe and I think it is important that I share with you this. We talked and he narrated to me how they were arrested with Ojiayo at Ambassador Bus stop where they wanted to board a matatu (taxi) after attending a bunge la mwananchi at Jevenjee garden. When he asked the officers to identify themselves they grabbed them and pushed them into waiting vehicle. They then switched the volume of music full blast as they ordered them to stoop down. They were taken to an open field in Ngara in what looked like a school. He was removed from the car where they frisked him and took all his belonging which included a wallet that had fifteen thousand shillings. He was then laid on a pillow and a gun pointed on his head. They informed him that they were creating a scene of crime. The Abductors/police wanted to know if he could raise one million in an hour. He was told to use his phone to call and he called his friend Mr. Ngunjiri and told him he wanted the money to buy a tender. He called again to find out if Ngunjiri had found the money. When Ngunjiri asked him if the tender could wait until tomorrow he informed him if he dosnt get the tender it could cost him his survival.

They also turned to Ojiayo and asked him what he does and he informed them that he was a human rights activist and if they were genuinely arresting them to take them to a police station and book them in the OB. He was told to shut up or his head will be blown too.

They then bundled them back to the vehicle and drove them for sometime. They said they would take them to Karen and kill them. When they asked what they had done answered that they wanted them dead. 'mumetusumbua sana' (you have troubled us a lot) later they packed at a place where Kamau came to discover later that it was Gigiri police station parking. Ngunjiri called again and said he had two hundred thousand and wanted to know if they could take that and wait for the rest of the money in the morning. Kamau asked them how they wanted the money to be delivered and they asked him if he had a wife which he answered to the affirmative. They said the money could be delivered to the wife and then they could direct her how to get the money to them.

It was then that there was a message coming in from the Radio call they were holding and they all moved aside and listened and discussed. Kamau and Ojiayo were in the car with the driver. They later came back removed Kamau from the car and took him to the police station. It is then that he realised that they had been operating from the parking of the Gigiri police station from the time the car stopped.

The following morning he was picked by different police officers who took him to Central police station and he was informed that he will be charged at 2.00 pm. It is only when he met the Human rights Lawyer Hon. Muite that he was told that he was charged with being in possession of Bhang (marijuana).

Several questions arise from this report.

1. With the increase of kidnapping cases in the country, are the police the ones carrying them out?
2. Is it possible to trace the arresting officers and investigate this allegetions?
3. Can we trust the police?
4. How did the arresting know that the activist had marijuana?
5. What became of Kamau's money?
6. Who can answer this questions?
7. How safe are Kenyans if the law enforcers can abduct?
8. How safe are human rights activists?

Friends and colleagues, this is very disturbing. Can anyone there try to unravel this mess?



Beatrice G. Kamau

Executive Director

Social Reform Centre (SOREC)

Tanzania: Loliondo report of findings

FEMACT

2009-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58956

FEMACT LOLIONDO FINDINGS
19th -21st August 2009
FEMINIST ACTIVIST COALITION (FEMACT)


1.0 Background information
Over the Last three months, acts of unconceivable evil were perpetrated through an eviction operation against indigenous pastoralists in Loliondo. Loliondo is one of the three Divisions of the Ngorongoro District situated in the Arusha Region in Northern Tanzania. The Ngorongoro District Covers an area of about 14037 square Kilometres. Stretching across some 8,300 sq km, is the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, established in 1959 and governed by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority, and the rest is the Loliondo Game Control Area consisting of the Sale and Loliondo Divisions.

The eviction conducted by the Tanzania police Field Force Unit was supposedly an act to eliminate the pastoralists from the hunting block allocated to an OBC known as Ortello Business Cooporation in 1992. The pastoralists had allegedly invaded the private hunting block as well as degraded the environment in the respective area. The evictions were thus aimed at returning them back to their supposed villages and save the environment in one of the vital forests of the Game Control area.

The malicious and ruthless operation to evict the maasai communities was alleged to have affected eight Villages of the Loliondo division. The alleged villages were left in unimaginable distress and utter poverty. Among other inhuman acts such as rape and torture, the Loliondo communities are alleged to have lost their properties and loved ones. It was alleged that more than two hundred Maasai bomas were totally burnt; women were raped; more than 3000 people left homeless without food and other social basic needs and more than 50,000 cattle were left with no grass and water.
Due to the spreading of this information especially from pastoralists’ Civil Society Organisations and contrary information from government agencies, a group of activist Civil Society Organisations under the FemAct network in Dar es Salaam took the initiative of conducting a painstaking investigation on the matter. Following the latter, the FemAct secretariat teamed up with the Pastoralists’ Network to put in order a two-day fact-finding mission which resulted to this account.

2.0 Objectives of the investigation
The investigation team was comprised of seven representatives of the FemAct network from Dar es salaam, three pastoralist CSOs from Arusha one based in Loliondo and four media persons. The FemAct representatives included FORDIA, HakiArthi, LEAT, LHRC, TAMWA, TGNP and WILAC. The pastoralist CSOs included UCRT, PINGOS and NGONET. The investigation team arrived in Loliondo on Wednesday the 19th day of August 2009 with the following objectives:

1. The team aimed at establishing the legal Status of the Villages and that of Ortello Business Corporation.
2. The team aimed at accessing the legitimacy of the evictions and the means and procedure followed.
3. The team intended to access the extent of damage caused by the eviction as well as to identify immediate solutions and fate of the villagers.
4. The prosecution of cases if any found.
3.0 Courtesy Visit to the District Commissioner’s Office

On Thursday the 20th day of August 2009, the Investigation Team passed by the District commissioner’s office as a matter of courtesy. To the team’s amazement, the Ngorongoro District commissioner Mr. Elias Wawa Lali gave the team a four hours presentation where he briefed the team of the ongoing situation in his district.
Mr Wawa Lali started by giving a brief history of the problem where he alleged that the source of the conflict in Loliondo stems from overlapping legislations. Mr Wawa Lali noted that the 1959 regulation establishing the Ngorongoro Conservation area and the Loliondo Game Control Area overlaps with the 1975 legislation that establishes villages and community villages. The Latter gives the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism ownership and overall mandate over the Game Control area and the former gives the villages the power to enter contracts with any investor interested in investing in the village. Mr. Lali argued that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism allocated the Game Control Area to the OBC without paying due regard to the village authorities and hence the current blows.

With regard to the eviction operation, the District Commissioner alleged that the maasai communities are being evicted from the area in conflict due to the environmental importance of the respective area. He pointed out that, the area in dispute is a vital forest for the sustainability of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti National Park as well as the entire ecosystem. Mr Wawa Lali claimed that the area in conflict is the only place with a water source and also acted as a buffer zone, a production area for animals as well as the animal migration corridor. He add that by virtue of his position as the District Commissioner, he is obliged to enforce and ensure the implementation of the law as well as to protect the Natural resources for the country’s best interests.

Mr. Wawa Lali claimed that the maasai communities are depleting the environment by cutting down trees in order to push away the Arab investor. He alleged that the maasai population and their livestock have been increasing over the years and currently they cannot be carried by the land in conflict. Mr. Lali observed that the increase in population and live stock is a danger not only to the ecosystem but also the entire existence of the wild beasts. Subsequently, the eviction of the maasai from the alleged area in conflict was a necessity.

Mr Lali assured the FemAct team that the Loliondo evictions were legal and were carried out in a subtle way paying due regard to Human Rights. Mr Lali asserted that the communities were given due notice to peacefully depart from the land in conflict but they did not respond accordingly. He noted that after endless cues, he gave what he referred to as a legitimate command to evict the pastoralists from the respective area. The District Commissioner affirmed that the eviction took place from the 4th day of July 2009 to the 6th day of July 2009. He declared that the evictions started from Orelia village followed by Kalkakamoo and Girgiri. Mr Lali emphasized that the eviction operation was fair and paid due regard to human rights. He noted that the Police field force unit first evacuated all women and children and ensured that all persons with their belongings left the area before burning the Bomas. Mr Lali stressed that the Bomas were only burnt so as to prevent the communities from resettling in the same Bomas after the eviction. When asked about the alleged rape cases and other inhuman acts during the eviction, Mr. Lali asserted that all those were false accusations and misrepresentation twisted by the pastoralist CSOs on the ground.

After the detailed account of the evictions, Mr. Lali assured the FemAct team that all that has been heard on the Loliondo evictions is nothing but missinformation. He alleged that the pastoralists CSOs were not only responsible for misinforming the media but they also incited the maasai communities to continue depleting the environment and disobey the eviction order. Mr Lali insisted that the CSOs actions were influenced by political interests of some of their members wanting to become political leaders in the coming elections.

Apart from resting his case on pastoralists CSOs, the District Commissioner alleged that the media people went to the extent of setting bushes to flames in order to portray that the Loliondo evictions were still ongoing. He observed that whereas the evictions only lasted three days, there were TV programs aired two weeks latter declaring the continuation of the evictions. Mr. Lali condemned such audacious deceitful acts and urged the FemAct team to go prove the above allegations for themselves and inform the nation of the ongoing misinformation.

With regard to contracts entered between the village council and the Ortello Business Corporation, Mr Lali stated that the respective contracts were valid and legally entered between the two parties by mutual consent and understating. He assured the FemAct team that the villages benefited from the contracts and their annual income was duly paid by the company. He said that initially the villages earned three million Tanzanian shillings but as of last year (2008) they earned twenty five million and the Soitsambu village earned fifty million Tanzanian shillings. The District Commissioner added that apart from the latter income the villages have been able to receive education assistance from the OBC. Mr. Lali said that approximately 60 children from the Loliondo villages were being educated by Ortello Business Corporation. Mr. Lali went on to enlighten the FemAct team that the question of education to massasi children is a question of great concern. He said that his office has been force to intervene and forcefully recruit children so as to provide them with the basic primary education. Mr Lali also gave an example of one child who ran to the Police car during the operation asking for help so as to secure education.

Giving his blessings to the FemAct team to continue with their mission, the District Commissioner assured the team that the eviction operations were stopped and currently they only arrest people who are caught cutting down trees and depleting the environment. He said that they had so far arrested seven people on the latter charges. The district commissioner urged the FemAct team to go affirm his words and help his office clear the alleged accusations against it.

3.1 Observation points from the District commissioner’s presentation.
Throughout Mr. Lali’s presentation, great reference was made to the Committee on Peace and Security as well as the Committee on Political Affairs. Mr.Lali gave orders of the eviction depending on the decisions of the two committees and made reference to a chain of meetings held with the two committees before the eviction. According to Mr. Lali, the political committee whose main role is to ensure the implementation of the ruling party’s policies is the one with the upper hand and the capacity to give him orders. Mr. Lali declared that most of the matters pertaining to the Game Control Area are surely beyond his command and his hand were tied. Apart from the above mentioned committees, Mr Lali referred to two Taskforces from both the regional and national level formed to address the environmental issue in Loliondo. Mr.Lali referred to a meeting held on the 20th of June 2009 by the committees and the Regional Taskforce with an aim of evaluating the environmental status in Loliondo. Whereas Mr.Lali made reference to these Taskforces, he did not disclose their decisions or responsibilities. It was also clear from our observation that the operation was being conducted without clear reference to any particular laws and that the normal law procedures were not followed. Further the institutions responsible with delivery of justice such as courts were not involved in giving orders for eviction and demolition of people’s properties. Hence all acts were determined administratively through the office of the DC and RC.

4.0 Investigation Team’s Field Findings
After the encounter with the District commissioner, the FemAct team began its fact-finding mission in the Loliondo Villages. In one and a half day, the team managed to visit four out of the eight Loliondo villages as well as the Ortello Bussiness Corporation camp site. The team visited the Ololosokwan, Soitsambu, Olerien-Magaiduru and Arash villages and came up with the following findings.
Generally, the team established that it was true that there were ruthless eviction operations conducted in the Loliondo villages. Contrary to the District Commissioner’s claims, the investigation team came across testimonies and evidence of despicable despicable acts. The team came across women who had undergone miscarriages, rape, loss of children and other properties including food and shelter. Men who were chained beaten and humiliated in front of their families, those who had lost thousands of livestock among other properties and those who were imprisoned for no apparent reasons. Generally speaking, the maasai communities in the Loliondo villages are internally displaced persons. They have no land to settle, no shelter, no food, no water for even their livestock, no clothing or any other form of social services.

Above all, the maasai communities are highly traumatised and need sociological support. Due to the callous and malicious nature of the evictions, the maasai communities have remained terrified and always fearful. When the investigation team arrived in the Olerien-Magaiduru village, some of the villager started running thinking the Field Force Unit was back to harass them. A few members of the team who went to see a woman who had undergone a miscarriage also encountered resistance from the lady whose mother affirmed that she was scared thinking they were part of the evicting officers. The team also received complaints from men who complained that their wives have become hysterical and time and again collect themselves and bust out into tears.

The team also confirmed that it is not true that journalists had been setting bushes to flames so as render the continued burning of bomas. The Investigation team found more than two freshly burnt bomas in the Arash Village around olchoroibor sub village.

The investigation team also established a close link between the police conducting the evictions and Ortello Business Corporation and that the evictions were aimed at protecting the Corporation and clearing the fields for hunting. Apart from receiving endless testimonies, the team realised that the police force responsible for conducting the evictions, is the same unit as the one which questioned the team upon arrival at the Ortello Business Corporation camp site. Further the eviction operation team is hosted at OBC Camp.

The enquiry team also established that there was no forest to be protected as alleged by the District Commissioner. The team only came across savannah plains and dry lands which formed the game control area where hunting blocks were to be allocated. The claims that the evictions were aimed at protecting the environment were thus false. On the other hand, the evictions were carried out throughout the Loliondo villages without any defined boundaries. Conversely , the allegations that the maasai communities are depleting the environment by cutting down trees is also false as the investigation team found no cut trees but instead a few tree branches used by the maasai to construct their traditional Bomas. The team actually established that the eviction process contributed to environmental degradation through the burning out of Bomas and pushing the maasai communities from their land to an area with a low carrying capacity. Additionally, the respective areas had no water source, and were not in any way a buffer zone.

