Current Issue

Let us return to the source

In quest of a humanism of the 21st century

Neville Alexander

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59678

cc Wikipedia CommonsActivist Sipho Maseko’s total commitment to the total liberation of South Africa and the continent as a whole was driven by the values of freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy, Neville Alexander writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. Reflecting on the path South Africa has travelled post-apartheid at a memorial event for the late Maseko, Alexander exhorts the country’s citizens to put these values back at the centre of its vision, plans and behaviour as the basis of a non-racial, democratic republic.

It was with much pleasure that I accepted the invitation of the organisers of this memorial event to speak in honour of the late Sipho Maseko, whom I knew for most of his life as an activist operating within the paradigms of Black Consciousness. I accepted the invitation with a sense of gratitude, especially because I believe that this is the kind of occasion where we should reflect with care and seriousness on the paths we have travelled during our short post-apartheid journey.

Sipho, whose widow Pam worked with me in the National Language Project and in other contexts for many years, was one of those young people of the 1980s, who were totally committed to the total liberation of South Africa and of the continent as a whole. The sincere, indeed the naive, belief in the values of freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy, which drove all of us at the time, has been systematically eroded by the irruption of the narcissistic, dog-eat-dog virus that is spreading across the globe in the current era of the hegemony of neo-liberal capitalism.

RETURNING TO THE SOURCE

It is against this backdrop, that I want to put the spotlight on the question whether it is possible for us to ‘return to the source’ – to borrow an exhortation from Amilcar Cabral – to once again place at the centre of our vision, our plans and our behaviour the values on the basis of which we hoped to build the non-racial, democratic republic after the demise of apartheid-capitalism.

Because of time constraints, I shall not analyse the many important writings of the Black Consciousness generation, in which they grappled, among other things, with questions of identity and social structure. Allow me to highlight two central issues only. The first is the vision that actually illuminated the path of struggle chosen by that entire generation, whether or not they belonged to formal organisations of the Black Consciousness Movement. In the words of Steve Biko in one of his very last interviews shortly before he was murdered:

‘We are of the view that we should operate as one united whole toward attainment of an egalitarian society for the whole of Azania. Therefore, entrenchment of tribalistic, racialistic or any form of sectional outlook is abhorred by us. We hate it and we seek to destroy it. (Biko, S. 1987. I Write What I Like. Oxford: Heinemann p.147.)

Elsewhere, I have written about the dynamics of the Black Consciousness Movement. All I wish to stress here is that the Biko generation set out on that long march implicit in the Gramscian notion of the war of position. Through the University Christian Movement and other sources, they came into contact with the pedagogical and social conceptions of Paulo Freire and the theology of liberation, among others, and all of these influences, besides the ideas current in the different organisations involved in the national liberation struggle, in the context of the repression and against the background of the mixture of Christian philanthropy and African communal life that all of us who were adults in those days had experienced in the countryside, undoubtedly contributed to their formulation and conscious promotion of this strategy. The promotion of the Black Community Programmes, together with the development of a modern labour movement, which had a more differentiated but related source and a sometimes converging, sometimes diverging, trajectory, was no less than such a war of position, one which eventually brought about a change in the balance of forces and helped to reshape the political space in the worst years of the repression.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LIBERATION

While bearing this in mind, let me refer you to the other issue that I consider as having been central to the strategic path of the BCM, i.e. the idea of ‘psychological liberation’.

In dealing with this concept critically, we have, in philosophical terms, to navigate carefully between the Scylla of voluntarism and the Charybdis of political paralysis. Today, we would deal with the question in terms of the relationship between structure and agency. However, let us keep the discourse at a manageable level by stating quite simply that the question we are faced with is whether, and if so, how it is possible in the era of neo-liberal barbarism to implant a different set of values among especially the younger people in South Africa and elsewhere, in spite of the many structural constraints that determine their individual existential projects and the massive bombardment of negative and self-destructive ethical messages emanating from the media and other ideological state and non-state apparatuses. It is clear, certainly to me, that this is the challenge that faces all thinking South Africans, and people on the Left specifically, if we are to have any hope of turning our society to head once again in a direction that can lead to the post-apartheid and even post-capitalist situation we had envisaged before 1996, more or less.

We know, of course, that it is a combination of ideas, organisation and political-economic developments at the macro-level that brings about fundamental social shifts at any given time and place. It would, therefore, be a mistake to think that by harking back to a concept such as psychological liberation, I want to suggest that we focus all our energies on moral education of the youth, as important as that activity is.

The real question behind these reflections is how we can tap back into the power that actually exists in many different social spaces and instantiations but which we have made ourselves believe is vested only in and, indeed, belongs to, ‘the government’. If the BCM and other movements, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, taught us anything, it is that we always have access to power, as long as we know how it is distributed.

The Biko generation inculcated positive values of self-respect, self-esteem and self-consciousness into the young people at schools and at higher education institutions as well as older people in communities and in workplaces. They did so because they understood that the slave mentality is the proximate source of the sense of disempowerment, despair and political apathy that keeps the oppressed in thrall. Above all, they understood intuitively that power is not simply the control of armed force, legitimate or otherwise. Hence, they undertook community development programmes and mobilised people at the grassroots in order that they might survive in the menacing environments of apartheid South Africa.

Sipho Maseko himself and others in accordance with the injunction Education for Liberation, organised in Cape Town the Black Students Project that undertook political education as well as enrichment programmes that sought to help students understand their school work properly and pass their examinations, among many other things. Under the banner of the slogan ‘You are your own liberators!’ the Black Community Programmes empowered whole communities across the entire country.

As indicated earlier, together with the evolving modern labour movement inside the country, it was this war of position that eventually put an end to the apparently linear curve on which the apartheid regime thought itself to be proceeding ever upwards. Again, I do not have to go into details; many articles and reports are available for those who have a more serious interest in what was done by the young people of the 1970s and the 1980s.

THROWING OFF THE YOKE OF RACISM - AND CLASS?

There is no doubt, of course, that the struggle against racial oppression in all its reprehensible forms compelled everyone to focus on the overriding objective of throwing off the yoke of racism. The mistake that many made, as we shall see, was to assume that the end of apartheid would bring about the end of class exploitation which, in this country because of the peculiar historical dynamics, continues to perpetuate racial inequality.

What does the picture look like today? Let me begin to answer this question by referring to the fact that when Evo Morales became President of Bolivia not so long ago, one of his first official acts was to get a law passed that reduced his presidential salary by 57 per cent. In post-apartheid South Africa, the very opposite occurred. The recommendations of the Melamet Commission of 1994 and of the subsequent annual increases recommended by the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers, based on the principles of remuneration of the apartheid dispensation, were accepted without much soul searching among the new elite.

This, in my view, was the first signal that we were headed in the wrong direction. It sent entirely the wrong message to the youth of a poor, ‘third-world’ country, South Africa, to the effect that successful black people are people who earn in these brackets and who own fancy cars and houses. The role model effect of this kind of lifestyle and value system which, today, 15 years later, has become the accepted thing, will take many years and many alternative models of success to turn around. I cite the effect of the acceptance of the salary packages recommended by the Melamet Commission in its different instantiations as the first of a series of lifestyle signposts for the youth. Add to this the fact that during the struggle against the apartheid regime, everyone, including your ‘Comtsotsi’, was seen to be and treated as an equal, whereas after 1994, there was this sudden and very visible divide between those who were deemed to have been ‘successful’, on the one side, and the Great Unwashed, on the other side, the veritable underclass, victims of apartheid before 1996 and of neo-liberalism thereafter.

One does not need a degree in philosophy to work out the socio-psychological results of this situation. The thousands of ‘service delivery protests’ – a euphemism for localised mini-uprisings – the vandalism that accompanies them as well as ‘ordinary’ crimes such as hijackings, cash heists, kidnappings, armed robberies, etc: All of these horrendous manifestations of barbarism induced by the logic of capitalism in the 21st century, are payback acts of entitlement. ‘If you who, yesterday, were in the trenches with us or with our parents can now drive around in a Mercedes Benz or a BMW, live in a mansion or even a palace in the leafy suburbs, and generally live it up, why should I continue to be mired in poverty and filth in so-called informal settlements with pit latrines, no garbage removal and no proper educational and health facilities?’

This is the logic that is playing itself out on our streets.The simple fact is that if young people in the townships and in the rural areas are unemployed, hungry, frustrated and angry, they will, under these circumstances, resort to theft and even murder in order to live like those few others who, by grace of birth or because of political patronage, belong to the new elite. Given the retreat of all the moral and political censors that kept things ‘looking good’ during the post-War years, one can hardly ‘blame’ this youth for behaving in such a reactionary manner. Drugs and Americanised TV are increasingly added to this lethal syndrome of social pathologies.

There have been many more or less sophisticated attempts at explaining the sociology of the current disaster and it is unnecessary to add another such attempt to this list. What is clear, however, is that if we fail to address the question of values with even a modicum of success, we will inevitably arrive at the edge of the abyss, pushed there by this logic of capitalism.

FINDING ALTERNATIVES

The intelligentsia in particular have a moral obligation to help the entire nation to find and accept the alternative. Today, when we are witnessing the collapse of the global financial system which reflects the terminal condition of the system of capitalism as a whole, the Thatcherite mantra: There is no alternative, which in any case never had any basis in fact, is no more and no less than an expression of social dementia and denialism of the most self-destructive kind. For, not only are there alternatives, they are staring us in the face if we have the boldness and the imagination to explore them and, like the generation of Sipho Maseko, begin to make a difference on the ground.

How do we re-establish a culture of positive values, one that is socially critical but not destructive in its modalities? What is the foundational value that should inform everything else we believe in and do? I am here referring to the kind of value system that can inspire an entire generation of young people to take on to themselves the task and to forge the instruments of social mobilisation on a large scale and for decades, rather than just a few years, knowing full well that the realisation of their ‘dream’ will change everything from the bottom up and shape social structures and processes that will be very different in form and effect from those of the neo-liberal imperialist agencies that now disfigure their lives and ruin our societies. In the previous dispensation, anti-racism and anti-apartheid for most, as well as anti-capitalism for some, were such a set of beliefs that not only fostered solidarity and unity but also charged the imagination of young people with a vision of the ‘non-racial, non-sexist and democratic’ alternative to apartheid.

The answer has been lurking in, among other places, the ecological economics of scholars such as Andre Gorz for many years, but it has taken global climatic disasters and the collapse of the tyrannical political structures in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to make us understand the full significance of the present stage of bourgeois rule. Today, we know that political diversity is as important for a humane society as are bio- and cultural diversity. For some years now, it has dawned on me that a humanism of the 21st century will have to be based on what Gorz calls the principle of sufficiency which, for the sake of a broader understanding of what this concept entails, I have transliterated as ‘Enough is as good as a feast’.

It ought to be obvious that if the structures and processes of modern industrial societies were informed and shaped by this view of life, most of the currently existing social modalities and human desires and activities in most contemporary states would forthwith become antiquated and counter-productive. The hegemony of the world view that proclaims, among many other things, that ‘more is better’, that in terms of the much-vaunted ‘intellectual property rights’, I deserve all the fruits of what I have initiated, and that the ideal is to be the ‘world champion’ in all spheres of life: In short, that the good life is to be had by competing and fighting against other human beings who, in the extreme case, have to be dehumanised so that I am not constrained by any fellow-feeling from killing them.

APPLYING THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENCY

Let us try, however briefly, to sketch some of the consequences of applying the principle of sufficiency as the major moral force shaping post-apartheid South Africa. To begin with, in the domain of education, where the state and other public institutions can legitimately intervene, the content, orientation and delivery of the curriculum at all levels of the system would be changed fundamentally.

The psychological, pedagogical, ideological and emotional revolution implied by an approach that does not glorify individual or group domination while allowing for the full development and flowering of the potential inherent in each and every human being can be imagined and extrapolated very easily. Individual brilliance expressed and deployed on behalf and for the benefit of democratically legitimated groups at different levels of society will continue to be one of the drivers of all social progress, including economic development.

In the domain of the media and especially advertising, we would be rid of the brutalities and socially disreputable messages which subject us to the domination of capital. Adverts like the currently popular one which claims that everyone wants to be a ‘winner’ and in the ‘first team’, rather than a ‘deputy-chairperson’ or a ‘benchwarmer’ – or words to that effect – would become as absurd and counter-productive as they are from the point of view of a more humane social order. The glorification of the ostentatious consumption and high life of so-called celebrities in politics, business, culture, sport and even religion would cease to be the supposedly inspiring models of ‘the good life’ that they are marketed as being in programmes such as Top Billing and others. All domains of life would be affected in the most profound possible way.

What a drab and boring vision, I hear the privileged strata exclaiming. On the absolute contrary, I should like to respond to my imagined detractors. Artists, designers, architects, urban planners, in fact all creative individuals and agencies will be faced with the challenge of finding the optimal ways of expressing and realising the entire range of possibilities in every domain of life. This will be the terrain of competition, not for individual glory and unequal reward but precisely for the common good, the old-fashioned commonwealth!

REALISING VISION AND VALUES

Is this no more than John Lennon or Vladimir Lenin’s dream? How do we begin to initiate and incrementally realise this vision and this set of values? Besides the ongoing political and economic class struggles, in which we are willy-nilly involved and by means of which we attempt to create and to consolidate more democratic space in the short to medium term, we have to go back to the community development tasks that the BCM initiated so successfully, if not always sustainably, owing to the ravages of the apartheid system.

We have to rebuild our communities and our neighbourhoods by means of establishing, as far as possible on a voluntary basis, all manner of community projects which bring visible short-term benefit to the people and which initiate at the same time the trajectories of fundamental social transformation, which I have been referring to. These could range from relatively simple programmes such as keeping the streets and the public toilets clean, preferably in liaison with the local authority, whether or not it is ‘delivering’ at this level, to more complex programmes such as bulk buying clubs, community reading clubs, enrichment programmes for students preparing for exams, teachers’ resource groups at local level, and, of course, sports activities on a more convivial basis, etc.

It is important that I stress that wherever possible, the relevant democratic authority should be asked to support the initiative. On the other hand, the community and its community-based organisations must remain in control of what they are doing.

This is the difference between South Africa today and South Africa yesterday. As long as, and to the extent that, we have a democratic system, there is no reason why any of these programmes have to be initiated as anti-government initiatives. Any representative democratic government would welcome and vigorously support such initiatives, since they are pro-people, and in the current context, pro-poor initiatives.

There are already many of these initiatives and programmes in existence. They will, if they are conducted with integrity and not for party-political gain, inevitably gravitate towards one another, converge and network. In this way, the fabric of civil society non-government organisations that was the real matrix of the anti-apartheid movement will be refreshed and we will once again have that sense of a safety net of communities inspired by the spirit and the real practices of ubuntu, that saved so many of us from being destroyed by the racist system. Today, the struggle is much more obviously being conducted as a class struggle against exploitation and unconscionable as well as totally unnecessary and unjustifiable social inequality, manifest in the miserable lives of the vast majority and the vulgar parading of wealth and comfort of the few.

I am all too aware of the fact that this has turned out to be a kind of secular sermon. It would have been easier, and it was probably expected by most of my audience, for me to have formulated yet another analysis of ‘the global crisis of the capitalist system’. There are more than enough of these, I think. Here, too, enough is as good as a feast.

It has been more difficult and challenging for me to return to the source, to reflect on the first principles that motivate us in our struggle for a humane world order, one where every child and every person has more than an outside chance of fulfilling his or her human potential.

Today, we have to formulate these principles in a new language, one that will find readier access among the youth, to whom, as we say so beautifully but so ineffectually, the future belongs. I have probably not succeeded in finding those words but I hope that my attempt to do so will inspire others to take up the challenge. I also know that I have spoken very much in the spirit of the late Sipho Maseko and his generation of revolutionaries.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Neville Alexander is the director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa, University of Cape Town.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Ending aid dependence: Asserting national autonomy

Yash Tandon interviewed by Pambazuka News

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59664

In an interview with Pambazuka News, Yash Tandon discusses the problems of 'development aid', his differences with Dambisa Moyo's arguments in 'Dead Aid', the importance of Southern countries' right to autonomy and his own book, 'Ending Aid Dependence'.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Yash, how did you come to write 'Ending Aid Dependence?'

YASH TANDON: The book was written just before the September 2008 conference in Accra organised by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank on the Accra Action Agenda (AAA). The AAA was based on the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PDAE). The PDAE, based on five principles, looked benign at first sight … until you began to analyse it in detail, looked at the fine print, and began to understand its implications. It was clear to me that hiding behind its benevolent exterior lay an insidious formula to subject aid-recipient poor countries to the collective discipline of the donors. Like colonialism that was sold to us as something ‘for our own good’ and in recent decades the ideology of globalisation and neoliberalism, the PDAE was packaged also as something ‘good’ for us, especially for Africa. As somebody said, I think it was Aristotle, there comes a time when out of a false good there arises a true evil. This is what the AAA was. So the aim of the book was to caution the developing countries against endorsing the AAA.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What were the biggest challenges in writing it?

YASH TANDON: The main challenge was twofold. The first was to meet the deadline of September 2008. I started writing the book in June 2008, and I was immensely relieved that I was able to finish and get it published just before the conference. The second challenge was to get the message across to the developing countries. The OECD and the World Bank could not be stopped, I am afraid, but I am pleased to say that once my book was in the hands of the delegates coming from the developing countries, many of them did begin to put to question the whole idea of ‘development aid’ as a genuine instrument of development.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The aid taxonomy that you have come up with is a useful tool with which to analyse aid and place it into categories. As you stated: ‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’ How did you come up with these categories? Did the colour-coded work of the World Trade Organization (WTO) inspire you?

YASH TANDON: Actually not, there is very little inspiring about the WTO. Multilateral trade is important, of course, but the WTO is so deeply steeped in legitimising the outcome of asymmetrical power relations between the North and the South that it is the wrong instrument to advance the cause of multilateralism. No, I invented the colours myself. It wasn’t difficult. And the main purpose behind it was to disaggregate the phenomenon of ‘development aid’. Too much is made of the fact that some countries have met their 0.07 per cent of GNP quota for aid to the poor countries and others have not. It is when you deconstruct the aid package that you realise that these figures are quite meaningless, and often used for propaganda purposes. There is much hidden in the package that is counter-developmental; indeed, if I may say, imperialist.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: But, surely, you cannot use the term ‘imperialist’ in describing the legitimate concern of countries in the North about, for example, the violation of human rights or corrupt governments in developing countries. If they use aid to make countries in the South respect human rights and be responsible to their people, what is wrong with that?

YASH TANDON: This is a complex question that needs much time to explain. I am aware that a number of our friends in the North, especially in the civil society, are disturbed about the conclusions I derive in relation to what I call ‘Red Aid’, which is in fact the most dangerous form of aid. I include the donors’ use of the aid instrument to enforce human rights and ‘good governance’ on our countries as the most intrusive, and indeed, imperialist, form of aid. Of course, we cannot endorse the violation of human rights, nor can we condone corrupt governments. But donors have often used ‘human rights’ as a cover to push money into many of our own civil society organisations in the South to advance their own agenda in our countries. And let's not forget that the Western nations have double standards on human rights. They are also selective about what instances of violations of these rights constitute legitimate for their intervention and which are not. The human rights issue is a minefield. And so is the issue of ‘good governance’. Donors are best advised to keep out of using their monetary clout to enforce human rights or good governance on our countries. But as I said, this is a complex question. I suggest you read the parts in my book in which I have discussed this issue.



PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In light of the current financial crisis, and your advocacy for more South–South cooperation mainly in respect to aid, do you believe that the financial crisis facilitates and brings the wanted cooperation forward? Or does the impact of the crisis inhibit it?

YASH TANDON: It is interesting that the impact of the current financial crisis is directly proportional to the degree of the South’s integration into the North’s globalisation agenda – the deeper the integration, the bigger the negative impact. This does not mean that we abruptly cut off from the North, but it does reinforce the point I made in my book about the imperative of the ‘national project’ as opposed to the globalisation project. Would the present crisis help or hinder South–South cooperation? Well, it is going to be a struggle. There are some in our own countries in the South who argue that we in the South need ‘more aid’ to get out of the crisis. I disagree. I think we need more national and regional ‘self-reliance’ on matters such as regional market creation, regional currency etc. The initiative taken by some Latin American countries joined by a few countries from the Caribbean to create the regional currency – the Unified System for Regional Compensation (SUCRE) – for example, is a step in the right direction. But as I said, this is going to be a struggle. I hope Pambazuka News will open space to debate this matter further.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: As you have pointed out in your most recent article in Pambazuka News, 'G8 and Africa: Some give, plenty take', nothing has changed in donor countries' policies towards developing countries. Do you believe that the ‘national project’ (in essence, the continuation of the struggle for independence) has died in developing countries? Or conversely, have been there any events that point to a revival in the recent year?

YASH TANDON: Things are indeed changing. There are tell-tale signs that the Western world is on the defensive. It is losing its dominant and domineering position in the South. It is losing moral authority. Its global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the WTO and the OECD are losing legitimacy and credibility. The countries of the South, on the other hand, are beginning to reassert their national independence. Of course, it will take a long time before they gain total liberation from the economic domination of the West.

This is true even of countries as large as China, India and Brazil, where Western multinational corporations are able to use their lead in technology and intellectual property rights to penetrate production, distribution and financial systems. But the shifting balance of forces between the North and the South in favour of the South is a palpable and unstoppable force.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: While the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is resilient, as you point out, last meeting in 2008, do you see it as a potential leader for the expansion of ‘policy space’ (the expansion of space to operate independently without restrictions from dominant global power-holders)? Where do you see the G77 and emerging powers like China in all of this?

YASH TANDON: NAM is a historical movement. There was a time after the end of the Cold War when its future was put in doubt, mostly by Western observers. But that was a myopic view of the movement. NAM was more than simply keeping out of the Cold War, it was also an assertion by the former colonised peoples that they wanted to be masters of their own self-propelled development. NAM also adopted certain principles regulating relations between states that were being systematically violated by the counties of the North – such as the five principles of non-interference in internal affairs, equality, national sovereignty, cultural diversity and identity.

I am pleased that the NAM countries were at least able to have the above principles enshrined in the final document at the Accra meeting on the PDAE, which my book discusses. The Accra document did not say if these principles also applied to North–South relations. So, yes, NAM continues to remain a live expression of the commitment to an independent policy space for the South. Emerging countries such as China and India, and the G77 countries in general, can no longer be taken for granted. Gone are the days of 1945 when the institutions of global economic and political governance were engineered without their effective participation. Gone also are the days when the WTO was thrust onto the peoples of the South without their effective participation. It is a different world now.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: There has been much publicity given to Dambisa Moyo’s book ‘Dead Aid’. Her argument boils down to critiquing aid as a fetter against private accumulation, in essence a re-casting of the tired neoliberal mantra about the free market. That position has been in strong contrast to your own, yet some would say you have been surprisingly silent in critiquing her position. Why?

YASH TANDON: This is a very good question. No, I am not shy of critiquing Dambisa Moyo’s prescription for development. I recognise that this will take Africa backwards.

I have avoided confronting Moyo so far because I want to join forces with her to argue the case against development aid. I agree with Moyo that ‘development aid’ is no solution to our under-development. I agree with her that aid makes our governments accountable to donors rather than to our own people. And so on. At times, she makes an even stronger and more categorical case against aid than I do.

However, her proposed solution of opening up the African market and resources to foreign investment capital is not the way forward for Africa, or for the developing countries. To be sure, we in the South are still behind the West in terms of technology, and we do need technology. But the barrier to this technology is not capital inflow from the North. In fact, there is more capital outflow from the South to the North. The barrier to the South acquiring technology lies in intellectual property rights (IPRs) in which technology is encased. I used to be the executive director of the South Centre from 2005 to 2009. One of the major battles the centre (founded among others by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere) was to break down this stranglehold of IPRs on the universalisation of technology. Science and technology are a heritage of mankind, not a gift of the West to civilisation.

Moyo comes from a different world from where I come from. She comes from the world of finance, and it is not surprising that she should offer solutions closer to her experience. I come from the world of academia and active political struggle for the liberation of my country from the shackles of imperialism, a phenomenon which Moyo does not recognise. Lately, I have been involved in building the capacity of the countries of the South to negotiate in the WTO, the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD. From my experience I can say that the track Moyo is advocating is already losing effectiveness, credibility and legitimacy. She is right about ‘Dead Aid’ – the title of her book – but what she is advocating is a ‘Dead Road’.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: As the former executive director of the South Centre, what are your thoughts on the recent Africa–South America (ASA) summit in Venezuela? Should we see this as a major event in South–South cooperation or as a stepping-stone to future cooperation?

YASH TANDON: What we are witnessing is a milestone in the road to South-South cooperation. Western mainstream media has been attacking President [Hugo] Chavez even though he has been repeatedly winning democratic elections. Hence the ASA summit has been maligned in the press. But we must remain clear in our mind as to what the ASA stands for. It stands for the South’s further liberation from the domination of the North. One of the most important things to have come out of the summit is the endorsement of the Banco del Sur (the Bank of the South) as an alternative financial system to the IMF–World Bank dominated global banking system. Of course, the Banco has to go a long way; its capital base is still small, and it is still evolving rules of financing development projects. But it has a bright future. It is interesting that several African countries have expressed an interest in joining the bank.

Another significant development is the evolving alternative currency in the southern hemisphere. The SUCRE can offer to the countries of the Latin America a real opportunity to break away out of the dominance of the dollar. He who controls money controls the economy. That has been our experience in Africa, where the IMF effectively controls our money. Money is a public good. It is not something that should be handed over to private banking. The Latin American experience may yet usher in a new concept of money, one that serves the people and not a few thousand from the corrupt elites of the banking establishment.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Do you have any future projects with the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI)? Are there any publications on the horizon for us to read?

YASH TANDON: SEATINI, whose chairman I am, is an evolving civil society organisation. It is right now focused on the current negotiations in the WTO, and also the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) being negotiated between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and the European Union. We are fighting against the EPAs. It is also involved in issues related to food security, land-grabbing in Africa, climate change and regional integration. I am myself engaged in applying my ideas on ending aid dependency to my own country, Uganda. I am taking this opportunity to revisit the history of our monetary policy, and to examining how and why we allowed ourselves to be chained down by aid and an externally controlled money system, and how we might break away from it. I am also doing some research and writing on African integration and regionalism. This is under threat from the EPAs, and continued fixation of our leaders to the flawed neoliberal policies of the Bretton Woods institutions. This is strange, since these organisations are themselves now bankrupt not only of capital but also of ideas. Out of these engagements, no doubt, will emerge some small publications that I hope will have useful policy recommendations to our governments. Through these writings I hope also to join the larger debate on how the African people can unite against ceaseless efforts by imperial forces to divide and conquer us.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Yash Tandon is the former executive director of the South Centre in Geneva.
* Tandon's 'Ending Aid Dependence' is available from Pambazuka Press at £9.95.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

'Flushed with elation': Ruth First at the University of Dar es Salaam

Barbara Harlow

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59662

cc JaysenDrawing on fascinating personal correspondence with a variety of individuals, Barbara Harlow looks back on the experiences of Ruth First during her short time as an economics lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam. First spent an autumn semester at the university in 1975, a time which coincided with the visits and debates of such prominent intellectuals as Walter Rodney, Mahmood Mamdani, Terence Ranger and Issa G. Shivji.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

[Ruth First (1925-1982) was assassinated in Maputo by a letter-bomb sent from Pretoria to her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University. Her killers were granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But was Ruth a 'legitimate target', which in the commission’s parlance meant someone who was politically involved and therefore a target of the apartheid regime? Who was Ruth First?

