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Pambazuka subscriber survey: 90% satisfied, 40% want to pay

Firoze Manji

2009-11-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/editorial/60180

Many and sincere thanks to the hundreds of you who took the trouble to respond to the survey that we launched in September. The survey, conducted for us by the independent market research company Frank Research, was aimed at getting your perspectives on how we could improve Pambazuka News. Here’s what you said:

More than 90% of you said you were satisfied with Pambazuka News, with 40% saying that you were very satisfied. Thank you!

We said we were thinking of offering a number of additional services. Most of you said you were interested in at least eight of the services, including access to Pambazuka News archives; the ability to have greater interaction and collaboration via the Pambazuka News website with other members, institutions, social movements, policy-makers and others to advocate for social justice; the ability to download ebooks and training materials; and the ability to get discounts on books published by Pambazuka Press.

You were most interested in being able to use the Pambazuka News platform for organising and interacting with others, as well as being able to access the rich archives of some 54,000 records stored on Pambazuka News, with articles written by some 1,700 writers, bloggers, commentators, analysts, academics and activists.

Nearly 40% of you said you would be willing to pay between $3.00 and $5.00 a month to become a member of the new Pambazuka platform.

We were touched by the fact that so many of you were able to devote considerable time and thought to suggesting how we can improve the quality of Pambazuka News – tighter editing, shorter articles, greater breadth of coverage and so on. We take your suggestions seriously. These comments were really helpful.

In order to deliver the kind of improvements you want, we are developing ambitious plans to expand and upgrade the existing website as the hub of social activism across the continent – an independent, self-financing pan-African social network and community of members comprising social justice activists, engaged intellectuals and institutions that have similar missions to those of Pambazuka. The platform will be a space where African civil society organisations, social movements, academic and research institutions, advocacy groups, alliances and coalitions can upload their publications, reports, information about events, training materials, video and audio materials; organise online discussions; hold online seminars; and advertise their products, courses and publications. It will be a space where books (print and ebooks) on African affairs can be obtained at discounted prices.

Access to the Pambazuka News website and e-newsletter will remain free but in addition we will be inviting individuals and institutions to join Pambazuka as fee-paying members in return for an exciting range of new services and benefits.

More details coming soon!

Tsvangirai’s terrifying gamble

Mary Ndlovu

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60201

cc WikimediaA season of fear has returned to Zimbabwe, following Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to ‘disengage’ from the country’s dysfunctional Government of National Unity, Mary Ndlovu writes in Pambazuka News. With unlawful arrests, abductions, beatings, torture, burning of homes and killings by Zanu PF and state agents on the increase again, ordinary Zimbabweans are sceptical that SADC’s latest attempts at mediation will bring the country’s people closer to peace and prosperity. But says Ndlovu, there is ‘still room to hope for a miracle’.

A season of fear has returned to Zimbabwe and it is unlikely that the patchwork performed on the fraying coalition government will reverse its impact, at least not in the short run. Unlawful arrests, abductions, beatings, torture, burning of homes and yes, killings too, by Zanu PF and state agents, are again on the increase. The instigators bare their claws, threatening terror for anyone who dares to oppose them. Not that the claws were ever fully retracted; through over the past year there has been plenty of opportunity for the predator to lurk in the shadows, and sharpen them for future use. Now the time seems to have come to emerge and renew the hunt.

Just a month ago there was still a lingering hope that the coalition government could save us. As long as the political players maintained a peace, however uneasy, and the economy could achieve even the slightest forward momentum, it seemed possible that the future might promise some stability and eventually meaningful development. Difficulties continued, and the harassment of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) and obstruction of their policies was endemic. But as long as the three parties remained together in government, there was a chance that, little by little, enough influential Zanu PF policy-makers might begin to see a better future in co-operation than in belligerence. Events of the past month have tested these hopes, as MDC-T has wavered in the face of relentless pressure making a partial withdrawal from power sharing and turning to SADC (Southern African Development Community) for assistance. In spite of the apparent tougher stance of SADC in the Maputo meeting of the troika on defence and politics at the end of last week, few Zimbabweans put much trust in the thirty-day reprieve that has now been announced.