The investigation team also proved that it is not true that the maasai communities had trespassed or invaded the Ortello Bussiness Corporation area as the maasai have been living in the respective villages since time immemorial. Additionally, what the Ortello Business Corporation has is a mere hunting permit and not ownership rights on the respective land. It is only to negotiate with the respective villages on the terms of use so as to effectively utilise his permit. The investigation team received testimonies from maasai elders ranging from the age of 65 and above who were born in those villages and who claimed to have buried their ancestors on the respective land. One Mr. Yohana of 74 years of age from the Ololosokwan village is a good example whose memory goes back to the 1950s before the nation’s independence. He recalls having buried his father in the Ololosokwan village at the area where people are evicted.

The enquiry team also established that contracts entered between some of the Loliondo villages and Ortello Business Corporation were void. Upon reviewing a number of contracts, the teamed noted that, in the first place, the contracts were entered between the villages and the District Commissioner’s office (the government) on behalf of Ortello Business Corporation who signed as a witness. Secondly, the contracts only outlined the terms to be followed by the villages but were silent on those to be adhered to by Ortello Business Corporation. Lastly, the Contracts had no conflict resolution clauses or terms of termination and in most cases, the village members did not participate in the whole process. Further in no clause does the contract talk about the land and the eviction of the pastoralists should any breach happen.

The investigation team furthermore established that, most of the villages had not for a long time benefited from the existence of the Ortello Business Corporation. It is only Tuesday the 18th of August 2009 on the material day of our travel to Loliondo that the villages received cheques of twenty five thousand shillings. With some village elders having been forced to receive the cheques on a ceremony presided by the District Commissioner. Our visit to all the villages has proved that the villages are not aware of receiving the money. Some have even stated clearly that they have no interest of knowing whether the money has been received let alone any interest with the money itself.

The concern that the community has on OBC was yet another establishment. The confidence level of different members of the community including the CSOs in Loliondo has seriously been affected to the extent that everybody is worried about action being taken by the government when they get involved in the OBC matter. This can be justified by how our team was followed by the militia and how we were obstructed by the FFU vehicle after visiting the OBC camp.

4.1 Findings on Ortello Business Corporation
Apart from the above findings which are contrary to the District Commissioner’s statements, the investigation team came with the following findings.
In the first place, upon arriving at the Ololosokwan villages, one receives the following network text message through the Zain mobile network.
“Dear Guest, Welcome to the UAE. Enjoy the best network coverage and other unmatched services only with Etisalat. Please use<+> or <00>before the country code for international calls. For directory services call 181, for availability of GPRS, MMS 3G roaming services call Etisalat Travellers help line 8002300 & for inquiries on Tourism, entertainment, shopping, etc call 7000-1-7000(Roaming rates apply) Have a pleasant stay in the UAE.”

The above network text message leaves allot to be desired. One wonders whether Ortello Business Corporation is a private company or is a sovereign state within Tanzania. The question of the relationship between the Corporation and the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) did not stop lingering in the heads of members of the investigation team.

As if the above is not enough, Ortello Business Corporation is guarded by the Tanzanian police and the entire security system since 1992. After the investigation team leaving the company’s camp site after facing luck of corporation from the Camp manager, miles away being followed by three militia vehicle, the team was stopped by head of the field force unit responsible for supervising the evictions and guarding the company’s camp site. He assured the investigation team that he had received phone calls from his bosses namely the District and Regional commissioner complaining about the team’s visit to Ortello Business Corporation camp site. He went on insisting that the team was authorised by the District Commissioner to visit the villages and not the company. He also requested of any photos of the company the team might have taken.

The above scenario surely leaves one perplexed as to whether, Ortello Business Corporation is a company registered under the Tanzanian companies Act, Cap.112 which in turn makes it a Tanzanian citizen required to abide by the Tanzanian laws or whether it belongs to a sovereign state having diplomatic relations with the country.
Ortello Business Corporation also owns an Airstrip big enough to be called an airport. Maasai communities on the ground assert that the Jet that lands on the respective air strip has the capacity of carrying about 400 people and in most cases carries animals and cargo. The investigation team affirmed this by seeing number vehicles around the area operating with no number plates and some with Dubai number plates. This was surely yet another wonder. Where our immigration, Tax and carriage authorities? This was all the investigation team called ask itself.

What is the Legality of Ortello Business Corporation? To what extent are the Loliondo communities and the nation at large informed of and involved in activities carried out by Ortello Business Corporation? What interest does the state have to enter a contract with its citizens on behalf of an investor? To what extent do the citizens know about the formed taskforces to address the Loliondo case? Why the government’s protection over Ortello Business Corporation? These are all unanswered questions that the investigation team took back home.

5.0 What the Loliondo Communities Want.
1. Villagers want back their ancestral land both for their survival as well as for the sustainability of their livelihood system.
2. They want to fairly benefit from the natural resources in their areas
3. Community members demand to be involved in all decisions and all matters of their concern.
4. The community demands that they be treated fairly and harassment conducted by the government machinery on behalf of OBC should stop immediately
5. The community demands restitution for the loss that has been incurred in the process of the operation
6. Further, there is a strong demand for the government’s accountability in all decisions that impact on the livelihood of the people
7. The community needs OBC out of their land and that they should be left alone to determine their destiny

6.0 Immediate needs Identified by the Investigation team
- The Loliondo communities immediately need Water for the survival of both the people and their livestock,
- They immediately need shelter as most community members have no houses and leave under trees,
- They need quick medical aid especially for women and children— women who had undergone miscarriages are yet to receive medical aid. They also need sociological support and counselling.
- Food is of the essence as they utterly have no food
- and lastly a number of arrested community members need legal assistance.

7.0 Action to be taken by FemAct and Pastoralist CSOs
- Provide immediate legal assistance: This action is to be taken up by PINGOS, LHRC, UCRT and NGONET. The team is to come up with the budget of two advocates to follow up on the cases. And LHRC should provide an advocate who will be facilitated by joint efforts.
- Immediate social services: With regard to the emergency social services, a fund raising proposal is to be written by the pastoralist network coordinator so as to raise relief funds from organisations which give out such funds.
- Media Strategy: The organisations are to have a press Conference to break the findings and thereafter a series of media programs to address the Loliondo case in both national and international media houses.

NOTE:
CIRCUMSTANCES NOT CONDUCIVE TO COLLECT ANY STATISTICAL DATA
MEMBERS OF THE INVESTIGATION TEAM
1. Usu Mallya TGNP 0754-804793 usu.mallya@tgnp.org
2. Ananilea Nkya TAMWA 0754-464368 tamwa@tamwa.org
3. Yefred E.Myenzi HAKIARDHI 0784-464973 myenzi@hakiardhi.org
4. Edward Porokwa PINGOS 0754-479815 pingostz@yahoo.com
5. Edward Loure UCRT 0784-568444 coordinator-crt@dorobo.org
6. Magdalene Aquiline WLAC 0754285496 wilac@raha.com
7. Shirley B.Mushi CORDS 0784-782525 pastoralist.policy@gmail.com
8. Amina Udi FORDIA 0717-305221 pr@fordia.org
9. Clarence Kipobota LHRC 0762-776281 Kipobota@yahoo.com
10. Shilinde Ngalula LHRC 0754-657325 ngulula@yahoo.com
11. Bridget Senewaji LEAT 0755-659185 sengwajib@yahoo.com
12. Steven Shikuku PINGOS 0763-672137 ashiembi@yahoo.com
13. Seif Mangwangi PINGOS 0754-460520 seif_yustus@yahoo.com
14. Alvar Mwakyusa Thisday 0754-570870
15. Boniface Meena Mwananchi 0715-577382
16. Husseni Ramadhani ITV 0783-421542

Abbreviations
CSOs Civil Society Organisations
FORDIA, Concerns for Development Initiatives in Africa
LEAT Lawyers Environmental Action Team
LHRC Legal and Human rights Centre
TAMWA, Tanzania Media Women Association
TGNP Tanzania Gender Network Program
WILAC Women Legal Aid Centre
UCRT Ujamaa Community Resource Trust
PINGOs Pastoralists Indigenous Non Governmental Organizations
NGONET Ngorongoro Non-governmental Organisations Network


C/O Tanzania Gender Network Program (TGNP)
P.O.BOX: 8921 Dar es saalam, Tanzania,
Gender Centre, Mabibo Road Opposite the National Institute of Transaport(NIT)
Tell: +255 22 2443205;2443450;2443286; cell: +255 754 784050, fax.2443244, email: info@tgnp.org, web:www.tgnp.org

Nigeria: Fashola State government should reinstate Ayodele Akele now!

2009-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/58955

FASHOLA GOVERNMENT SHOULD REINSTATE AYODELE AKELE NOW!!

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State hereby calls on the Babatunde Fashola/AC government of Lagos State to immediately recall Comrade Ayodele Akele, a former labour leader in Lagos State, in the spirit of the celebration of the life of Chief Gani Fawehinmi. If Lagos State government does not want the public to believe that it is playing to gallery, it should immediately recall Comrade Ayodele Akele.

Comrade Akele, the former chairman of Congress of Industrial Unions (COIU) was sacked about six years ago by the government of Bola Tinubu for leading tens of thousands of workers in struggle for the implementation of N7, 500 minimum wage. Comrade Akele was sacked along with thousands of other workers but till date has not been recalled. It is on record that Nigerian workers are one of the poorest paid in the world, therefore the struggles of workers led by Akele should naturally be commended by a state government and party that claim to be progressive.

But unfortunately, Lagos State government has refused to fully implement a living wage for workers as enshrined in the 1999 constitution. In Lagos today, public school teachers are on strike as a result of the failure of the Fashola/AC government to pay the meagre 27.5 percent salary increase as contained in the Teachers’ Salary Scale (TSS). Furthermore, workers including lecturers in the state owned university are currently on national strikes as a result of governments’ (federal and state) under funding of education. Till date, Lagos State government has not given any commitment to the demands of workers and in fact supported the federal government’s treacherous excuse of federalism to deny university workers their entitlement and education its dues in terms of proper funding. In virtually all tertiary institution in Lagos State, students are made to cough out pocket-tearing fees. How will this government that claim to be progressive and even played a role in the celebration of the pro-worker Gani Fawehinmi, justify this anti-worker, retrogressive actions with the campaign for a quality and free education by Chief Gani Fawehinmi?

To add insult upon injury, workers’ leaders like Akele are currently being victimized and vilified. All this reflects the anti-worker, reactionary character of the state government despite all the propaganda, face-lifting and merry-making to associate with a genuine fighter like Chief Gani Fawehinmi. If Fashola/AC government is sincere about its celebration of Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s life, it should commit itself to the ideals of Gani Fawehinmi, which include abhorrence of oppression and attack on workers, free and quality education and well remunerated workforce, it should immediately recall Comrade Ayodele Akele and pay him his entitlement so far. Furthermore, it should immediately implement the TSS, accede to the demands of striking university workers and stop the witch-hunting of workers and students being carried out on behalf of the Lagos State government by the Lateef Hussein-led Lagos State University (LASU) management.

Finally, we call on workers’ unions in the state and the country to defend workers rights of association and unionization which is being carried out by the Lagos State government against activists like Comrade Akele. This is necessary if workers are to secure gains in their struggle for better living. The recent attack on leadership of medical doctors’ association by the Fashola/ AC government shows the anti-worker character of the state government. If workers do not defend the rights of their victimized colleagues and leaders, it will further embolden government to carry out more attacks on workers, their leaders and unions. The labour leaders in Lagos and the country should not feel that they can be immune from such attacks.

We will not end this statement without reiterating our support for the striking university workers under ASUU, SSANU, NASU and NAAT in their current struggle to force all anti-workers and retrogressive governments in the country to commit public resources to public education. We call on all well-meaning Nigerians, to use this period of celebration of the radical life of the enigmatic Chief Gani Fawehinmi, to give support to the striking workers as a way of achieving the dream of Gani Fawehinmi for free and quality education at all levels.

Comrade Waheed Lawal, Chairman
Kola Ibrahim, Secretary

Will a tribunal office in Kenya be safe?

Isaac Newton Kinity

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/58978

Kenya’s history indicates that whenever pressures build up for change, for correction of certain mistakes or in a negative situation, there have always been instances of insecurity all over the nation. This insecurity has always been aimed at either diluting the pressures, diverting attention or both.

In 1991, a commission of inquiry into the mysterious death of the former minister for foreign affairs, Dr Robert John Ouko, was set up. In less than one year, the commission was disbanded without reason by the then president of Kenya Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. Before the commission was disbanded, the chairman of the commission, and current Kenyan Chief of Justice Evan Gicheru, complained of insecurity. He said he feared for his life. He also revealed that his phones were tapped and people were listening to all of his conversations. In a period of only one year after the commission was disbanded, 42 Kenyans died under mysterious circumstances. They included the international police officer who was attached to the commission and most of the former colleagues of the late minister.

A short while later, the superintendent of Scotland Yard, John Troon, and another officer were invited to Kenya by the government to help in the investigation of the mysterious murder of Dr John Robert Ouko. A few weeks latter, Mr Troon said that he was leaving for Britain to attend to his sick mother. As soon as he arrived in Britain, he released a statement saying that he would not return to Kenya for security reasons.

After the Waki Commission released its findings and recommendations, high-level security concerns emerged everywhere in Kenya. The insecurity slightly declined after the Kenyan members of parliament softened their rigid stand to oppose the formation of a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of the post-election violence.

There will be unbearable insecurity once the tribunal starts its work in Kenya. The perpetrators of the post-election violence, most of whom may be senior Kenyan politicians, may politicise the proceedings of the tribunal. In order to disrupt the efficiency of the tribunal, the security of the judges and other officers will be undermined. The possibility that some of those officiating the tribunal may taste the worst scenario of insecurity and even death will not be ruled out. There will be no way the tribunal will successfully prosecute the perpetrators of the post-election violence while operating in Kenya.

The success of the Rwanda tribunal for the perpetrators of the genocide was partially attributable to the fact that its main offices were located in Tanzania. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the ideal place for the prosecution of the perpetrators of the post-election violence in Kenya. Nevertheless, the Kenyan parliament is on the verge of approving a tribunal. Owing to the security concerns of those who will be responsible for the running of the tribunal, I sincerely plead with the prosecutor of the ICC, the chairman of the African Union and the secretary general of the United Nations to recommend the relocation of the tribunal offices to another country once it is approved by the Kenyan parliament. By doing so, the tribunal judges and others working there will be assured of protection and security. Considering what happened in Somalia and Rwanda, if proper measures are not taken, Kenyans and the whole world will live to regret it.