Ruth First’s public and political career spanned more than three decades, from her contributions as an investigative reporter in South Africa in the late 1940s and 1950s, through her 117-day detention in 1963, to her exile years in the UK where she wrote and advocated on behalf of the anti-apartheid struggle and African liberation. Her last professional postings were as much academic as activist, at the University of Durham (UK), the University of Dar es Salaam, and in the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University (Maputo).
The following article discusses her stay at the University of Dar es Salaam.] (Eds)

'For the first three weeks I’ve been flushed with elation at the experience of development studies having relevance, and students being responsive.'
(Ruth First to Gavin Williams, 16 September 1975)

RUTH FIRST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM

Ruth First, on leave from the University of Durham (UK), spent the fall semester of 1975 teaching in the Department of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The early 1970s were intensely energetic years throughout recently decolonised Africa, and not least so in the universities. At Makerere University, for example, radically revised curricula in literary studies would lay the grounds for new imperatives and directions in African cultural production and critical practice. At the University of Dar es Salaam, as at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), it was historiography – and by implication, history itself and its contribution to 'nation-building' – that was in question. Ruth First’s semester in Tanzania coincided with the presentations, seminars, debates and colloquia across the social sciences faculty of such intellectual upstarts – now luminaries, even posthumously – as Terence Ranger, Walter Rodney, Mahmood Mamdani, Archie Mafeje, John Saul, Jacques Depelchin and Issa G. Shivji.

But if 1975 was an especially active year in post-colonial African intellectual history, it was also another turning point in First’s own critical itinerary. South African historian and journalist and ANC (African National Congress) and SACP (South African Communist Party) activist, Ruth First had left her native country in 1964 with her three young daughters following her release after 117 days of detention to join her husband, Joe Slovo, in exile in London. She would never return to South Africa and was assassinated by a letter bomb sent from Pretoria in 1982 to her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, where she had been a senior researcher at the Centre of African Studies since 1977. That final posting was one that First in fact visited on her return route to Durham from her semester in Dar es Salaam in December 1975–January 1976.

If less than half a year in a distinguished lifelong career as a writer and activist, Ruth First’s visiting semester at the University of Dar es Salaam is nonetheless crucial both to her own intellectual biography and to that story’s relevance for understanding the post-independence African historical narrative and its continued influence. The semester is also especially telling with regard to the early efforts toward post-colonial academic exchanges that sought, however haphazardly, as well as hazardously, to redress even then the distortions of divisions of intellectual labour (in Walter Rodney’s terms, perhaps, 'how Europe underdeveloped Africa') that have vexed programmes in international studies ever since.

Ruth First’s application did go forward, if in fits and starts, and she eventually arrived in Dar es Salaam in late August 1975 to take up her temporary teaching position at the university. This was some eight years after Nyerere’s pronouncement of the Arusha Declaration in February 1967 that outlined TANU’s (Tanganyika African National Union) policy on 'socialism and self-reliance' for Tanzania. First herself had been living in London since early 1964 where she had resettled, following her release from South African detention, raising her three daughters and managing the household during the often protracted absences of her husband, Joe Slovo, whose work with the ANC took him regularly to Africa. Her own already distinguished career in South Africa as an ANC/SACP anti-apartheid activist and investigative reporter was critically transformed over the course of her London expatriation, under both political and financial pressures. There was, in other words, a struggle to be waged and a family to be supported. Bills had to be paid after all, debts accounted for, old scores settled and freedom won. Prior to taking up her post at the University of Durham in 1973 then, First had already published (or researched) numerous books, on South West Africa (1963), Libya (1974), coups in Africa (1970), sanctions against South Africa (1972), her own prison memoir, 117 Days (1965), and her credentials as a researcher were academically impeccable if politically, and probably just as predictably, controversial. She would go on to publish several more books, including Olive Schreiner (1980) and the posthumous Black Gold (1983). Whatever then could the former South African political detainee, journalist, professor, public speaker, rally crier and exile, possibly be doing in Dar es Salaam in 1975?

According to the Arusha Declaration, advocating as it did policies of socialism and self-reliance, and perhaps with particular and exemplary relevance for reconstituting academic endeavours and enterprise in the newly independent nation, the 'biggest requirement (for development) is hard work' but, the declaration admonishingly continues, 'the second condition of development is the use of intelligence.' 'Unintelligent hard work,' emphasised Nyerere’s declaration, 'would not bring the same results as the two combined.' Although Ruth was most certainly intelligent, and it would be difficult, even for her critics, to deny that she was a hard worker – on any number of fronts – there were still the requisite bureaucratic and political protocols attaching to the Durham–Dar exchange that needed to be worked out before the deal could be done. For example, as one Dar es Salaam colleague wrote to First regarding the possibility of establishing 'some sort of inter-departmental link' between the two institutions, 'the more good postgraduates you can send the better but they will have to learn Swahili' (David Rosenberg to Ruth First, 08/06/74).

Nor was language facility the only issue. Shortly afterwards, First wrote back to Rosenberg regarding monetary, cost-benefit arrangements: 'Since the suggestion for the inter-departmental links organised with the Inter-University Council, we are at present exploring the financial aspects of such an exchange, and the possibility that the Council might finance the secondment of teaching staff from here to your Department, so that you would not be burdened with any additional financial cost but, on the contrary, would benefit to the extent that you want additional teaching.' (Ruth First to David Rosenberg, 26/08/74). But there were political investments as well that would be at stake. Rosenberg wrote, for example, that 'we are extremely keen on bringing here people who have worked on Cuba, China, West Africa, etc etc' (24/10/74). Two months later, as the prospects for the exchange evolved, First herself would reply to Dr Rweyememu regarding both her intellectual interests and her academic bonafides, that, as she wrote, 'my strongest concerns and interests are in Africa, both independent Africa and the South, though I have been teaching across a broadly comparative Third World board' (28/12/74). Her teaching and research interests, and her political commitments too, would seem to have qualified Ruth First for the opportunity to join for a semester the faculty in the Department of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam, even if, as her head of department in Durham, Philip Abrams, wrote to her in June 1975, 'I suppose the invitation is a Good Thing, although I must say it will cause some problems. I will start now,' Abrams nonetheless went on, 'to unravel the administrative tangles if any.' After all, since 'we want,' he wrote, 'a special relationship with Tanzania I suppose we really should take the opportunity to bring it to life if we can' (06/01/75). Within a matter of months, Ruth would be in Dar es Salaam, where Arusha-provoked crises still simmered on the campus – and intellectual excitement continued to ferment.

EPISTOLARY ASSESSMENTS

In one of her first epistolary communications from Dar es Salaam, this one to her husband Joe, Ruth suggested both the exhilaration and the frustration that came with the new posting and its inevitable prevarications. 'Today,' she wrote, 'after 24 hours of searching for him, Professor Guruli [then chair of the Economics Department], who got me out here, dropped his entire course in my lap, and I start Monday.' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 15/08/75). That lament was perhaps enhanced by an apparently uncomfortable BAA flight and seemingly unsatisfactory accommodation at a (albeit luxury) hotel too far from the campus.

Transportation to 'the hill' (both physical and occasionally ideological) would be a persistent problem, but in any case, the 'University is pretty confusing, come to think of it', the visiting lecturer wrote home, giving as one example, the vexing political assessment of two of her new colleagues. She’d been, as she noted, '… talking to Mamdani (whose work is the Shivji equivalent on Uganda…), but he [Shivji] must label Mamdani a Trot. Like many labels, they stick to the wrong surface.' In the same letter, the self-conscious epistolary expatriate described as well a disturbing 'slaughter at a seminar', the occasion being 'when Terence Ranger – founder of the so-called Dar es Salaam school of history – was put on the chopping block. I must say he deserved it, for a woolly ambiguous treatment of so called peasant consciousness though the attack was ferocious. Apparently the calculated murder-in-public of liberal ideology is part of class struggle, but even my stony heart was moved by Ranger’s plight' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 15/08/75). Heady stuff for sure, even for 'stony hearts' like that of Ruth First who, for all her accomplishments, was already known both for her diffidence in venturing into new areas of inquiry and for her refusal 'to suffer fools gladly'.

Ruth First’s letters from Dar es Salaam provide thus both a provocative, dramatically punctuated and scrupulously scriptorial account of the academic activities on 'the hill' and an analysis of the challenges of academic exchanges generally, but particularly when complicated by the combined and uneven syllabic form and content of courses in 'development'. Even the very letter-writing itself was something of a hurdle for Ruth, inveterate and notorious typist that she was. As she wrote to her daughter Gillian, for example: 'Am typing this in office hours on an Italian portable; the structure of Italian is apparently different, so the m z w ? . ! ó o and heavens knozs what else are all in the zrong positions. You’ll have to decipher as you go; it’s not intended to be coded' (Ruth First to Gillian Slovo, 20/10/75).

At least she had a typewriter though, even if with an Italian keyboard (but then Ruth had always been enamoured of most things Italian – shoes, leather, and former colonies too – from Libya to Eritrea). Still and all, general working conditions in the Economics Department did pose some frustrations for the relocated researcher, teacher and epistolarian, as she wrote to Joe after a month in Dar: 'Had been running out of paper till today (the econs dept has nought: I ordered 2 lead pencils, 2 file covers and some paper and gem clips and the list came back with crosses against all items) when a friend showed me round the White elephant of a fishery institute next door this hotel. It’s Dutch money and expertise all down the drain. The huge freezers are empty; the building deserted; rather like an antonioni film. But the cupboards are full of stationery so I’m in stock again' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 18/09/75).

The letters, like the luta, continued and so, another month and a half later, Ruth wrote again to Joe regarding the epistolary episteme: 'If you want to know how I manage so many letters, they’re generally easier than lecture or seminar preparation, and when I’m apprehensive about starting a new lecture, I warm up on letters, on the grounds that friends and relatives are less hostile than students. Not that the latter are, rather they’re demanding. In fact, I’m getting a lot of good feedback from them and will be really sorry to be back among my English lumps [in Durham].' Ruth, that is, was learning too, as well as teaching, at least according to the version in the same letter: 'My course hit a few good high spots – and some low – but they’re hipped on the analysis of under-development, and it’s really intriguing how they react when they have to apply their method to Tanzania. This when the divide comes. The radicals persevere with the analysis; the nationalists take refuge in statements about exceptions. Or something even less tangible…' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 1/11/75).

Teacher–student relations, however, were not Ruth’s only concern. There were collegial (and then again sometimes not so collegial) interactions that preyed on her efforts, both pedagogical and political, to participate in the educational processes in that African university, representing a continental space from whose liberationist transformations she had been exiled for more than a decade now. In the same letter to Joe, then, she wrote further, perhaps by way of attempted reassurance to both herself and her spouse: 'In case you’re worried, my relations with the people that matter remain very good. I’ve not quarrelled, only argued! Of course I’ve been blackballed by that silly crowd at the university which clusters like a cabal round the GDR staff and trainees' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 01/11/75). Already in September, she had written to Joe that 'S…' and his lot are beginning to character-assassinate me. Mildly, but they’re testing, I suppose. Tried it out with a chap connected with IDS with whom I’m friendly. Asked him if he knew I was using a British passport. They’re actually beneath contempt. Not that this item is that significant or important but it’s a measure of their tactics. They should stick,' Ruth blandishes nonetheless, 'to the non-capitalist road' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 18/09/75).

Dar es Salaam, the university ('the hill'), the economics department and the hotel too were vital crossroads to, fro and within Africa at the time, however, and so Ruth First, however trepidatious, however venturesome, found herself from the very first in the thick of things, looking out on various sides and from across sundry fronts: 'The place is flooded with expatriates and new ones are coming every day. As are the consultants and experts […] There’s also top FAO man here, who once worked with John Saul and co and knows everything there is to know, it is said. He is appalled that this luxury hotel is still running. When tourism was part of planning, there was an outcry against the wastage of resources, but this was excused on the grounds that tourists would bring foreign currency…' Even so, Ruth goes on, 'there is, as usual, a great deal of new work being done, especially on the rural areas' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 21/08/75). And she had, after all, been seconded to teach courses in the 'political economy of underdevelopment and planning' and 'African society and environment.'

CURRICULAR ASSIGNMENTS

For all the 'new work being done', there was, even for Ruth, much work to do, and she was especially concerned – at times even 'panicked' – about her courses and lectures. Just over a week or so into her stay in Dar es Salaam, she wrote to Joe in serious jest, 'Can you believe that I’ve not had a swim yet? Partly, mostly, because,' she confessed, 'I fell on such a pile of daily preparational living from lecture to lecture' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 21/08/75). It wasn’t the first moment of panic, however, since a few days earlier she had already found anxious camaraderie with an Italian colleague: '… sunbathed [note, not swimming] for an hour or so but am panicked about my lecture tomorrow so worked mostly, in between talking to the Italian whose lecture tomorrow is panicking him too. What a dreary routine this academic life…' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 15/8/75 – postscript Sunday night).

The 'panic' notwithstanding, First was, in the early days of her semester-long sojourn at least, especially impressed with the 'Africanisation' of the university and the programmatic priority, the crises notwithstanding, given to the matriculation of 'mature' students. As she wrote reflectively and speculatively to her husband Joe shortly after her arrival, on 3 September, 'I’m amazed at the level of my students, though I’m sure there are duds and conservatives among them too. But this is the first year of the mature intake i.e. university entrants are no longer processed through the schools but through the workplaces, and need Tanu credentials. From the looks of it numbers of older people, experienced people have got in, and their commitment is very earnest, even if only for careers.' Parenthetically, however, she continues: '(One negative effect is that the intake of women dropped from 10 to 2.5 per cent; a reflection of the discrimination against women in life after high school.).' (Ruth First to Joe Slovo, 03/09/75). A short month and a half later, however, the same teacher of the second half of the year-long 'Economics 202: Political Economy of Underdevelopment and Planning' would write, if not less enthusiastically then still rather more critically, to her daughter Gillian:

'My students are complaining that in the essay assignments I've set them – as 40 per cent of the exam mark – they have to read more than one book. More explicitly they are open-ended questions: they complain, they have to think out an answer: and a direction of argument: Surely some will take to it well: many are very bright, though instinctively set for conservatism once this university training guarantees them a meal ticket for life. Which it will.

'What gets me is when, in conversation or in class, some of them try putting over this socialist ethos thing: an official line that carries less and less conviction as they proceed to pretend bureaucrats and workers and peasants alike have their shoulder to the socialist wheel.

'The workers' term for the bureaucrats is the Nizers: those who have never looked back since they were Africanised into the controlling posts of the system.' (20/10/75)

The course assignments for Econ 202’s second term, as identified on the syllabus, were, however, indeed demanding and organised under the topics of 'theories of underdevelopment', 'strategies of development', 'industrialisation', 'rural questions', 'rural co-operation in Tanzania' and 'class and development', with readings ranging from the classical works of Marx and Lenin through contemporary critics such as A.G. Frank, Samir Amin, E. Laclau, H. Alavi, and Issa G. Shivji, to cite but a few examples.

First herself was not unconcerned at the kinds of academic exchanges that were enabled – or disabled – by her own relative newness to the situation and the challenges of the experiment in higher education launched in the early years of the University of Dar es Salaam and into which she had entered. Her lecture notes for the introductory session are provocatively suggestive of the pedagogical imperative she worked under in this historic setting:

'Today an introd lecture by way of exploration

'Find my feet, find out where yours are, for we have to run this course together!

'Difficulties of not being with you right from outset

'unavoidable

'My purpose today: to check where you are at.'

The notes go on:

'MAIN purpose: to draw some threads together

'Provide an overview which does not repeat the theories of development, underdevelopment, but which slots them together, for they do make a pattern.'

First also admonished and encouraged her students about the 'importance of feedback', noting to her students:

'Hope you’ll speak up, even dissatisfaction, complaints. Lectures pack too much? too thin? Coming over too fast? […] Interruptions (questions) during lectures? You must judge. Break continuity – danger. throw me off my balance? On the other hand sometimes helpful to ask for clarification. And if I can’t give it at the time I promise to go away and think about it for the following time.'

As for the seminars, these are to be 'working sessions', she emphasises to the students, 'YOU to do the work.' For that first introductory lecture, the teacher’s notes run to 15 typewritten, handwritten, much redacted pages. Ruth First was, as she wrote at the time to her Durham colleague and friend Gavin Williams, 'flushed with elation at the experience of development having relevance' (16/09/75).

FINALS

The final exam questions that First set, following meticulous revisions and painstakingly cramped rewritings, for the students of Econ 202, not only ask the exam-takers to respond to the concerns of the syllabi, but also perhaps to summon a critical analysis, even if not an elated one, of the 'experience of development having relevance':

'Answer Three (3) Questions, 1 (one) from Section A and two (2) from Section B.

Section A

1. Outline and evaluate ‘vicious circle’ explanations for poor economies.
2. Outline and evaluate Rostow’s Stages of Growth theory.
3. Distinguish between ‘growth’ and ‘development’.
4. What factors explain the expansionist tendencies of capitalism (a) in the period of the scramble for Africa in the late 19th century and (b) in the post-independence situation of the second half of the 20th century?

Section B

5. ‘For capitalism to penetrate into the sphere of industrial production it must have a market which is ready to absorb a continuously increasing volume of products’. What obstructs this process in under-developed economies?
6. Explain Samir Amin’s theoretical model for self-centred (developed) and dependent (peripheral) capital accumulation.
7. ‘In under-developed economies the state performs the function of merchant capital’. How would you substantiate this statement from the characteristics of merchant capital?
8. ‘Industrialisation can deepen under-development’. Demonstrate this with reference to the case of Tanzania, giving careful and accurate instances of the trends in industrialization policy since Independence.
9. ‘External dominance is only possible where it finds support in national sectors which benefit from it’. Is this statement valid in the case of Tanzania OR Kenya?'

The questions that Ruth First posed to her Econ 202 students at the end of the 1975 academic year, and at the conclusion of her own semester-long academic exchange at the University of Dar es Salaam, were indeed pressing questions, not only for her students, who needed to pass at least the exam if not the hurdles awaiting them in the public sphere, but for the researchers, colleagues, policy-makers and politicians, Tanzanian, African and international alike, with whom she shared and disputed the intellectual premises and academic corridors and offices. The same questions, that is, animated importantly the discussions among the 'intellectuals on the hill', as Issa G. Shivji referred to his colleagues on the campus, or critics – both positive and negative – still identified in the literature as the groundbreaking 'Dar es Salaam school of historiography'.

For now, however, which Econ 202 exam question(s) would you want to try to answer? Then? Currently? Or which of the interrogatory puzzles might Ruth First herself have been most keen to investigate at the time? Would Question Four, for example, among the options under Section A, be considered as timely, anachronistic, or even, just perhaps, prescient, asking as it does after a longer historical narrative that would connect critically the 'expansionist tendencies of capitalism (a) in the period of the scramble for Africa in the late 19th century and (b) in the post-independence situation of the second half of the 20th century.' Beginnings and ends, not to mention means, were implied in the exam question. In other words, why was Ruth First, so 'flushed with elation at the experience of development having relevance', asking her Econ 202 students about colonialism on their final exam, to comment on the 'scramble for Africa' of all things?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in the maiden issue of Chemchemi, bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the editorial board of Chemchemi.
* 'Looked Class, Talked Red: Ruth First, An Intellectual Biography' by Barbara Harlow is a forthcoming publication from Pluto Press and Pambazuka Press.
* Barbara Harlow is a professor of English literature at the University of Texas.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Bring SA’s security apparatus under civilian control

William Gumede

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59686

© Ahahlali.orgSouth Africans must be vigilant that elements of their democratic state – especially the state security apparatus – do not return to the ‘strong-arm tactics, dirty-tricks and law-unto-themselves behaviour’ of the apartheid-era, William Gumede writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. ‘Our democratic state is supposed to be a caring one; not one that terrorises ordinary citizens, or uses the state for personal and factional gain,’ Gumede says.

As is now becoming increasingly clear from the many court trials, towards the end of the presidential term of Thabo Mbeki, elements of the security apparatus increasingly started to behave like their apartheid predecessors in their muzzling of rivals and legitimate criticisms of the state, and in the abuse of power for personal and factional interests.

The leadership succession battle of the ANC, ahead of the party’s December 2007 Polokwane national conference, saw rival factions inside the ANC often using state security agencies, the police and intelligence services, to try to eliminate each other. At the height of the tussle, a state of paranoia reigned, where smear campaigns, deliberately planting stories and entrapment – such as the attempt by rogue intelligence agents to plant drugs on a Mail & Guardian journalist – were used as a devastating weapon to discredit opponents.

High on President Jacob Zuma’s priority list must be to put a stop to senior ANC or government leaders abusing the security apparatus of the state for personal and factional interests. The president must make sure that allies, now in control of the ANC and government, do not use the state security apparatus for revenge attacks, or abuse it to trip up opponents, so frequently done by some allies of Mbeki. For starters, the idea of setting up a department of state security is not only a waste of scarce resources, but is simply out of place, in the kind of caring democracy we want to create in South Africa.

For another, the new muscular shoot-to-kill policy and ask questions later of the police is undemocratic. Furthermore, the proposals to militarise the police service, complete with military ranks such as general, are also completely wrong. Increasing suggestions of sending intelligence officials to probe social delivery protests is dangerous. The security of the state is not threatened by poor people protesting, critical civil society groups or activists or journalists. Continuing poverty, combined with lack of service delivery, mismanagement, public corruption and the unfairness of leaders and their family and friends living in the lap of luxury, subsidised by taxpayers’ money and then having the arrogance to tell the poor to be patient, and that there is no money for redistribution, is an explosive mix.

The fallout from the ANC’s succession battles has left dangerous divisions in the entire state security apparatus, which is in itself a threat to the stability of the country. There are likely to be intelligence and police operatives from both the apartheid era, and the democratic dispensation, who are walking around selling incriminating information to the highest bidders, potentially to be used again to knee-cap opponents, secure a government tender or seal a business deal.

We must very quickly bring the security apparatus – police, intelligence and army – under civilian control. The first step must be to depoliticise the state security apparatus. It is also simply unacceptable that senior figures in the state security apparatus have such extensive business interests. To simply declare it, and stay in office, is just not on. The watchdogs, ombuds offices and regulatory institutions set up to guard over the state security apparatus, must not only be on high alert for abuses; they must act resolutely to stamp it out. Civil society, the media and ordinary South Africans must be vigilant. Our democratic state is supposed to be a caring one; not one that terrorises ordinary citizens, or uses the state for personal and factional gain.

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.

Nigeria's Governor Timipre Sylva: A thief is a thief whether family or not

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59661

cc nairaland.comGovernor Timipre Sylva of Nigeria's Bayelsa state is notable solely for his 'profligacy, perfidiousness, aloofness and incompetence', writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde in this week's Pambazuka News. With Sylva content to pursue an apparently never-ending programme of foolish and money-gulping schemes, Abidde stresses that Bayelsans and the Ijaw group as a whole need to demonstrate the same willingness to challenge their own elites as they do the federal government and exploitative oil companies.

The Ijaw ethnic group can be found in seven federating states in Nigeria: Ondo, Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa and Edo. Except perhaps in Lagos State, where migratory history is slightly unclear, the Ijaw are indigenous to all these communities. Ethnographically for instance, we have the Kalabari, the Okrika, the Opobo and the Nembe Ijaw. We also have the Arogbo, the Apoi and the Andoni Ijaw. In terms of demography, Ijaw are minorities in those states, except in Rivers and Bayelsa State. In Bayelsa, they constitute the absolute majority and consider the state the Mecca for all Ijaw at home and abroad.

It is generally assumed that however goes Bayelsa, so goes events in most other Ijaw communities and commune across the country. Because of this and other factors, the state has been under a political and security microscope since its inception in 1996. In very recent times, when people think of Bayelsa State, they invariably think of ex-Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and his deputy (who is now the nation’s vice-president). The man currently at the helm of state affairs is Timipre Sam Sylva. Governor Sylva, by all accounts and available evidence, is unlike any other governor the state has ever seen. And in fact, of all the sitting governors, one can hardly think of another quite like him in terms of profligacy, perfidiousness, aloofness and incompetence.

Bayelsa State, as with other states in the Nigerian Niger Delta, receives a handsome monthly allocation from the federal government. Now, whether the percentage is fair – considering that the state is one of the nation’s major breadbaskets – is an argument for another time. What is irrefutable, here and now, is that Yenagoa receives large monthly allocations. That being the case, the argument becomes: What does the state do with its allocation and its internally generated revenue? Where does the money go? What has the Sylva government done with the millions of dollars it has received in the last two or so years?

We have asked the same and similar questions of Alamieyeseigha and Goodluck Jonathan. And in fact, these questions have been asked of all governors and governments in the Niger Delta since 1999. No answers were ever given, none forthcoming. Governors and governments in the region have acted and continue to act as if they are beyond reproach, beyond accountability and beyond the people’s scrutiny. In every single instance, these governors behave in manner that indicates that they do not care about legitimacy, about accountability and about good governance and whatever else traditional and Western-style democracy calls for. Except in two or three states, what we have in the Niger Delta is indicative of the rot, the indifference and the callousness that dominates our nation’s political space.

As a Nigerian and as someone who has resided in all the regions of the country, I very much care about what is going on in our country. We have a diminishing and an ineffective presidency; a country with weak and failing institutions; a mostly fatalistic and fearful populace; and a political class that takes pleasure in raping and exploiting its peoples. In addition to caring about Nigeria, I also care about what is happening in my home state, Bayelsa. I am alarmed by what has happened and continues to happen in my state. But really, nothing meaningful is happening in terms of development; but a lot is happening in terms of theft, maladministration, apathy, dishonesty and indolence on the part of the governor, the commissioners and most members of the economic and political class.

All over the state, especially in Yenagoa, people seem to have given up. There is hopelessness in the air. They seem to have accepted failure and boldly accepting of the nothingness Governor Timipre Sylva unquestionably embodies. Majority of the people and the majority of the elites know that the governor is a non-performer. Still, no one seems to have the courage to challenge him. Those whose duty it is to call the governor to order seem to have lost their moral authority. They have, for too long and on many occasions, compromised their integrity. Others seem to have lost their voices and their cojones as a result of their over-reliance and dependence on political favours, appointments and contracts and on Sylva’s stingy goodwill.

And so it is that in spite of the governor’s incompetence and unenlightened state, the vast majority of the people just sits still and sit pitifully. Most people, it appears, are not bold enough to take the governor on. History shows that a leader – any leader – who is not answerable to his people is likely to act like an unhinged deity. We saw what Governor Alamieyeseigha did and also saw what became of him and the state after his abridged tenure. We also cannot forget what became of the state when Governor Goodluck Jonathan was in office. Unlike his predecessors, however, this governor is monumentally inept, and in the process driving the state into utter ruin and damnation.

We have a governor who, in two or so years, has signed a ridiculous amount of memorandums of understanding. He is alleged to have signed an agreement with an Israeli enterprise to 'make Bayelsa the fruit and vegetable basket of the nation'. In 2008, he was partnering with George Soros 'to help the government of Bayelsa to strengthen institutions in the state that promote good governance and community development projects … was particularly interested in the welfare of the youths … especially those who recently gave up militancy and proposed schemes that would help to build capacity and give them life changing skills'.

When this and several other money-gulping schemes didn’t pan out, Timipre Sylva took to wasting millions of dollars on publicity and propaganda campaigns and on consultancy works, i.e., how to 'establish and operate fish ponds in the state'. Bayelsans have been fishermen since the beginning of time. How and why in heaven’s name would the governor pay millions of dollars to Americans to teach the Ijaw how to fish? Even if fish farms are of higher technology, are there no Nigerians with the technical know-how?

And just recently, 'Governor Timipre Sylva made available to the government of the United States of America, acting through the US Agency for International Development – Nigeria (USAID – Nigeria) in Abuja, US$994,509 to implement the legislative strengthening activity entitled the "Strengthening Transparency, Research, Independence and Development" (STRIDE) project. The State provided the contribution to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) for the first phase of the STRIDE project to strengthen the capacity of key officials within the executive and legislative branches of the government of the State of Bayelsa on fiscal, legislative, and transparency reforms.'

As with several other projects, the STRIDE project is simply another avenue for the governor and his posse to steal and steal some more. Members of the executive and legislative body may even find it necessary to take fact-finding trips to the US. On their way in, and out of the US, they will stop in London, Paris, Johannesburg and wherever else catches their fancy. In the process, millions of dollars will be stolen and wasted. But of course, that is the way of this governor and the Bayelsa state assembly – a good for nothing assembly!

Bayelsans in general and the Ijaw in particular do complain about and against the federal government. That’s fine. They have every right to do so. Nonetheless, they must also pay attention to their own leaders – governors, commissioners, federal ministers, special advisers, civil servants, contractors and many others –who have been committing atrocities against them. Frankly, the Ijaw cannot continue to blame the federal government and the oil companies, yet tolerate the stupidity, the cruelty, the lawlessness and the perfidy of their own elites. Most of all, they must not tolerate leaders who steal and mismanage their treasury and other resources. A thief is a thief is a thief whether that thief is a member of the family or not.

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

African pastoralists face climate change threat

Aaron Tesfaye

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59683

cc landcoalition.orgThe first victims of the change in global precipitation patterns will not be people from rich, polluting nations who engage in ruinous consumption, but the poorest of the poor – such as African pastoralists who exist ‘precariously at the periphery’, Aaron Tesfaye writes in Pambazuka News. As world leaders prepare for the UN Climate Change Conference in December, Tesfaye looks at why the summit’s agenda has ‘produced serious divisions between developed and developing nations’, with one side seeking to maintain a way of life, and the other struggling to meet basic needs.

As the world’s leaders meet in Copenhagen, Denmark on 7 December 2009, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, things are already starting to look bleak for the poorest of the poor on the planet. They are the pastoralists of Africa. Many eke out a living in the Sahel, a semi-desert belt that stretches from Senegal to Sudan, and other pastoralists struggle similarly in the horn of Africa and in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and parts of southern Africa.

Today these pastoralists face drought, desertification, and disruptions in water supplies because worldwide precipitation is shifting away from the equator towards the poles, warming the polar regions while parching countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus it is widely believed that the first victims of the change in global precipitation patterns, the canary birds of climate change, will not be people from rich, polluting nations who engage in ruinous consumption, but African pastoralists who exist precariously at the periphery.

As the world gets ready for the Copenhagen summit, it is important to note that the agenda, which will impact poor nations most severely, has produced serious divisions between developed and developing nations. To date, no serious climate regime dealing with the issue has emerged because of the concerted opposition of the US and others to the Kyoto Protocol.

As far as the global south is concerned, basic development and the alleviation of poverty remain at the top of the agenda. Those in the global south see the concern of some rich nations as an attempt to hold back that agenda by limiting their energy use. The global South seeks solutions to climate change in substantial transfers of capital and technology from north to south that would facilitate development without increasing emissions. Thus it is widely expected that the issues visited at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the Rio Summit, which revealed divisions in interests, will rear their head again at Copenhagen, and the summit may not produce a control regime.

The issues between North and South are complicated by great inequalities in per capita emissions and populations. Although the potential for increased emissions is present, on average emissions of fossil fuel from developing nations are barely one tenth of the OECD average, and per capita emissions from regions such as India and Africa are around one twentieth of those of the US. In other words, the contribution of Sub-Saharan Africa to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel is miniscule, and yet scientists predict the African continent will bear the brunt of climate change.

However, even before the alarm sounded on climate change in 1988, desertification and environmental degradation had hit the Sahelian countries of Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Sudan. The situation has made these nations prone to either floods or extreme scarcity of resources for livestock. In the Nile Basin, environmental degradation, coupled with the beginning impact of climate change, is producing famine-like situations. Nations such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania are beginning to be impacted and at times have been threatened with famine because seasonal rains are in short supply.

The reasons for the massive food deficit and poverty on the continent are partly environmental, bad economic policies, foreign exchange problems, and debt overhang. However, the 1968-73 African droughts that claimed the lives of millions of human beings and animals, especially in the Sahel, were a result of desertification exacerbated by colonial intrusion, which introduced changes into local economies. The basic subsistence strategies of pastoralists – marketing excess male animals or changing the species of herds and flock to spread risk – were altered forever by commercialisation that favoured cattle for export to the metropolises of Europe, distorting traditional ways of survival.

Clearly then, rich nations and poor nations look at long-term challenges of the environment differently. Today, while rich and emerging nations are basically concerned with their respective ways of life and attendant competition for global economic and political power, some poor nations in Africa with burgeoning populations and scarce resources are struggling to provide citizens with the means to meet basic human needs, such as water, food, and shelter.

As in past conferences, the Copenhagen summit will carry its own divisions among nations. These will be between those that are major energy producers and those that are non-producers, between those that are relatively resilient to the projected impact of climate change and those that are vulnerable to those impacts, and between those with differing attitudes on environmental impacts and the inherent scientific uncertainties.

But Copenhagen will also produce new visions and solidarities among the powerless. Sub-Saharan Africa and small island nations in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, some of which are only two meters above sea level at their highest point and thus most vulnerable, will be vocal in asking for early action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well as halt deforestation and the destruction of the Earth. Theirs will be small but righteous voices speaking on behalf of the planet that is home to us all.

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* Aaron Tesfaye teaches in the Political Science department at William Paterson State University, Wayne, NJ.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The madness of Ethiopia’s 2010 'elections'

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59654

cc EthiomediaWith the ruling OPDO/EPDRF (Oromo People's Democratic Organization/Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) presiding over an extensive security and media network entirely in its own interests, Ethiopia's 2010 elections appear likely to be far from 'free and fair', writes Alemayehu G. Mariam in this week's Pambazuka News. Commenting on a recent report composed by Dr Negasso Gidada following a visit to Dembi Dollo in the Oromia region, Mariam stresses that while there is no reason why Ethiopia could not hold open elections, political realities on the ground will ensure the exact opposite is true.

'Is it possible to have a fair and free election in a police state?' That is the inescapable question one must answer after reading former Ethiopian President Dr Negasso Gidada’s recent reportage on his visit to Dembi Dollo in Qelem Wallaga Zone of Oromia region.[1] In his recent, widely read analysis, Dr Negasso flatly declared that there is 'no level playing field' in Dembi Dollo, and by implication anywhere else in Ethiopia, to have a free and fair election in 2010.

Dr Negasso’s account of his visit to Dembi Dollo evokes the farcical theatricality of a low-budget political horror film: The former president shows up for a visit in Dembi Dollo and is promptly shooed away and stonewalled by local functionaries. He is told he can’t hold mass public meetings or engage in other forms of discussion or dialogue with the public. In disbelief, he hastily arranges individual meetings with local businessmen, community elders, teachers, health workers, church leaders, qa’bale officials, private professionals, university students, NGO employees and members and supporters of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM). He is horrified to learn that the individuals who have met or spoken with him could be abused and victimised by local security operatives. He becomes aware of the ubiquitous and omnipotent local security apparatus with its tentacles planted firmly into individual households.

To describe Dr Negasso’s account on the 'current situation' in Dembi Dollo as 'downright chilling' would be a gross understatement. He depicts a local party organisation nestled within an oppressive security apparatus consisting of layered and operationally interlocking committees (which could be best described as 'commissariats'), mimicking Stalin’s NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in the 1930s. Households, hamlets, villages, districts, towns and zones are hierarchically integrated into a commissariat for the single purpose of coordinating command and control over perceived 'enemies of the people'. There is a network of informants, agents and secret police-type operatives who rely on heavy-handed methods to harass, intimidate, gather intelligence and penetrate opposition elements with the aim of neutralising them.

The integrated overlay set-up of the local security structure with the dominant OPDO/EPDRF (Oromo People's Democratic Organization/Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) party in Dembi Dollo is quite intriguing. According to Dr Negasso’s reportage, there is no structural or functional separation of political party and public security in Dembi Dollo. The two are morphed into a single political structure which totally controls and dominates the local political and social scene. The special Woreda town administration is sub-divided into four large 'Ganda' or villages with their own councils, each consisting of 300 members. Each qa’bale has representation in the Woreda council, which is further sub-divided into zones and even smaller units called 'Gare'. There are 30 to 40 households in a 'Gare' group, which is overseen by a commissariat consisting of a chairperson, a secretary, a security chief and two other members. There are up to 17 'Gare' in each zone with branches in every village, schools and health institutions. There is also a larger network of 24 qa’bales under a Sayyo Rual Woreda. Public employees, farmers, local youth, women, members of micro-credit associations and others are involuntarily inducted into the security-party structure.

The security network is so sophisticated that it has Stalinesque quasi-directorates consisting of party and security organisations working together to maintain round-the-clock surveillance and generate and distribute real-time intelligence on individual households through an established chain of command. It is clear from Dr Negasso’s reportage that the local commissariats have expansive powers of investigation, arrest, interrogation and detention. They maintain a network of anonymous informants and agents who provide tips for the identification, investigation and arrest of local individuals suspected of disloyalty to the regime. They control and regulate the flow of information and visitors in and out of the town. Apparently, they have the power to deport anyone considered persona non grata from the town. In general, there is little question that the commissariats and the interlocking quasi-directorates engage in widespread human rights abuses against the local population.

One of the common methods of local control described by Dr Negasso involves the use of highly intrusive security structures called 'shane', which in Oromo means 'the five'. Five households are grouped together under a leader who is responsible for collecting information on the households everyday and passing it on to the 'Gare' officials. For instance, the 'shane leader knows if the members of a household have participated in "development work", if they have contributed to the several fundraising programmes, if they have attended Qabale meetings, whether they have registered for election, if they have voted and for whom they have voted'. The 'Gare' security chief passes information he has received from the security network to his superiors right up the chain of command.

Here are some excerpts from Dr Negasso’s reportage:

'The OPDO/EPRDF … seems determined not to allow any other political organization which could compete against it in the area. This goes as far as not welcoming individual visitors to the area. Visitors are secretly followed and placed under surveillance to determine where they have been, whom they have visited, and what they have said… Local people who had contact with visitors that are summoned and grilled by security officials. In my case, my brother-in-law, with whom I stayed … received telephone calls from the Dembi Dollo and Naqamte security offices. He was asked why I came, whether I came for preparation for the coming election or for any other purpose.

'[A USAID visiting group received the same treatment.] They were followed from the time it arrived in Naqamte. After the group returned, several security officials interrogated leaders of the Dembi Dollo Bethel-Mekane Yesus Church… One of the church leaders was even summoned to the zonal administrator’s office and asked detailed questions about the visitors from Addis.

'[Individuals who came to greet] Dr. Belaynesh (member of the OFDM and an MP) were arrested, interrogated and held in custody for 24 to 48 hours. The houses of some of these individuals were also searched.

'OPDO/EPRDF in Dembi Dollo, besides using the police and security offices and personnel, also collects information on each household.

'Each household is required to report on guests and visitors, the reasons for their visits, their length of stay, what they said and did and activities they engaged in.'

THE 'ELECTION CODE OF CONDUCT' GAME

The ruling dictatorship has been peddling the idea of an 'election code of conduct' to entice the opposition to field candidates for the 2010 'election'. Foreign embassies have been enlisted to do cheerleading for such a 'code'. Medrek, a forum for eight political parties, walked out of 'election code' talks sensing a sure-fire trap down the road as the 'election' date nears.

Lately, there has been talk of 'boycotting' the 'election'. The unjust imprisonment of Birtukan Midekssa and the release of all political prisoners has become a central issue. Ato Gizachew Shiferaw, a member of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party and vice-chairman of Medrek stated unambiguously: 'Unless we take some sort of remedy toward these political prisoners, it will be difficult to look at the upcoming elections as free and fair.' Medrek is also demanding the establishment of an independent electoral board and an immediate stop to the harassment of opposition candidates and supporters. It has also called for the presence of international election observers. Bereket Simon, the Machiavellian demiurge of the dictatorship, dogmatically pontificated: 'We invited them to a dialogue in the presence of the British and German embassies. We invited them to join negotiations. They declined. The party who walks away from the negotiating table doesn’t have a moral right to accuse us of closing political space.'

FREE AND FAIR ELECTION: NO NEED TO RE-INVENT THE ELECTION WHEEL

A free and fair election is possible only where the rule of law prevails and fundamental human rights are respected. There is no mystery to having free and fair elections. To be sure, in theory, there is no logical reason why there could not be free and fair elections in Ethiopia in May 2010 or at any other time. Its 'constitution', which describes itself as the 'supreme law of the land', guarantees voters and candidates (and citizens in general) full freedom of speech and expression; ensures freedom of press, which guarantees the right to publicly disseminate political messages and information in the run-up to elections and the post-election period; the right to vote and the secret ballot are secured; guarantees of an electoral level playing field accessible to all voters, parties and candidates with an independent, non-partisan electoral organization to administer the process are belaboured in the constitution; freedom of association to form political parties and civic organisations is held inviolable; and freedom of assembly to hold political rallies and to campaign freely is upheld as a hallowed right.

Further, there are purported legislative and regulatory safeguards in place to ensure fair access to the public media by opposition candidates and parties, to penalise the improper use of the police, the military, the judiciary and civil servants and elections officials. The use of public funds and equipment for partisan political purposes is strictly prohibited. The electoral process is guaranteed to ensure unencumbered voter registration, accessible polling places, the dignified treatment of election officials, open and transparent ballot counting and verification processes, the oversight of elections by trained and politically independent election officials and to prevent election fraud. Administrative and judicial challenges of election results are guaranteed by law.

Most importantly, it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ethiopian voters are second-to-none in their understanding of the democratic electoral process. In 2005, an estimated at 90 per cent of the 26 million registered voters in the country voted, according to the Carter Center. Ethiopian voters have gained solid experience in the electoral process. What is needed now is to replicate and improve the 2005 electoral process for 2010. There is no need to re-invent the election wheel.

THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE: IS AN ELECTION CODE OF CONDUCT NEEDED?

When the fox is guarding the election henhouse, it is rather meaningless to talk about election housekeeping rules, which is what an 'election code of conduct' is. Ultimately, the fox rules the henhouse with an iron fist, and though he may agree to 'fair' rules of the electoral game, he knows that in the final analysis he holds all the cards and the opposition none. In other words, in a police state the 'chief of police' knows that he is guaranteed victory in all of the zero-sum games he plays because he owns the game. He also knows that his opposition is powerless to break his perpetual streak of 'victory'. In all of the talk about elections, one question relentlessly gnaws the mind of the dictator: How to buy time and cling to power indefinitely while stringing along the opposition by trickery, false promises, double-dealing, double-crossing, shenanigans, razzle-dazzle using foreign embassies as intermediaries, duplicity and whatever gimmicks remain hidden in the dictatorship’s bottomless repository of political dirty tricks.

TOWARDS AN ELECTION CODE OF CONDUCT?

The idea of an 'election code of conduct', at first blush, is appealing because it points in the direction of a peaceful and civil electoral process. Such 'codes' have been used successfully in different countries. In principle, they are useful and facilitate an electoral process that is clean, and free from violence and vote rigging. But we must remain acutely aware of one fact: Those who clamour for an election code of conduct usually champion it to cloak and shroud the dirty political tricks they have concealed up their sleeves.

If such a code is to be had, it must be devised along the same lines as the criminal code. Just as the criminal code is designed with criminals and the criminal classes in mind, an election code should be designed with vote riggers, ballot stuffers, and election thieves in mind. As Dr Negasso’s reportage plainly indicates, it is the ruling 'EPDRF' party that has misused and abused official public resources, equipment, machinery or personnel for improper electioneering work. They are the ones who have improperly used public places to hold partisan political meetings and election rallies and prevented or made inaccessible such places on the same terms and conditions to opposition parties and candidates. It is the party in power that totally and completely dominates the print and electronic media, and misuses it to advance its partisan political agenda. It is the ruling party and its leaders that make illegal and corrupt offers and promises of financial payoffs, grants, fertilizers, roads and projects in exchange for votes, not the opposition. It is the ruling party members who can travel everywhere, distribute pamphlets and posters, hold rallies and meetings at any location of their choice while opposition parties and candidates are at the mercy of the local police authorities, who routinely deny them permission to engage in ordinary political activity. It is the ruling party that uses election propaganda that appeals to ethnic prejudices, inflames historical grievances and passions and heightens tension among different communities and groups, not the opposition.

Seeking to offer an answer to the question of whether a code of conduct can be drafted to bring sanity to elections in a police state – or hold the fox guarding the henhouse accountable – may appear to be an exercise in futility given the dictatorship’s history of elaborate machinations and shenanigans, total lack of transparency and zero-sum blame games. So, the question needs to be emphatically re-phrased: Will the dictatorship agree to and in good faith abide by an election code of conduct that is based on the principle of respect for the rule of law and human rights, and conforms to its own constitution and election laws?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was originally published by Ethiomedia.
* Alemayehu G. Mariam is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. For comments, he can be reached at almariam@gmail.com.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTE
[1] http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/1451

The confessions of Speaker Oladimeji Bankole

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59656

cc Wikimedia CommonsWhile encouraging of speaker of the Nigerian House of Assembly Oladimeji Bankole's capacity to 'tell it as it is' with regard to the Niger Delta, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde finds the Nigerian government's lack of support for the area to be utterly deplorable. If the speaker, as a government representative, has in effect confessed to the 'long-suspected national crime' of the persistent exploitation of the Niger Delta, it is incumbent upon the state to usher in a genuine 'Marshall Plan' to begin to compensate the area's inhabitants, Abidde contends.

Oladimeji Sabur Bankole is the speaker of the Nigerian House of Assembly. Although he recently joined the ranks of the Nigerian ruling class, he has steady roots in the Nigerian political landscape. Educated at home and abroad, he seems to have escaped most of the blemishes and shenanigans of the Nigerian political system, and as such tends to be more open-minded and more honest with his pronouncements. Even so, no one get to be the speaker of the Nigerian House, or of any House of Assembly, without rigorous schooling in the art of politics. And politics, for the most part, involves deception and the ability to double-speak.

In his most recent interview (The Nation, 14 October 2009), Speaker Bankole did not exhibit either characteristics. What he did was tell it as it is. In Bankole to Niger Delta: your leaders failed you, the honourable speaker was quoted as saying: 'If we are to be honest with ourselves, we have not been fair to the Niger Delta. We have been unfair to the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta has been producing the funds with which we’ve been running this country for so many years.' He got that right: Nigeria has been ridding on the back of the Niger Delta – especially on the sweaty bareback of the oil-producing communities.

When you ride on people’s back, you may be tempted to take them for a ride, abuse them, exploit them, rape them, deride them, cause havoc to their ecology and encourage social tension and dislocation, and may see no reason to engage in the development of their land. You may not think of providing amenities and other forms of human security. And if you have god complex – in addition to your tendency to use others – you may even think they are beneath you, and so you do not see them as equals, as humans.

Indeed, this has been Nigeria’s approach to the oil-producing communities since the 1970s. And now that the honourable speaker, who is second or third in line for presidential succession, has confessed to a long-suspected national crime, it behoves the Nigerian government to render an apology to the people of the Niger Delta, especially the oil-producing communities, for their crime of apathy, abandonment and neglect and for several years of environmental poisoning. After a confession, an apology follows and then a remedy. In this instance, a public apology, followed by a Marshall Plan for the oil-producing communities, is in order.

The honourable speaker continued: 'The funds we used to build Abuja where I came from this morning, those lovely roads and bridges and offices came from the funds from the Niger Delta. I have not seen such bridges and roads in the Niger Delta. I haven’t. Until those roads and infrastructure come to the Niger Delta, well, we’ll continue to put the request on the front burner of Nigerian politics.' To be fair, the speaker discussed other salient issues – some of which I agree with, others, I vehemently disagree with. But that is neither here nor there.

We sometimes wonder if Nigerians – especially those living the good life – understand the type of fetidity those in the riverine areas are consigned to. I wonder if they know that a sizeable number of those in creeks live an almost sub-human lifestyle: no potable water, no electricity and no quality schools or health services. I wonder if they know that the most basic of all basics are scare in the riverine area, the same region that sustains Nigeria. There are no lovely roads or lovely bridges or lovely homes. Nothing in this region, save the people’s spirit and humanity, can be considered lovely. Life in the riverine area is hellish and energy-sapping.

A little digression: I wonder if the honourable speaker knows any Emir, Oba or Obi who is is not, directly or obliquely, involved in the oil trade? Is there a retired military officer, from the north, the middle belt, the east or the west and who retired at the rank of colonel and above who is not, in one fashion or another, involved in the oil trade? Are there roads, hospitals, airports, colleges and universities and other government institutions, built between 1970 and 2009, that were not constructed with a high percentage of oil money? What has the oil money done for the oil-producing communities?

Private mansions, from Lagos to Abuja and from Ilorin to Kano and Kaduna, were mostly built with legal and/or illegal earnings from oil. If you go to Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and several places in Nigeria, all you see are palatial homes and fancy cars with their owners going on vacation to some of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth. They go for medical treatments abroad, send their kids to the best schools abroad. How many of those living in the riverine areas can make such claims or have access to such opulence? These are the kinds of disparities these communities have been pointing out.

In the last 40 years, about half a million Nigerians have been sent overseas on state and federal government scholarships. Considering that Nigeria is a rentier state, one can safely assert that earnings from oil were responsible for their educational joyrides. It was a good thing, but how many came from the oil-producing communities? Today, the thieving elites continue to send their children to universities abroad with oil money. Meanwhile, Nigerian universities are bastions of 19th century education and infrastructure. Who does not know that American and European universities are citadels for children of the thieving elites? How many from the oil-producing communities have so benefited?

Back to where I was. When we hear certain elements from the northern part of Nigeria speak about the oil-producing communities, we shudder in disbelief. Some speak about the riverine areas in contemptuous and derogatory terms. The Ijaw, for instance, are generally considered the trouble-makers, an ungrateful bunch of people. Heck, what should they be grateful for? We sometimes wonder if, in their calculations, they consider the Ijaw equals within the Nigerian polity. Government undercounts the Ijaw, under-educates and mis-educates them, pollutes their environment, and promotes social discord, militarises their land, inferiorises their leaders, and then appropriates their oil. And then Nigerians wonder why the Ijaw are always agitating?

Consider this: The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (and his posse), have variously argued that the north owns the oil. But leave it to the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) to drum the songs of war. Some members of that body, some of whom I admire, would rather the government invade, expel and send these communities to the most desolate expanse of the Sahara Desert.

Ask yourself these questions: (a) How many citizens from the oil-producing area received scholarships to go abroad or attend Nigerian universities?; (b) How many from the oil-producing communities have oil wells and/or are directly involved in the oil trade?; (c) How many students from these districts are deployed by the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) to serve in the oil and gas sector?; (d) How many university graduates from these locales have high-paying jobs with the oil companies or the Nigerian oil ministry?; (e) How many oil ministers, since 1970, hail from the Niger Delta?; and (f) How many federal universities, polytechnics, hospitals and colleges of education and other institutions are located in the oil-producing communities?

Put another way, what’s the level of federal presence in these communities? Do you know? Even the much-talked-about Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was a charade. It was nothing more than a money-making venture for political insiders. Intelligence estimates of the last four years show that more about 70 per cent of the prime contracts went to non-Niger Delta PDP contractors. For the most part, after mobilisation and other fees were collected, contractors simply went their ways. In most instances, party stalwarts brought authorisation papers from Abuja or Kaduna and contracts were awarded. These are the kinds of injustices justice-seeking groups have been fighting against.

The honourable Oladimeji Bankole was, to a very large extent, honest in his assessment. We’d like to reciprocate even though we have told the truth several times before: (a) The amnesty programme will fail because it was built on deceit; (2) The government does not have viable post-amnesty plans; (3) The government does not have viable plans to develop the region; (4) The surrender of arms and ammunition was just a show and more than two-thirds of those who surrendered were not militants; and (5) Since the government had encouraged a cloak-and-dagger mentality, it will come back to harm it. Most of those who promoted the amnesty fluff were only interested in their bank accounts and the expected political appointments.

And finally, Speaker Bankole went on to say: 'For some of you who have been to Lagos in the past one year, I’m sure you’ll notice the difference. And I’m not shy to appreciate that there is a difference in Lagos. It’s good governance.' Good governance? Holy Moses! Jah Jehovah! Well then, it is time the government and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) start to promote good governance in the region. To this end therefore, the party should stop imposing the weak and the inept as governors on the people. Not doing so would be a fraction of absolution.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

The financial crisis and Tanzania

E. J. Minja

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59679

cc stock.xchngIn this week’s Pambazuka News, E.J. Minja looks at the implications of the global financial crisis for Tanzania, what could be done to minimise its negative effects and capitalise on any positive effects, and how the country needs to deal with the crisis.

The financial crisis has been with us sufficiently long for even a non-sophisticated reader to grasp its basics. The initial signs originating from sub-prime mortgages prompted the question ‘What is it?’ This was soon followed by ‘What is causing it?’ Gradually we had the financial meltdown, and now we are grappling with the credit crunch and its contagion effects. The root of all these, as advanced here, is irresponsible borrowing and lending coupled with regulatory lapse in economies where economic agents overly rely on credit for both consumption and investment.

Firstly, irresponsible borrowing and lending led to loans being made to borrowers with poor credit ratings, resulting in the explosion of the sub-prime credit market.[1] Using the term ‘irresponsible’ may be taking an extreme position, but considering some of the credit products that were being offered, the presence of excess liquidity notwithstanding, it may not be that inappropriate.[2]

Secondly, a regulatory lapse allowed excessive creativity in engineering financial products whose quality proved extremely difficult to establish. Though the products originated in limited markets (mainly in the USA) they ended up being marketed, bought and insured by financial institutions and markets all over the world. One may also see a regulatory lapse in the regulators simply watching as borrowers and lenders engaged in irresponsible lending and borrowing.

Finally, over-reliance on credit for both consumption and investment is both the source of the crisis and a fuel to the crisis that transmits the effects to the real sector. On the one hand, reliance on credit is what caused the explosion of the sub-prime credit. On the other, it is what is now being seen as the secondary or indirect effect which is proving both more damaging and difficult to handle. That is, lack of credit is putting serious dents on consumption and investments and consequently production and employment.

The financial crisis is viewed as originating in the USA. Tighter monetary policy and upward adjustment of mortgage rates meant that financial institutions having exposure to the sub-prime market started experiencing delinquencies and foreclosures. The crisis has been highly contagious, with what was seen as a USA problem becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

While the crisis has driven some of the affected economies into recession, the question of ‘How safe is Tanzania?’ is constantly in the minds of the public, policy makers and politicians. In this piece we attempt to present some implications of the financial crisis for the Tanzanian economy and what can be done to minimise the negative effects and capitalise on any positive effects.

To do so we start by revisiting the causes of the crisis, and the channels through which it has been transmitted to other countries. This is followed by an analysis of the possible implications focusing on the nature, persistence and magnitude of the effects. Finally we end by pointing out what Tanzania needs to do to deal with the crisis.

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: THEN AND NOW

The circular nature of the financial crisis means that one can start from any point in the cycle in explaining what it is all about. The story often starts with sub-prime mortgages in the US but we have to go back to the factors that were pushing these types of mortgages. The fall in stock prices that began in 2000 with the burst of the dot-com bubble and excessive liquidity associated with low interest rates in 2002-2004 period are two of the factors.

The fall in stock prices had a flight-to-safety effect that had a bearing on both liquidity and housing prices. On the one hand, investors shunning the stock market held liquid assets while waiting for the market to turn around, or channelled their wealth into housing, thus fuelling the already rising house prices.

On the other hand, liquidity also meant that lenders were eager to push funds into the hands of borrowers as investment vehicles were competing to turn out impressive numbers despite the low interest rates. The competition led to lenders pushing financial products to low quality borrowers – particularly credit cards and sub-prime mortgages – as well as engaging in financial engineering aimed at either hedging the risk exposure or transferring the risk altogether.

One prevalent technique was the use of adjustable rates, which for mortgages, led to the now infamous ARMs – adjustable rate mortgages. Lenders were using introductory ‘teaser’ interest rates that typically started below the rates on comparable fixed-rate mortgages. However, after the introductory period, which could range from a few months to three years, the rate is adjusted upwards.[3]

While lenders were pushing sub-prime mortgages, borrowers also saw them as financial products worth acquiring. Firstly, appreciation in house values that was being experienced in the USA meant that it made more sense to use credit to finance home ownership rather than continuing renting. The mortgage monthly repayment may be slightly higher than the monthly rent, but ownership gives both shelter and equity in the property.