Yours faithfully,

Isaac Newton Kinity

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Isaac Newton Kinity is the former secretary general of the
Kenya Civil Servants Union, and the chairman of the Kikimo Foundation for Corruption and Poverty Eradication.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

District 9 left me with very mixed thoughts

Cheryl Phillips

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58977

While I was offended by District 9's blatant stereotypical racist expression, I liked the film's documentary-style cinematography, which leads you to believe the story.

Visually the travelogue-type camera work of the cast documenting the project in hand works with its dodgy ‘keep your hand steady’ visual approach. This brought me right into the set. My son (who is 16) liked the special effects and wished the film was in high definition (HD). However, I personally was disappointed with the special effects; they were not worth going to the big screen for. The sound effects did work, as the sound quality was very good. I liked the innovative documentary-style of filming, which was worth watching. My son liked the fact that there were no big-name stars in the film and therefore that there were no egos or heroes pre-determined by stardom.

What was interesting was how straightaway aliens were no longer termed aliens but given the derogatory name ‘prawns’. The subliminal use of hip-hop music and the few items of clothing worn by the aliens coax the viewers into feeling that the aliens have a ‘black’ culture about them. So it came as no surprise that their only allies were stereotypically ‘corrupt Nigerians’! Is it meant to show black-on-black crime?

The ghetto-style plot along with the scenario of the bloodthirsty corrupt Nigerians was tiresome. Their portrayal as dribbling, sweaty, decaying, ugly, loud and dumb men with a sprinkling of high hoes was more than my spirit could bare.

I’m still left slightly confused at the fact that the aliens who seemed to be highly intelligent and resourceful with such sophisticated technology then acted so ravenous over cat food. Somehow this theme seems familiar; no matter how intelligent you are, if you do not conform to the Western idea of 'normal' you will be an outcast and viewed as a social problem. My son also asked how the team of men understood what the aliens were saying?

When the team went to District 9 again there were lots of subliminal messages to decode and filter. Each alien was given a Western name to remove all past identity and impose government ownership. The pulling of plugs to abort babies alluded to population control. Although the team went in talking about the law and human rights the aliens were allowed no civil liberties and everything they did was a crime!

The media handled it all in true media fashion and my son also commented on the use of dirty tricks to frame people by misrepresenting the truth. DNA was the currency and genetics were what was being traded in this film, a medical apartheid at any cost. Science was calling the shots and determining what was normal for the aliens, based on a Western construct.

To sum up, the film was a socio-politically incorrect, semi-cerebral plot of subterfuge based blatantly on South African apartheid in a Benny Hill-style remake of City of God.

This film, if nothing else, should make us all ask the question: When we do get visitors from other countries or indeed other planets, how are we going to receive them? Is it always going to be about DNA and control via war and oppression?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Review: The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration

By Peter Stalker

Jared Ficklin

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/58971

It has been over forty years since Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech of 1968. The modern immigration debate has not come far. Misconceptions of who migrates and why are held by even those who should know better, as was strikingly illustrated recently by a crown court judge who, while sentencing a cannabis dealer, blustered about ‘hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people like you (who) come to these shores from foreign countries to avail themselves of the generous welfare benefits that exist here.’ The judge may be censured by the Lord Chancellor for his outburst on the grounds it amounted to unacceptable political comment. If only His Honour had read The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration, by Peter Stalker, he might have saved himself the trouble.

Chapter one, ‘How many immigrants are there?’, categorises migrants by their motivation for travel. The various immigrant streams are often conflated with asylum seekers, though they are separate groups and governed by different legal frameworks. The folly of this course is exposed by Stalker’s tidy exposition of migrant numbers and their destinations.

The second and third chapters, titled ‘Why people migrate and choosing the destination’, respectively, could have assisted the aforementioned judge. He would be surprised to learn that ‘economic migrants’ do not tend to base their migratory decisions on primarily economic concerns. It is the social networks between source and host nations that are mainly responsible for the ebb and flow of migrants. In the 1950s the UK recruited thousands of workers from the West Indies, creating cultural and personal linkages that continue today. Our unfortunate judge, who was sentencing a Jamaican man when his outrage boiled over, should have included the governments of the 1950s in his barrage.

Chapter four, ‘The economic benefits of migration’, shows clearly that immigrants are both a sign of and a driver for a strong economy. Far from being a drag on economies by claiming benefits and taking locals’ jobs, migrant workers prop up entire industries and provide a flexible, cheap and practically disposable resource. The commonly held belief that large immigration flows hamper the economy is more a reflection of tabloid marketing and partisan point-scoring than of the facts.

Chapter five, ‘Emigrants as heroes’, provides insight into the various factors that push migrants abroad and pull them home again. Stalker discusses in detail the ‘brain drain’ effect and the contributions migrants make to their home economy as well as their local one. Perhaps surprisingly, the country with the highest number of university graduates working overseas is the UK with 1.5 million seeking their fortunes abroad, mostly in the US. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before US tabloids run sneering headlines complaining about ‘American jobs for British workers’.

Chapter six takes a different tone to the rest of the book. Titled ‘The shock absorbers for the global economy’, it explains the economic models that underpin globalisation and industrialisation. The politicians know that their economies need the workers because the businesses tell them so. But to admit that would require public engagement with the realities of migration that most politicians don’t dare risk. Stalker states on the last page that ‘The fact is that in almost all cases migration is good for both source and destination countries’. The value of migrants as an economic and human resource is undeniable. Unfortunately, their value as scapegoats for politicians and newspapers is equally high.

It is easy to forget the main conclusion to be drawn from the book, which is ineluctable if only mildly stated by the author on page 97. That conclusion is that the opposition to immigration we hear in the tabloids, from government ministers, from the right-wing politicians and even, shamefully, some ‘quality’ newspapers stems from a cultural unease with people who are different, people who are alien.

The debate gets couched in languages of economics and security, but those arguments are shaky even when taken at their highest. Stalker notes that people in developed countries tend to believe that historical immigration was good, and present immigration is bad. But this view moves almost unchanged through time, as the ‘bad’ immigration of a previous era becomes accepted in later years.

No tabloid headline or politician’s call for limits on immigration of the last ten years is substantially different than this statement, made a hundred years ago by Francis Walker, then the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ‘The entrance into our political, social and industrial life of such vast masses of peasantry is a matter which no intelligent patriot can look upon without the greatest apprehension and alarm… They are beaten men from beaten races, representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence’.

We now know that those ‘peasants’ were the engine of development for the economic dominance of the United States in the 20th century. Walker expresses, with greater eloquence, the same sentiments heard today. A hundred years from now guides to the facts about migration may include a quote from a certain crown court judge.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration (2008) by Peter Stalker is published by The New Internationalist. (ISBN 978-1904456-94-0)
* Jared Ficklin works with the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit in the UK.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The illusiveness of a Pan-African Africa

Remembering Osagyefo

Sokari Ekine

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/58973

21 September 2009 marked the 100th birthday of African revolutionary and Pan Africanist Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah had a vision for a united Africa, released from the shackles of colonialism – a vision which is yet to materialise:

‘We are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity. We again rededicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.’ Kwame Nkrumah on the dawn of Ghana’s independence in 1957

Although a number of Ghanaian bloggers celebrated Nkrumah’s 100th birthday, generally African blogs were silent. If this is a reflection of attitudes towards the ideology of Pan-Africanism then Nkrumah’s vision remains as illusive as ever.

A number of Ghanian bloggers published Nkrumah’s speeches – Talking Notes posts his 1963 speech to the OAU on the need for a united Africa and ‘cringes to think what he would think of what we have become’. Indeed.

‘On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence.

Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonial controls and interference.’

Ghana Hype links to a pre independence speech Nkrumah made to African freedom fighters in Accra [http://tinyurl.com/l3fkdn] and comments:

‘The truth is that the words spoken on that faithful day are still more than apt today with regards to africans in Africa and Africans, Africa -Americans, Black 'British' and Caribbean people who still live with varying forms of imperialism today in different masks – POVERTY, LAZINESS, MEDIA SUBJUGATION, DIVIDE AND RULE, AFRICA vrs CARIBBEAN, BLACK VRS MIXED RACE, GUN CRIME, SO CALLED BLACK ON BLACK VIOLENCE, HIP HOP CULTURE(GANGSTERISM) the list goes on.’

Maya’s Earth believes Nkrumah’s greatest legacy to Ghana is the breaking down of ‘tribal barriers’:

‘In his quest for panafricanism, he had to first break tribal barriers before breaking national distinctions. By transferring civil servants to places in the country that they had no tribal link to, e.g. sending an Ashanti to Accra, a Ga to Koforidua and a Fanti to Tamale, tribal interaction was forced on Ghanaians. A young Fanti who’d been stationed in Tamale for four years would sooner or later look for a spouse and marry out of his tribe.’

Finally, Anti-Rhythm recounts the 1964 assassination attempt against Nkrumah:

‘Jan 2, 1964. Kwame Nkrumah walks the grounds of Flagstaff House with personal guards and ‘trusted’ cops aplenty. An assassin (who sent him?) squeezes off a bullet and misses. Salifu Dagarti throws the Prez down, and probably saves his life. For reward, the next bullet drills cleanly through Salifu’s loyal skull. Onlookers remain bystanders as the assassin chases after the President into a kitchen. Prez is screaming, but no help arrives. Kwame Nkrumah personally wrestles and overpowers a gun-toting assassin. On this day, he’s 54 years and 125 days old! But he escapes with only a facial bite!’

For a full list of Ghana blogs see Ghanablogging.com.

Liberian blog, Ducor Talk takes issue with what appears to be an anti Ellen Sirleaf Johnson forum, Liberian Forum, asking President Obama not to embrace the Liberian President. They write:

‘To the international community and especially the American political audience, president Ellen Johnson of Liberia, the only female African president is a good leader. But to the ordinary people of Liberia, president Ellen Johnson is simply a multi-national corporate agent that was imposed upon them by the George Bush administration, to serve in the interests of Goldman Sachs, DynCorp (either an affiliate or subsidiary of Halliburton) , and other bad corporations that have caused the economic crisis in America.’

Ducor Talk does quite a good job of responding to the forum but I’m not sure there isn’t an element of truth in some of what they say - just the name Halliburton should send out warning signals:

‘I for sometimes in the past was of the opinion that conspiracy theorists were a problem of the Western World but Mr Urey piece has shattered that long standing view. It is impossible for me to decipher why the government of Liberia will be a servant of the triumvirate of Goldman Sachs, DynCorp (either an affiliate or subsidiary of Halliburton) and other bad corporations that caused the economic crisis in America to the detriment of the Liberian nation and people. The public will be better served if Mr Urey could provide further elaboration on his claims.’

Whilst Ghana bloggers are celebrating Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism, Nigerian bloggers are in a furor over the depiction of Nigerians in the South African film District 9. While there is validity around criticising the negative portrayal of Nigerians, I think we need to look at that in the context of the film, where the only redeeming characters are possibly the aliens themselves. Everyone else lies somewhere on the spectrum of evilness. Apparently the Nigerian government has now asked cinemas in the country to stop showing the film – it’s called CENSORSHIP! This post by Nnedi Wahala Zone speaks for the feelings of most Nigerian bloggers. After investigating D9 producer, Neill Bloomkamp and discovering from Wikipedia that he was a ‘racist South African’ I guess he felt much better about writing his criticism of the film – well he felt the need to research the man before writing so something influenced him! He admits to wanting to protect Nigeria and raises these questions around the film:

‘Why were “The Nigerians” the only human beings living with the aliens? Were they the only ones primitive enough to live with aliens? Well, the Nigerian women were providing sexual “services” to the aliens, so I guess so (did they really have to go there? And why… ugh, my blood pressure is rising. I think I’ve made my point on this subject).

Why were the black South Africans portrayed so positively and the “Nigerians” so negatively? On top of all this, there was not one redeeming Nigerian character. They were all crazy, motiveless, and blood thirsty. And that’s why in the end, all “The Nigerians” were summarily killed off at basically the same time, complete with the “close on”, cliché, super violent killing of Obasanjo as the cherry on top.’

Despite Nigeria’s anger over District 9, Pyoo wata reports on the features both countries share – high levels of crime and along with that Nigeria is planning to copy South Africa’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. The irony of this is not lost on Pyoo Wata:

‘Sadly, in both cases, Nigerians will end up the indirect targets of both proposed moves. The fear that exists in the minds of many is that Onovo's proposal could be utilised by political parties who could intimidate opponents through local police forces. This has already been well documented in my home state during the Bakassi era. Though such has been demonstrated with vigilante groups, the potential buying and selling of local police force loyalties is not terribly far-fetched.

‘Also, considering the xenophobic sentiments that mar the South African landscape, the targetting of Nigerian citizens through Cele's proposal, is not at all inconceivable. Several of the riots we all witnessed last year in South African slums were largely directed towards Nigerian immigrants who are believed to be at the root of the majority of crimes committed. With such stereotypes pervasive amongst some white and black South Africans alike, it remains possible that under the guise of maintaining peace, the lives of Nigerians in South Africa may indeed by sacrificed.’

All I can think of is if there was a shoot-to-kill policy adopted by say the US or UK police what kind of an uproar would there be? This is not to say that the police in either of these countries do not shoot people – especially young black men – and inevitably they walk away punishment free. Nonetheless at least there is a semblance of accountability and public disdain for police murders. Here we have two countries which want to adopt what is essentially a right to murder policy and it appears that people are generally happy with this – unless of course it directly affects them – ie Nigerians being targets in SA.

Another story from Liberia, published in Monocle – which isn’t a blog or particularly African centred – but I love this story. The Daily Talk is a ‘blackboard’ Blog published in Monrovia by Alfred Sirleaf. Watch the video here.

‘Alfred Sirleaf's “Daily Talk” newspaper reaches thousands of Liberians every day but only ever produces one copy. How does he do it? By writing the day's biggest stories on a large blackboard beside a busy road in the capital.’

Finally Black Looks publishes another story around Caster Semenya. This one is written by Australian activist Farida Iqbal and focuses on the media invasion of Caster. Remember it was an Australian newspaper which first published the results of the so called ‘gender test’. This case just gets worse and worse. I cannot imagine the pain this has caused Caster and her family and I hope one day they can get some justice for the destruction of their lives:

‘Semenya was subjected to invasive ‘gender tests’ (actually testing biological sex, not gender). The test results were leaked to the international mass media. Australia’s Daily Telegraph was the first to run the story, revealing Semenya has internal testes and no womb. This may or may not be true.