Rapid increase in house prices also created speculation opportunities – people could use mortgages to acquire properties for renting out and benefiting from the appreciation of property value. Since not all aspiring home-owners qualify for typical mortgages some are willing to enter at ‘lower’ levels, hence the emergence of sub-prime borrowers in contrast to prime borrowers.

A typical sub-prime borrower in the USA was not someone buying a house, but someone refinancing. A very basic form of financial engineering, refinancing was seen as the best way to replace a credit card burden with mortgage. The credit card burden itself originated from a push by lenders to get credit cards in the wallets of consumers that coincided with the generally low interest rates that were being experienced in the USA.

Most credit cards pushed with low introductory ‘teaser’ interest rates soon turned into a burden as the rates were adjusted upwards. Consumers saddled with credit card debt found it sensible to refinance them with mortgages – which essentially involved mortgaging their houses in order to repay the credit card debts. Just like the credit cards, the mortgages also had introductory ‘teaser’ interest rates but more importantly they were carrying adjustable rates.

Refinancing also involved attempts by home-owners to cash in on the appreciation of their homes to fund consumption or even to simply move to lower rate mortgages. If the value of a mortgaged property increases, the owner gains from the appreciation since the mortgage payments are not affected by the appreciation. Of course the opposite also happens with a decrease in values.

In case of appreciation, the homeowner does not need to sell the property to realise the appreciation; s/he just takes a second mortgage based on the higher value and uses the proceeds to repay the earlier mortgage while still remaining with an amount accruing from the appreciation. The end result was homeowners who had very little equity in their properties and whose mortgage servicing obligations could push their cash flows to the limit as the rates were adjusted upwards.

Although upward adjustment of mortgage rates was expected, tight credit ended up magnifying its damaging effects. For most of the sub-prime borrowers, the upward adjustment led to mortgages that they could not service. Generally higher interest rates were also pushing housing prices, whose growth had since slowed, downward.

A crisis involving sub-prime mortgages would have only affected mortgage providers, were it not for complex financial engineering that came with it. This ranged from simple collateralisation to complicated securitisation, tranching, credit default swaps and insurance.

Most mortgage originators did not wish to hold the assets in their balance sheets. Repackaging and selling the mortgages meant that they were not only able to get the mortgages off their balance sheets but also they could originate more mortgages. Most of the processes started with collateralisation and securitisation – that is, packaging mortgages into a pool of assets based on which standardised debt instruments are issued and sold to other financial institutions and the general public.[4]

The problem was that the process was not a simple ‘pass-through’ securitisation. For example, to make the mortgage pool more appealing for issuing debt securities, financial institutions threw into it both prime and sub-prime mortgages and even some synthetically created assets. Then they engaged in credit tranching, by creating multiple classes (or ‘tranches’) of securities, each of which had a different seniority relative to the others.[5]

The key goal of the tranching process is to create at least one class of securities whose rating is higher than the average rating of the underlying collateral pool or to create rated securities from a pool of unrated assets. This is accomplished through the use of credit support (enhancement), such as prioritisation of payments to the different tranches. The financial institutions then de-linked the credit risk of the collateral mortgage pool from their own credit risk, hence making it possible to create securities that had a higher rating than their own. In some cases this involved the use of finite-lived, stand alone special purpose vehicles (SPV).

Throw in credit rating agencies that had lost direction and you end up with massive volumes of securities that were continuously being created, marketed and insured worldwide, whose value and risk were very difficult to establish. This web is what led to the financial crisis being very contagious.

Fast forward and the financial crisis turns into a credit crunch. Banks and other financial institutions – both those that have been affected by the crisis as well as those that have not – become unwilling to lend. Some are trying to sort out their positions while others are playing the wait-and-see game. Most of them will only put their funds in ‘absolute safe’ assets. Foreclosure, high interest rates and the fact that there are very few qualified mortgage borrowers have sent house prices on a downward spiral. Finally, consumers are not spending especially on items whose purchase can be delayed, forcing producers to cut production and lay off employees.

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS ON TANZANIA’S ECONOMY?

The effect of the crisis on the Tanzanian economy can be viewed in a number of ways and dimensions. We discuss three of them here: The nature of the effect, which may be direct or indirect; the persistence of the effect, from short-term to long term; and the magnitude (scale/size) of the effect.

Direct effects depend on the links between the Tanzanian financial sector and the affected financial institutions and stock markets. The links can exist in the form of having deposits in the affected institutions, holding their shares or debt instruments and holding toxic financial assets most of which have indirect links with the affected institutions. Worldwide, most of the effects of this nature have so far been established, although the quantum may be unravelling as institutions take stock of their holdings. Affected stock markets are also bottoming-up.

Direct effects to the Tanzanian financial sector are likely to be minimal for a number of reasons. First, the financial sector is regulated in a number of areas that would have established the damaging link.

Foreign banks operating in the country are governed by laws that treat them as independent banks rather than branches of the foreign banks. As a result, while some multinational financial institutions such as Citibank and Barclays Bank have been affected, their Tanzanian operations have not.

Further, the strength of bank regulation and supervision as per the Bank and Financial Institutions Act (2006) has led to a limited number of foreign resources in the local commercial banks – currently standing at 11 per cent – and so far not showing any holding of the toxic assets.

It is worth pointing out that one of the causes of the financial crisis is poor corporate governance in the financial sector, which entertained massive creation of off-balance sheet assets most of which turned out to be toxic. So far Tanzanian financial supervision and regulatory system has managed to limit damage from this side. Some financial institutions may take a more cautious stance when advancing credit as they reflect on the consequences of irresponsible lending and financial engineering.

Recently, there has been a large increase in the number of foreigners participating in financial markets in developing economies in the quest for higher yields. Flight to safety prompted by the financial crisis is causing investors to sell their assets in those economies which are considered the riskiest. Our stock market, which is relatively new and highly inactive in trading in securities, is shielded from the crisis through an unliberalised capital account that limits direct and legal participation of foreigners. Thus while other stock markets, including Nairobi and Johannesburg, have been affected by the financial crisis, the effect on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) has been minimal because of the few foreign investors. Tanzania also has some exchange controls that restrict the flow of international capital thus limiting the contagion effect from foreign financial markets.

Indirect effects are not directly connected to the financial sector but more related to links among economies and sectors. The links between Tanzania and the affected economies range from simple trade, investment, aid, grants and remittance flows to complex price discovery for financial and non-financial products. The bottom line is, if the US, with a 25 per cent share of global GDP, slows down, it will definitely have an impact on the entire global economy, including Tanzania.

For Tanzania, the national budget, which has substantial donor finance, will be affected if donors’ commitments are not fully met. Faced with the need to commit financial resources to bail out affected entities in their domestic economies, some countries may be forced to cut down aid and grants to Tanzania.

However, this effect is likely to be felt in the long run rather than in the short run, especially if the crisis persists, as aid and grants commitments are often decided well in advance. As far as donor funding is concerned, civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), whose budgets depend on foreign donors, are definitely going to bear the brunt of the financial crisis.

The effect will be felt even in the short run as the financial crisis affects the wealth of the donors – both individuals and charity organisations. It is important to note that most endowments that donate to the civil society and NGOs hold their wealth in financial assets, most of which have experienced substantial fall in their value.

Reduction in foreign direct investment (FDI) is likely to be experienced both in the short and long runs, since foreign investors acquire resources from banks and financial institutions as well as venture capital funds. Most of these sources have been affected by the financial crisis either directly or indirectly through their connection with the financial markets.

Reduction in FDI will also be aggravated by the fact that most FDI to Tanzania flows to activities that are of a capital intensive nature – mining, oil and gas exploration – and that are also risky. Some firms will also be focussing on their internal problems, thus limiting expansion activities to foreign countries including Tanzania.

Other negative effects will be in terms of flows from tourism, remittances from Tanzanians living in the affected economies and exports. A fall in wealth and aggregate income – the latter due to high unemployment and low bonuses – as well as difficulties in securing credit will directly affect the flow of tourists and their cash into Tanzania.

The same factors will affect remittances to Tanzania, which, of late, have increased, though not to the same significant extent as in other countries including neighbouring Kenya and Uganda. Tanzania’s exports, especially the non-traditional items such as flowers and other horticultural products, have started feeling the effects of the credit crunch, with a decline in both prices and volumes of exports.

The effects on tourism and exports are the most worrisome for Tanzania, considering the prominence these sectors have been given in the recent past. The tourism sector, especially, has established strong links with other sectors and the hospitality industry is a major employer in areas with touristic attractions such as Arusha and Zanzibar.

Not all effects of the financial crisis will be negative to Tanzania. The price of oil has declined sharply from the highs observed in mid-2008 due to a decline in demand in the affected economies that also caused a reduction in the level of speculation in the commodity. Some commodities – especially gold – have experienced increased prices that are now viewed as a safe haven for investors attempting to protect their wealth.

Combined reduction in employment is expected in the tourism industry and the horticulture sector. Foreign currency flow effects will have a bearing on the value of the Tanzanian shilling which has not only depreciated recently but has also experienced some volatility. Tanzania’s lower external debt, better external reserve levels, prudent fiscal management and debt markets with an investor base whose dependence on foreign investors is minimal, will help minimise the effects of the financial crisis on her financial system. Limited effects on the different sectors translate into a limited effect on the overall economy.[6] The effects on the overall economy are also unlikely to last long as economic agents make adjustments and the affected economies start to pick up.

LESSONS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

Domestic factors are critical determinants of the persistence and magnitude of the effects – particularly those affecting the financial sector directly. First, it is information symmetry and how economic agents perceive the effects of the crisis. Information asymmetry may throw firms and individuals into a panic mode, with consequences such as a flight to currencies perceived as safe or even a run on banks. Further, lessons from the crisis are useful in gauging how the economy is perceived to exhibit features that led to the financial crisis. For example, the effects may be amplified by overvalued housing markets, explosive credit expansion by commercial banks or even political uncertainty.

With the credit crunch, it would not be wise to expect many new investors from abroad and therefore taking care of the existing ones is essential. Limiting the effects on the economy is critical in sending a message that Tanzania should be viewed as a safe haven for attracting more foreign investments. Finally, care has to be taken with the property formalisation programme (MKURABITA). One idea of the programme is that formalised properties will serve as collateral in assessing credit. While formalisation of properties is undoubtedly important, mortgaging the formalised property can easily spiral to irresponsible lending and borrowing.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* E. J. Minja is in the department of Finance at the University of Dar es Salaam Business School.
* This article first appeared in the maiden issue of CHEMCHEMI, Bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editorial Board of CHEMCHEMI.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] I use ‘sub-prime credit market’ rather than the now famous ‘sub-prime mortgage market’ because irresponsible borrowing and lending was initially responsible for expansion of credit card loans that was a precursor to, as well as a source of, the expansion of the sub-prime mortgage market.
[2] One mortgage provider in the USA, whose motto was ‘Home of the ‘no doc’ loan’, had a product called the NINJA loan which stood for No Income, No Job (and) no Assets.
[3] In some cases the rate is also adjusted upward as general interest rates change.
[4] Collateralisation means that the underlying mortgages and their cash flows were effectively the collateral of the created securities
[5] The word ‘tranche’ comes from the French word for slice. In collateralisation, the terms ‘tranche’ and ‘class’ are synonymous.
[6] China, which sells a fifth of its exports to the USA, estimates that a 1 per cent drop in US economic growth will translate into a 6 per cent drop in its exports.

The financial crisis is an ideological crisis

A rejoinder to E.J. Minja

Adolf Mkenda

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/59681

cc East Asia ForumWhile E.J. Minja provides a good overview of the financial crisis, Adolf Mkenda writes in Pambazuka News, he does not situate the problem in its ideological context. Highlighting ‘a resurgence of interest around the ideology and philosophy that underpins the current economic system’, Mkenda argues that the crisis ‘should provoke a bonfire of debates and inspire a spring of new ideas’ about ‘how the global economy can be reformed or overhauled’.

GLORY TO THE UNFETTERED MARKET

While E.J. Minja gives a good descriptive overview of the on-going financial crisis, he does not situate the problem in its ideological context. He misses out on the important ongoing debate about the nature of the global economic arrangement and how it can be fundamentally reformed or overhauled. As recently as January this year, 2009, a conference was hosted by Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France and attended by Tony Blair and Angela Merkel, among others, to discuss how to reform and save capitalism. Questions are being asked about the perverse impact of the neo liberal push that has dominated the global economic system for the last three decades. There is also a resurgence of interest in Marxism. After all, Karl Marx did argue that as capital becomes more and more concentrated and centralised, crises would be ever more recurrent with even larger impacts, ultimately ushering in socialism. There are therefore important debates and a resurgence of interest around the ideology and philosophy that underpins the current economic system with a view to seeking a better alternative. This crisis reminds us that we are not at the end of history after all; Francis Fukuyama got it all wrong.

On the one extreme we have neo liberal economics whose paradigm derives from libertarian philosophy that insists on individual autonomy and advocates a minimalist state. Economic neo liberalism has it that markets are sufficient in resolving issues of production and distribution and that even where the market fails, an intervention by government simply makes matters worse. Neo liberal economists therefore push for unfettered markets with ever smaller government, privatising of all economic activities, including all social services and even social security arrangements, deregulation to favour business and an assault on organised labour. The central belief of neo liberalism is that the market always corrects itself, and any attempt by governments to intervene in the market ends up creating perverse incentives or simply worsening the situation. The only role of government that is cheerfully accepted is that of enforcing property rights. Some extremists would even wish to privatise law enforcement agencies.

The reason that Republicans in the US Congress dithered and then voted against the economic stimulus package is not simply because of petty party politics. It is also to some extent because of the strong influence of those who believe that all should be left to the markets – those who made bad decisions by either taking on a mortgage they could not afford to pay or extending loans to sub-prime borrowers, or through securitisation of the mortgage without due diligence of risk must be left alone to bear the costs of their decisions. In future everybody would know that you cannot make bad decisions and expect somebody else to come to your rescue. Market punishes and market rewards, glory be to the market. The appalling hardship that would be suffered by many – most of whom had nothing to do with bad decisions in the first place – is of little interest to market fundamentalists. The fact that some of the CEOs are laughing all the way to the banks with fortunes they made in the course of creating this crisis and that the deliberate absence of law makes it impossible to book them is of no concern to the libertarians. The potential cataclysmic social and political implosion that might be triggered by massive unemployment, wide-spread foreclosures and crushing poverty does not scare the believers of the market – faith can after all impel one to suicide.

PRIVATE PROFITS, SOCIAL LOSSES

On the other extreme are the Marxists of all shades, some believing that social agency is important for overthrowing capitalism and installing communism in its place, while others believe that once the material conditions are in place the death knell of capitalism would be sounded as true as once the celestial bodies are properly aligned the sun gets eclipsed. In either case, communism would usher in an era from ‘each according to his ability’ to ‘each according to his need’. That would bring in Fukuyama’s end of history. Whether human agency can bring communism now or whether the material conditions are now in place such that this crisis would usher in communism are issues open to debate.

Between the two extremes, there are all types of possibilities and proposals. There is a revival in Keynesian economics – one that admits the inherent tendency of the markets to equilibrate at socially sub-optimal levels and thus justifying continuous government intervention to bring equilibrium and social optimality in one fold.

Another proposal looks at the increasing inequality that has characterised the neo liberal period, what Paul Krugman, the latest Nobel laureate in economics, calls the New Gilded Age. This inequality cannot be explained by either differences in effort or talent. The explanation, according to some, is found in the new permissive social norm – a norm that lacks outrage at the extreme inequality; the manner that CEOs amass for themselves astronomical pay; the growing speculative mania in search of maximum profit and in the disconnection between real economy and the financial superstructure. Whether changing the social norm would be sufficient to redress the growing inequality is open to debate. Nevertheless, the increasing inequality may explain why profit in the real economy is declining (Marx had predicted this), and thus financial capital looks ever more attractive. The crisis in sub-prime mortgages is therefore only a symptom of a lingering and perverse problem of growing income inequality. Restructuring social norms and the economy to compress differences in income is a possible way of averting this crisis in the future. The question remains on how social norms can be changed and how the economy can be re-structured.

At least the crisis is making it possible for discussion about the growing inequality to begin seriously, without one being accused of practicing politics of envy[1] or stoking class warfare. The fact that taxpayers are paying to bail out companies because of decisions made by overly paid executive officers is starting to breed outrage. The recent bonus package that managers of the AIG amassed for themselves even as the group is surviving on taxpayers’ money is pushing the matter to breaking point. In general, the neo liberal mantra is in shambles when profits are private while losses are social!

BONFIRE OF DEBATES, SPRING OF IDEAS

Developing countries such as Tanzania have several lessons to learn from this crisis. The first has to do with the problem of ensuring credit to the majority without creating devastating defaults. This point has been touched on by Minja. It must be remembered that sub-prime lending enabled a very large number of people to own houses. In fact this is a point that neo liberals taunt with time and again, that it is not neo liberalism that created the crisis, but government interventions that aimed at ensuring widespread property ownership. We must continue to search for an economic system that is ethically defensible, including an attempt to ensure everybody has shelter, food and decent work. We cannot shirk from this pursuit.

The neo liberal policies of the last three decades must be questioned. Markets are important; they give freedom of choice and send important signals to producers. But in most cases markets are imperfect, either because of information asymmetry, or because some goods are public goods, or even because of lack of competition. Market also fails when inequality that cannot be explained by efforts or talents soars. All these facts are well known in mainstream economics. Yet we accepted the neo liberal doctrine that markets can do the work without other institutions and without government intervention, and we privatised most of our economic activities, even those that are of a public goods nature. This kind of doctrine contributed enormously to the ongoing crisis, and we must take note that attempts to rescue the situation constitute a significant departure from neo liberalism.

It appears that income inequality is at the centre of the slow growth in the real economy, because the classic multiplier effect of expenditure is necessarily reduced when income is concentrated in a few hands. Besides that, countries with high income inequality tend to have less achievement in terms of other valuable parameters such as life expectancy, literacy rates and so on, than countries with a more equal distribution of income. Thus the US, with a higher per capita income, does not enjoy as much achievement in several valuable pursuits as Sweden or Canada. We must evaluate our policies not only in terms of the contribution to growth, but also on the impact in income distribution.

Finally and more importantly, we must remember that the task of searching for a better economic system continues. We have not come to the end of history, or of thinking, for that matter. We must revisit the classic works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and others in searching for new ideas. This crisis should provoke a bonfire of debates and inspire a spring of new ideas. The description that Minja gave about the financial crisis is a good starting point, but unbounded prescriptive debate must now start in earnest.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in the maiden issue of CHEMCHEMI, Bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editorial Board of CHEMCHEMI.
* Adolf Mkenda is in the department of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] Former President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, coined the phrase 'wivu wa kike' to brand those questioning the growing inequality in the country. Wivu wa Kike is Kiswahili for feminine jealousy.

Deregulating robbery in Nigeria

Kola Ibrahim

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/59655

cc oubangui.wordpress.comWith Nigeria's ruling elites seemingly intent on continuing to rob their country blind, Kola Ibrahim stresses the need for a nationalised economy rooted in a genuine workers' democracy.

Against all opposition, the Nigeria's Yar’Adua government has again come out boldly to announce the total deregulation of fuel come 1 November this year. This crude and rude behaviour of government against the hues and cries of the toiling people is highly condemnable. The labour movement must immediately commence mass mobilisation through a one-day national warning strike, with mass mobilisation through rallies, pickets of government places including national assemblies, state government houses and leafleting before this month runs out to prepare for an all-out mass movement against this obnoxious policy. Local, community and state mobilisation committees must be immediately set up to include workers, students, youth, market women, peasants, artisans and community groups.

The labour movement must not wait until terrible policy starts taking its toll on the poor masses of this country or when government will be using the argument of ‘negotiation’ to water down the opposition before taking action. Even if the Yar’Adua government is forced to concede for now, it will rebuild its arsenal to launch this and other anti-poor policies. Thus the labour movement and pro-labour groups must demand an open, democratic probe into the over 3 trillion naira oil subsidies and public declaration of financial assets and business of all oil companies in the country and the nationalisation of the commanding oil industry under the democratic control and management of the working people and consumer association. This is the real alternative to the fraudulent deregulation policy of the government.

With the government’s announcement, a civil war has already been declared on the working masses; the labour movement should not wait any longer. It should be recalled that already the prices of kerosene, diesel and industrial fuel have been deregulated without any formal announcement. Therefore, to wait for an official announcement of government before responding to this declaration of open war by the government is giving the government time to re-strategise its attack and to mobilise all its forces of reaction against working people. The labour movement should not take the masses to the barricade with a white flag.

Indeed, the implementation of this policy is a leeway to the expansion of all the anti-poor, neoliberal policies being introduced for over two decades which have made the rich corrupt few richer while making life more miserable for the working but poor people. However, the leadership of the labour movement must not only re-strategise its opposition to this policy, it must take a revolutionary, working class. It must be totally and unflinchingly opposed to not only deregulation but all anti-poor, neoliberal capitalist policies if it must to secure a better living for the working people.

To the Yar’Adua government, the governors’ forum, big business and the capitalist pundits in the media and boardrooms, deregulation is necessary because the subsidy on fuel pricing has led to huge corruption and the looting of the treasury by 'unknown' leeches within the ruling class, which the government claim is holding it to ransom. How many of these public looters have been probed or prosecuted the Yar’Adua government and its town-criers failed to tell the people? What an irony: an 'anti-corruption' government accepting the superiority of gangsters! Maybe they are the real sponsors of the variously rigged elections in Nigeria that put current political officers in power; thus they are sacred cows.

The argument of the Yar’Adua government to justify deregulation is a continuation of the old worn-out excuses of the ruling class. The excuse of the Obasanjo government for an incessant increase in fuel prices was that it was spending tens of billions on fuel subsidies and that therefore poor people would have to bear the brunt through a fuel price hike. The Yar’Adua government has only stepped this up by exposing that the subsidies running to over 3 trillion Nigerian naira have only gone to the sharks in big oil-marketing business and government. But, what are government’s alternatives to this obviously maddening scenario painted by the government itself, to arrest the looters? To stop the financial haemorrhaging of the nation? Obviously not, but making the people the direct victims of the looting: more deregulation.

According to the Nigerian economist Professor Sam Aluko, oil marketers make over US$160,000 on a ship-load of refined petrol fuel imported into this country. This is aside from profit being made on other crude products like paraffin and jet fuel; neither is it part of the profit being made by shipping companies and private port managers, among other sundry charges that will add up to extra 40 per cent of fuel costs. With the country’s refineries working at less than a third of their capacity, the Nigerian government has already privatised fuel production and deregulated its importation while only using public resources to subsidise the profit of the oil marketers. Therefore, the latest attempt is only a re-deregulation of this obvious robbery. In this what can be termed a 'subsidised' deregulation system; the Nigerian government uses public resources meant for the development of social infrastructure to service the profit interests of fuel marketers, their bank creditors (some of whom are now being made scapegoats for massive fraud perpetrated by all shades of the big business class), shipping companies, private port managers and stock gamblers. In the planned re-deregulation, poor people are to directly bleed out billions in profit for these fat-cats while government also doles out billions through other means to them.

PRIVATE REFINERY: SHEER MIRAGE

Worse still, whenever there is crisis for oil importers, the government will immediately intervene on their behalf (through tax breaks, special offers, price flexibility and cheap credit) in the name of ‘encouraging investment’ – the same way that it arbitrarily fixed the price of petrol at 65 naira, even when it should be less than 50 naira. Therefore, the planned re-deregulation is a cover to insure super-profits. Some have argued that deregulation will ‘encourage’ private investors to invest in oil-refining. But, funnily enough, while tens of persons were given licenses by the Obasanjo government to build private refineries, these shylocks have converted these into license to import refined fuel, no thanks to the connivance of the Obasanjo government. According to reports, it will cost around US$2 billion to build a standard refinery. How many local investors can commit this amount to a long-term project like refining?

The main reason why these oil companies (local and foreign) will not build a refinery is because they depend on short-term profits and not long-term investment that will tie down their capital. This explains why the world’s financial sector overtook the industrial sector (in the US, the manufacturing share of GDP (gross domestic product) fell from 25 per cent to 12 per cent, while the financial share increased from 12 per cent to 20.5 per cent from 1973–2008), which led to the current global economic crisis that has foreclosed any tangible investment in the third world – except financial gambling. Nigeria’s case is worsened by the terrible state of the nation’s infrastructure, which has made investment in the country costly. Nigerian capitalists are parasites who only mushroom on the decayed carcass of a mismanaged national economy. They are the beneficiaries of the government’s handout of public resources to private hands through the privatisation of public corporations and oil wells and the commercialisation of social services and official corruption-cum-nepotism. This is why they will prefer to buy the nation’s refineries, cement companies, telecom companies and oil wells at token cost where they can easily sell their estates to make quick profits, rather than investing directly.

However, assuming without conceding that private individuals invest in oil-refining, as is being hoped by some pundits, can this alleviate the suffering of Nigerians? In the first instance, the refining will be hijacked by a clique as most of these moneybags can hardly bear the risk alone, thus leading to the formation of a cartel and a monopoly. The example of the NNPC's (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) privatisation in 2007 where a cartel of big companies, banks and foreign firms bid to buy less than a third of the corporation at a fraction of its value is instructive. Thus the question of competition and consequent price reduction is out of it as demand and supply will be manipulated for price increases. A vital example is the deregulation of paraffin (kerosene), diesel, cooking gas and jet fuel, the prices of which have skyrocketed daily.

Moreover, these companies will have to provide their own power and transport system as the nation’s infrastructure is dilapidated, which will bear on the cost and availability of the products, while prices will have to be hiked to meet international profit levels. Meanwhile, there is no way government can provide this infrastructure without impinging on the super-profits of the business and political class. More important is the profit-flight by multinational companies, which will escalate devaluation and the balance of payments. All this will worsen the already comatose industrial sector, with attendant job losses and associated social crises.

LABOUR’S LIMITED OPPOSITION TO DEREGULATION

In a statement by the NLC (Nigeria Labour Congress) – the central labour union – the government was tasked, in the immediate term, with refining petroleum products from neighbouring countries (so as to reduce landing costs) and then starting the process of building new refineries. This may sound pragmatic, but it is clearly unrealistic. The NLC’s position fails to take into cognisance the political economy of the Nigerian ruling class. It assumed that the government is acting independently of big business. The question we must ask is: Is it not the same private companies, and Nigerian looters, who have majority shares in oil refineries in these neighbouring countries that will refine, import and distribute the fuel? Will government not continue to subsidise their profits?

The demand for building more refineries is correct but limited. The labour movement must be aware that many of the Nigerian politicians at all levels are directly linked up with the business class. The labour movement must ask itself why Nigerian governments for the past 10 years of civil rule have not added a tangible value to the nation’s refineries (despite over US$300 billion that had accrued to the country’s coffers) but have actually used it as a conduit pipe to drain billions of dollars to private accounts of corrupt government officials, bank-sters, big business, contractors and foreign corporations. Yet more working people are being thrown into the dungeon of poverty, want and misery. That the Yar’Adua government could not build more refineries or undertake an ambitious sustainable and environmentally friendly energy project after more than two years in office is not accidental. It is a product of the neocolonial, neoliberal capitalist arrangement where the rich few rent-seekers are in control of the economy on behalf of the international imperialist capital. If the Nigerian government commits itself at all to building new refineries it will result from either the government’s intervention to restore oil oligarchs’ falling profitability or as a product of intense mass political struggle, which tends to overturn the system.

The labour unions like PENGASSAN (the oil workers’ union) and the TUC (Trades Union Congress) even stated that they are opposed to privatisation unless ‘it is necessary and transparent’. The question is: What transparency is needed for a policy that is in itself the robbery of the whole country by a tiny clique? If the same unions oppose deregulation and privatisation because it will lead to worsening living standards of the working people, why then must the same policies be necessary in any form? Comically, the same government that failed to probe into hundreds of billions wasted on refurbishing the country’s refineries now wants to sell the refineries to their plunderers in the name of encouraging private investment.

DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

Without a working-class movement and organised mass political movements opposing not only deregulation but also demanding public ownership of the oil industry under democratic control and the management of elected representatives of working people and consumers’ organisations, building new refineries – if undertaken by government at all – will become another conduit pipe for the massive looting of the public treasury, the collapse of these refineries (through nepotistic and corrupt managements) and their eventual privatisation. Public ownership under democratic management of the working people and consumers will imply that management officials of the oil industry will be elected by the workers and consumer associations, and such officials will collect salaries of averagely skilled workers and be subject to immediate democratic recall. This will also mean the opening of the financial records of oil companies while huge profits go to the private coffers of big business sharks to be used to undertake long-term plans for sustainable energy development.

With this, it will be possible to have plans of not only building new refineries on a sustainable basis but also developing other sustainable energy and power sources. All this can only be possible by developing other sectors of the economy. Meaningfully, this will require the extension of public ownership to the commanding heights of the economy. The tens of billions of dollars in the nation’s foreign account will be used to undertake a long term development of all sectors of the economy and energy resources. This will means among others, free, quality, massively funded, expanded and democratically-run education and healthcare system, provision of employment for all able bodied citizens, efficient social infrastructures – cheap, efficient and environment friendly transport system (road, water, rail and air), energy system, mechanized, poor-peasant-oriented and environment friendly agricultural, potable water and mass public housing.

FOR A NEW SOCIAL ORDER

But all the above programmes cannot be achieved by ‘advising’ the Nigerian capitalist ruling class. It needs to be demanded by the labour movement through a mass movement built democratically from the grassroots and communities, which will place the working-class in power. The rot in the oil industry is also glaring in other sectors of the economy such as social services, power generation and the financial sector. So, the working-class movement must understand that resistance to deregulation policy needs mass actions which must start with re-building mass organisations of the working people, especially the labour movement (as a fighting and democratic organisation) that will combine to struggle for a N52,200 wage without retrenchment, massive funding of education and healthcare and with the political struggle to take over governance. The labour movement needs to call an immediate summit of all working people’s organisations, pro-poor organisations, student/youth movements, peasants/market women organisations, socialist movements, left-wing political parties and self-determination groups to draw up plans of building a mass working people’s political platform that will champion the struggles. Such a platform will have to adopt a revolutionary democratic socialist stand against neoliberal capitalism.

A genuine socialist system will combine a nationalised economy with a workers’ democracy (as opposed to the monstrous bureaucracy of Stalinism that caused the collapse of the nationalised economy of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1990s) while taking an internationalist outlook, as a nationalised economy cannot operate in isolation. A successful movement of the working people in Nigeria will resonate and serve as beacon to working and oppressed people all over the world.

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* Kola Ibrahim is a member of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Uganda's 2009 September hooligans' riots like 1966 crisis?

Kintu Nyago

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/59660

cc IRINTaking issue with suggestions that Uganda's 2009 riots can be compared with the country's 1966 constitutional crisis, Kintu Nyago argues that the two scenarios are like 'chalk and cheese'.

Though tempting, the likening of Uganda’s September 2009 riots to the 1966 crisis – as done by Kalundi Serumaga (‘Things fall apart again well-worn path to constitutional', The East African, September 14–20 2009) and Joe Powell (The Independent, issue 078) – would resemble comparing cheese and chalk. For to begin with while in 1966 the constitution allowed for a political Kabaka (who Serumaga seems to currently advocate for), today he is a constitutional, traditional ruler. Under the 1962 independence constitution, the Kabaka was the head of the Ugandan state and also the Buganda government and the Kabaka Yekka.

Under the fudge referred to as the 1962 Lancaster House constitution, the Kabaka was both head of the Ugandan and Buganda states and the de facto leader of the Kabala Yekka (king only) party. This anomaly that made the Kabaka political had negated the position adopted seven years prior in the Buganda Agreement of 1955, an august document made by the best well-meaning brains in Buganda together with the colonialists, which had conditioned the return of Sir Edward Muteesa from his first exile in the early 1950s upon his becoming a constitutional monarch. This was in addition to having of an elected Lukiiko and Katikiro. Indeed, both Michael Kintu and Mayanja Nkangi became Katikiro through elections.

The genesis of Uganda’s 1966 constitutional crisis lay in the conflict-prone 1962 independence constitution, the culture of political autocracy and impunity we had inherited from the British, political divisions within the Uganda People's Congress and the lack of political experience amongst our then rulers.

Uganda’s independence constitution, made by the opportunistic UPC–KY (Uganda People's Congress–Kabaka Yekka) coalition, in cosy cahoots with the departing British, was a partisan, sectarian document. This coalition was opportunistic and uneasy because while the UPC, then following the tradition of the Uganda National Congress (UNC), had set out to be a pro-democracy (Anglican) pan-Ugandan party, the Kabaka Yekka on the other hand focused on creating an ethnic federal entity (Federo/Majimbo) type governance system, headed by an absolute monarch. The KY was offered this, on a silver platter, at Lancaster!

Worse still, this fudge set out in black and white to perpetually rig from power the roman catholic establishment and their Democratic Party. They regarded this document as illegitimate. It also disfranchised the people of Buganda, for it was the Anglican landed gentry dominated Lukiiko which was ensured to elect, on their behalf, their own members of parliament. Furthermore it gave the Kabaka political power and made Buganda a state within Uganda.

Colonialism responded to political dissent with brute force. This thinking informed the operations of the colonial state apparatus, as for instance with the King's African Rifles, which the UPC–KY administration inherited and abused.

These tensions stressed to the limit the young Ugandan polity, a reality further complicated by the inexperience of the political actors at play. For instance, Milton Obote only meaningfully engaged with statecraft just four years into independence when he joined the Legco. Moreover, his leading the UNC was by fluke, resulting from an internal coup instigated by one Jolly 'Joe' Kiwanuka, who replaced Ignatius Musaazi with Obote in 1959.

Grace Ibingira was barely 30 when he become the all-powerful attorney general. Other key actors were equally inexperienced. Felix Onama (defence minister) had been a village cooperative union clerk, and Basil Bataringaya (interior minister) a primary school headmaster.

Inexperience and short-sightedness led Obote at the 1965 UPC Gulu Delegates Conference to dump John Kakonge, a reliable ally, for the position of party secretary general, for Ibingira. Soon afterwards Ibingira and Mengo (the seat of Buganda kingdom), led by Kabaka Muteesa, attempted to remove Obote from power. All this played out through the attempted failed coup by Brigadier Shaban Opolot, the Congo gold and ivory crisis debate, the Daudi Ocheing parliamentary motion of no confidence, and the internal UPC elections.

Obote responded by pushing forward with the referendum of the lost counties, ethnicising the military and security forces, imprisoning five dissenting senior cabinet colleagues during a cabinet meeting, abrogating the 1962 constitution, attacking the Lubiri (palace) where up to 1,000 people were killed and exiling Muteesa till death.

He then banned the monarchy, and hurt the psyche of the Baganda by militarily occupying the Lubiri and Bulange, all the while openly bragging about and justifying these excesses as a 'revolution'! Like a crazed bull in a China shop, he further undertook a catalogue of costly political mistakes as his 'encirclement of Buganda policy' and the hurried dismantling of the KY dominated the Buganda state within a state, with most of its functionaries being laid off without their due retirement packages. This alienated from Obote an important power structure. He also imposed a perpetual Buganda-specific state of emergency, hence affecting all and sundry and sealing his and whatever had remained of the UPC’s fate in Buganda.

Serumaga argues that Yoweri Museveni's administration’s stopping of Kabaka Mutebi’s visiting Kayunga was a sign of constitutional collapse. I would regard this as a misinterpretation of facts. For the Banyala of Kayunga may be a minority, numbering less than 10,000 people, but they are nonetheless recognised by the Uganda constitution as a separate ethnic group. Moreover, Kayunga district council recognised their cultural institution.

Now given that some Banyala were opposed to the Kabaka’s visit without being involved and consulted, and tempers were fired, it was in the country’s best interests to ensure that Kabaka Mutebi, his delegation and the people of Kayunga were protected from harm. Does this constitute a constitutional breakdown? Certainly not!

Furthermore, even in democracies, rioters – especially if they wantonly destroy private and public property, including burning down police stations and inciting racial and ethnic hatred – are never treated with celebration. They are dealt with firmly. For appeasement is likely to result in the very constitutional breakdown Serumaga refers to in his epistle to the diplomatic community and regional civil and political society.

In conclusion, it would mark the height of ignorance to liken Uganda’s 1966 constitutional crisis to the September 2009 hooligans' riots. For unlike Obote, Museveni and his inner circle, being better exposed and seasoned political actors, are unlikely to embark on a mistake-committing safari. Indeed, they acted to protect, rather that undermine or abrogate, a legitimate constitution. And the NRM (National Resistance Movement) party and state apparatus are cohesively behind their leadership. Additionally, Mengo lacks the formidable state and partisan political apparatus which Kabaka Muteesa had through the 1962 constitution. Lastly, unlike the UPC in the mid-1960s, the NRM has solid political support in Buganda. This is reflected at the crucial party, government and local government levels. These elected leaders would sway the population towards it when push comes to shove.

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* Kintu Nyago is the executive director of the Forum for Promoting Democratic Constitutionalism.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Female circumcision must end

Joseph Kaifala

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/59682

cc P.A.P-BlogTradition is not an adequate justification for maintaining the practice of female circumcision in Sierra Leone – or anywhere in Africa, Joseph Kaifala writes in Pambazuka News. Both ‘obsolete’ and ‘unnecessary’, the practice runs counter to progress and the upholding of human rights, says Kaifala.

History helps human societies maintain the things of the past, which they can cling to for the future, and those they can safely cast into the bottomless ditches of obsolete traditions. The confidence of societies in determining the things they can keep, improve, or delete altogether is called progress. Progress or more appropriately ‘learning from history,’ is necessary for societies for the casual fact that we are prone to mistakes, prejudices, biases or uncontrolled changes in society. Sometimes the factors that led to a certain truth simply disappear. Nowadays, incessant improvements in technology, globalisation and affordable education grant us the opportunity to do things in more facile manners, identify our individual errors, or merely jump on the bandwagon of globally accepted norms; why not?

It is with such ideas of progress that I declare the practice of female circumcision obsolete and unnecessary in Sierra Leone in particular, and Africa especially. This is not a question of denigrating Sierra Leonean traditions and the long social services that the institution of circumcision rendered to our people; it is a matter of progress and human rights as required by our participation in the global community, especially the United Nations. The use of culture and tradition in the twenty-first century to rationalise the unnecessary removal of the female clitoris is a sign of our refusal to embrace the teachings of history and to accept the progress our country clearly needs. Apart from the usual blind cultural nonsense we use to defend our unwillingness to change, no one in Sierra Leone can truly explain the contemporary necessity of clitoridectomy.

Some even argue without the slightest hesitation that female circumcision is intended to prevent promiscuity in women. While this is a good intention, promiscuity is not some exclusive female syndrome. In fact we all know that women are not the most promiscuous in Sierra Leone. But to prove this further, it is arguable that among all the ethnic groups of Sierra Leone, the Krios are less promiscuous, and they don’t even practice female circumcision. In a behavioural sense, there is nothing that an uncircumcised Creole girl does in the streets of Freetown today that is not done by a circumcised Temne or Mende girl. One sex cannot be blamed for the debauchery of society. As a Nigerian comedian puts it, ‘there are two things involved.’ Or as the good lord himself says, ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’

Another argument that sounds credible, if it was made in the middle ages, is that female circumcision is hygienic and prevents stench in women. Well, wouldn’t the simplest solution be bathing! We do not scrape the skin off our armpit or heinously cut off our arms simply because our armpits sometimes produce odour. There are other unpleasant analogies of secreting body parts we could remove, but I’ll leave that to our individual imaginations. The rational truth is that there is nothing female circumcision can do for the clitoris that cannot be done in modern hospitals, if need be. Globalisation has granted me the opportunity to move around a little, and having lived among both the circumcised and uncircumcised of the earth, I cannot attest to any pungent stench in one that is not in the other, depending on their sanitation routine. If religion, which is more fundamental than culture, recommends ablution to deal with our bodily impurities, why can’t our common sense catapult us beyond the laziness of cultural excuses?

My dilemma with this issue had always been the admirable fact that before the advent of colonialism, and with it Western institutions, the bondo, Sande, Poro etc. served as our educational institutions, where the elders of our societies – as carriers of the goods of our past – transmitted vital elements of savoir-vivre to adolescents.

Our elders, as trustees of our societies, scrutinised the elements of their time and transmitted the things that were absolutely necessary for the preservation of their kind. The variables of these teachings change from generation to generation, and it becomes imperative for the current generation to lay conscious foundations for the next. But if you don’t, I hope you would have better explanations for your daughters than the defeatist haven of culture and tradition.

I am aware of the fact that there are those among my people who would quickly taunt me as being brainwashed by Western ideas and ideologies. By all means I accept, but if you are reading this, so are you. If we accept Western education, Western-styled parliaments, Christian names, Western suits other than pihuin, some even reject their languages, and so on and so forth, then we have to use them to better our societies not damage them further.

It is my patriotic duty to condemn the decadent aspects of my country while promoting the good. It is not enough, as the national anthem compels us, to pray that ‘no harm on thy children may fall.’ We must always employ the entirety of our devotion, strength and might to stand for their rights. Only then shall we be truthful to the ‘land that we love, our Sierra Leone.’

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* Joseph Kaifala is from Sierra Leone. He is director of The Jeneba Project, a not-for-profit organisation providing educational assistance to Sierra Leone. 
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Somalia: When is a pirate not a pirate?

Agustín Velloso Santisteban

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/59684

cc Bikya MasrTwo Somali 'pirates' captured after they attacked a Spanish fishing boat are likely to spend a long time behind bars, Agustín Velloso Santisteban writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, given that they are also poor, black and Muslim. Highlighting the struggle for survival and hardships so many Somalis face, Santisteban suggests that there are other more dangerous ‘pirates’ out there that ought to be pursued and brought to book for far worse crimes.

Oh, the pirates! What a nice word. It brings us sweet memories from our childhood. Unscrupulous, merciless, astute characters, and today armed with automatic guns. We are longing to see before the High Court in Madrid, Spain, the two Somali pirates captured by our brave Atalanta operatives in the Indian Ocean on 4 October.[1]

We have had enough of the corrupt CEOs who sail towards offshore banks. We do not want to hear anymore about the prime ministers who attack and invade faraway countries. What we really want is to see real pirates. While those corsair and freebooter businessmen and politicians are well-known and still at large, you can confidently expect that the two detainees will spend a long time behind Spanish bars. Everyone knows that they are poor, black, Muslim and dared to attack a Spanish fishing boat.

PRISON PREFERABLE TO FREEDOM?

However, if you think twice, you might conclude that their future in prison is not so gloomy. First of all, they will enjoy three hot meals a day and they will see a doctor, probably for the first time in their lives. Besides, they will be spared the random bombing of their land by United States F-16s, and also the bullets shot by Ethiopians and Somalis working for imperialism.

In spite of the storytelling by NATO and European Union security high priests, who make a comfortable living out of sending troops to third world lands and seas like Somalia and the Indian Ocean, supposedly swamped by pirates on a rampage after European fishing boats, in the real world things are the other way round.

Perhaps Spanish fishers could forgive Somalis for not knowing the differences between the foreigners who approach their coasts in order to take away their fisheries, from those who land in order to impose a political regime, and both from those who just choose to dump their nuclear waste in the sea bed.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Somali fishermen live in one of the world’s poorest countries. Life expectancy is approximately 48 years. Around 60 per cent of the population is illiterate, while there is no compulsory basic education law. Close to 36 per cent of infants are underweight. There are half a million refugees and another million internally displaced. Hundred of thousands undergo similar living conditions. Almost everything is scarce, especially human rights.

Unicef announces that ‘[url=http://www.unicef.org/somalia/children.html
]a Somali child’s chances of surviving to adulthood are among the lowest of children anywhere in the world.[/url] Add to this the fact that the odds of the child’s mother dying during pregnancy or in childbirth are also extremely high. These high death rates stem from the interaction of a number of causes set within a complex socio-political context, but are largely attributable to disease, dehydration, malnutrition, lack of safe water, and poor sanitation.’

GOOD PIRATE, BAD PIRATE

Perhaps Somalis could forgive Spanish fishers for not knowing the difference between illegally fishing in Somalia and in Norway, and not knowing the different ways each people has to protect their riches.

In 2005 a Norwegian Navy vessel seized a Galician boat illegally fishing halibut. The Navy communiqué says that ‘during the inspection we found out that the boat had big amounts of halibut hidden in its hold’. It also informs that ‘we ordered the boat to sail to Tromso (a north-western city), but the Spanish captain refused to comply with.’

Perhaps one could forgive the Norwegians for being so insistent. The very next day (20 November) they seized another Spanish fishing boat: ‘The Garoya is the second fishing boat captured in two days. It has been reported that it kept in the hold more than 100 tonnes of halibut, just like the Monte Meixueiro seized yesterday. Its captain has been charged with providing wrong information to the fishing authorities and tampering the books.’

Perhaps one could forgive Spanish mass media for not reporting these days about the story of the Spanish boats seized in the past, which took place in the seven seas. Boats have been captured by Norwegian, Moroccan, Irish, Canadian, South African, British patrol boats.

It is also rather ironic that the British engage today in chasing Spanish pirates, although they could be forgiven for this, since classical Spanish author Lope de Vega and Literature Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez – as well as various film directors – were inspired by Sir Francis Drake.

THE STATE OF SOMALIA

Somalia has not had a real government in the last fifteen years. During this period, the king of the seas (and indeed of the sky and the whole world), the greatest pirate of all times, ordered yet another military operation in Somalia.

Siad Barre, former Somalia president, was a client of the Soviets during the seventies, but this did not prevent the United States from supporting him during the eighties. When the White House decided to support the warlords in their war against the Islamists from 2000 on, the US president did not hesitate.

Westerners could be forgiven for remembering (and praising through a Hollywood film) the killing of 19 marines who took part in the Mogadishu military operation carried out by the United States in the early 90s, and forgetting the approximately 1000 Somalis that were killed in the attack.

This operation capped many years of US actions in Somalia. Somalis, like other lesser peoples, enjoyed US international aid, which mainly means shipping arms to a country in order for the beneficiaries to kill each other, and at the same time providing political support to justify the killing according to the motive in fashion: Communism, drug trafficking, Islamist terror, tribal fighting and so on.

One has to add the dumping of US-subsidised agricultural produce in Somalia, and other political and economic interventions related to oil and strategic interests, to produce a ravaged nation, physically and morally devastated.

Somali seas have not been spared foreign interventions. As Johann Hari writes in ‘You are being lied to about the pirates’ (The Independent, January 9th, 2009), some Western countries have taken advantage of the lack of government in Somalia to dump their nuclear waste in its waters. For Somalis, the consequences are as harmful as the consequences of war and long lasting.

To make matters worse, Somali fishers watch huge foreign ships taking away tons of fish while they barely manage to obtain some kilos with their skiffs.

Perhaps Somali fishers could be forgiven for dreaming of their sons and daughters enjoying the riches the foreigners take away for their children.

HOW THE WEST WINS

Spanish fishers fishing in the seas around Somalia and people who eat their produce back in Spain, could be forgiven for cherishing basic wishes: Working unmolested and ingesting fish proteins respectively. They could also be forgiven for electing politicians who guarantee the fulfilment of their wishes, no matter what price, other people’s life included.

These politicians could also be forgiven for setting up a Holy Alliance with their neighbours, in order to send war boats supported by war planes to compete for food with poor Somalis in the Indian Ocean, although they could negotiate fishing permits before fishing, or even pay fines if they are caught cheating, as it has happened many times in the past with Spanish vessels.

However, it cannot be forgiven that Spanish and other Westerners – who know how Somalis are mercilessly being crushed – put the blame on Somalis and hunt them when they confront the real pirates.

Pirates have traditionally been well considered by the people, in novels and in films. How revolting they became when they took over governments and corporations.

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* Agustín Velloso Santisteban is with UNED’s Facultad de Educación.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] Operation Atalanta is campaign of the European Union to stop the ‘piracy off the Somali coast’. The joint naval patrol includes vessels from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

A Spanish frigate captured two of the bunch of ‘pirates’ who seized the Spanish fishing boat Alacrana, and both are now in a Spanish prison awaiting to be taken to court.

ACHPR resolution on Gambia

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/59659

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has issued a statement calling on the African Union to, among other things, intervene with immediate effect to ensure that H.E. President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh withdraws the threats made angainst human rights defenders, and to ensure that the Republic of The Gambia guarantees the safety and security of the members and staff of the African Commission, human rights defenders, including journalists in The Gambia, and all participants in the activities of the African Commission taking place in The Gambia.
RESOLUTION ON THE DETERIORATING HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN THEREPUBLIC OF THE GAMBIA

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission), meeting at its 7th Extraordinary Session in Dakar, Senegal, from 5 to 11 October 2009;
Conscious that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantees the basic rights and freedoms enshrined therein, and confers the African Commission with the mandate to monitor, promote and protect human and peoples’ rights on the continent;
Recalling its Resolution, No. ACHPR/Res.13 (XVI)1994 adopted at its 16th Ordinary Session held in Banjul, The Gambia, from 25 October to 3 November 1994;
Resolution No. ACHPR/Res. 17(VII)1995 adopted at its 17th Ordinary Session held in Lome, Togo, from 13 to 22 March 1995, and Resolution No. ACHPR/Res. 134(XXXXIV)2008 adopted at its 44th Ordinary Session held in Abuja, Nigeria, from 10 to 24 November 2008; all of which relate to the human rights situation in the Republic of The Gambia;
Considering that the African Commission has on several occasions brought to the attention of the Government of the Republic of The Gambia, concerns on human rights violations in The Gambia, in particular the right to life and the right to freedom of expression. These concerns relate to the alleged murder, unlawful arrest and detention, harassment, intimidation, prosecutions and disappearances of journalists and human rights defenders deemed to be critical of the Government;
Deeply concerned by allegations that on 21 September 2009, H.E. President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh allegedly stated in a national television broadcast that he would kill anyone, especially human rights defenders and their supporters, whom he considered to be sabotaging or destabilizing his Government;
Considering that the alleged threats undermine the safety and security of members and staff of the African Commission, and human rights defenders who participate in the activities of the African Commission, including in the 46th Ordinary Session scheduled to take place from 11 to 25 November 2009 in Banjul, The Gambia, whose Agenda will address the human rights situation in Africa;
Convinced that the alleged statement calls into question the commitment of the Republic of The Gambia to the fundamental principles and objectives of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, the African Charter and other regional and international human rights instruments;
Recalling that the Headquarters Agreement between the African Union and the Republic of The Gambia on the establishment of the Headquarters of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in The Gambia guarantees the inviolability of the members and staff of the African Commission and participants in the activities organized by the African Commission:
(i) CALLS on the African Union to intervene with immediate effect to ensure that H.E. President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh withdraws the threats made in his statement;
(ii) FURTHER CALLS on the African Union to ensure that the Republic of The Gambia guarantees the safety and security of the members and staff of the African Commission, human rights defenders, including journalists in The Gambia, and all participants in the activities of the African Commission taking place in The Gambia;
(iii) REQUESTS the African Union to authorize and provide extra-budgetary resources to the African Commission to ensure that the 46th Ordinary Session is convened and held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, or any other Member State of the African Union, in the event that His Excellency the President of The Republic of The Gambia does not withdraw his threats and the Government cannot guarantee the safety and security of the members and staff of the African Commission and the participants of the 46th Ordinary Session;
(iv) REQUESTS the African Union to consider relocating the Secretariat of the African Commission in the event that the human rights situation in the Republic of The Gambia does not improve;
(v) URGES the Government of the Republic of The Gambia to implement the recommendations of its previous Resolutions, in particular, Resolution No. ACHPR/Res. 134(XXXXIV)2008, adopted during the 44th Ordinary Session held in Abuja, Nigeria, from 10 to 24 November 2008, and to investigate the disappearance and/or killing of prominent journalists Deyda Hydara and Ebrima Chief Manneh.

Done on 11 October 2009, in Dakar, Senegal.

Solidarity statement with sexual minorities in Uganda

The Gay And Lesbian Coalition of Kenya

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/59663

We, the Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Bisexual persons of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, wish to show our support and solidarity with the LGBTIQ community of Uganda and Sexual Minorities Uganda as they face uncertainty following the tabling in Parliament of the Anti-Homosexuality bill no 18.on the 14th of October 2009. We note that this proposed legislation, if passed, will be a breach to the fundamental rights and freedoms of all LGBTIQ persons of Uganda.

Further, this bill seeks to control and dictate every Ugandan’s sexuality and gender expression by criminalizing consensual same sex relationships and self identities .The belief that homosexuality is unnatural and a threat to traditional family values is promoting false prejudices that target the LGBTI community and render them vulnerable to acts that are in violation of their rights as citizens, which in turn degrade the value and efforts put in achieving a democratic state of Uganda.

As Kenyans who risk facing the same legislative discrimination, considering the shared borders and legal jurisprudence of the East African community, we are pledging our infinite support and adding our voices to demand that the Ugandan parliament refrain from passing this bill into law. Additionally, we encourage the East African community to challenge these appalling acts directed towards minority communities and especially sexual minorities. We further condemn the justification of human rights violations in the name of morality and culture that go against the good will of all states that have signed and ratified the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

In light of the homophobic responses and reaction from the Ugandan government and its agencies and as an effort from the LGBTI community that raise awareness and challenge all forms of human rights violations perpetrated on the basis of one’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity (arbitrary arrests and detention, physical assault, emotional and mental assault, hate speeches and hate crimes ), we urge the government of Uganda to refrain from such acts and put in place mechanisms that address the issue of gender and sexual based violence against all Uganda citizens.

Regardless of our personal moral beliefs and values, our sexual orientation and gender identity we are standing up in solidarity with our Ugandan brothers and sisters to agitate for the respect for Democracy, the Constitution and its enshrined principles of human dignity, equality, freedom and justice for all.
In solidarity,
Pouline Kimani
Steering committee
For: Gay and lesbian coalition of Kenya

Kareem Amer remains in prison in Egypt

Free Kareem

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/59668

Kareem is a young Egyptian blogger who was only 22 years old when he was sentenced to 4 years in prison by the Egyptian government for criticizing Islam and the President of Egypt on a personal blog. Kareem was threatened and harassed consistently for his writing, and was previously arrested prior to his sentence, all of which were attempts to silence his opinions which he should be free to express. He challenged the Egyptian government and the self-proclaimed "scholars" at the Al Azhar religious institution which he attended (and was eventually expelled from) by criticizing them and their policies. His latest arrest was on the 6th of November, 2006, and he has been in prison ever since that date. Months after that, while he was imprisoned without charges, he was formally sentenced to 4 years in prison, causing him to be the first blogger in the Arab world to be sentenced officially by a court for his blog.

Since the 6th of November, 2006, on the day of his arrest, I created FreeKareem.org to try and secure his release, and dozens of volunteers soon piled up to help out, making the campaign one of the most visible campaigns for a blogger in the world. Despite that, and the outrage expressed by thousands of people worldwide, including government officials and MPs who shamed Egypt and the Egyptian government for this gross human rights violation, Egyptian authorities failed to acknowledge this mistake. We created many campaigns over the years to help keep the mainstream media interested in covering this story, knowing that this is what the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak is scared of most. We did through worldwide simultaneous rallies which took place in at least 150 major cities around the world, the "Flood the Jail with Mail" campaign, other letter campaigns throughout the year, #FreeKareem Twitter days, creating Free Kareem events in schools and universities around the world, involving musicians and artists, and much more.