If it is true, it is a discovery that would prompt any 18 year-old to do some profound soul searching about their identity, their relationship to their body, and their relationship with the world. Ideally this soul searching would be done in the person’s own time, in their own way.

Yet for Semenya there was no question of privacy. The most intimate details of her body were revealed to the world in lurid headlines in the international mass media: ‘Semenya has male sex organs’ (11 September, Sydney Daily Telegraph) ‘a woman… and a man!’ (10 September, NYDailynews.com) ‘Is SHE a he?’ (19 August Melbourne Herald Sun).
Semenya is now traumatised and has gone into hiding. She is not the first athlete to have had this experience.’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Luanda diversifies its portfolio

Africa-Asia Confidential

2009-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/58957

China's relations with Angola suffered a setback this month when Luanda turned down the acquisition by China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Sinopec of a coveted oil block. Worse, lower than expected oil revenues have battered the Angolan economy and government officials are scheduled to meet representatives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund at the end of this month to negotiate a support package.

Sonangol, the state-owned oil company, invoked its right of first refusal on 10 September on a 20% share of Block 32 held by United States-based Marathon Oil. China National Offshore Oil Corporation and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) were planning to buy the block - a promising investment, boasting 12 oil discoveries and estimated recoverable reserves of 1.5 billion barrels of light crude - in a 50-50 joint venture for US$1.3 bn.

As an existing equity holder, Sonangol (20%), with partners in the block Exxon Mobile (15%), Petrogal (5%), and operator Total (30%), has the right of first refusal to buy the stake for the price on offer. Marathon Oil says that the decision does not change their plans and the deal is expected to go through before 2010. Sinopec and CNOOC, collaborating for the first time in such a venture, had outmanoeuvred Brazil's Petrobras, India's ONGC Videsh and even a separate bid by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for Block 32. The agreed price is much lower than Marathon's hoped-for $2 bn. or even the Goldman-Sachs evaluation of $1.4-1.65 bn.

China is seen as one of Angola's closest partners, and a partner who understands Angolan politics particularly well, so the failure of CNOOC and Sinopec in their bid is significant. Yet Chinese relations with Angola are not special; they are as pragmatic as Angolan relations with other countries.

Despite counting China among its largest concessional lenders, Luanda has made no secret of its efforts to diversify its portfolio of investors, ensuring that no one partner becomes too powerful in the oil industry. Consequently, Chinese efforts to secure oil equity in Angola have proved less successful than Beijing's original expectations, and the Western oil majors still predominate.

Friends and finances
Predictions that the global downturn would not affect trade and investment in Africa proved optimistic and half-year trade statistics show that year-on-year from June, China-Angola trade fell 57% to US$5.8 bn., one of the biggest drops in bilateral trade. As in Congo-Kinshasa, Angola's relationship with World Bank and IMF has been altered by its relations with China. High oil prices during the post-war boom and Chinese loans made dealing with the conditionalities of the Bank and Fund unnecessary. Now, with a weakened economy - by mid-year, the government had slashed the budget by 25% or $11 bn. - there is little choice.

Harnessing the opportunities provided by the financial crisis, Chinese multinationals have increasingly been on the lookout for overseas acquisitions. Efforts to acquire assets in Western markets, particularly in the USA, have repeatedly been quashed by concerned shareholders and governments alike. Smarting from such reactions, Chinese oil companies thus turned to developing countries, where their investment met with less resistance.

African countries, however, are also not keen to hand prized assets to Beijing's companies, especially when oil prices have risen to between $70-80 per barrel. In Libya, the state-owned National Oil Corporation prevented the sale of Canadian company Verenex's assets to CNPC this month, preferring to buy the assets itself and hold on to or sell them off for more when prices rise.
There are, though, some relations between the Angolan state and Chinese companies that are close. ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) of India hoped to buy Royal Dutch Shell's 50% share in Block 18 and cut a deal with Shell in April 2004, but the deal was blocked by Sonangol and OVL was accused of not understanding Angolan politics. The stake in Block 18 was eventually acquired by the Sonangol Sinopec International. SSI, a joint venture between Sinopec and China Sonangol International Holding, has the backing of key stake holders in the Angolan elite. It is majority owned by Sinopec with 55% and Beiya International Development (now known as Dayuan) and CSIH are partners with 31.5% and 13.5%. Sonangol Exploration and Production only has an indirect interest in SSI through its 30% stake in CSIH. New Bright International Development is Sonangol E.P.'s senior partner in CSIH with 70%.

Personalities who are close to the Angolan elite hold key positions in many of the companies linked to the CSIH and SSI. Helder Bataglia, Chief Executive of Espirito Santo Commerce (Escom), has partnered with Beiya International Development (now Dayuan) in the joint venture China Beiya Escom. Escom completed the construction of Luanda's new tallest building, the Escom tower in August. French national Pierre Falcone acts as an advisor to CSIH through his private equity company, Pierson Asia, and is also a close confidant of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Tangled webs
The Chairman of the China International Fund is also the Vice-Chairman of CSIH, Luo Fanghong. CIF, the construction arm of Dayuan, has a multimillion-dollar portfolio of infrastructure projects all over Angola. In Luanda, General Helder Vieria Dias Junior 'Kopelipa' chief of the presidential guard and head of the Gabinete de Reconstrução Nacional is probably the closest advisor to President Dos Santos. The GRN was established to manage the CIF funds. It is also significant that Manuel Vicente, the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Angolan national oil company Sonangol, is also one of the directors of CSIH.

If relations between Angola and China are not special, relations between this group of individuals (and others) certainly are. Politics in Angola revolve around personal friendships and trust that has been won over many years and, in some cases, decades. The link surrounding CSIH, SSI, Dayuan, New Bright, as well as the personalities associated with them are largely based on an opaque clique.
SSI evades the classic definition of a national oil company and there are indications that within the company private interests are more overt than national interests. Nevertheless, Sinopec, despite being a national oil company, is one of the few state-owned companies that has managed to be included in this network through SSI. The CSIH and these personal relationships are the key to Chinese success, rather than the economic or bilateral considerations.

The informal nature of the ties leads to greater opacity. The World Bank, US government and Angolan sources estimate that CIF has loaned somewhere between $3-10 bn. to the Angolan government. CIF projects are approved on a project-to-project basis, with little oversight from the Ministry of Finance. In the run-up to the publishing of the 2009 budget, statistics showed that the GRN was supplied with a credit line worth $157 mn., most of which was directed towards low-income housing construction. The final 2009 budget, released in June, showed that the GRN only had funds of $125 mn., a far cry from the billions of dollars suggested in the West. Such a large discrepancy may be due to poor planning and inertia at the GRN, a lack of money at CIF and funds tracked so far off the books that they do not appear in any budgets.

Sonangol's Vicente announced on 10 September that a new licensing round is likely to take place by the end of 2010. Before that can take place, a new constitution must be ratified. Presidential elections are now likely to take place in September 2010. A new licensing round is long overdue; it was delayed first by parliamentary elections in September 2008 and most recently because of low oil prices. Among the pre-qualified companies are several Asian oil companies such as Sinopec, India's ONGC Videsh and Essar Exploration and Production, Pakistan's Oil & Gas Development and Japan's Inpex. SSI also pre-qualified as a non-operator and is expected to win acreage.

Dos Santos did not meet China's President Hu Jintao at July's G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy as Hu had to cut short his visit because of violence at home, but he did meet South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In August, South Korea revived its Angola/South Korea Joint Bilateral Commission on Economic, Technical and Scientific Cooperation. Angolan Minister of Public Works Higino Carneiro and South Korean Minister of Trade Kim Jong-hoon led their respective delegations. Oil acreage is surely part of the calculation, but it remains to be seen whether bilateral relations can trump the close-knit ties of friendship.

* this article was first published in Africa-Asia Confidential, Vol.2 No. 11, September 2009

Pambazuka News 115: Le panafricanisme face au centenaire de Nkrumah

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/58968

La problématique de l'émergence d'une communauté politique africaine
Willy Jackson

L’engagement des Nkrumahistes pour le changement au Ghana
Kofi Mawuli Klu

Sénégal : Faire prévaloir la force de la raison face aux médias
Olivier Sagna

Ananas, euros, jatropha… Saurons-nous faire les bons choix ?
Maurice Oudet

Pambazuka News 21: Eleições em Moçambique

2009-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summarypt/58975

Constitution committee restructured

2009-09-25

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/662686/-/136cvn6z/-/index.html

Zimbabwe’s troubled constitution making process is facing new challenges after the coalition principals in the unity government packed the executive of a committee managing the reforms with trusted loyalists. The process to craft a new supreme law for the country that must be completed within two years is a key area for the unity government formed by President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Police battle WOZA protesters

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/y8tebv2

Police in Zimbabwe battled rioters in Bulawayo as members of the leading pressure group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), continued marking the United Nations 'International Day of Peace' with street protests. As the protesters took to the streets, marching and chanting slogans, Zimbabwe's riot police reportedly chased them with the aim of dispersing them.

Africa: Polygamy – the heart of the matter

Deborah Walter

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/59016

Although still widely practiced both in Africa and around the world, the practice of polygamy is seldom spoken of. Just in time for South Africa’s Heritage Day, celebrated on 24 September, Gender Links has launched a new publication of personal accounts – “I” Stories – Polygamy: The Heart of the Matter. In South Africa, the issue leapt to center stage during the run up to the 2009 presidential elections. The sudden interest was not surprising - after all, how many countries have a polygamous president in its highest offices?
Although still widely practiced both in Africa and around the world, the practice of polygamy is seldom spoken of. Just in time for South Africa’s Heritage Day, celebrated on 24 September, Gender Links has launched a new publication of personal accounts – “I” Stories – Polygamy: The Heart of the Matter.

In South Africa, the issue leapt to center stage during the run up to the 2009 presidential elections. The sudden interest was not surprising - after all, how many countries have a polygamous president in its highest offices?

Heading into the polls, the polygamous lifestyle of Jacob Zuma, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), became a hotly debated topic of discussion, especially amongst gender and women’s rights activists. Media focused on such logistical matters as security costs and which wife would accompany the new President during official functions. Traditionalists argued cultural choice, while gender activists questioned polygamy’s place in a constitutional democracy.

Amongst all the debate, the voices and the views of those most “in the know,” the women and men living in polygamous relationships were virtually non-existent. Recognising the importance of these missing voices, Gender Links embarked on this “I” Stories project, to collect personal accounts of women, men and children from polygamous unions.

The first section of this book shares stories from writers questioning cultures, beginning with a Zambian gender activist who grew up, very happily, with three mothers. This story, in which each wife lives an empowered and independent life, shows the complexity of views on polygamy and the tensions of questioning cultures.

Other stories paint a different picture, in which culture literally traps women. Shocked to learn she was the eleventh wife, Tholakele Dlamini recalls, “He married me through the Swazi law and custom, and that meant no going back.” Though Mozambican Isabella Jaime’s father is a traditional healer with 5 wives and over 18 children, her feeling is that “most people still think in the past and that is why they justify polygamous practices.”

Several stories in the second section focusing on multiple wives recall emotional, physical, and financial abandonment by husband and families, and gives insight into the pain some women face - for example, for if pregnancy does not follow marriage quickly or family favours another wife. There are also two sets of stories, from husbands and wives, who candidly tell of some of the problems, but also give some insight as to how these families function successfully – “talking is the only solution,” says Zabele Mirole.

The book also includes stories of growing up in polygamous homes. Whether because of experience, or growing up in a more “modern” age, many children from polygamous families are critical of what they see as the competition for scarce resources, confusion, and unhappiness of mothers in these relationships. “…focus on what it does to the children, what good does it do them when they live amongst feuding adults,” suggests Mwiindi Himaambo. Worse, are accounts of children mistreated by the mothers who are not biologically their own.

The final part of the book are stories that speak up on gender violence and HIV/AIDS. Helena Eduardo* of Mozambique recalls that herself and her co-wife, Joana, worried about their husban’s affairs “Armando started to have other relationships and he would lie to both of us about his whereabouts,” she says. “When I fell pregnant for the third time, I discovered that I was HIV positive after a series of tests. I also recommended to Joana that she take the same tests, which came out positive.”

The final story from Zimbabwe offers a more positive view – with three wives, Elliot Makumbe became a gender activist with Padare men’s group, and now ascribes to the ideal that “men of quality are not afraid of equality.”

All of these accounts offer food for thought about gender and gender equality, and questions some of our assumptions about polygamy. It’s a choice say proponents - but stories show women who expected to be the only wife, women pressured by husbands and family, or who lacked the economic power to disagree – and none of these offer choice, even if the person says “yes.”

Yet, some accounts show there can be a different side, with families living in harmony. They also show that rigid gender roles not only cause problems for women, but men also. As it stands, men face incredible pressure to reproduce quickly, provide for families, and be the glue that holds the family together.

As one of the first of its kind, those culturally attached to polygamy and those vehemently against will likely read this book. We ask that everyone read with an open mind, hear the stories and voices reflected in these accounts. There is much to be learned from these small glimpses into other lives.

*Deborah Walter is editor at Gender Links.
*This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service, which offers fresh news on every day news.

Africa: Women take lead in biodiversity conservation

Dingaan Mithi

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/59023

In many African communities, women struggle to feed their households. The situation is worse when husbands migrate seeking better opportunities, or are absent completely, for one reason or another. Across Southern Africa, groups of mostly women farmers are turning back to traditional food crops in hopes of better food security for their families, and finding economic independence at the same time.
In many African communities, women struggle to feed their households. The situation is worse when husbands migrate seeking better opportunities, or are absent completely, for one reason or another. Across Southern Africa, groups of mostly women farmers are turning back to traditional food crops in hopes of better food security for their families, and finding economic independence at the same time.

Diniwe Mereki is a primary school teacher who was inspired to participate in the project after seeing the high level of commitment from other women and the great work happening in the fields. “I think it is helpful for women to be involved in food security,” she says. “A woman can rely on herself and feed her children, without relying on her husband’s support.”