This certainly worked in terms of raising awareness and mainstream media attention, which went wild, everywhere from the Washington Post to Czech TV. Staff at the Egyptian consulates and embassies around all these countries were certainly aware and felt the pressure multiple times throughout every year. They heard us say: We are aware of the mistake the Egyptian government has caused and we are here until you CORRECT IT. They never did. 1080 days later and they never did.

Kareem shouldn't be forgotten. He is not merely an example of what could go wrong for bloggers under oppressive regimes. He is a human being and my friend who deserves his freedom. Please help me free him, and communicate this message to the Egyptian government or journalists around the world, and perhaps to the U.S government that continues to fund this regime out of self-interest at the expense of basic human rights.

Kareem must be freed.

* For more information please visit www.FreeKareem.org and do your part to spread the word. If you Tweet this news, please use the hashtag #FreeKareem.

* Esra'a Al Shafei - Director, MideastYouth.com / FreeKareem.org

Gambia: Stopping FGM by 60 circumcisers and 351 communities

GAMCOTRAP

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/59670

2nd Celebration of a Public Declaration by 60 Circumcisers and 351 communities in the Upper and Central River Regions of the Gambia 2009.

Over the years, The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children - GAMCOTRAP has been engaged in consistent grassroots activism and social mobilisation through training and sensitization activities to raise consciousness of men and women on the Effects of FGM on the reproductive health rights of women and girl-children. The organization has worked closely with the communities through an empowerment process to be able to bring about change. As a result of the series of activities, the organisation has been able to register immense success leading to the first Public Declaration was made by 18 Circumcisers and 63 Communities to protect their children from FGM, on the 5th May 2007.

Sustained advocacy engaging the duty bearers at the community level has resulted to yet another success story. GAMCOTRAP will be marking the 2nd Dropping of the Knife event through a Public Declaration by 60 Circumcisers and 351 Communities in the Upper and Central River Regions of the Gambia.

As part of this land mark achievement, GAMCOTRAP will be organizing a great celebration to honour the ex-circumcisers and their communities on the 5th December 2009 at the Basse Stadium in the Upper River Region commencing at 9.00am. The Public Declaration has very strong support and commitment from their traditional rulers and Council of Elders as well as the Local Government Structures across the regions.


The activity will be presided over by Her Excellency, Doctor Isatou Njie-Saidy the Vice President and Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs. Also Secretaries of States and local and international dignitaries and young people will be in attendance.

Review of the IASC products: Invitation to participate

Inter-Agency Standing Committee

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/59688

Invitation to join the Peace and Collaborative Development Network

Free professional and academic networking site in International Affairs, peacebuilding and related fields

Craig Zelizer

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/59689

President Rupiah Banda’s legacy

Henry Kyambalesa

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/59657

There has been so much talking about 'continuing with the Mwanawasa legacy' by Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) leaders recently, a legacy whose content they have not been able to explain to the Zambian people.

If the so-called 'legacy' includes the introduction of free education up to grade 7, it does not match the legacy of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), which provided free education from Grade 1 through university from independence until the mid-1980s.

If the 'legacy' includes the provision of 'free' healthcare to rural dwellers, it does not match UNIP’s free healthcare for all Zambians from independence until the mid-1980s. If it is about the fight against corruption, the scourge had never been pervasive until the MMD assumed power.

There is, however, still a great opportunity for President Rupiah Banda to leave his own legacy rather than continuing to sing about someone else’s questionable legacy. Let me suggest some of the potential initiatives which President Banda can pursue if he is interested in leaving a legacy after his term of office:

1) The creation of a smaller cabinet with fewer ministers and the abolition of the positions of deputy minister and district commissioner, among other sinecures.

2) The operationalisation of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in order for the broadcasting industry to be regulated by an independent body.

3) The enactment of the Freedom of Information (FoI) bill and making it possible for journalists to access information that is vital to both the media and members of the public.

4) The creation of an autonomous 'Bureau of Statistics and Archives', placing the Zambia Daily Mail under its auspices. The bureau should replace the Central Statistics Office (CSO) so that it can freely and independently collect, process, maintain and publish essential data and information about our beloved country, and should incorporate the National Archives of Zambia.

5) The establishment of an Electoral Complaints Authority of Zambia (ECAZ), which should assume the functions of the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) stipulated in Clauses 6 through 8 of Article 112 of the Draft Constitution prepared by the Mung’omba Constitutional Review Commission (CRC). These functions could be designated as a separate article and amended accordingly.

There is a need for a separate governmental watchdog designed to monitor the activities of officers of the ECZ, and the conduct of elections in the country. This will hopefully lessen the vulnerability of the ECZ and the electoral process to the influences, manipulation and/or machinations of unscrupulous politicians and political parties.

6) The conversion of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), which is currently vested in the Office of the Vice-President, into an autonomous 'National Emergency Management Agency' (NEMA). The agency needs to be made autonomous in order for it to perform its duties without any political meddling or manipulation by government officials to achieve partisan objectives, and should incorporate the functions of the Public Welfare Assistance Scheme currently administered through the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services, which includes the Social Cash Transfer Scheme. NEMA should be accountable to the Parliamentary Committee on Health, Community Development and Social Welfare.

I make these suggestions knowing very well that some of the MMD leaders are likely to interpret the gesture as an insult to the president and his administration.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Still on press freedom

Adeyemi Demola

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/59658

In Nigeria, press freedom has been a major debate. Who knows whether it will be entrenched into the yet-to-be amended constitution? On television, radio, in periodicals and even in conversations, people are unanimous in their resolve to allow press freedom to prevail as a vital tool for the entrenchment of genuine democracy, probity and accountability in governance.

To some people, especially those parading the corridors of power, the freedom being sought for the press is mistaken as an exclusive privilege for journalists. Thus, such people find it difficult to see the reason why the press should be accorded freedom in our society. We all know that freedom of the Nigerian press is not guaranteed by any formal document, except the constitutional provision that tasks the fourth estate of the realm to defend accountability in governance. But the tools needed by the press to provide a veritable space for the press to function are daily hoarded by the ruling class.

If there is a consensus that no single individual possesses the answer to all public questions, the corollary then is that if no one has all the answers, as many people as possible should be allowed their say on topics of national interest. The press must be given the opportunity to have access to information and to provide such information to the general public.

Moreover, individuals must be allowed to access information freely so that accountability can be really be deepened. This is important because at some point the press, depending on ownership and editorial interest, can be a fetter to access to information even if public information is made available. Furthermore, press freedom will be worthless if the socio-economic rights of citizens are not guaranteed. There cannot be interest in governance if the populace is poor.

However, the Nigerian government starts to fret as soon as press freedom is passed into the constitution because it is an open secret that the majority of Nigerian politicians got to power through crooked means. Furthermore, the corrupt capitalist system that they defend cannot allow them to freely give these rights to the people. This places an enormous task on journalists, working people, professional associations and civil society to mount serious pressure on the national assembly to concede to this simple democratic right of the people. This, however, should not blindfold us into opposing several atrocious laws to be passed in the name of constitutional amendment.

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

Tanzanians and Burundians could live together

We are the same. All have blood.

Tumaini Andrew

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/59691

My name is Tumaini Andrew. I live in the United States of America.

I'm glad to see your email address on line and allow us to send some comments. If you wanna know more about me, I am a refugee from Burundi. But I was born in Tanzania in Tabora region in 1984. My parents fled in 1972. But God helped us and we come here in the US.

So the reason of this mail, is to make a comment for those refugees who live in Mtabila refugee camp. We hear that the Tanzania forces them to repatriate. Why it couldn't do like for those refugees in1972 in Katumba and Mishamo in Rukwa region, or those for Ulyankulu in Tabora region?

I think there is no difference between them. All those refugees came from the same country. The difference is the year of entry. The government is supposed to let them free if they don't want to go back in their country.

We are the same. All have blood. Because of that, Tanzanians and Burundians could live together.Thanks very much.

Uganda’s homosexuality bill distracts from real issues

Nabila Sempala

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/59690

Becoming Zimbabwe

A History from The Pre-Colonial Period to 2008

Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/59685

In 1997, the then secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, expressed the need for a 'more open and critical process of writing history in Zimbabwe…The history of a nation-in-the-making should not be reduced to a selective heroic tradition, but should be a tolerant and continuing process of questioning and re-examintaion.'

Becoming Zimbabwe tracks the idea of national belonging and citizenship and explores the nature of state rule, the changing contours of the political economy, and the regional and international dimensions of the country’s history.

In their Introduction, Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo enlarge on these themes, and Gerald Mazarire’s opening chapter sets the pre-colonial background. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni tracks the history up to World War II, and Alois Mlambo reviews developments in the settler economy and the emergence of nationalism leading to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965. The politics and economics of the UDI period, and the subsequent war of liberation, are covered by Joseph Mtisi, Munyaradzi Nyakudya and Teresa Barnes.

After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe enjoyed a period of buoyancy and hope. James Muzondidya’s chapter details the transition 'from buoyancy to crisis', and Brian Raftopoulos concludes the book with an analysis of the decade-long crisis and the global political agreement which followed.

'a profoundly new history of Zimbabwe that tears apart all of the old certainties' – David Moore, associate professor of Development Studies, University of Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Raftopoulos was formerly associate professor of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, and is currently the director of Research and Advocacy, Solidarity Peace Trust since 2007, based in Cape Town. He has published extensively on Zimbabwean history, historiography, politics, and economics. From the late 1990s he was a key civil society leader in Zimbabwe, serving on the founding executive of the National Constitutional Assembly from 1998-2000, and the first chair of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition from 2001-2003. He is currently also Research Fellow at UWC and Research Associate at UCT.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from The Pre-Colonial Period to 2008, edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo, is published by Jacana Media. EAN/ISBN-13: 978-11-7700-9636
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Hesperian's free books on health

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/59692

Hesperian is the nonprofit publisher of 'Where There Is No Doctor', 'Where Women Have No Doctor', 'A Community Guide to Environmental Health' and many other books on health. For 37 years, Hesperian has been helping people take control of their health and their lives by producing simply written and carefully illustrated books and training guides that help people to diagnose, treat and prevent most common health problems and to work together to change the underlying causes of poor health. Visit our website to download our books for free.

Review of 'Reforming Leadership in Africa' by J. William Addai

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/59675

Increasingly, leadership has emerged as a key factor in Africa’s progress. Bewildered leadership schemes have seen a good part of post-independence Africa sinking, some leading to horrible civil wars and state paralysis. Africa’s leadership jam reveals that African elites have not understood their environment in relation to Africa’s progress, especially how to draw leadership materials from within their raw cultural values. Nigerians, Kenyans, Guineans and Central Africans will tell you they have everything but leadership.

This acknowledgement was revived when I read 'Reforming Leadership in Africa', a contribution to the ongoing discussions continent-wide for the need to appropriate Africa’s cultural values and institutions into Africa’s progress, as a matter of psychology, confidence, dignity and logic. Such appropriation will help the continent’s progress by fostering the required self-assurance considered necessary for progress. The schism in Africa’s leadership field has come about because the ex-colonial structures have not been harmonised skilfully enough with Africa’s indigenous ones, especially in ongoing decentralisation exercises and the talk of developing new leaders for tomorrow’s Africa.

The ex-colonial structures are generally thought to be superior to that of Africa’s, not only by the ex-colonialists of yesteryears but also Africa’s elites of today. The trick in resolving these contentious African leadership issues, argues the author, is to develop skills to appropriate the differences to bring out the best in Africa’s leadership potential. The author, an Ashanti himself, draws heavily from Ashanti traditional leadership values and institutions, which he describes as his 'research test tube', to explain the leadership reforms Africa feverishly needs to drive its progress.

In his bold attempts to locate where the Africa leadership–progress inadequacies come from (that’s the lack of Africa’s cultural inputs), it is easy to see where Africa’s developmental troubles come from: a leadership mired in the notorious authoritarian, individualistic 'big man' syndrome against Africa’s traditional consensus building. If Africa’s development challenges are leadership first, then what value of leadership? Leadership that for historical and cultural reasons flows from Africa’s innate traditional values, and simultaneously balances Africa’s time-honoured traditional values with that of the ex-colonial heritage. The question is how African elites, as directors of progress, can draw from Africa’s cultural values to reform their trembling leadership tests today. And short of that, we will continue to suffer, as African leaders repeat the old mistakes that have disturbed them and their people’s progress.

Against the backdrop of global intercultural leadership studies, Joseph William Addai, an administrator, a religious and international development scholar, has put in extensive scholarly and practical work to provide matter-of-fact answers to Africa’s leadership predicament. These are enriched by his participation in diverse programs in North America, Papua New Guinea, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Of particular note is his drawing from the Ashanti kingdom’s Manhyia Palace and the late heavyweight Ghanaian neoliberal conservative political leader William Ofori-Atta (Paa Willie).

It is clear from Addai’s work that from scratch African states were in a leadership dilemma – that’s if they are aware that it is a pressing issue, and how to reconcile ex-colonial Europe’s individualist-oriented leadership organisation with Africa’s traditional group-oriented system. Underpinning all these systems are the foundational values of each society as drivers for effective leadership organisation for progress. Africa has a leadership difficulty at the moment because its foundational cultural values do not flow dexterously into its modern state organisation, as the Japanese have successfully done.

In dealing with both inadequacies of the European leadership system imposed on Africa and the shortfalls of Africa’s traditional leadership organisation, Addai compellingly discusses various leadership theories and practices and comes out refreshingly with the view that some sort of hybridisation of the European and the African systems is needed to make progress.

Perhaps Addai’s thesis, with the prominent argument that an understanding of African cultural values is indispensable to Africa’s leadership organisation, will be of help to attempts to review Ghana’s ongoing 20-year-old decentralisation exercises, which have been more about the 'political and fiscal' without weaving into it Ghana’s cultural receptivity as an organisational necessity.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 'Reforming Leadership in Africa', J. William Addai, Publishers Graphics Indiana: 2009, US$24.99 plus shipping.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Review of 'The Candy Girl' by Marcella Camara-Macauley

Roland Bankole Marke

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/59671

Marcella Camara-Macauley was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, west Africa. At the tender age of 18 months, she was afflicted with the polio virus, and for almost three years she could not walk. She began to walk late, taking baby steps the first time around, impaired by debilitating polio. She still needs a new leg brace every year to aid her to walk.

Growing up in Sierra Leone was fun, though not without obstacles and challenges, which she faced tenaciously and valiantly. And with the help of her parents, who encouraged her to be herself, instilling in her good moral values which contributed to her maturity, with God's blessings. After finishing high school her parents sponsored her to go to the United States to pursue an education in nursing. But she had no passion for nursing. She could not tolerate the sight of people in pain. So, she took her own path, studying early childhood education, since innately she loves children. And for the past 14 years she has enjoyed every moment of teaching young kids.

Last summer she started writing children’s stories, and published down the road her maiden book 'The Candy Girl'. It was, indeed, a giant leap from a young writer preparing to take the mantle of leadership in the literary arena, from Sierra Leone’s prolific veteran children’s books writer, Dr Talabi Aisie Lucan. Marcella needs all the encouragement she can get in an industry that is not attractive to the youth, probably because it’s not a fastfood industry. 'The Candy Girl' is a delightful and passionate read that targets children ages 5–11, teaching them and adults alike the golden rule, do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. The story encourages children to help others who are in need.

M. Joe the candy store owner always gave Faith her requested candy though she was often a quarter short of the price. Eventually, Faith grew up, worked hard, saving enough money to buy the store from Mr Joe. This mirrors the fact that no condition is permanent in life. Sharing is caring in a world today that is seemingly selfish, greedy and laden with multiple problems.

One of Marcella's goals is to return to Sierra Leone to help handicapped and orphaned children still traumatised and psychologically affected by the nation’s decade-long gruesome civil war. She hopes to invest the profits from the sales of her book for this purpose. Marcella enjoys giving back generously to others, caring for the less fortunate children. Growing up, it was hard for her to begin a non-profit organisation in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

As a result of the war in Sierra Leone, many children were left handicapped or orphaned. Her heart goes out to all these needy kids. She intends to get the children off the streets of Freetown, give them a place they could call home and a better education and life. As an accredited educator, she believes that education is the key to being successful, and she yearns to see every child get an education. She would love to apply the ‘No child left behind’ philosophy instrumental in the United States to this nation’s educational system. Looking back at her life, she’s grateful to the folk involved in her life, who are a real blessing to her. Her prayer is that people around the world will see this urgent need and rise up to the call, helping very poor kids in one of the poorest nations in the world, according to the United Nation’s data.

Marcela Camara-Macauley holds degrees in Counselling from Bethel University, Silver Spring, Maryland, and in Early Childhood Education, from Prince George’s Community College, and Child Development Accreditation (CDA) certification. I would recommend 'The Candy Girl' to every child around the world, and adults too. Investing in her book means that one is supporting a worthy cause, helping to educate and care for destitute kids in Sierra Leone. It’s never too late to learn the ABC of living fulfilling and peaceful lives, around the world: 'Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.' Pioneering achievements often sprout from humble beginnings. The mango tree could only bear mangoes, not oranges, provided nurturing is done properly with patience and persistence. Similarly, the coconut does not fall far from the tree.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 'The Candy Girl', Marcella Camara-Macauley, Xlibris Corporation: 2008. ISBN: 1-4363-8789-2 (soft cover). ISBN: 1-4363-8790-6 (hard cover) Available at http://www2.xlibris.com/Bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=52001.
* Contact the author at mcmmacauley@yahoo.com for autographed copies.
* Roland Bankole Marke is a poet, author and advocate for children and women without a voice, from Sierra Leone. Visit his website at www.rolandmarke.com.
* Roland Bankole Marke © 2009.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Speaking out against Uganda's homophobia

Sokari Ekine

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/59687

Uganda is once again at the forefront of promoting and upholding that which is most unAfrican – homophobia. The new proposed legislation will criminalise Ugandan LGBTI and all those who support them in anyway including housing, employment, education with prison sentences of between seven years and the death penalty. Black Looks explains what you can do to stop this horrendous legislation from being passed but you need to act quickly. Other posts on the Bill are from Black Looks (Uganda Homophobia Bill) and Gay Uganda.

Cape Town Lesbians have an excellent commentary ‘Fear and Loathing in Uganda’:

‘The Anti Homosexuality Bill ensures virtual complete authority of the Ugandan government over what people are, think, say, feel or do, where or why they do it, or who they do it with – or who knows about it and doesn't tell. It goes further to make people who do not act against gay people in a hostile fashion, criminals as well. It in effect makes being born gay, or not thinking the same way bigots do, a very, very dangerous fate indeed.

This obscene and outrageously inhuman law gives flesh to the bones of the meaning behind the saying: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments – governments should be afraid of their people.” Reading the wording of the proposed Bill, I cannot stress the irony behind this strongly enough.’



The East African Philosopher reminds us of Thomas Sankara on the 22nd anniversary of his assassination. I wonder what Sankara would have thought about the attack on human rights and civil liberties posed by the Ugandan Homophobia Bill? If his record on women’s rights are anything to go by then I think he would have been very supportive and positive. We need leaders with courage and with vision – Sankara had both:

‘He was the first African leader to emphatically promote women’s rights and declare HIV/AIDS a public health priority. He also stripped tribal chiefs the “right” to get forced-labour from their “subjects”, among other revolutionary policies during his military rule. He was the first and last African head of state to declare IMF/World Bank “aid loans” illegal and should not be paid by any poor country. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. Big up to all those who died for a cause!

‘If only Africa had leaders like him…’


Sahel’s Blog reports on the upcoming national elections in Niger as the conflict between President Mamadou Tandja and the opposition continues:



‘After months of political turmoil, on August 4th Tandja held and won a referendum to extend his term in office. Since then, conflict between the incumbent and the opposition has continued through protests, arrests, and a general climate of tension punctuated by opposition calls for outside intervention.

‘That intervention began this weekend at a meeting of the Economic Community of West African States in Abuja. ECOWAS “called…for elections planned for next week in Niger to be called off and imposed limited sanctions on Niamey”, and “barred Niamey from putting up candidates for posts in international organisations or hosting ECOWAS meetings.”
Regional outcry and domestic protest has not dissuaded Tandja from pursuing the elections as planned. With an opposition boycott in effect, the president’s allies appear poised to win a massive number of seats.’



Don Thieme of Life Cycle Analysis reports on the sinking of African cities as sea levels rise. At particular risk are Alexandria in Egypt, Cape Town, South Africa and Lagos, Nigeria, both because they are below sea level but also due to the rising population in these cities. More on this here:

‘Following the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Wheeler (2007) penned a note about the sea level projections in which he correctly criticized their overly conservative use of glacial ice melting rates for Greenland and West Antarctica. As discussed in an earlier post on African Loft, a scenario in which these ice sheets continue melting at their present rates will in fact result in catastrophic submergence by the year 2099 along the coast of West Africa. Nigeria would be particularly affected because of the dense population in Lagos and other coastal cities.’

Just Africa reports on the ongoing violence in Guinea following the murder of at least 151 civilians and 1200 injured, including many women raped. Schools have been closed and it is feared that the threat of further violence is preventing many from seeking much needed hospital treatment. Still, a two-day strike last week called by the trade unions managed to bring the mining industry to a standstill.

Politically, the situation continues to be difficult to navigate. Celou Dalein Diallo is the leader of the main opposition party and is currently in France recovering from injuries sustained at the stadium protests. Sidya Toure, a former prime minister, is the head of another opposition party, the Union of Republic Forces. The URF rejected Camara’s call for unity at the beginning of the month. Camara continues to express that though he is uncertain of whether he will stand for re-election, that his natural rights as a Guinean citizen should not obstruct such a decision. Given the outbreak of violence on 28 September, Toure and Guinean civil society find this to be an unacceptable possibility.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

African view: China's new long march

Elizabeth Ohene

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/59674

In Ghana as in other countries on the continent, the Chinese are here, very visible and very busy.

The relationship between Africa and China is a love-hate one - the love is more on the side of the governments and the hate on the side of business, civil society and the unions.

But those of us of a certain age know that the Chinese are not new to Africa.

The first wave of Chinese flirtation with Africa was in the early years of independence and at the time when they themselves were serious communists and seemed to frown on business and all things capitalist.

They came to Africa to make friends, they built the first football stadiums and organised projects that the World Bank frowned upon.

They set the fashion for our presidents, getting the likes of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania into Mao suits.

This time around they are here for business, and let nobody forget that.

Bulldozer diplomacy

Sixty years of communism in the People's Republic has lulled some people into forgetting just what committed businessmen the Chinese have been for 3,000 years.

Their methods might be slightly different from those we have been used to from the Western nations we have been dealing with for the past 300 years, but the Chinese I have come across are as ruthless in business as any "master of the universe" on Wall Street.

I have seen them operate at first hand over the past eight years, when I was in government in Ghana.

Many are willing to work seven days a week; if they can get away with paying $2, they will not pay $3; and if you are late with the payment of one interim invoice, they will stop work.

If it suits them, they claim they cannot speak or understand English to get themselves out of sticky situations.

Here is an example of what I mean: A Korean company was building a highway westwards out of Accra for more than a year.

The work stalled because the authorities could not, or would not, pull down the structures demarcated to be pulled down and for which compensation had been paid.

Indeed, the gossip was that more people started putting up structures after the demarcation exercise so they could be paid compensation - but that is another story.

A Chinese company started building a highway northwards out of Accra.

Once the demarcation was done and the compensation paid, they waited for seven days and one fine Sunday morning, as people made their way to church, they brought out the bulldozers and by the time church was over, the houses and kiosks in their way had all been pulled down.

No amount of shouting or pleading or threatening impressed them - they claimed they couldn't understand English.

After a few days of shock, the communities resigned themselves and concentrated on the beautiful road being built for them.

Meanwhile on the western front, it took for ever before the project could be completed. And guess who got kudos for delivering the work on time?

We'll get the cheque

I recall a gathering in Oxford University in the early 1990s that brought together investors, business people, academics, UN types, pseudo-politicians and journalists to deliberate on Africa.

I forget his name now, but I think he was a boss with a mining company.

He told a story of his experience of doing business in China and in Zimbabwe.

He and his team arrived in Zimbabwe to a muted reception and slightly shambolic series of meetings and concluded a low-scale deal, or at least that was their view at the time.

Next stop Beijing, where the full panoply of state protocol was on display, complete with a 27-course dinner in the People's Hall in Tiananmen Square.

They signed a deal and were highly impressed with all the arrangements.

Yet four years later they had made no money in China but were making a lot of money in Zimbabwe.

And, by the way, at the end of the Chinese trip, they had been presented with a detailed bill for the 27-course dinner and the protocol laid on for them - and they had to pay.

The Chinese are here and everywhere else to make money and let no-one forget that - ever.

Guinea: Blood and money in the streets

Africa-Asia Confidential Oct 2009: Vol. 2 No. 12

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/59666

China's business ties to the loathed Camara junta could quickly backfire

Beijing's Foreign Ministry officials are energetically distancing themselves from a US$7 billion minerals deal announced on 9 October by the increasingly isolated military regime in Guinea with the Hong-Kong based China International Fund. Without some fast diplomatic footwork, China could again face excoriation for helping to finance a murderous regime, five years after an international campaign began pressuring Beijing over military and financial links to the Sudanese regime and massacres in Darfur.

Many observers are sceptical about the insistence by China's Foreign Ministry that the CIF has no formal ties or financing arrangements with the Beijing government. In Angola, state-owned oil giant Sinopec is the majority partner in a joint venture with the CIF's parent company, Dayuan International Development (see Organigram). Dayuan's directors are the financial beneficiaries of such multibillion dollar cooperation with African and Chinese state entities (see 'The faces behind the funds').

On 17 October, West African leaders imposed an arms embargo of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's junta for the killing of at least 157 people when government troops fired on a demonstration on 28 September. The International Criminal Court said it would open investigations to determine whether the brutal attack amounted to crimes against humanity. This follows sanctions announced by the European Union and the United States, alongside United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's setting-up of independent inquiry into the killings in Conakry.

Faced with growing foreign and local pressure from rival military factions, Capt. Camara's ruling clique has gone on the offensive, putting up Mines Minister Mohamed Thiam to announce that the CIF was willing to invest $7-9 bn. on oil and mining projects in Guinea, together with road building, railway and other transport projects. Thiam called it the contract of the century. The point was clear: criticism from Europe and the USA does not matter because China would be replacing Western interests in Guinea.

That might have been a popular ploy a decade ago but now many Guineans are as sceptical about China's ambitions for their country as they are about Western intentions. Minister Thiam's announcement about the Chinese deal has fuelled local concerns: he said the government was creating a joint venture establishing a Guinean state-owned mining company, based out of Singapore, which will hold rights to all the country's mining and gas reserves, except those currently being exploited under established contracts. It is unclear how the the CIF deal would affect the many mining contracts that are being reviewed by the Camara regime.

Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol and its joint venture with the CIF, China Sonangol International, are also to invest in the Guinea projects. Guinea's negotiators have accepted the CIF's demand that the agreement includes almost all unexploited mineral, oil and gas resources. Officials on all sides are reluctant to discuss the precise terms, particularly the provisions for short-term financing that the regime needs to survive in the face of sanctions.

According to a source close to the dossier, the deal with the CIF was proposed by Mamady Diaré, Conakry's Ambassador to Beijing, in June (AAC Vol 2 No 11). The core protocol seen by Africa-Asia Confidential says, 'the parties [CIF and Guinea] will subscribe to the capital stock of the company and will exercise their rights to vote and other powers of control in relation to the Société Sino-Guineenne de Développement', indicating that the initial capital share will be 15% controlled by Guinea and 75% by the CIF. The remaining 10% of the Guinean stake is to be paid for in advance by CIF, which can then be purchased by the government at the market rate to raise its share to 25%.

An official in the Ministry of Mines who opposes the deal said: 'It seeks to set up a big company called the Guinean Development Corporation (GDC) Mining, Oil and Gas, which will have a right of first refusal on resources that are not being exploited by mining companies. This national company will have subsidiaries (GDC Transport, etc.) which will deploy in each sector to develop infrastructure or to develop a business.'