Mereki is a member of a farming group in the Ntchisi district in the central region of Malawi. The group is part of a project currently running in Mali, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho, as well as Malawi, being implemented by the Circle for Integrated Community Development (CICOD), supported by HIVOS, FAIR, Development Fund of Norway, Swed Bio, and the Zimbabwean-based Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation Programme (CBDC),

Although a teacher by profession, Mereki is also now a proud framer who believes in the value of traditional crops. “I can tell you that indigenous crops are different from hybrid, they are very reliable, some of them have medicinal value, so we cannot ignore local indigenous crops,” says Mereki.

Although the project is open to both women and men, FAIR programme coordinator, Dalitso Kafuwa is proud of the overwhelming participation of women, who comprise 85% of participants. “We have empowered women here, they are now mainly involved in the cultivation of indigenous crops. It is women who are the custodians of biodiversity conservation,” she notes.

Kafuwa stresses the need for men to be involved, so that not only women are seen as seed custodians. However, she says that men are not as interested in growing local indigenous crops as women are. “Women are mostly at home, they are the ones keeping indigenous seeds. Men are only interested in high-profit crops such as tobacco,” observes Kafuwa.

Participants grow crops such as Bambara nuts, Okra, local beans, millet and groundnuts. These mostly women farmers are not only at the forefront of cultivating local crops, they are also involved in a farmers’ rights forum, where cross-cutting issues of gender and HIV and AIDS are addressed.

The project also highlights the importance of traditional crops for plant genetic diversity and environmental policy issues, such as safeguarding local plant genetic resources from pirating by powerful foreign multinational companies, who sometimes reap the profits from indigenous knowledge. The Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (CEPA) handles policy issues in this project, addressing, amongst other things, bio safety in the context of local plant genetic resources.

According to the organisers, the project conforms to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) of 1994. The treaty is an international legally binding instrument that targets the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources; it also has provisions for farmers’ rights that compel governments across the globe to uphold these rights.

According to Kafuwa, local crops are very important and must not be forgotten. “Malawi is a signatory to ITPGRFA and it is important to keep local plant genetic resources from local plants. Local crops are very important and we should not forget them. Hybrids and local crops must be promoted together,” she adds.

Vickness Majoni is another woman taking a leading role in community biodiversity conservation. She belongs to a farmers club composed of 20 women and 5 men, which started in 2006. She calls for more women to be involved in the conservation of indigenous crops to make themselves food secure.

“Women must be food self sufficient, we don’t have to have to rely on our husbands. In this project woman are able to participate in all activities without being blocked by men,” she says.

As many countries race to meet some of the targets set in the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, it is not still clear to what extent countries and governments have put in place strategies or interventions to promote women in farming and environmental conservation. Yet women are pivotal in boosting food security. Ignoring women’s participation is retrogressive and will do little to help end hunger in the world.


*Dingaan Mithi is programme officer for Journalists Association Against AIDS in Malawi.
*This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service, which offers fresh news on every day news.

Mauritania: Violence against women increasing

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/y9y689u

Hundreds of serious cases of violence against women were recorded in Mauritania between 2007 and 2009, the Chairperson of the Association to fight Against Dependence (ALCD-RIHAB), Mrs. Fatimetou Mint Ahmed Jiddou, has disclosed.

Sierra Leone: Thousands unite to end maternal mortality

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/yd4msgc

Over 4,000 people gathered in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Tuesday to attend the launch of Amnesty International's campaign to end maternal mortality in the country. Amnesty International's Secretary General, Irene Khan, told the assembled crow that having a baby should be a very happy occasion, “but, in so many houses it becomes a very sad occasion.

Zambia: Standing together in the face of abandonment

Mubayandi Kwiima* with Perpertual Sichikwenkwe

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/59017

My name is Mubayandi Kwiima.* I am 39-years-old and a mother of five. I’m the second wife in the polygamous marriage of three wives. I work as a clerk at one of the government ministries in Zambia. My story started in 1989 when I got married to a man who presented himself to me as a single man. My parents accepted his gesture and allowed him to marry me after he had paid dowry as per our Tonga tradition.
My name is Mubayandi Kwiima.* I am 39-years-old and a mother of five. I’m the second wife in the polygamous marriage of three wives. I work as a clerk at one of the government ministries in Zambia.

My story started in 1989 when I got married to a man who presented himself to me as a single man. My parents accepted his gesture and allowed him to marry me after he had paid dowry as per our Tonga tradition.

Before we got married, he told me he was the father of two but that he was single. After the marriage, about a year later, the number increased from two kids to six.

One day, his mother-in-law (mother to his first wife) walked in my house and bluntly informed me that the man I called my husband was already married, separated from his wife, but that they were not divorced.

When my husband returned home, I confronted him on this issue and he apologetically confirmed the story. I knew I was in hot soup. I am a child born out of a polygamous marriage. My mother was a second wife to my father, so I was already familiar with the happenings in a polygamous marriage. Since I was already pregnant by then, and the fact that his wife was not back, I saw no point of leaving him.

In 1994, his first wife started coming home and my husband asked me to accept her as part of the family, especially since she was the first wife and they were married. Looking at the misery that was showing on the first wife’s face, I understood that she was going through a lot and I accepted that she move in with us.

Problems in my marriage started immediately because I was working but the first wife was not. Every time I bought anything or cooked food, mostly bought with my own money, the first wife would grab the food on grounds that the money was from our husband, accusing that the man was fond of me and not her.

The trend went on until in 1999 when our husband who was a Human Resource Officer at a government ministry decided to stop work and moved to his farm. By then, he had managed to the first wife a job as a cleaner in the same ministry where I was working.

This was the beginning of serious problems for us all. After few months he came back home and told us that he did not want any of us to visit him at the farm, instead we should concentrate on educating and feeding our children because he was no longer going to be providing anything for us.

Before long, news reached us that this was because he had married another woman, to make it three wives. This angered both of us so much that the first wife decided to follow him with all her children to the farm. However, before the night was over, he chased her back.

Two days later, our husband came to our house and informed us that it was true that he had married another woman. He told us never to visit him at the farm without his permission. He reiterated that he is never going to provide food for us but that we should work hard to educate our children and look for food for them.

It was at this stage that I confirmed that polygamy was a dirty game and in reality, it was not marriage. I told myself that if I had to carry on with life, I had to be a strong by myself.

The first wife was devastated with our husband’s behaviour and almost took her own life. Since problems had forced us to develop a good relationship between ourselves and our children for survival, I advised my friend against this move. I told her that there is no need to take her life over a man, who was does not provide anything for the family. I reminded her about her seven children that needed her attention.

I comforted her and told her that even if the husband does nothing, the fact that we were both working was fine, although our income was inadequate to cater for all our needs with our children. These problems forced us to develop a close relationship.

As if his mistreating behaviour was not enough, in 2001, our husband stopped having conjugal rights with both of us and just concentrated on the third wife. He completely stopped coming and even changed his phone numbers. We would only see him if there was an illness or sickness in the family. After couple of years, he came back home and told us that we were still his and it was up to us to follow him to the farm.

We discussed the issue and vowed never to follow him for conjugal rights. We thought about HIV/AIDS and how many wives have died of the disease at the hands of polygamy.

I have always known polygamous marriage not to be good and very few people in such marriages have peace and enjoy life. There is so much unfaithfulness in polygamous marriage and that is the reason there are so many deaths among such couples in this era of HIV/AIDS.

There is always fighting and quarrelling among the wives. In situations where you find the wives becoming friends, they usually work together against the husband. In many cases, they encourage each other to have extra marital affairs and keep each other’s secrets.

Now there is nothing I can do, because my husband has not officially divorced me. I am still living in the matrimonial house and have to look after my children, educate them so that tomorrow they can have a better future and look after both of us.

I do not intend to seek divorce as long as he does not do so. I want to maintain my title. For me, it is marriage for life, whether in polygamy or not.

* not her real name.

*Mubayandi Kwiima* writes with Perpertual Sichikwenkwe, a freelance writer in Zambia.
*This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service, which offers fresh news on every day news.

Egypt: New draft bill to regulate NGOs being discussed

2009-09-25

http://www.hrea.org/index.php?base_id=2&language_id=1&headline_id=9998

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT), expresses its deepest concerns following the accusations against human rights organisations voiced by Dr. Abdel Aziz Hegazi, Chairperson of the General Federation of Civil Associations, an institution likely to become the prime means for the Executive to regulate NGOs in Egypt.

Ethiopia: ‘Assurances’ no guarantee against torture

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ltx8mv

The UK government should not rely on unreliable "diplomatic assurances" against torture to deport national security suspects to Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to the UK government. In December 2008, the United Kingdom and Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), similar to those the UK has signed with Jordan, Lebanon and Libya. Under these MoUs, the receiving governments provide "diplomatic assurances" that they will not mistreat persons whom the other country transfers to their territory.

Gambia: Jammeh issues death threats to rights advocates

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/59011

President Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia on September 21, 2009 issued a stern warning to Gambians in a television broadcast not to have anything to do with international human rights advocates, who he described as “saboteurs” bent on “destabilizing” the country.
President Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia on September 21, 2009 issued a stern warning to Gambians in a television broadcast not to have anything to do with international human rights advocates, who he described as “saboteurs” bent on “destabilizing” the country.

Speaking in a rare interview on state-owned government-controlled Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS), President Jammeh threatened that: "those who want to work with these so-called defenders of human rights, thinking they will be defended by them are wrong. If you want to destabilize the country, sowing confusion and suffering to my people, I will ensure that you are dead.”

President Jammeh continued saying: “what I want to make very clear to each (you) and these so-called defenders of human rights is that I will never allow anyone to destabilize the country on behalf of the campaign to promote the rights of man.”

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported that President Jammeh’s latest threats could be a reaction to a September 3, 2009 announcement by the United States Embassy in Banjul. The Embassy has approved a proposal to promote human rights through building the capacities of civil society organisations including the Gambian Press Union (GPU) and the Network of Human Rights Journalists. Since the announcement President Jammeh has consistently chastised human rights activists.

Despite incessant unlawful arrests, killings, disappearances and other inhuman atrocities, committed against journalists and media, the GPU is the only institution that the authorities have not been able to have control over. Other civil society organisations such as the students and labour union have been undermined.

MFWA condemns these threats and appeals to the members of the United Nation currently meeting in the United States of America to call the bluff of Yahya Jammeh.

For more information please contact:

Kwame Karikari (Prof)
Executive Director
MFWA
Accra
Tel: 233-21-24 24 70
Fax: 233-21-22 10 84
Email: mfwa@africaonline.com.gh/alerts@mediafound.org
Website: www.mediafound.org

Gambia: President to enforce death penalty

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ye6xt4a

The Gambian leader, President Yayha Jammeh has vowed to enforce death penalty so as to prevent or discourage escalating rate of murder incidents in the country. “The death penalty is there to ensure that nobody kills anybody. We are going to implement the death penalty to the letter”. If you kill and the law says you must die, you will die,” President Jammeh said.

Madagascar: Poverty forces 2 million children into hard labour

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48552

Poverty has increased dramatically in Madagascar since January, when a national protest movement to end the regime of former president Marc Ravalomanana plunged the country into a socio-economic crisis. Since then, the number of child labourers has risen by a whopping 25 percent.

East Africa: Conflict and drought force more Somalis to flee to Kenya

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/y8dxe4o

The refugees are arriving at an overwhelming average rate of 6,400 a month, adding more pressure on the already overstretched facilities and resources in Dadaab camps in northern Kenya, which currently host three times the population they were designed to hold.

Global: Monitoring disaster displacement in the context of climate change

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/y9ktlsk

At least 36 million people were displaced by sudden-onset natural disasters which occurred in 2008, including over 20 million displaced by climate-related, sudden-onset disasters, according to a new report by NRC/IDMC and OCHA. In comparison, 4.6 million people were newly internally displaced during the year by conflict and violence. This report presents the results of a study carried out by IDMC and OCHA earlier this year.

Africa: SADC Peoples’ Summit Declaration

5-6 September 2009

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/59014

We the more than 250 representatives of Social Movements, Non-Governmental Organisations, Trade Unions, Religious Organisations, Economic Justice and Human Rights Networks, Youth and Women’s Organisations, met in Kinshasa, DRC, to bring the SADC Community’s attention to challenges that affect our daily lives. The SADC Peoples’ Summit is annually convened parallel to the Heads of State Summit under the auspices of the Southern Africa Peoples’ Solidarity Network, SAPSN.
We the more than 250 representatives of Social Movements, Non-Governmental Organisations, Trade Unions, Religious Organisations, Economic Justice and Human Rights Networks, Youth and Women’s Organisations, met in Kinshasa, DRC, to bring the SADC Community’s attention to challenges that affect our daily lives. The SADC Peoples’ Summit is annually convened parallel to the Heads of State Summit under the auspices of the Southern Africa Peoples’ Solidarity Network, SAPSN. Our theme for this year is, ‘Reclaiming SADC for People’s Solidarity and Development Cooperation: Taking Ownership of our Resources for People’s Security and Justice”. From our deliberations at the Summit, we call on the SADC governments and all stakeholders to pay particular attention to the following:

1. Privatisation of basic Public Services: This is worsening the poverty of the SADC peoples as African leaders apply neo-capitalist and western policies without profound analysis of regional and African issues. Privatisation violates the right to life as it infringes on the rights to education, health care, accommodation, safe drinking water, protection of persons and services and also the right to electricity. The Peoples of SADC demand that:

* The DRC and the other states in the region involved in the exportation of electricity from Inga Dam ensure that there is complete electrification of DRC before exportation.
* The organised Civil Society representing specific social interests should be actively involved in the negotiations related to the granting of contracts on public services in order to guarantee the social economic rights of workers and the social responsibility of new shareholders in community development projects.
* There should be a STOP to privatisation of essential services.

2. The impact of external forces in the DRC armed conflict is of major concern.
The role of foreign states in the stabilisation of the DRC must be of concern to the SADC Heads of State. The people of SADC are demanding that:

* The SADC states move and cooperate following the SADC charter on the security of DRC in order to allow effective peoples integration;
* The SADC states must themselves avoid taking advantage of the weakness of the Congolese government to occupy it as in the case of Kayemba and Bas Congo by Angola and other forms of imposition.
* The SADC Leaders ensure that the resources of the Congo are used for the benefit of the people of the Congo.
* The rampant violence against women and children in the DRC must be stopped forthwith.

3. Democracy and human rights is a solid base to support sustainable development and guarantee the participation of SADC people in the project of regional integration. We demand that:

* All the governments throughout the region respect promote and protect fundamental human democratic rights. On this subject, we would like to draw the attention of the Heads of State on the Limited freedom of speech and association particularly for the political organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland, Angola and Zimbabwe is an impediment to the people’s participation in the project of collective development.
* The power sharing agreement concluded on 15th September 2008 in Zimbabwe between the political protagonists must be implemented in the realisation of promises on human rights related reforms.
* The strengthening of mechanisms of execution of the SADC Tribunal decisions. The courts and national tribunals should be without racial, sex and social class discrimination.

4. External debts, international aid and Trade Injustices are ropes that tie down the African people to poverty. The majority of the population who pay the price are ignorant of this issue. It is therefore necessary that the civil society gets involved in the popularisation of debt problems, and make petitions demanding external debt cancellation to the SADC Head of State.

The people are calling for:
· An audit of external debt in order to separate legitimate debt from illegitimate debt particularly when the political leaders enjoy being supported by donors and Western states.
· Organise a meeting of the SADC civil society on external debt and submit the resolution to SADC Heads of State.
· Our national governments to stop opening up our markets to international competition that negatively affect small-scale producers and traders particularly women.
· Our governments to revisit and review the Economic Partnership Agreements they have signed whilst those that have not yet signed should desist from signing the agreements.

5. Global Financial Crisis.
The global financial crisis is widely generalised and yet it was created by the financial institutions from economically powerful nations. The State must involve itself more in the regulation of the financial sector to avoid fraud, money laundering and their harmful social consequences on the people. To achieve this we demand that:

* The Heads of State must favour the creation of a common market of exchange in the region to allow financial cooperation and integration and regional customs.
* The SADC states must adopt a policy of granting micro credit to the population particular rural and peasant to prompt either production of local goods.


6. Climatic Change and Energy Crisis has become a major problem in the 21st century affecting all the countries. However, the most industrialised nations which find themselves out of our region and of the continent are the biggest polluters. The African people, particularly women and children who are already poor and they pay the most.

* The SADC people reject the principle and application of Carbon Trade which is a false solution predicated on inventing a perverse right to pollute. They propose reforestation of forests devastated by western companies and put in place measures protecting water and fishing.

* The SADC people must participate and contribute positively as civil Society in order to find national solutions to the problem of Global Warming. The DRC civil society seeks that the Heads of State and SADC Nongovernmental organisations support the preservation of the Central basin whose greater part is found in the Congo.


7. Poverty and Unemployment are a plague in our region principally caused by neo-colonial and capitalist policies implemented by our governments. SADC countries pledged to allocate 10% of their national budgets to agriculture (Maputo Summit 2003) but food crisis continues and not all countries have honoured their agreements on agriculture. We have 249 million people in the region, 70% of them depend on agriculture for food, income and employment. The poor spend 60- 100 % of their income on food.
WE therefore demand:

* The establishment of an economic and social agency to promote creation of decent employment in each SADC country;
* A huge budgetary allocation to the key sectors particularly education, employment creation, and the fight against poverty.

* On Agriculture the government must provide with: Infrastructure (roads, railways and access to markets), Mechanisation, Inputs (seeds etc), ’ Research and extension services and capacity building for farmers’ organisations,

* Mitigation approaches must be put in place in areas where climate change is having an impact for example providing irrigation where farmers depend on rainfall (due to evidence of drought they are becoming vulnerable)

Global: Interface Journal

Call for papers

2009-09-25

http://www.interfacejournal.net/

Interface is a new journal produced twice yearly by activists and academics around the world in response to the development and increased visibility of social movements in the last few years – and the immense amount of knowledge generated in this process. This knowledge is created across the globe, and in many contexts and a variety of ways, and it constitutes an incredibly valuable resource for the further development of social movements.

Asian perspective on global power-shifts

2009-09-25

http://www.hindu.com/br/2009/09/22/stories/2009092250061500.htm/

V. R. Raghavan highlights that the growing output of studies and books on the implications of the power-shift to Asia has generally been based on the need to protect the interests of developed countries, but the latest edited volume by N.S. Sisodia, V. Krishnappa provides a refreshing contribution to the discourse by examining an Asian perspective on the global power shifts.

China and Africa’s Natural Resources

The Challenges and implications for development and governance

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ydrqtlb

In latest report from the SAIIA China in Africa project, Chris Alden and Cristina and Alves argues that China’s energy policy, particularly continues remains a strategic focus in Beijing’s foreign policy making and underpins China’s economic foray into Africa’s natural resources.

China at age 60: from pariah to world power

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/y998nwe

Sixty years ago, as Mao Zedong declared the founding of a new communist nation, considered a pariah state. Today t is a world power with sweeping influence -- it is financing America's debt, snapping up access to natural resources in Africa and Latin America, and making its voice heard on major diplomatic issues.

China's growth will continue

2009-09-25

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4649

China’s successful economic policies are specifically Chinese. But they are made up of universal elements.

Emerging Powers news roundup

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/59102

A) Trade, Investment, Aid and Development

1. Russia identified as a key economic partner for South Africa
“Trade and investment with Russia is very vital,” Business Unity South Africa CEO Jerry Vilakazi tells Engineering News Online. “Russia is a very key strategic partner for South Africa.” More

2. China’s Sinohydro in Talks to Build $300 Million Dam in Congo
Sinohydro Corp., China’s largest dam-builder, is in talks to build a hydroelectric plant worth about $300 million in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Wu Zexian, China’s ambassador to the country. More

3. SA may still surprise on the FDI upside in 2009 – Unctad
South Africa, which recorded a strong rise in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2008, might still show increased inflows for 2009, despite estimates that global flows would slump from $1,7-trillion in 2008 to $1,2-trillion this year on the back of the global economic crisis.
More

4. Ethiopia seals China deals
The Ethiopian government said that its national electricity company has signed contracts with three Chinese firms to develop hydro-electric projects and made preliminary accords for wind power projects.
More

5. China does more for Senegal in 4 years than West in 20 years: envoy
Chinese ambassador to Senegal, Lu Shaye, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News agency that since diplomatic relations have resumed with Senegal 4 years ago there has been more that the |Chinese have done for the West African country’s development than the West over the last 20 years. More

6. China, Guinea-Bissau sign cooperation accord
China and Guinea-Bissau signed more than 6 million Euros in technical cooperation accords for food security and financial aid recently when the Chinese deputy foreign minister and the Guinea=Bissau Minister for Defense met to reaffirm bilateral relations.
More

B) India’s African footprint continues...
1. India, A Trusted Ally-Prez Mills
President John Evans Atta Mills at the week-end acknowledged India as Ghana’s longest and one of the biggest allies in the world and pledged the country’s willingness to embrace the Indian experience in her development efforts.
More

2. African nations beckon Indian businessmen for trade, investments
Addressing a seminar on ‘African countries – trade and investment opportunities,’ organised by EEPC INDIA in Chennai, envoys from envoys of Kenya, Ghana and South Africa said There is good potential for trade and investment opportunities in African countries, especially in tourism, agriculture, transport and manufacturing, communications, energy, building and construction and pharmaceutical sectors, and it is up to Indian entrepreneurs and traders to tap the unlimited opportunities.
More

3. India offers assistance, training to Liberia
Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, the first Indian minister to visit Liberia in 38 years, arrived in the west African state bearing gifts, including lines of credit, a grant of $2 million and various training programmes.
More

C) FOCAC News
1. Tanzania president hails Forum on China-Africa Cooperation as "great initiative"
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete on Saturday said that the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation is a "great initiative" as it serves as the structure for the two sides to work together.
More

D) IBSA versus BRIC and Building Southern Alliances
1. G20: Cementing a Southern Alliance
Major developing countries are again preparing to stand together on critical issues at the G20 heads of government meeting in Pittsburgh Sep 24-25.
More

2. SOUTH AMERICA-AFRICA: New Summit to Boost Cooperation
Heads of state and other officials from 54 African and 12 South American nations will meet for the Second Africa-South America Summit 26-27 September on Isla Margarita, Venezuela, to boost cooperation in a score of areas with potential for greater bi-regional exchange.
More

E) Business is Business
1. China says no renewal of S.Africa textile curbs
China does not plan to renew a voluntary two-year restriction on textile exports to South Africa imposed after unions complained that cheap imports were hurting local manufacturers, its ambassador said in Pretoria recently.
More

F) Company News
1. Libya fund to buy Verenex for $293.7M in cash deal
Canada-based oil producer Verenex Energy Inc. said it has agreed to be sold to the Libyan Investment Authority for about $314.1 million Canadian ($293.7 million) in cash, after a better deal with a Chinese firm fell through.
More

2. Bharti-MTN may be finalized soon despite regulatory hurdles
The $24 billion complex mega-merger deal between India's top mobile operator Bharti Airtel and South African MTN is likely to be inked by September-end despite regulatory hurdles in the way.
More

3. Chinese to buy Super Group truck assembly plant
Norinco Motors looks set to be the first Chinese company to operate a vehicle assembly plant in South Africa.
More

4. Government Endorses Arcelor Mittal & GTZ Effort…To Establish Corporate Responsibility Forum In Liberia
The Government of Liberia, through the Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs, Amara Konneh has endorsed the ideas of ArcelorMIttal and the German Technical Cooperation agency (GTZ), for the establishment of Corporate Responsibility Forum in Liberia for the first time in the country’s history.
More

5. Team South Africa bats for MTN
MUMBAI: A delegation of South African officials told Indian policymakers on Thursday that the latest change in takeover rules would make it more difficult for telecom major MTN to execute its deal with Bharti Airtel.
More

G) Tensions, Rivalries and Disputes
1. THINGS NOT WELL AT DIKGATLHONG DAM PROJECT
Employees of Sinohydro, feared that with the unskilled Chinese holding key positions which need accountability, the safety and the life of workers at the project have been subjected to great danger.
More

2. China Spreads Aid in Africa, With a Catch for Recipients
From Pakistan to Angola to Kyrgyzstan, China is using its enormous pool of foreign currency savings to cement diplomatic alliances, secure access to natural resources and drum up business for its flagship companies. Foreign aid — typically cut-rate loans, sometimes bundled with more commercial lines of credit — is central to this effort.
More

3. Over 10 Sinohydro employees in Siavonga resign
More than ten Sinohydro workers in Siavonga have resigned from the Chinese company with immediate effect over what they termed poor safety and conditions of service.
More

Angola: Angolans 'tired of waiting for elections' - UNITA

2009-09-25

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/662970/-/136ctbuz/-/index.html

Angolans are tired of waiting for presidential elections and may soon take to the streets in protest against delays, the head of the main opposition UNITA party has said. Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in power for 30 years, has pushed back a presidential poll at least three times since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002.

Burundi: UN to support staging of elections

2009-09-25

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32212

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced it will manage a $44 million fund to promote the peaceful staging of presidential, parliamentary and local elections next year in Burundi, which was been wracked by ethnically-based strife for decades. Through the fund, UNDP will assist the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) organize the polls, promote civic education about the election process, encourage media coverage and try to boost the participation of women in the elections.

Cote d'Ivoire: Electoral commission briefs religious leaders

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ya224kp

Officials of the Ivorian Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) have held a meeting with religious leaders to enable them to better understand the current electoral process in the country.

Ethiopia: Ethnic federalism could lead to election violence

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48518

Criticised as system of dividing and ruling people according to their ethnic groups, Ethiopia’s federalism has just become a bone of contention. A recent international report warns if this system, and the resultant lack of governance, continues the entire Horn of Africa could be destabilised.

Kenya: US warns 15 of blocking reforms

2009-09-25

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/662842/-/136cu6wz/-/index.html

The United States has sent warning letters to 15 prominent Kenyans it says are blocking reform in east Africa's biggest economy following last year's post-election violence, the U.S. ambassador has said. Michael Ranneberger, the U.S. envoy to Kenya, declined to name the individuals. But he said they included sitting government ministers, members of parliament and other senior officials on both sides of the country's coalition government.

Liberia: Mixed reaction to UNMIL extension

2009-09-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86193

In Liberia citizens’ reaction has been mixed to a 16 September UN Security Council decision extending the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIL) to assist with the planned 2011 presidential and legislative elections.

Somaliland: Elders extend President Kahin's rule

2009-09-25

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE58O08120090925

Clan elders in northern Somalia's breakaway enclave of Somaliland voted on Friday to extend President Dahir Riyale Kahin's term on condition that a voter list be finalised and a date set for a presidential election. It was the third time since April 2008 that Somaliland's upper House of Elders has extended Kahin's term, which was due to expire on October 29. Opposition politicians in the lower House of Representatives have demanded the president be impeached.

Kenya: World Bank freezes US$ 166 million funding for projects

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ybb9kln

The World Bank (WB) has said it had suspended funding for two key projects, worth US$ 166 million, covering education, water and flood management in Kenya's western region, pending investigations into fraud and corruption. The Bank said the projects, including the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) and the Western Kenya Community-Driven Development and Flood Mitigati on Project (WKCDD), were suspended over corruption involving Bank staff and Kenyan officials.

East Africa: Countries agree on common market

2009-09-25

http://www.tralac.org/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=74595

A technical team from countries in the East African region, which has been meeting in Kampala, Uganda, has agreed on a pact paving the way for free movement of labour in the region. Once the Kampala Common Market Protocol is endorsed, professionals, services and capital owners will be able to move freely in the five countries of the East African Community (EAC).

Global: G20: Cementing a Southern Alliance

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48511

Major developing countries are again preparing to stand together on critical issues at the G20 heads of government meeting in Pittsburgh Sep 24-25. But Southern solidarity may need to move beyond the strategic common front presented at such summits to include a strengthening of continuing ties.

Global: Social investment is the key

2009-09-25

http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/7121.html

The second half of 2008 saw unfold one of the most significant financial crises in history that started in the United States and then spread to Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. The response was just as historic. To stave off regional and global recessions and restore stability and confidence in the market, northern governments are pursuing a massive and unprecedented program of government intervention, nationalizing banks, injecting massive subsidies into ailing institutions and re-regulating their financial sectors.