The accord dated 12 June states that 'the parties agree not to engage during the period of exclusivity of the discussions in any negotiations or to conclude contracts or agreements with a third party on rival projects.' This clause, which implies an option of first refusal, infuriated some officials in the Mines Ministry. 'This agreement is shady! How can you give so much power to a supposed national company which is not really controlled by Guinea? Why was it decided to go to Singapore to sign a joint venture as if it was impossible to do this in Conakry?' asked one of our sources.

Mining Minster Thiam, who is a close friend of Captain Dadis, says that the contract was signed by himself, Deputy Minister for Construction Boubacar Barry, and Finance Minister Mamadou Sandé, who is also close to Dadis.

Thiam extolls the 'strategic partnership' between Guinea and the CIF. 'It is about creating a national mining company that will hold the state's interests in existing projects and which will develop new mining permits, like GEPetrol in Equatorial Guinea, Sonangol in Angola and Vale Doce at its origins in Brazil.'

The discussions started, Thiam said, on mining projects and the infrastructural work that they would require. 'The $7 bn. will be financed by the CIF through the same mechanisms used for the $11 bn. invested by the Chinese in Angola since 2005: a combination of their own funds, private and Chinese state banks' credit lines, and after by international banks upon their signature,' said Thiam.

After announcing the deal, the Camara junta promised the installation of an emergency 30 megawatt thermal power station, an overground metro service in Conakry and orders for aeroplanes to launch an airline called Air Guinea International.

The 12 June agreement includes a long shopping list:



a new thermal power station and rehabilitation of installations ($75 mn.);
water projects at Badi ($215 mn.) and low-cost housing ($250 mn.);
electricity improvements for Conakry, Tinkisso and Kinkon ($30 mn.);
construction of government offices at Koloma ($650 mn.);
construction of an industrial zone;
dams at Foumi ($350 mn.), Cogon ($350 mn.) and Kaléta ($290 mn.);
Air Guinea International ($216 mn.), urban bus and train services;
the Trans-Guinéen railway to evacuate ore from the Nimba Mountains and an integrated port development (costed at $4.1 bn. in 2003).


Other projects listed in the framework document include fishing, cotton, agro-processing, cement, tourism and telecoms companies. If the CIF project works, Chinese companies stand to control almost all productive sectors of the economy; to repay the loans of several billion dollars promised by the CIF, the GDC will have to develop its mining permits and Guinea's oil and gas potential.

Already there are financing delays: the 100 buses promised within 45 days of the 12 June accord signing and the aeroplanes within two months are yet to arrive. A source at the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative told AAC that payments of $50 mn. from CIF to the Guinean state about two months ago were blocked by BNP Paribas and Citibank due to insufficient documentation.
Also, the luxury cars given by China for Guinea's celebration of 50 years of Independence now serve as a means of transport for the CIF management to run their errands around Conakry.

The managers of CIF and China Sonangol have turned their profitable business in Angola into a global business empire. An agreement for China Sonangol to buy 49% of Air Tanzania was announced by Tanzania in August 2008 (AAC Vol 1 No 10) but the plan does not seem to have moved forward since then.

There are also plans for China Sonangol to finance renovations at Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam. The Air Tanzania management wants China Sonangol to support a $508 mn. plan to buy nine new planes and to improve training and technology.

It seems that in exchange for the $21 mn. in finance for Air Tanzania to expand its fleet, China Sonangol was awarded three oil exploration licences, in contravention of established procedures. In January, the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation revealed that it had awarded three licences in Rukwa to China Sonangol as part of the company's budding relationship with President Jakaya Kikwete's government. TPDC officials said that these licenses dated back to an agreement in 2007. Presenting itself as a private company to the government, China Sonangol was participating in negotiations with the state-run policy bank, the China Development Bank, in order to finance the purchase of 49% of Air Tanzania, officials said in August 2008.

Côte d'Ivoire's national oil company Petroci has sought out Chinese investment in the oil and gas sector. In 2009, Petroci started talks with China Sonangol and state-owned oil company Sinopec about building a refinery and for joint exploration (AAC Vol 2 No 8). And in Nigeria, China Sonangol bought out oil company Devon's rights to deepwater block OPL 256 in 2008, but has not explored it yet.

CIF's parent company Dayuan International Development and Portuguese bank Escom formed a partnership with Congo-Brazzaville's national oil company, the Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo, called SNPC Asia Holding in 2005 with the goal of trading the country's oil in China. It was managed by Lo Fong Hung, Veronica Fung and allies of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Denis Gokana and Blaise Elenga.

* This article was firts published in Africa-Asia Confidential Oct 2009: Vol. 2 No. 12

Kenyan PM urges Mugabe to step down

2009-10-23

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news221009/kenyPM221009.htm

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has urged Robert Mugabe to ‘relinquish power’ saying the ZANU PF leader alone was ‘responsible for the political stalemate’ in Zimbabwe. Speaking in France during a joint press conference with the French Foreign Affairs Minister, Odinga did not mince his words, bluntly saying; ‘In Zimbabwe Mr. Mugabe is not part of the solution to the political problem; he himself, is the problem.’

Mugabe loyalists storm out of House

2009-10-22

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/675504/-/135oarxz/-/index.html

The rift between Zimbabwe’s coalition parties has spilled into the country’s polarised parliament after legislators from President Robert Mugabe’s party walked out protesting against critics of the veteran leader. Zimbabwe was plunged into a fresh crisis last week after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change started boycotting cabinet and council of ministers meetings.

Kenya: Back-street abortions underline need for sex education

2009-10-23

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86641

Julia Nyaberi's* "clinic" in Majengo, a slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, caters to one type of client only - pregnant women seeking abortions. Young women writhe in pain on the floor of the poorly lit house; the neighbours all know what happens here and have become immune to the moans and wails.

CAR: Children bearing brunt of troubles

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32643

Children in the Central African Republic (CAR) are paying a heavy price for the troubles faced by the country, and their plight could worsen without urgent international support, said a senior official with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Global: The humanitarian impact of two years of blockade on the Gaza Strip

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/l3fr9o

A recent UN report documents the humanitarian impact of the blockade imposed by Israel since June 2007 on the 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip. It focuses on the effects of the import and export restrictions and the travel ban to and from Gaza on livelihoods, food security, education, health, shelter, energy and water and sanitation

Guinea: Prime minister hails decision to investigate killings

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yfzvxsr

The Guinean Prime Minister, Kabine Komara, has hailed the decision of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the 28 Sept massacre of protesters in Conakry by elements of the Guinean military. In a broadcast to the nation Wednesday, the Prime Minister said the decision would make it possible to identify all those involved in the killing of civilians who were protesting an alleged plan by mili tary leader Moussa Dadis Camara to transmute to a civilian leader by participating in the forthcoming presidential election.

South Africa: Illegal eviction interrupts funeral

2009-10-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/59707

On 22 October, only moments before the funeral service of the late Eunice Nothemba Boyseen, a group of police officers arrived at Mrs Boyseen's house and attempted to illegally evict her daughter Dora Boyseen and the rest of her family. Luckily, residents were able to prevent this eviction from taking place.
On 22 October, only moments before the funeral service of the late Eunice Nothemba Boyseen, a group of police officers arrived at Mrs Boyseen's house and attempted to illegally evict her daughter Dora Boyseen and the rest of her family. Luckily, residents were able to prevent this eviction from taking place.

This was not the first time that police attempted to illegally evict the Boyseen family. The first and second evictions happened last year when AEC member Nothemba Boyseen was 93 years old. Because of her age, Nothemba was intured during the process.

The reason the evictions have been taking place is because of an error mad eby the City of Cape Town in which the nextdoor neighbour was mistakenly given the title deed to both her own home and the home of Nothemba Boyseen. Dora Boyseen complains that the neighbour even harrassed her family and sweared in front of guests during the funeral procession.

The Boyseen family are very upset because while it is the error of the City, it is their family that has had to suffer the consequences.

We would like to also inform everything that this morning at 08h00, the Boyseen family has been invited with the Anti-Eviction Campaign to meet with Grace Blaauw from the National Housing Department

For more information, contact:

Katie Meintjies (AEC member and neice of Nothemba Boyseen) at 079 996 2597
Antana Masizana (Street Chairperson) at 073 189 9008
Mncedisi Twalo (AEC coordinator) at 078 580 8646

Uganda: Video evidence of police and army's brutality

2009-10-23

http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/12147.html

Video footage collected from YouTube leaves little doubt that the riots in Kampala last month were met with excessive use of force by the Ugandan police and military forces. An unestablished number of demonstrators and ordinary civilians, most likely in excess of 20, were killed, and many more injured by stray bullets and through heavy baton beatings.

Africa: Climate change 'to accelerate displacement' - UN

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32682

Climate change will lead to ever greater numbers of people being uprooted in Africa, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today, calling for enhanced and swift actions to reduce disaster risk and step up mitigation.

Africa: International community fails Somalia

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yjz8hpw

The international community is failing over 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Somalia at a time when the humanitarian crisis is deepening, Walter Kaelin, the Representative of the UN Secretary General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, said at the end of his mission to Somalia in Nairobi, Kenya.

Africa: UN to help fight forced displacement

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32665

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pledged full United Nations support to help Africa address the needs of some 14 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) driven from their homes by fighting and prevent the conflicts that caused their plight.

Angola: Tit-for-tat deportations leave thousands at risk

2009-10-22

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48933

More than 30,000 Angolans are stranded in transit camps after being abruptly deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and there are growing fears of a cholera outbreak as the rainy season begins.

 The families - around two thirds of whom had official refugee status in DRC - were booted out earlier this month in retaliation for Angola expelling thousands of Congolese migrants in recent years.

Burundi: Long-term IDPs need land security

2009-10-23

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

The security situation in Burundi improved markedly after the last rebel group in the country laid down its arms at the end of 2008, and no new conflict-induced displacement was reported in 2009. However, up to 100,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) remain in sites in northern and central Burundi.

Global: New report: Making migration work for development

2009-10-22

http://tinyurl.com/ykg9qtj

Barriers to migration should be reduced to enable migrants to play a positive role in both industrialised and developing countries, says a leading DFID-funded research group. The findings, produced by the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC), are published in a research brief launched in advance of the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2009.

Horn of Africa: Rising numbers of illegal immigrants enter Somaliland

2009-10-23

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86708

Immigration officials in the self-declared republic of Somaliland have expressed concern over the increase in the number of illegal Ethiopian migrants entering the region, with claims that up to 90 people are arriving daily, against 50 in 2008.

Africa: October Beijing + 15 Update

FEMNET

2009-10-22

http://www.femnet.or.ke/

African women’s organizations at the national level have been mobilized to form National Working Groups to review their country’s progress in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action. We hope that in preparing for the Africa Regional meeting on Beijing +15 for Member States in November 2009, and for the NGO Forum and CSW 54 in 2010, each National Working Group will have a document identifying 12 key accomplishments that have been made since Beijing + 10 Review process in 2004, and 12 key areas where critical gaps remain that governments must commit to address.

Algeria: Police fire on slum protest

2009-10-23

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/10/20091021135417557575.html

People living in a slum district of the Algerian capital have taken to the streets for a second day to protest against job and housing shortages. Residents of the Diar Echams area, frustrated over high unemployment and inadequate housing, clashed with police on Wednesday having started their protest on Monday night.

Global: Civil society and peacebuilding

2009-10-23

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3587

How can civil society most effectively work for peacebuilding? This working paper from the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding presents the findings of a comparative research project which analysed the performance of civil society in regards to protection, monitoring, advocacy, socialisation, social cohesion, facilitation, and service delivery in situations of war and armed conflict.

Africa: Africa labour news roundup, 20 October 2009

2009-10-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/59787

Africa: What is China doing in Guinea?

2009-10-22

http://tinyurl.com/yzpmd9w

Reports that China is financing investments to the tune of $7bn in military-ruled Guinea in exchange for access to its resources have re-ignited western fears about Chinese activities in Africa. Portrayed as a callous grab for resources that ignores the recent killing of Guinean opposition protesters by government troops, closer analysis of the situation reveals as much about foreign perceptions of China in Africa as its does about one of the continent's most significant economic relationships.

China and Kenya in infrastructure talks

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/59677

Kenya’s government is in talks with Beijing over development of a multi-billion dollar port and transport corridor that could provide a new export route for Chinese oil in southern Sudan. The cash-strapped Kenyan government opened negotiations with Qatar over a potential $3.5bn investment in the port project late last year in return for a lease on 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops.
Kenya’s government is in talks with Beijing over development of a multi-billion dollar port and transport corridor that could provide a new export route for Chinese oil in southern Sudan.

The cash-strapped Kenyan government opened negotiations with Qatar over a potential $3.5bn investment in the port project late last year in return for a lease on 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops. But no deal was struck and Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister, indicated to the Financial Times that he now viewed China as better suited to the project.

“The Chinese offer the full package,” he said, referring to the combination of financing and technical expertise that state-backed Chinese banks and construction companies have rolled out across Africa.

A Kenyan delegation led by Mr Odinga flew to China late on Wednesday for talks on the project involving the construction of a port in the popular tourist area of Lamu, and road and rail links to Kenya’s borders with Ethiopia and southern Sudan.

China’s engagement with the continent has gathered pace in recent weeks as it has pursued a multi-billion dollar deal for oil, mineral resources and infrastructure in Guinea and a bid for up to 6bn barrels of Nigeria’s oil reserves.

Kenya does not have the proven mineral resources that have attracted Chinese companies elsewhere. But China has extensive oil interests in neighbouring Sudan, it is an important lender to states such as Ethiopia and Chinese contractors are gaining a dominant position in public works projects across East Africa.

CNOOC, one of China’s big three state-owned energy groups, will start prospecting for oil in a block in northern Kenya by the end of this month, Kenya’s energy ministry said this week. It also has exploration rights for a second block in the Lamu basin.

The Lamu port and the road and rail links – dubbed Kenya’s “second corridor” – would kick-start the development of northern Kenya and accelerate economic growth in connected parts of Ethiopia and Sudan.

It could also provide an alternative route for oil out of southern Sudan, a semi-autonomous region due to vote on independence from the Khartoum regime in a referendum in 2011.

The Kenyan government confirmed that talks with China were ongoing but said: “We are open to any interested parties.”

The Chinese embassy in Nairobi said Kenya had requested China’s help.

* This article was originally published in the Financial Times on 14 October 2009

Uganda: Big U.S. military exercise for northern region

2009-10-22

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15641

More than 1,000 American and East African troops are to be deployed in northern Uganda next week as the United States carries out its biggest military exercise in Africa this year. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are each sending up to 150 soldiers to join 450 US military personnel in Kitgum for the October 16-25 exercise known as Natural Fire 10.

US arms Mali to battle al-Qaeda

2009-10-22

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8316269.stm

The US is preparing to give Mali's army millions of dollars worth of military hardware to help them fight al-Qaeda's North African branch. Trucks, powerful communication devices and clothing are among $5m (£3m) of equipment being handed over.

Côte d’Ivoire: UN envoy appeals for November polls to keep on track

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32677

The top United Nations envoy to the Côte d’Ivoire today called on the West African nation to build on momentum towards holding its much-delayed presidential elections, slated for the end of next month.

Egypt: Opposition tries to rebound

2009-10-22

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8315952.stm

Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party keeps a tight grip on power by ensuring that its political opponents stay weak but recently opposition forces have shown fresh signs of life.

Mozambique: Calm and quiet campaign

Mozambique political process bulletin

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/59653

In contrast to 1999 and 2004, with just 10 days to go before the election, the campaign is slowing down. The Bulletin’s 120 journalists spread across the country all report the same thing: “everything is calm”. In the first days the parties had caravans of cars racing around countryside, but this has dropped off considerably. And there has been a similar drop in public involvement in party parades and rallies.
In contrast to 1999 and 2004, with just 10 days to go before the election, the campaign is slowing down. The Bulletin’s 120 journalists spread across the country all report the same thing: “everything is calm”. In the first days the parties had caravans of cars racing around countryside, but this has dropped off considerably. And there has been a similar drop in public involvement in party parades and rallies. Also this year, it seems that fewer party caps, shirts and capulanas are being distributed. There also seems to be less door-to-door campaigning. “You hardly notice we are in an election campaign”, a resident of Gorongosa commented to the Bulletin.

There has also been a sharp reduction in the use of state cars by Frelimo, following detailed reports of extensive use in the early days of the campaign. Where state cars are still being used, much more care is being taken to use banners and posters to cover up registration numbers and names of ministries.

MDM appeal rejected as too late

The Constitutional Council has rejected an MDM appeal against the exclusion of its lists in most provinces. The MDM submitted its appeal on 21 September, but the law requires that appeals be submitted within 5 working days. Lists of candidates were posted outside the CNE on Sunday 6 September. (Acordão 24/CC/2009 de 2 de Outubro de 09)

Campaign incidents

Acts of violence by all parties and use of state vehicles continues to be reported in a few places. These are reports from out 120 journalists as well as from people’s correspondents.

Violence

Manhiça, Maputo province: Those accused to attacking 7 MDM sympathisers on 30 September will go to trial in the district tribunal on 21 October.

Moatize, Tete: More incidents are reported from Tete than elsewhere. Two MDM supporters, Sandra Domingos and Ângela Rafael Joaquim, both breast-feeding women, were held for at least two days – 12 to 14 October – at the district police command, for allegedly destroying Frelimo posters. On 11 October four MDM supporters were arrested for destroying Frelimo and Renamo publicity material. And on 10 October, a Frelimo shock group in Zobué disrupted an MDM rally with a mix of singing, drumming, dancing, and stone throwing.

Maxixe, Inhambane: OJM members led by the Frelimo district secretary accused of destroying Renamo and MDM campaign material in Chambone on 13 October.

Mabalane, Gaza: The Renamo-nominated member of the district election commission was attacked outside his house on 13 October, allegedly by Frelimo members.
Chókwé, Gaza: An MDM member claims he was threatened that he would be killed it he did not join Frelimo.

Machanga, Sofala: 17 October, Frelimo and MDM in scuffle in Chigogoro. Claim Frelimo shock group was pulling down MDM posters and MDM reacted by throwing stones, injuring two Frelimo militants.
Buzi, Sofala: A candidate for provincial assembly is receiving training as a polling station staff member, which is not permitted.

Murrumbala, Zambézia: A Frelimo shock group attacked PRR member Carlitos Davane in Boroma on 12 October.

Use of state cars by Frelimo

Pemba, Cabo Delgado: Frelimo is using government cars brought from Maputo, according to the driver of one of the cars. The cars include a Land Rover Discovery MMQ-56-48 of the Ministry of Agriculture, used since the beginning of the campaign.

Cahora, Bassa, Tete: 15 October, Ford double cabin of district administration.

Mabalane, Gaza: Education, white Nissan Hardbody MMS 14-06

Muchanga, Sofala: 17 October, Agriculture, white Toyota Hilux MLV 06-44

Mozambique: Frelimo has $1 million for helicopters

Mozambique political process bulletin

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/59667

The Guebuza campaign is making intensive use of four helicopters, and the Bulletin estimates that the cost will be nearly $1 million. This means that Frelimo is spending more just on helicopters than the total amount ($750,000) being given to it this year as state funding. (Total funding to all parties is $1.85 million). This shows that Frelimo has much more money to spend on this election than any other party.
The Guebuza campaign is making intensive use of four helicopters, and the Bulletin estimates that the cost will be nearly $1 million. This means that Frelimo is spending more just on helicopters than the total amount ($750,000) being given to it this year as state funding. (Total funding to all parties is $1.85 million). This shows that Frelimo has much more money to spend on this election than any other party.

Each of the four Bell 206 Jetranger helicopters being used by presidential candidate Armando Guebuza costs $700 per hour of flying time just to hire, plus all costs of fuel, taxes, a crew of four for each helicopter, and ground staff. The initial move of the helicopters to Maputo also must be paid for. We estimate the total cost by the end of the campaign will be nearly $1 million.

The helicopters are leased from National Airways Corporation, based at Lanseria airport in Pretoria. The company also leases helicopters to the Mozambican government, and the same type of helicopter has been used by the President to travel around Mozambique as part of his “open presidency” programme. This has raised some concerns about contracts and transparency.

Tension and fraud warnings
in Ilha de Moçambique

Ilha de Moçambique, which had the most serious misconduct in local elections last year, is tense again this year.

Gulamo Mamudo, ex-mayor and now head of the Renamo elections office on Ilha de Moçambique, accuses Frelimo of orchestrating a scheme whereby young men in Frelimo “shock groups” will try to block Renamo members from voting. The idea is that the young men will sleep at polling stations in order to be first in queues, then slow down the queues, hoping that older voters will get tired of waiting and go home.

Frelimo brigade head in Ilha de Moçambique, Martinho Marcelino, says all of Renamo’s accusations are baseless and it is only preparing to justify its eventual defeat.

However, Mamudo’s allegations are not as odd as they may seem. In local elections last year, Frelimo youth did something similar. Young men went up to older people in the queues, seemingly to help them, looked at the voters cards, and said they were in the wrong polling station and had to go to the other side of the island to vote. When they arrived at the new polling station, they were told they had been in the right place initially, so had to walk back. The assumption was that older people there were more likely to vote Renamo, and that the older voters would go home rather than trek back to the first polling station. So Mamudo’s concern could be valid.

Meanwhile, there is continuing violence on the island. Frelimo militants vandalised the Renamo headquarters on 13 October. The Bulletin saw many stones inside the building and Renamo reports that its members inside were injured by the stone throwing.

Meanwhile Martinho Marcelino reports that eight Frelimo members were beaten by Renamo militants and that one Frelimo man, José André de Castro, remains hospitalised.

Four Renamo candidates for Nampula provincial assembly were arrested for damaging Frelimo campaign posters. After being held by police, they were charged and released. Neves Alberto (Lumbo district Renamo delegate)), Assane Yahaia, Omar Wacaire, and Zito Momade Ussene. A fifth Renamo candidate, José Carmona Nanhecua, has already been convicted of electoral crimes. (See Bulletin 15). Mamudo says it is intimidation and the police are improperly targeting Renamo provincial assembly candidates.

One source of tension on the Ilha is the fact that the former president of the municipal assembly, Caetano Alberto Júnior, has quit Renamo and joined Frelimo and is actively campaigning for Frelimo. Renamo demands that he leave the current municipal assembly, because he is no longer a party member.
- Julio Paulino

Campaign Diary

Small parties chase votes in Zambézia

Although the elections in Zambézia, as elsewhere, are dominated by the three main parties (Frelimo, Renamo and MDM), the small parties have also launched their campaigns.

ADACD (Aliança Democrática dos Antigos Combatentes de Luta de Libertação de Moçambique), a coalition of three parties set up by veterans of the liberation war, only started its campaign Sunday 18 October. Although it is standing for Zambézia seats in the national parliament, the head of the list, Ana Langa, seemed more interested in campaigning in favour of Frelimo presidential candidate Armando Guebuza.

Although the ex-combatants are actively supporting Guebuza, they say they want seats in parliament in order to change his incorrect economic policy, which is not generating wealth or well-being for the majority of Mozambicans.

ADACD’s symbol is the orange and it wants to be elected to parliament to promote social well-being. The party is campaigning without election material, other than a few caps, shirts and posters, but former guerrillas from the liberation war 40 years ago remain a strong presence. The coalition is standing in five provinces, Zambézia, Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Maputo and Gaza.

Few choices for PDD

The PDD (Partido para Paz, Democracia e Desenvolvimento) led by Raul Domingos, which once seemed placed to become a third political force in Mozambique, is virtually dead in Zambézia, and is hardly seen on the streets. PDD is standing in seven provinces for national parliament, but not in Zambézia, which seems to have broken the spirit and enthusiasm of party members there. There have been no rallies or other actions in Quelimane because there is no point. PDD election head Inácio Mukalachi says the party is only campaigning in the three districts where it is standing for provincial parliament: Inhassunge, Gurué and Namarrói,

In the early days of the campaign militants in Milange attempted rallies, but says they were confronted by a climate of violence which led to scuffles with Frelimo, during which eight PDD members were arrested.

Party militants says they have not been told to campaign for any presidential candidate, and feel that none of the three candidates has the qualities of their president, Raul Domingos.

Frelimo, Renamo and MDM

But it is mainly Frelimo, Renamo and MDM who are keeping up in this 45 day marathon race for votes. After a quiet period, Renamo is pedalling harder, with its president Afonso Dhlakama campaigning in Zambézia. MDM had been concentrating on the capital but with the return of its candidate Daviz Simango, it is spreading its activities through the province, particularly in Gurué this weekend. Frelimo, too, is preparing with the final weekend of the campaign, with various brigades spread throughout the province and cars circulating with Frelimo publicity.

Campaign incidents

Acts of violence by all parties and use of state vehicles continues to be reported in a few places. These are reports from our 120 journalists as well as from people’s correspondents.

Violence

Mabalane, Gaza: 17 October, two Frelimo militants arrested for beating the local Renamo delegate, Nelson Chitsondzo.

Sussundenga, Manica: 18 October, Renamo party headquarters in Dombe burned.

Nhamatanda, Sofala: 18 October, Frelimo militants used drumming, megaphones and loud motorcycles to disrupt training of MDM (Movimento Democrático de Moçambique) polling station agents.

Other incidents

Cheringoma, Sofala: 17 October. Frelimo officials distributed model ballot papers showing votes for Frelimo, and allegedly told local traders that if they did not post the model ballot and tell people to vote for Frelimo, then their stalls would be forced to close.

Marringue, Sofala: 18 October, training of polling station staff was suspended for the day because of the arrival of Armando Guebuza. Furthermore, some of those being trained say they were forced to go to a rally for Guebuza in Nhamapaza.

Use of state cars

Mabalane, Gaza: 19 October, Ministry of Science and Technology double cabin Ford Ranger, with the registration number covered by Frelimo pamphlets

Global: Launch: Corruption Perceptions Index 2009

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yzuw4y2

Transparency International, the leading civil society organisation fighting corruption worldwide, will release its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on 17 November 2009. The index ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. Released annually since 1995, the CPI helps to highlight the propensity of domestic corruption and its damaging influence.

Africa: UN agency calls for harnessing of untapped potential of remittances

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32626

A new United Nations report calls for the lifting of restrictions and costly fees imposed on the $40 billion that migrant workers send home to Africa each year, the world body’s agency tasked with eradicating rural poverty has said. “Supporting this people-to-people money flow to rural areas of Africa is especially vital now because of the recession,” said International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Assistant President, Kevin Cleaver.

Algeria: New steps to tackle youth unemployment

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yzpezeu

Algeria is acting to reduce the high unemployment rate that afflicts young people, with steps that include new social benefits and government funding for public sector job creation. One key step involves a monthly government payment of 6,000 dinars to unemployed people, especially youth, as part of wider efforts to tackle an unemployment rate officially estimated at 11%.

Global: 'Global poverty is not acceptable'

2009-10-23

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48963

The economic crisis is a fresh reason to meet Millennium Development Goal targets, not an excuse to miss them, said European Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso, opening the dialogue at the fourth edition of the European Development Days (EDD).

Global: Developed nations must show more flexibility in Doha talks

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/ykjaff8

Key players in the global trade arena have not shown the kind of flexibility to indicate that a Doha deal could be reached in the next year or so, International Trade and Economic Development Deputy Director General Xavier Carim has said.

Mozambique: Watching the water flow away

2009-10-23

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48969

Less than 100 kilometres from the second-largest dam in Africa, women walk with their babies strapped on their back, water pails balanced on their heads. They walk slowly, their bodies tired. And as night falls, and darkness hits the red sand of the dirt road, they disappear into the dark.

Africa: Fresh campaign against paediatric Aids

2009-10-23

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48962

Eleven years ago, Raloke Odetoyinbo had been married for two years and a month when she found out she was HIV positive. In that moment she thought she had lost her chance of ever having children because, she said, she believed that her child would be born HIV positive.