Malawi: Effective targetting to ensure pro-poor impact of social protection

2009-09-25

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=44613&type=Document

In the process of defining the target group for the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme (SCTS) the Government had to choose between universal targeting and poverty targeting and between categorical concepts and inclusive concepts. The paper analyses eight target group options ranging from categorical schemes like universal social pensions or child grants to inclusive schemes targeting ultra poor households.

Africa: Leaders unite to meet UN malaria eradication targets

2009-09-25

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-7W83K6?OpenDocument

African leaders are at the forefront of a landmark initiative to protect all those at risk from malaria with life-saving interventions by the end of 2010, the United Nations Envoy for efforts to defeat the deadly disease says. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) is tasked with ensuring that more than 240 million insecticide-treated bed nets are distributed throughout malaria-endemic countries on the continent by the end of 2010, with the aim of ending unnecessary deaths from the disease by 2015.

Global: First positive results from an HIV vaccine

2009-09-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86279

A six-year clinical trial in Thailand has yielded the first ever evidence that an AIDS vaccine can provide some protection against HIV infection. The trial team in Bangkok, Thailand's capital announced on 24 September that rates of HIV infection were 31 percent lower in trial participants who got the vaccine than in those who received a placebo.

Global: Human Rights groups condemn deportation of HIV-positive migrants

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ye8f4wm

National governments, in cooperation with international agencies and donors, should reconsider their decision to deport people living with HIV/AIDS, human rights groups said. A report, released by four HIV/AIDS and human rights groups, describes cases in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and the US, in which HIV-positive migrants were deported, saying that there was the need to develop policies guaranteeing uninterrupted treatment for this class of people.

Kenya: Survey reveals older people at risk

2009-09-25

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86277

Kenya's older citizens are not safe from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to the final report of the 2007 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey. The survey, released on 24 September, also showed that the country's epidemic varies greatly from region to region, while HIV testing remains low due to low risk perception among the population.

South Africa: Health budget decisions may be violating Constitution

2009-09-25

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032515

Several health-related budget decisions taken in the past financial year violated the Constitution, the National Health Act, the Public Finance Management Act and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. This is according to a group of activists, researchers, unionists, health workers and academics who have written letters to the ministers of health and finance, expressing grave concern over budgeting practices within the public health system and the dire effect it is shaving on HIV/AIDS, including the antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes.

South Africa: Multiple partner study full of surprises

2009-09-25

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86260

Multiple partnerships may not be as common in South Africa as previously thought, according to a study presented at the recent AIDS Research Symposium at the University the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. Saul Johnson, managing director of Health & Development Africa (HDA), a health consultancy which conducted the research, said findings from four sites across the country showed about 26 percent of men and 5 percent of women reported having had more than one partner in the past year.

Southern Africa: Deaths in older children, teenagers with HIV set to grow

2009-09-25

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/48A188C0-B082-4555-9D10-899C84E60212.asp

A growing epidemic among child and adolescent survivors of mother-to-child HIV transmission in southern Africa is emerging, highlighting the failure to recognise its development and address the clinical needs of this population, research published in the September 24th issue of AIDS shows. Although there is a high risk of death in the first year of life for infants infected perinatally, children may live with asymptomatic HIV infection for long periods, undiagnosed.

Uganda: Handbook for community Aids workers

2009-09-25

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=44694&type=Document

Uganda like many other developing countries, suffers from inequitable distribution of health workers between rural and urban areas and between public and private sectors. To strengthen the referral systems, people living with HIV have been trained as Network Support Agents (NSA) to work alongside health care workers in health facilities. This handbook has been designed to help NSAs and other community-based volumteers/providers to be more effective in disseminating standardised HIV and AIDs information at grassroorts levels.

Swaziland: Educating angels

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48474

It is not a typical classroom setup where pupils sit in rows facing the front with a teacher lecturing before them. Instead, Angel Hlatshwayo (13), like the rest of her colleagues, sits in an individual cubicle concentrating on the work before her. "This is a unique system of education which was started in the United States of America," explained Bulembu Christian Academy (BCA) principal Jon Skinner.

Zimbabwe: UNICEF boost education with $70m

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/yczbmam

The United Nations Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) on Monday availed US$70 million to Zimbabwe&s under-funded education sector that is currently reeling under a two-week-old strike by teachers across the country. "The government of Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children's Education Fund and the international donor community unveiled a US$70 million partnership through the Educational Transition Fund," UNICEF said in a statement.

Botswana: Booklet set to challenge perceptions of gays

2009-09-25

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=botswana&id=2313

In its endeavor to change society’s perception of non heterosexual people and to promote understanding of different identities within this community, Lesbian, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) has produced a booklet unraveling, among others, issues of coming out, the paths to self realisation and challenges faced by this community. True-life Stories and Poems that may change your perceptions, Dancing to the Beat of a Different Drum, is the title of the booklet which contains life stories of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender Batswana from a variety of backgrounds.

North Africa: Film explores being gay in Tunisia

2009-09-25

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=tunisia&id=2308

A film, set to be released on the 7 April 2010, has brought the topic of homosexuality back in the agenda in Tunisia. The first feature film by Tunisia’s Mehdi ben Attia titled “Le Fil”, tackles the issue of homosexuality between men within a male chauvinistic society where men are supposed to be men and ancient traditions still rule. Entirely shot in Tunisia, “Le Fil” was presented under the Tunisian National Selection, during the Festival du Film Francophone d’Angouleme (South West of France), on 26 to the 30 August 2009.

South Africa: Relief as lesbian's killer jailed

2009-09-25

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8270417.stm

Gay activists in South Africa have welcomed the life sentence handed down to a man for the killing and gang rape of lesbian football star Eudy Simelane. Ms Simelane was one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in KwaThema township near Johannesburg.

Africa: Senegal seeks UN backing for 'Great Green Wall'

2009-09-25

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32238

Senegal has called for United Nations support for the “Great Green Wall” project in which African countries have agreed to plant trees in a band across the breadth of the continent to try to lessen the effects of desertification. President Abdoulaye Wade told the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate that he wishes the UN will endorse the project, “which contributes to the protection of the environment,” help in the battle against climate change and would mobilize thousands of people.

Madagascar: Political instability speeds destruction of a unique environment

2009-09-25

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/359.1

Political instability in Madagascar is having a serious effect on the already fragile and highly endangered ecology of this island nation. This is of profound concern as Madagascar contains many unique species that are already severely threatened.

Namibia: For trees, against monoculture

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.org/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48531

Large-scale tree planting on agricultural land can save those primary forests, agroforestry experts argue. But the new plantations are detrimental to biodiversity and indigenous people, critics respond. Professor P K Nair, director of the Centre of Subtropical Agroforestry at the University of Florida, believes planting trees on farmland is the way to conserve what's left of the world's rainforests.

Nigeria: Imminent explosion in Ijegun community in Lagos

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/ybjrz3h

A large quantity of petroleum products that were not properly cleaned up after the Ijegun pipeline rupture on May 15, 2008 have found its way into water-bearing wells used by residents of the community and may soon lead to massive explosions and loss of lives. ERA/FoEN monitors that visited Ijegun, located in Ikotun Local Government of Lagos State on Sunday September 13, 2009 observed that virtually all wells within the axis of the explosion and 14 streets away had large deposits of petrol that could be ignited by the strike of a match.

Lesotho: Compensation victory for displaced villagers

2009-09-25

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48587

Taelo Motseki had every reason to wear a broad smile despite the afternoon chill. His family along with 21 others displaced by Phase 1B of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project at Ha Mohale had won a decade-long struggle seeking compensation. On Sep 8, the Ombudsman, Sekara Mafisa, reversed and earlier decision and ruled in their favour, ending what had become a source of both frustration and anger for the 22 households now resettled at Ha Matala, in Lesotho's capital, Maseru.

South Africa: COHRE releases N2 gateway housing report

2009-09-25

http://www.cohre.org/store/attachments/090911%20N2%20Gateway%20Project%20Report.pdf

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) on Friday 11 September 2009 released a report on housing rights violations in the context of the N2 Gateway development project in South Africa. The report is based on research conducted by COHRE during a fact finding mission to South Africa in 2008 and its amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) submission to the South African Constitutional Court in the recently decided "Joe Slovo" case (Residents of Joe Slovo Community, Western Cape v Thubelisha Homes & Others, CCT 22/08[2009] ZACC 16).

Tanzania: Government says no land deal with South Korea

2009-09-25

http://farmlandgrab.org/7865

The Tanzanian government has refuted media reports indicating that it has leased out 1000 square kilometres of farmland to South Koreans. It was reported that South Korea had agreed to develop farmland in Tanzania, the latest in series of such deals between rich and poor nations.

Zimbabwe: Who really owns the land?

2009-09-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86269

A comprehensive land audit to establish who owns what after almost a decade of often chaotic land transfers in Zimbabwe is being stalled by a lack of money. President Robert Mugabe launched the fast-track land reform programme in 2000 to redistribute white-owned commercial farms to landless blacks.

Africa: Mamadou Goita on the African Green Revolution

2009-09-25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbwycpQRy5U

Mamadou Goita—Executive Director of the Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD) in Mali—was interviewed at the Salzburg Global Seminar by Susanna Thorpe, of WREN Media. This interview was during a high-level conference entitled “Toward a ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa?” The Salzburg Global Seminar partnered with the Institute of Development Studies and the Future Agricultures Consortium, bringing together stake holders from around the globe, to work on the challenges facing Africa regarding agriculture and farming.

Global: Rising hunger - the food crisis in focus

2009-09-25

http://www.facebook.com/l/50230;www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNnYVNksC-M

The World Food Programme says that, for the first time, the number of people facing hunger worldwide has topped one billion, but who is to blame for this and what can be done to stem the flow of starvation? Inside Story speaks to Bettina Luescher, Christina Schiavoni, and Pambazuka's Firoze Manji.

Global: Second report on the global food crisis

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/yejtjc2

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food has presented his second report entitled “Crisis into opportunity: reinforcing multilateralism”, on the global food crisis to the UN Human Rights Council.

Eritrea: World's worst place for journalists

2009-09-25

http://www.ifex.org/eritrea/2009/09/23/worst_gulag/

Eritrea ranks last place on the latest Reporters Without Borders (RSF) index measuring the level of press freedom in 173 countries. Privately owned press have been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki since 2001, and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison, says RSF. Four journalists have died in detention and, currently, at least 30 journalists and two media workers are believed to be in prison without trial.

Guinea Ecuatorial: Reporter spends 100 days in jail

2009-09-25

http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=34590

Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for the release of Rodrigo Angue Nguema, the Malabo correspondent of Agence France-Presse and Radio France Internationale, who has been held in the capital’s Black Beach prison for the past 100 days. He was tried on a defamation charge on 1 September but the court has yet to issue a verdict.

Mozambique: Opposition supporters asault journalist

2009-09-25

http://www.ifex.org/mozambique/2009/09/24/momade_antonio_assaulted/

MISA-Mozambique, a regional chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, has strongly protested the brutal beating of a community radio journalist by members of the country's main opposition party, Renamo, in the northern port of Nacala. The incident occurred on 16 September 2009, the fourth day of the current election campaign.

Nigeria: News editor murdered

2009-09-25

http://mediarightsagenda.org/bayoohu.html

On September 20, 2009 at about 6.52 a.m local time, Mr. Bayo Ohu, an assistant news editor with the private daily, The Guardian newspapers was gruesomely murdered in his home in Egbeda, a Lagos suburb by a gang of about six men who riddled his body with bullets. The assassins took away his laptop and mobile phone. No other flat or house in the area was attacked.

Nigeria: Radio journalist assaulted

2009-09-25

http://mediarightsagenda.org/oluokun.html

On September 16, 2009, Mr. Wale Oluokun, the Radio Nigeria Correspondent for Government House in Owerri, the Imo State capital in South-east Nigeria was beaten and injured by four armed government security agents in the presence of the Imo State Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Henry Ekpe and a couple of other journalists.

Somaliland: Media freedom kept within bounds

2009-09-25

http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/11821.html

The report, titled “Media Freedom Kept within Bounds”, unearths evidence-based information from journalists and media managers who recounted unrestrained and vituperative attacks on journalists and media houses. The media professionals signify that Somaliland authorities are responsible for outrages and structural suppression against media.

USA: Black coalition to protest expanding U.S. wars

November 7 - Washington, DC

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/diaspora/59008

A newly-formed Black coalition has announced a rally and march on the White House to take place November 7, 2009 beginning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Malcolm X Park. The rally and march are to protest the expanding U.S. wars and other policy initiatives that unfairly target the well-being of the world's peoples and the entire African diaspora.
A newly-formed Black coalition has announced a rally and march on the White House to take place November 7, 2009 beginning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Malcolm X Park. The rally and march are to protest the expanding U.S. wars and other policy initiatives that unfairly target the well-being of the world's peoples and the entire African diaspora. Known as the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, the coalition was decided upon on September 12, 2009 during a meeting in Washington, D.C. of more than fifteen activists from various Black organizations and institutions.

The rally and march intend to draw upon the support for a coalition comprised of many of the leading anti-imperialist organizations, journalists, activists, artists and scholars of the African diaspora and means to state clearly its intention to return this broad community to a tradition of progressive leadership or, as their call states, "a return of the Black world to politics despite the age of Obama." Comprised of some of the African world's most seasoned veterans of political struggle, consisting of members of the African People's Socialist Party, the NAACP, the Green Party, Black Agenda Report and many other grassroots organizations and efforts, this coalition is perfectly situated to do just that.

"Many well-meaning people in this country and around the world are afraid to take more progressive political positions for fear of being seen as anti-Black," the coalition contends. "We need to remind people of the absolute lack of 'progress' since new faces assumed leadership of this nation. Many of the leading concerns of Black people, Latinos and working people in this country remain insufficiently addressed. Black and Brown people continue to suffer the brunt of un/under-employment and predatory loan scandal crises. Military spending under Obama has increased as have the warfare this nation continues to export to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Colombia. Mass incarceration, police brutality and political imprisonment remain rampant and the most negatively impacted by the levee breech in post-Katrina New Orleans continue to be without homes, jobs or health care assistance. And to that point, these are precisely the communities who nationally will be the most negatively affected by yet another myth of health care 'reform.'"

The political paralysis now being experienced by all left-of-Obama political efforts themselves suffer from a lack of Black-led anti-imperial movements. Black Is Back is not simply a slogan for the African diaspora but for all progressive struggles which have historically always benefited from such coalition. On November 7, 2009 all are welcome to participate in a rally and march which will include many coalition partners in song, dance and political solidarity announcing the return to leadership of the world's most reliably anti-war and pro-social justice communities. As the coalition says, "To free our people’s hopes and dreams from oblivion, we need a coalition dedicated to the proposition that Black is Back.”

A summary of coalition partners includes:

Omali Yeshitela, African People's Socialist Party (APSP)
Dorothy Lewis, NCOBRA
Cynthia McKinney, Green Party
Ayesha Fleary, APSP
Chimurenga Waller, APSP
Stic Man, Dead Prez
M-1, Dead Prez
Ousainou Mbenga, APSP
Abdul Alim Musa, Masjid al-Islam
Ona Zena Yeshitela, APSP
Omawale Kefing, Burning Spear
Curtis Gatewood, NAACP
Raheal Rayza, University of Toronto
Norman Richmond, Toronto
Luwezi Kinshasa, APSP
Chakanda Gondwe, APSP
Pam Africa, Free Mumia Campaign
Brother Riley, Uhuru Radio
Rich Piedrahita, APSP
Jared Ball, VoxUnion Media
Chioma Oruh, APSP
Sister Olevette
Rosa Clemente, Green Party
Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination
Kali Akuno of MXGM
Omowale Adewale of G.A.M.E

Ethiopia: Three million children urgently need food amid worst crisis in decades

2009-09-25

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/SaveChAlli/3c9ea6a11a9183dc11df951655b5e04d.htm

Persistent drought compounded by higher than average food prices have created East Africa's worst food crisis in decades. Millions of children face the greatest risks, including severe malnutrition, disease, and death. But official food aid is falling well short of increased needs, particularly in Ethiopia. Across the Horn of Africa, an estimated 20 million people will need emergency humanitarian assistance through the end of this year. In comparison, last year – when drought, high food prices, and conflict were also at issue – only 14 million needed such assistance in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.

Somalia: Dourought crisis worsens, mortality risk grows

2009-09-25

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32193

The drought crisis in war-torn Somalia is turning increasingly acute and spreading to regions previously spared, with half the country’s 7 million people in need of aid, an increasing risk of deaths, and insufficient international donor response, a senior United Nations official has said.“Somalia needs to be seen as a priority case,” UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Bowden told a news briefing in New York.

Sudan: Sudanese troops renew attacks on Darfur rebels

2009-09-25

http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article32507

Sudanese army and government militias attacked this week twice rebel positions in Korma near Jebel Marra, said a commander from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Abdel Wahid Al Nur. Fighters of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) sit on top of a truck outside the north Darfur town of Kutum, December 15, 2007. The SLM/A rebel commander Ibrahim Al-Hillu said the air and ground attack began on Thursday and continued on Friday adding that the thousands of civilians fled their villages to take shelter from the assailant troops near Jebel Marra.

Global: Is Google violating women's rights?

2009-09-25

http://tinyurl.com/nyqps4

Google Inc.’s recent restrictions on ads for abortion services in fifteen countries raises questions about the influence of search engine provider policies on freedom of information. In withholding access to this kind of information, are women’s rights being violated?

Kenya: Killing two birds with one stone

2009-09-25

http://www.apc.org/en/news/kenya-killing-two-birds-one-stone

In Africa, the argument goes, the information and communications technology (ICT) market has not grown as fast as it could have because of the lack of a conducive policy and regulatory environment. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), by 2007 only 34 African countries had ICT policies, 12 were in the process of drafting one, while seven had not even launched the policy development process.

Africa: Reading for all

AfricaFocus Bulletin Sep 22, 2009 (090922)

2009-09-25

http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/rfa0909.php

Every two years beginning in 1999, there has been a Pan African Reading for All Conference, sponsored by the International Development Committee for Africa, the leadership of African councils of the International Reading Association. The conference is independent of government and run by educators in their professional capacities. This AfricaFocus Bulletin, available on the web but not sent out by e-mail, contains one of the two keynote addresses by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and the resolutions and recommendations from the conference.

Global: IJTJ 2010 Special Issue

Call for papers

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/59013

The International Journal for Transitional Justice invites submissions for its 2010 special issue titled “Transitional Justice on Trial: Evaluating its Impact” to be guest edited by Colleen Duggan, Senior Program Specialist with the Evaluation Unit of the International Development Research Centre, Canada.
CALL FOR PAPERS: 2010 Special Issue

The International Journal for Transitional Justice invites submissions for its 2010 special issue titled “Transitional Justice on Trial: Evaluating its Impact” to be guest edited by Colleen Duggan, Senior Program Specialist with the Evaluation Unit of the International Development Research Centre, Canada.

The proliferation of transitional justice mechanisms over the last two decades, has led to a growing concern that the enthusiasm of TJ proponents has overshadowed the critical importance of understanding the impacts it is having on the lives of people reckoning with a violent past.

Increasingly, hard questions are appearing in the literature on transitional justice; and academics are calling into question some of the core assumptions that tie together transitional justice, peacebuilding and development. For example, is there a causal relationship between dealing with the past and prevention of violent conflict in the future? Scholars allege that what exists is largely ‘anecdotal evidence,’ which is difficult to generalize across cases, contexts and time.

Moving to the level of practice, stakeholders involved in the administration of international aid are clamouring for more evidence-based approaches in support of transitional justice policymaking. In the corridors of multilateral, bilateral and other grantmaking agencies, it is not unusual to hear questions such as “How do we know that transitional justice really works?” Civil society organisations – particularly those working with victims in the global South – are demanding credible approaches for evaluating the impacts of transitional justice in societies often faced with the competing demands of impunity, corruption, poverty and social injustice. Advocates of transitional justice have tended to respond with principle-based arguments that speak to universally accepted human rights norms and off-hand remarks about moral imperatives. This is not to belittle the importance of the transitional justice project. It is to highlight the urgent need to build a solid body of evidence that sheds light on transitional justice’s successes and failures. The fact of the matter is that transitional justice – often controversial and always laden with political risks – is badly in need of an objective knowledge base that tells the impact story.

In this special issue of the IJTJ, we would like to delve more deeply into the impact dilemma currently being faced by those with a stake in the outcomes of transitional justice policies and practices. Just as evidence can be found in multiple and often unexpected places, we encourage the submission of theoretical, practical and policy-oriented papers from a broad spectrum of disciplines: law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, criminology, evaluation research, international relations and economics, among others. We encourage submissions from north and south-based authors. We welcome inputs from academics, from practitioners who have engaged in assessing the impact of their interventions, or other stakeholders who have reflected systematically on these issues.

Possible topics and questions may include (but are not limited to):

State of the art:
* What is the state of knowledge about the effects – either positive or negative – of transitional justice?

Methodologies for evaluating the impact of TJ mechanisms and projects:
* What methods of inquiry should be used for evaluating the impact of transitional justice and why?

· What are the potential pitfalls and promise of specific methods?
· Evaluation case studies
· Cross-disciplinary approaches
· Experimental designs

Challenges of conducting evaluation

· What are the particular ethical dilemmas faced by researchers and evaluators? How should they be managed?
· What is the relationship (if any) between transitional justice and larger processes for social and political transformation?
· What constitutes “good enough” evidence for proving causality or correlation between transitional justice and larger societal goals such as reconciliation, respect for human rights and improved democratic governance?

The politics of evaluation:

· How is transitional justice policy made?
· What role (if any) does evidence of impact play?
· How do local, national and international and political imperatives converge and diverge with research to influence perceptions of impact?
· How and who should determine whether transitional justice “works”?
· What are the tensions and trade-offs for determining this locally, nationally or internationally?

Lessons learned from monitoring and evaluation in other fields:
· How can monitoring and evaluative thinking be integrated into transitional justice mechanisms?

The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. Papers should be submitted online from the IJTJ webpage at www.ijtj.oxfordjournals.org

For questions or further information, please contact the Managing Editor at ijtj@csvr.org.za

New Publications on Climate and Finance on The Corner House website

2009-09-25

http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

The climate crisis and the financial crisis highlight the need to organise for social change -- and also open unprecedented opportunities for doing so. But to prevent a destructive return to business as usual, the roots of both crises need to be understood, together with the nature and limitations of elite responses to them. As a contribution to this discussion, 10 new documents have recently been added to The Corner House's extensive collection of free books and articles on climate change and finance.

Writing Africa: Caine Prize 10th Anniversary Tour

2009-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/59010

This year the Caine Prize for African Writing celebrates 10 years of the prestigious short story prize. An exciting, seven date UK-wide tour supported by Arts Council England, features Caine Prize winners and short listed authors.

Writing Africa – Caine Prize 10th Anniversary Tour


“Over the past ten years, the Caine Prize has done a great deal to foster
writing in Africa and bring exciting new African writers to the attention of
wider audiences.”
- JM Coetzee

"That's what the Caine Prize is about: celebrating the genius of human diversity... the idea is to enrich the world through its greater contact with Africa, and to enrich Africa through its greater contact with the world."
- Ben Okri

“The Caine Prize has played a vital role in discovering and supporting new writing from Africa, breathing fresh life into the renaissance surge in African literature.”
- Wole Soyinka

This year the Caine Prize for African Writing celebrates 10 years of the prestigious short story prize. An exciting, seven date UK-wide tour supported by Arts Council England, features Caine Prize winners and short listed authors Brian Chikwava (winner 2004), Chika Unigwe (shortlisted 2004), Binyavanga Wainaina (winner 2002) and EC Osondu (winner 2009). Africa’s highest literary reward- known as the African Booker has bolstered and launched the careers of many of Africa’s best young writers. Past winners have gone on to publish novels and reach the shortlist for other esteemed literary prizes. This tour is a unique opportunity for a wider audience to engage with some of Africa’s finest talent, and showcases the intelligence, ingenuity and irreverence of these young writers.

Tour details
Sat 10th October 2.30 – 4pm
British Library, Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB
Tickets: £6/£4 conc.
Box Office: 01937 546 546
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event95570.html
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and Binyavanga Wainaina. Introduced by Ben Okri, chaired by Aminatta Forna - followed by a reception
(Organised with the Royal African Society)

Sun 11th October 12-1pm
Cheltenham Literature Festival, The Inkpot, GL50 1QA
Box Office: 0844 576 8970
www.cheltenhamfestivals.com
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and Binyavanga Wainaina
(Supported by Sir Michael McWilliam and Jonathan Taylor)

Tues 13th October 6pm
University of Kent, Grimond Lecture theatre 3, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF
Tickets: £4 / £2 Concession
Tickets may be obtained either at the door or by sending a cheque or postal order to Caine Prize Evening, School of English, Rutherford Extension, University Of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF
Book: english-office@kent.ac.uk
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and Binyavanga Wainaina chaired by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Thurs 15th October 6.30pm
University of East Anglia, The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, NR4 7TJ
Tickets: free, Readings followed by wine reception
Booking: caineprizereadings@uea.ac.uk
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and Binyavanga Wainaina

Friday 16th October 7.30pm
Ilkley Literature Festival, Ilkley Playhouse, Wildman. LS29 9DT
Tickets: £4/£3 conc
Box Office: 01943 816 714
www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and EC Osondu chaired by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
(Supported by the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society)

Saturday 17th October 7pm
Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, Newcastle University, Culture Lab, NE1 7RU
Tickets: £6 / £4
Box Office: 0191 222 7619
Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava and EC Osondu chaired by Laura Fish

Monday 19th October 8pm
Lancaster Lit Fest, Storey Auditorium, House Lane, LA1 1TH
Tickets: £7.50 / £6
Box Office: 01524 582 394
Chika Unigwe & EC Osondu chaired by Graham Mort
www.litfest.org

Writers biographies
Binyavanga Wainaina won the Caine Prize in 2002 for his short story “Discovering Home” and famously used his prize money to set up the literary journal Kwani? in Kenya now in its fifth issue. He writes a weekly column for the Mail and Guardian in South Africa and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Granta and National Geographic. He is the newly appointed Director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College, New York and is completing his first novel.

Chika Unigwe was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2004 for her short story “The Secret” and was awarded a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, in the same year. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story "Borrowed Smile", a Commonwealth Short Story Award for "Weathered Smiles" and a Flemish literary prize for "De Smaak van Sneeuw". Chika Unigwe's stories have been broadcast on BBC World Service, Radio Nigeria, and other Commonwealth Radio Stations. Her second novel, Fata Morgana, was published in Dutch in 2008 and is published in English as On Black Sisters Street by Jonathan Cape.

Brian Chikwava won the Caine Prize in 2004 for his short story “Seventh Street Alchemy” and published his first novel Harare North (Jonathan Cape) in April 2009 to critical acclaim. He was a Charles Pick fellow at the University of East Anglia, and his work has appeared in short story collections published by Weaver Press, Jacana, Picador Africa, Umuzi and in the journals World Literature Today, Wasafiri, Moving Worlds, Literary Review, The Literary Encyclopaedia and others. Some of his stories have also been broadcast on BBC Radios 3 and 4 and Worldservice and is currently working on a short story collection.

EC (Epaphras Chukwuenweniwe) Osondu was born in Nigeria and worked as an advertising copywriter for many years before moving to New York to study for his MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. He has won the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction and his story “a Letter from Home” was judged one of ‘The Top Ten Stories on the internet’ in 2006. In 2007 his story “Jimmy Carter’s Eyes” was short-listed for the Caine Prize and in 2009 his story “Waiting” won the coveted prize. He now teaches at Providence University on Rhode Island. A short story collection will be published by Harper Collins in 2010.

The Caine Prize, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An “African writer” will normally be taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or
whose parents are African, and whose work has reflected that cultural background.

The African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of The Caine Prize, as is Chinua Achebe. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is President of the Council and Jonathan Taylor is the Chairman.

Royal African Society is Britain’s prime Africa organisation, fostering a better understanding of Africa in the UK and throughout the world. Its in-depth, long term knowledge of the continent and its people makes it the first stop for anyone who loves Africa and wishes to know more about the continent.

Arts Council England is the national development agency for the arts in England, distributing public money from the Government and the National Lottery.

For more information, photos and to arrange interviews contact:
Irenosen Okojie
Tel: 07939 005828 / 07535 234373
E-mail: irenoseno@hotmail.com

Fahamu