Global: State of world's vaccines and immunization

2009-10-23

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86679

Yellow fever is a “ticking time bomb”, while measles has been eliminated three years ahead of schedule in parts of Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. These are among the highlights of the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) report, State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization:

Global: Understanding how Thai vaccine worked is priority

2009-10-23

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032538

The priority for AIDS virologists in coming months is to find out exactly how the Thailand vaccine, which gave 30 percent protection against HIV, worked. This was the urging of one of the world’s greatest AIDS researchers, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), at the close of the Paris AIDS Vaccine Conference.

Malawi: Religions soften rules on condom

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/ykxocn8

Religious leaders have softened up their decision against general condom use in Malawi. Government officials see it as positive news in the fight against HIV/AID. Media reports say condom use in the southern African country remains below the levels needed to halt the spread of the disease.

Zambia: Court case reignites HIV testing debate

2009-10-23

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86577

The human rights record of the Zambian military is being tested in court by two former air force officers who allege they were fired for being HIV positive. Stanley Kingaipe and Charles Chookole claim they were tested and treated for HIV without their knowledge, and then discharged for being medically unfit a year later.

Africa: Honoured for capturing truths about society

2009-10-23

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=AfricaAbroad&id=2368

Well known gay rights activist, Zanele Muholi, has been awarded a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade, by the International Resource Network in Africa (IRN-Africa), for her outstanding contributions in the study of sexuality in Africa, at the recent Genders & Sexualities in Africa Conference held in Syracuse, New York.

Uganda: NGOs set to respond to anti-homosexual bill

2009-10-23

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=uganda&id=2371

Following the tabling of the Anti-Homosexual Bill in the Ugandan parliament, a new Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law has been formed, set to respond to the draconian bill which, according to the coalition undermines basic human rights and the Constitution of Uganda.

2009 Campaign: Commit • Act • Demand: We CAN end violence against women!

2009-10-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/59706

While U.S. attention is fixed on Afghanistan’s contested elections and the need to insure a democratic process, in another part of the world, democracy has been under siege at the ballot box with terrible consequences. African elections have devolved into rituals of absurdity. In the last five years we have witnessed attacks on democracy in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
Each year since 1991, tens of thousands of activists from every region of the world have taken part in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign. The campaign’s central messages – women’s rights are human rights and violence against women constitutes a violation of human rights – have been a rallying call of the women’s movement. Recognizing that violence against women affects people from every country, race, class, culture, and religion, the 16 Days Campaign provides an opportunity for activists to work together in solidarity and draw upon this period of heightened international attention to gain support for their local efforts.

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) during last year’s 16 Days Campaign, millions of people pledged their support for ending violence against women (VAW) and upholding human rights. Building upon this momentum, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) dedicates the 2009 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign to honoring groups and individuals who have committed to bringing VAW to the forefront of global attention, to encouraging everyone in their various capacities to take action to end VAW, and to demanding accountability for all of the promises made to eliminate VAW. Therefore, the 2009 theme is:

Commit ▪ Act ▪ Demand: We CAN End Violence Against Women!

Commit: We are All Responsible
In 1991 when 23 women from around the world met together at the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and envisioned the 16 Days Campaign, it was unlikely that any of them could have foreseen the incredible success of the campaign as a mobilizing tool. Because of their efforts and the commitment of so many other activists over the past 19 years, well over 2,000 organizations in 158 countries have organized around the 16 Days Campaign, and the issue of gender-based violence has received a significant amount of international attention. In planning for the campaign, CWGL asks you not only to honor and celebrate the achievements made to ending VAW, but also to encourage broad-based community participation by emphasizing that everyone has a role to play. We all have a responsibility to end gender-based violence together as women, girls, men, boys, and individuals of all generations, religions, occupations, sexual orientations, abilities, political persuasions, and socio-economic backgrounds.

Act: We Can All Make a Difference
2009 will mark the 10th anniversary of the United Nations’ formal recognition of November 25th as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There are many other landmark dates and documents that are the direct result of ACTION that women’s rights activists and defenders have taken. The anti-violence against women movement provides one of the best illustrations of how local activism can translate into global action. During the 2009 16 Days Campaign, CWGL encourages individuals, organizations, governments, etc. to take action on the commitments they have made to ending VAW. Each commitment – be it a personal pledge to speak out, a local or national law, an international convention or resolution, the Beijing Platform for Action – should be seen as a promise that has been made to women. NOW is the time to act on these promises. Every action, no matter how big or small, can make a difference!

Demand: We Are All Accountable
At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, women’s organizations from around the world met with government representatives and collaboratively produced the Beijing Platform for Action – one of the most forward-thinking government negotiated documents on women’s rights to date. This ground-breaking document set forth a list of actions, which, if implemented, would significantly reduce incidences of violence against women. 2010 marks the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Conference on Women. Therefore, we must all demand implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, as well as other key documents, and demand state accountability for ending impunity, allocating adequate resources, and implementing good laws and national action plans to address VAW. We also call on the UN to take bolder action on the UN Secretary-General’s “UNiTE to End VAW” Campaign Framework for Action. We are all accountable for playing our part in reducing violence at the individual and community levels, as well as at the nation-state and global levels.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women, and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a human rights violation.

Check out the website!
If you would like more information about the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign, please visit the official website http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html Pictures from the 2008 16 Days Campaign can be viewed on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/18578511@N04/

Help us brainstorm about new strategies!
Since this year’s campaign will focus on the power of women’s organizing and activism, we are asking for creative suggestions for actions that campaign participants can take. What exciting activities has your group sponsored? What unique and effective strategies have you tried? Do you have ideas about how to make the global 16 Days Campaign more dynamic? Write to us with your thoughts! E-mail: 16days@cwgl.rutgers.edu

The 2009 Take Action Kit: More details about the Campaign
The 2009 Take Action Kit, which will have more information about each of the theme points and suggestions to help with your planning, should be available online and in print in August. To request a kit, please contact CWGL:

Keely Swan, 16 Days Campaign Coordinator, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 160 Ryders Lane, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8555 USA; Phone (1-732) 932-8782; Fax: (1-732) 932-1180; E-mail: 16days@cwgl.rutgers.edu; Or to access the kit online, go to: http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html

Join the 16 Days movement!
Create or join a community, campus, national or international activity for the 16 Days. Request a Take Action Kit, join the 16 Days listserv, and use past 16 Days International Calendars of Activities (available online) to spark ideas for your activities or to find information about groups in your area. As November approaches, remember to submit your plans to CWGL for posting to the 2009 International Calendar of Activities to become part of the global 16 Days movement.

Join the 16 Days e-mail discussion!
Join the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence e-mail listserv discussion, which gives activists a space to share work against violence, build partnerships with others worldwide, and develop strategies and themes for the annual 16 Days Campaign. To join the discussion, visit: https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/16days_discussion

Submit your materials! Help us build a 16 Days Archive!
CWGL requests that participants in the 16 Days Campaign send descriptions of your current or past 16 Days events to the contact information below for posting in the International Calendar of Activities. CWGL would also be pleased to receive other materials, including posters, fliers, photographs, t-shirts, video footage, poems, songs, statements, and reports for the campaign archives. If you have photographs, documents, or other examples of your work that you can send in an electronic version, please do so and we will post it on the website. Because the 16 Days Campaign is global, the documentation of the campaign depends on you sending us information about your activities!

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is coordinated by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.

Africa: Green projects receive UN aid

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32635

Boosting energy efficiency in South African industry in the face of economy-threatening energy shortages and promoting environmentally-friendly production in Tunisia are the focus of two new United Nations projects. The Swiss Government will help fund the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) projects under the accord signed in Bern, the Swiss capital.

Africa: Italian police close in on ‘toxic’ shipwreck

2009-10-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/59669

A mission was launched on this week off the Italian coast to investigate what anti-Mafia investigators have long suspected was a conspiracy between organised crime, industrialists and government agencies to dump nuclear and other toxic waste in the Mediterranean and off Africa. An Italian marine survey ship under police protection started tests 12 miles off Calabria’s coast on the wreck of a cargo ship 500 metres below.
A mission was launched on this week off the Italian coast to investigate what anti-Mafia investigators have long suspected was a conspiracy between organised crime, industrialists and government agencies to dump nuclear and other toxic waste in the Mediterranean and off Africa. An Italian marine survey ship under police protection started tests 12 miles off Calabria’s coast on the wreck of a cargo ship 500 metres below.

According to Francesco Fonti, a Mafia turncoat, the ship was scuttled in 1992 carrying 120 barrels of toxic materials – much of it possibly radioactive. The ship, identified by Mr Fonti as the Cunski, is one of three vessels carrying toxic cargoes he says he sank as a service provided by the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia.

Over two decades Italian prosecutors have looked into more than 30 such suspicious deep-water sinkings. They suspect that Italian and foreign industrialists have acted in league with the Mafia, and possibly government agencies, to use the Mediterranean as a dumping ground. Vessels sank in fair weather had suspicious cargo, sent no mayday or the crew vanished. None had been located, until now.

Fishermen and political leaders in Calabria, alarmed at the possible environmental disaster, are protesting. Local mayors rallied in Rome on Tuesday to press the government to act quickly. Brussels has also added its voice. A letter sent last month by Stavros Dimas, European environment commissioner, seeking clarification from Italy, has so far gone unanswered.

The discovery of nuclear waste on the Cunski or other ships could raise uncomfortable issues for Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government, which is relaunching Italy’s nuclear power industry after a 22-year moratorium.

Now, the marine survey ship Mare Oceano is to use sonars to map and hopefully identify the ship, and test for radioactivity, before efforts are made to salvage the barrels. An Italian coastguard vessel has also searched for another wreck of a ship that Mr Fonti claims was scuttled off the central port of Livorno with toxic waste on board.

The Mafia’s involvement in illegal waste disposal on land, working for industrialists and local officials, is well documented.

The Mafia informant’s claims about involvement in sea dumping first made headlines in 2005, but progress was slow in pursuing them. Last month an expedition located what appears to be the Cunski, using Mr Fonti’s directions.

Over the years, magistrates have been aided by lists of suspicious sinkings provided by Lloyd’s of London in connection with suspect insurance claims, as well as persistent probing by environmental groups.

Francesco Neri, a Calabrian prosecutor who began investigating the “poison ships” mystery in the 1990s, says Mr Fonti has confirmed his suspicions.

“It was like investigating a murder without having the corpse,” he says, referring to their failure to pinpoint the missing ships, starting with the Rigel, which a court ruled was scuttled in 1987. Mr Neri recalls years of digging, threats, lack of funding and the strange death of his main investigator – one of several deaths said to be linked to the affair.

In December 1995, the investigator, Natale de Grazia, a young coastguard captain, died suddenly on a mission to the port of La Spezia. The official cause of death was heart attack, but colleagues suspect that he was poisoned.

Following the apparent find of the Cunski, a new inquiry has been launched by Calabria’s anti-Mafia directorate. (The exact identity of the ship is unclear – some disputed records show a ship named Cunski was scrapped years later.)

Attention is also being refocused on the case of a ship called Rosso which ran aground in rough weather near Amantea in Calabria in 1990, after what officials claimed was a botched attempt to scuttle it. Its cargo was removed and disposed of on land. Years later, doctors spotted a high incidence of local cancers.

Toxic contaminants and traces of radioactive caesium 137 were found in a nearby quarry used as an illegal dump. Investigating magistrates suspect a link with the Rosso.

Massimo Scalia, professor of physics at Rome’s La Sapienza university who led a parliamentary commission on illegal dumping in the 1990s, thinks the oceans were a natural extension for the Mafia.

“I’m sure they disposed of toxic and radioactive waste by sinking these ships,” he said. “But so far it is a theory – a theory in which I believe strongly but couldn’t find proof. That’s what I have been asking all these years: let’s find a ship and see what it carried.”

The commission and investigators repeatedly appealed for more government funding, but earlier inquiries were stopped.

Claims by Mr Fonti of involvement of Italian and foreign intelligence agencies and government officials in the trade of toxic and radioactive products have fuelled suspicions that some institutions may not have wanted to shed light on what lies on the seabed.

Investigators and parliamentarians have raised worrying questions about the source of the suspected nuclear material and who ordered its disposal.

In 2005, Mr Fonti told L’Espresso magazine that the Cunski carried radioactive waste from Norway. Ships, he said, were also sunk off Kenya, Somalia and west Africa. He also spoke of disposing waste for Italian, German, Swiss and Russian chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

Italian authorities have rejected his claim to have disposed of 40 lorry loads of material delivered to him at the Rotondella facility run by Enea, Italy’s nuclear authority.

Four years ago, Nicola Maria Pace, a prosecutor, told parliamentarians of three accidents involving nuclear waste stored at Rotondella, the last in 1994. He spoke of Italy’s “total submission” to US control over nuclear materials at Rotondella from 1954 to the 1970s, and how Iraqi scientists trained at Rotondella to use Italy’s Cirene reactors, which Iraq had sought to acquire in the 1980s.

In 2007, eight former senior Enea officials were placed under investigation over the handling of nuclear material. Italian media reported that the case was recently dropped.

More broadly, the extent to which a foreign hand is suspected is hard to gauge. Several sessions of the parliamentary waste commission were held in private for reasons of secrecy. Its public conclusions noted “interferences and threats” against investigators, and were critical of Enea’s management of nuclear waste.

The commission’s 1995 report spoke of the “possible existence of national and international trafficking in radioactive waste, managed by business and criminal lobbies, which are believed to operate also with the approval of institutional subjects belonging to countries and governments of the [European Union] and outside the EU”.

Prof Scalia is not alone in noting that Italy lacks a coherent nuclear waste policy and still has old waste held in “temporary” sites, some of it brought from the US decades ago.

The environment ministry and Enea did not respond to questions for this article. Statements by Stefania Prestigiacomo, the environment minister, have created confusion. First, the initial plans to use the ministry’s research vessel to survey the wreck was ditched. Then, parliament was told that a ship provided by Eni, the state-controlled energy group, was on its way from Cyprus.

Finally, the ministry said last Friday that the Mare Oceano, provided by Geolab, a Naples-based marine survey company, would do the work instead, directed by anti-Mafia investigators.

* This article was originally published in The Financial Times on 20 Octoboer 2009.

Global: Africa readies united front for crucial Copenhagen talks

2009-10-23

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48959

As African leaders meet in Ethiopia to discuss the devastating impacts of climate change, the United Nations has released a report warning that the economically-troubled continent will be one of the hardest hit by the ravages of global warming.

Africa: South African farmers sign Congo land deal

2009-10-22

http://tinyurl.com/ygbe3hq

South Africa has signed a deal with the Republic of Congo that will give South African farmers access to up to 10 million hectares of farmland, the country's biggest farmers' union said. The deal, potentially one of the largest land agreements on the continent and part of Congo's plan to improve food security, will allow South African farmers to lease land for maize, soy beans, poultry and dairy cattle among other produce.

East Africa: Kenyan tribe to become conservation refugees by end of year

2009-10-23

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5158

It has been confirmed that the Ogiek tribe will be evicted from their ancestral land in Kenya’s Mau Forest before the end of the year. The Kenyan government’s ‘Mau Forest Interim Co-ordination Secretariat’ has announced that the Mau Forest will be cleared of all people in five phases.

Global: Food security: Putting food on plates

2009-10-22

http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/1964/

The lack of confidence in global markets has driven some countries to push ahead with alternative food security strategies built around direct investment and bilateral relationships. State-backed investments in foreign land for food production have attracted considerable attention over the past year.

Global: FAO: A food battle won

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/ygfmp54

In an Italian city a room full of people rose to their feet and applauded for five long minutes. No, it wasn’t the opening of the “La Scala” operatic season. It was the closing session of the heretofore unremarkable Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)

Global: Seed policies and the right to food - New Report

2009-10-22

http://tinyurl.com/yfjlnct

Returning from a country mission in Brazil, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, presented in New York his report on the relationships between intellectual property (IP) rights and the right to food. Summarizing his analysis and recommendations, he called Members of the U.N. General Assembly to go towards seed policies that encourage innovation, promote food security and enhance agrobiodiversity at the same time.

Southern Africa: Dar declaration on agriculture the key to food security

2009-10-23

http://www.sardc.net/Editorial/Newsfeature/09291009.htm

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community have urged Member States to implement the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security to boost production and improve access to food in the region. SADC Heads of State and Government noted at their annual Summit that the region is lagging behind in implementing the plan.

Guinea: Radio stations self-censor; foreign journalists barred

2009-10-23

http://www.ifex.org/guinea/2009/10/21/radio_self-censor/

Private radio stations have cancelled political programmes in Guinea as journalists continue to be harassed by opposition supporters and the military after last month's massacre at an opposition rally, says the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

Swaziland: MISA expresses concerns over the Draft Media Commission Bill

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/ylk5sqj

MISA-Swaziland notes with great concern that the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT), with due respect, seems to be playing double standards in that it has unilaterally decided to go ahead and propose a statutory media council when it initially endorsed voluntary self-regulation and has been in the forefront of this process with previous Ministers leading it.

Tunisia: Journalists and activists targeted prior to elections

2009-10-23

http://www.ifex.org/tunisia/2009/10/22/makhlouf_arrested/

On 22 October 2009, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) expressed its growing concern over the organized campaign against journalists and activists in Tunisia.

South Africa: Constitutional water rights judgment 'gets it wrong'

Jackie Dugard

2009-10-22

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/373.1

On 08 October 2009, the Constitutional Court handed down its first water rights judgment. The case – Mazibuko & Others v City of Johannesburg & Others – was brought by five impoverished residents in Phiri, Soweto, on behalf of themselves, all similarly-situated residents and everyone in the public interest. The applicants challenged the City’s free basic water policy for being insufficient to meet the basic needs of large, poor, multi-dwelling households. T

East Africa: Ethiopia asks for urgent food aid

2009-10-22

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8319741.stm

The Ethiopian government has asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of a prolonged drought affecting parts of East Africa.

Ethiopian: 1 million more in need of food aid

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yfd3kt7

The number of Ethiopians needing emergency food aid has climbed by over one million from last year's figure, the government has announced. According to the revised 2009 humanitarian appeal for October and December, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), the number of people in need of emergency assistance has now reached 6.2 million from 4.9 million last year.

Nigeria: Government offers revolutionary oil deal to Delta

2009-10-22

http://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/article157467.ece

Nigeria plans to offer inhabitants of its oil-producing Niger Delta region ten percent of oil and gas ventures in a bid to end a rebellion that has hampered output for years, a report said. The Financial Times said the initiative, if approved by parliament, would signal a new phase in the government's efforts to forge a lasting peace in the delta, the key production area in the world's eighth largest oil exporter.

Somalia: Shabaab rebels threaten Uganda, Burundi

2009-10-23

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LN060319.htm

Somalia's hardline al Shabaab insurgents said they would strike the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks by peacekeepers from those countries that killed at least 30 people in Mogadishu. "We shall make their people cry," Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, al Shabaab's self-styled governor of Banadir region, which includes Mogadishu, told reporters late on Thursday.

Sudan: Blue helmets bring deadly ethnic violence under control in Darfur

2009-10-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32674

Peacekeepers serving with the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region have intervened in deadly tribal clashes, bringing the situation under control. The fighting between the Zaghawa and Birgid tribes near Shangil Tobaya in North Darfur state killed two people, with six people from both sides sustaining injuries. Four people who were critically wounded were taken by helicopter to El Fasher by the mission, known as UNAMID, for treatment at a Government hospital.

West Africa: Revenge killings sweep Guinea after protest crackdown

2009-10-23

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE59M0HD20091023

At least a dozen people have been murdered in Guinea over the past month in what police suspect is a flare up in revenge attacks for last month's bloody government crackdown on protesters. The attacks come amid increasing international condemnation of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's ruling military junta after gunmen opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in a stadium on Sept 28.

Kenya: How Africa can help itself to get lower bandwidth prices

2009-10-23

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

In Kenya two international cables – Seacom and TEAMS – have arrived but a fierce row has broken out over pricing. On the Government-backed TEAMS cable, Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo has said loudly and publicly that rates should come down to nearer US$200 per mbps. The cable’s owners say they have to recoup their money and that there will plenty of time later for prices to come down.

West Africa: Social network used to prepare forum on agriculture and ICT

2009-10-23

http://tinyurl.com/yzjpg9w

Burkina NTIC has launched a social network platform to prepare West Africa’s first regional forum on marketing agricultural products through ICT. The event will take place 23-25 November in Ouagadougou, and the platform will help deepen the discussions and share the outcomes with a wider international audience. Burkina NTIC is the national ICT for development network.

Sudan: Policy Debates and Dilemmas

AfricaFocus Bulletin Oct 11, 2009 (091011)

2009-10-23

http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/sud0910c.php

In the debate on international policies towards Sudan, analysts as Alex de Waal and Mahmood Mamdani have convincingly critiqued Save Darfur movement and the International Criminal Court for counterproductive "humanitarian fundamentalism."

Cameroon: PRD College International advanced Training Programme in Biomedicine and Development

2009-10-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/59703

The Poverty Related Diseases College coordinated by the University of Yaounde I is pleased to announce its first call for the International advanced Training Programme in Biomedicine and Development. The programme bridges the gap between the biological sciences, health and development in Africa by training scientists to perform research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and applying it to sustainable development. The deadline for applications is November 15th, 2009.
The Poverty Related Diseases College coordinated by the University of Yaounde I is pleased to announce its first call for the International advanced Training Programme in Biomedicine and Development. The programme bridges the gap between the biological sciences, health and development in Africa by training scientists to perform research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and applying it to sustainable development.
PRD College will award up to 24 fellowships to MD graduates registered for PhD, PhD Students or Post-Docs from Africa and Europe. The programme starts in January 2010 and will last for two and a half years having the following components:
The first course module (Makerere University, Uganda) will cover basic notions in the molecular biosciences and infection biology including the cellular and molecular basis of disease, immune evasion, management and prevention of PR&ND. Interactions between chronic non-communicable diseases and polymicrobial infections in the tropics will be covered. Students will then decide to study the fundamentals of epidemiology in combination with either pharmacology or vector control. Hands-on practical experience will be conducted for purposes of technology transfer. Alternatively students can choose to develop a specialised package topic in conjunction with a facilitator whose expertise is within the consortium. They must carry on with these specialized packages into the advanced course. The second module, (the advanced course) in ICGEB (Cape Town Component, South Africa) will take on the same themes as above but focused on translational research with applications to technologies that address health and development. The third course module (University of Yaounde I) will offer a wide range of topics targeting the increase of soft skills – leadership & management, culture context training, fundamentals of diplomacy, pedagogy and communication, intellectual property and knowledge management. In the science exchange programme the African participant will visit the northern partner laboratory during the twinning process and work alongside the European participant, while during the development reality-check internship the European participant will visit the African institution.

Course Timelines
April 2010: 3 weeks training at Makerere University, Uganda (Basic) Nov/Dec 2010: 3 weeks training at International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, South Africa (Advanced)
Jan 2011 – August 2011 3 months Reality Check at African Institutions* August 2011 3 weeks training at University of Yaounde I, Cameroon (Soft Skills)
Oct 2011 – March 2012 4 months Science Exchange Programme at European Institutions*

April 2012 3 days outlook meeting
*These components will be implemented through twinning of the African and European participants.
Students should have institutional support for this activity. The intensive training courses will be taught by researchers from partner and other Institutions; Partner institutions are:
• University of Yaounde I, Cameroon
• Makerere University, Uganda
• International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), South Africa
• Tropical Disease Research Center, Zambia
• Mbeya Medical Research Programme, Tanzania
• Stockholm University, Sweden
• Max Planck Institute, Germany
• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
• Academic Medical Center Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• Go Africa, Germany

Expected outcomes
The expected impact of this programme is the creation of a research environment, where highly innovative ideas are conceived and new approaches can be developed to manage PRD and neglected diseases. The emphasis lies on promoting translational research and the creation of partnerships between European and African research institutions. It is expected that the PRD College will serve as a model through which African nations and the EU can strengthen and adapt their development cooperation in the new global context. The PRD College is an investment in collaborative research.

Cost
Each successful applicant will be sponsored for travel, accommodation and subsistence during courses and exchanges. No other expenses such as per diems will be covered

Eligibility
Enrolment and admissions will be based on the following selection criteria.
• MD graduates or bio-scientists who are PhD students or
• Recently graduated PhDs within 3 yrs
• be enrolled at a University or be employed at a research institution
• candidates currently working on PR&ND will have an advantage

How to apply
PRD College targets research institutions as well as individual scientists from Europe and Africa. Therefore the following documents must be submitted for the application to be considered:
1. Completed application form including a photograph
2. CV of applicant
3. LOI from applicant expressing interest.
4. One reference letter external to the applicants department/institution
5. Letter of institutional or supervisors commitment demonstrating financial support and interest in the twinning programme.
All submissions should be in English. Letters of reference might also be sent in French. The submission should preferably be done by email to info@prd-college.eu or through the website at www.prd-college.eu, where the application forms and a template for the institutional letter of interest can be downloaded. The application deadline is November 15, 2009 at midnight. Incomplete applications and those received after the deadline will NOT be considered. Candidates will be informed on the outcome of their applications by
December 15-20,2009

Evaluation criteria
The applications will be evaluated on the following criteria:
• motivated expression of interest by the candidate
• strong reference letters
• scientific background and potential for research career development
• attestation of research progress
• expression of interest and commitment of the department/institution to participate in PRD College
Added Value
Students will be evaluated by examination and other performance indicators for certification, capacity at host institution will be reinforced, emergence of reinforced networks for further grant applications and career development.
For more information, please visit www.prd-college.eu or write to info@prd-college.eu

Uganda: The 1st annual human rights course

4 – 9 October 2009, Jinja Nile Resort, Uganda

2009-10-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/59702

The Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) with financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) convened a 5 day Human Rights Summer Course for Human Rights Defenders in the Great Lakes region from 4th -9th October 2009 at Nile Resort Hotel Jinja, Uganda.
The Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) with financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) convened a 5 day Human Rights Summer Course for Human Rights Defenders in the Great Lakes region from 4th -9th October 2009 at Nile Resort Hotel Jinja, Uganda.

Under the theme, ‘Building an effective Social Justice Movement in the East and Horn of Africa’, the purpose of this in-augural course was to provide Human Rights Defenders with a platform to Reflect on their human rights work and experiences as professionals and activists and enrich them with knowledge on the risks, opportunities and new tactics to advance human rights and democratic development in the region.

Addressing the 22 Human Rights Defenders from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, H.E Mr. Martin Shearman the British High Commissioner to Uganda who officiated at the opening of the Course urged the human rights defenders to be pro-active and extensively draw lesions from the UK Human Rights Act, 2000.

The course was facilitated by a Faculty of five well grounded and experienced human rights defenders who interrogated key subjects including; Leadership development and constituency building, dealing with impunity, the legislative process and the criminal justice system, International Human Rights system and its relevance in the quest for respect of human rights, Electoral Democracy and Monitoring and Evaluation with each of the delegates sharing on specific country human rights situations.

As a way of responding to the emerging human rights trends in the region, the course participants flagged up key actions and strategies that could be undertaken to effectively deal with this situation:

* To develop a system for monitoring, documenting and disseminating information on the situation of human rights and challenges faced by Human Rights Defenders in the region.
* To develop a unified and coordinated approach to address and respond to such violations and challenges facing Human Rights Defenders in the Great lakes region.

* To study and use the Chicago principles in programming, monitoring and evaluating human rights interventions by Human Rights Defenders in dealing with impunity in the region.
* To develop regional mechanisms to respond to Counter Terrorism Legislation and practice in the region.

o To build the civic competence of the population to promote electoral democracy.
* Identify, study and document good practices in the region that can be replicated across countries in improving the access to justice for the poor and vulnerable.
* Encourage collective advocacy for Law Reform amongst Law Reform Commissions and Human Rights Defenders in the region.

o To upscale independent human rights monitoring and reporting to the regional and international treaty bodies.
o To collaborate with other Human Rights Defenders in the production of country human rights status reports to international treaty bodies and subsequent follow up of recommendations and concluding remarks and
o To Lobby for the expansion of the jurisdiction of the EACJ to entertain human rights issues.

The meeting resolved to hold the Course annually on a rotational basis and the second course shall be held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2010 under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists (Kenya) Chapter.

Fahamu