We need to remind ourselves of the circumstances in which this political marriage was created. After the stalemate which followed the bloody run-off ‘election’ of June 2008, SADC, represented by Thabo Mbeki, failed to point out to Mugabe that he had behaved illegally, was illegitimately remaining in power and would therefore not receive recognition and co-operation. In a remarkable disregard of their own democratic protocols, instead of demanding that the will of the majority be honestly determined and the winner endorsed, SADC insisted that the first-round winners must simply join the losers who still held the reins of power.

During the negotiations that led to the uncomfortable agreement, both sides knew that they had to participate and must not be seen as the ones to withdraw. In spite of heavy pressure from some quarters on the MDC not to enter the agreement with Zanu PF, it was clear to most Zimbabweans that there was no alternative; the MDC had to try, in order to relieve the suffering of the people and make an effort to get the country’s economy on track again after its destruction by Zanu PF. It was nevertheless also clear from the agreement made, and the final sharing of ministries, that the MDC was entering this government with very little real power. It could be assumed that Zanu PF would play hardball, co-operate as little as possible, and wield the powers they still held to buttress their own position. What was not so obvious was that Zanu PF would continue to blatantly abuse those powers in full view of the region and of the world.

Some progress in the economic sphere occurred during the first part of the year, but now it appears that Zanu PF hardliners have carried the day. Their strategy has been to continue as if nothing had changed, to harass and intimidate their MDC ‘partners’ in government, trying to provoke them into withdrawing. By using the police, the attorney general’s office, the army and the militia, they have been able to keep MDC-T on their back foot, completely off balance. The MDC-T has not found any strategic direction by which to take the contest to Zanu PF’s corner, and unsettle them as well. They put their hopes on the revival of the economy, denying Zanu PF their former sources of patronage through the RBZ, and delivering an improved standard of living for the people. But they have been blocked and outmanoeuvred at every turn. Finally their frustration grew so great that they ‘disengaged’.

MDC-T know that Zanu PF wants them out of government; they know that if they withdraw they will be walking into the trap set by the hardliners – hence their withdrawal which was not a withdrawal but a ‘disengagement’. And their prime tactic once again has been to cry to SADC to ‘do something’. The meeting in Maputo suggests that SADC may be prepared to take a harder stance than previously against Zanu PF’s intransigence, but can we expect that SADC would take effective action now, when they have done nothing for the past decade? Hopes placed on President Zuma of South Africa have not borne fruit so far and even if the Maputo language is harsher, Zimbabweans watch with scepticism to see if this time will be different.

Tsvangirai’s disengagement, though understandable in the face of such harassment, was disappointing for several reasons. In the first place, it has not been clearly understood either by Zimbabweans or by outsiders. News media refer to his ‘withdrawal’, as does Zanu PF, failing to identify the nice distinction, if there is one. Unsophisticated Zimbabweans only know that something fundamental has changed, Morgan has made a defensive move, and they are feeling the heat.

Secondly, it appears that the step came as a result of the persecution of Roy Bennett; while we know that there are many issues in dispute; the timing was certainly unfortunate as inevitably it is interpreted as being finally provoked by the Bennett issue. Bennett has suffered severely for his political career but his harassment is hardly the most critical issue for the coalition government – continuing farm invasions, rule of law, and the contest for control of finances are surely all more significant for the future of the country. The timing of the ‘disengagement’ left Tsvangirai open to Simba Makoni’s accusation that this is about ‘jobs for the boys and girls’, and has provoked the standard Zanu PF pre-occupation with race. While it is about the basics of power, others have managed to make it appear like a mere self-interested temper tantrum.

Thirdly, although economic recovery has been slow, it has gradually been occurring. The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries reported a rise in industrial capacity utilisation from around 10 per cent earlier in the year to over 30 per cent by August. Mining has picked up significantly, achieving substantial increases in output in spite of irregular power supplies. Foreign investors have been reticent, but many had re-entered the economy through purchases of shares on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. Since the working of the coalition government is critical to the revival of the economy, MDC-T’s move has already begun to scare off investors and threatens to turn the slow progress into reverse.

Fourthly, it gave the hawks in Zanu PF the excuse to go hunting again, deploying their militia, arresting, abusing, burning, raping, and intimidating with wanton abandon. In the villages, especially in Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo, terror is on the increase, and on the major roads, military road blocks are everywhere.

Robert Mugabe could grandstand and plead injury – while he is attempting to implement the agreement, MDC is playing games and is not serious, ‘stepping in
and out’.

Meanwhile, the grassroots people whom the elephants are trampling are becoming desperate and devoid of hope. Very little has improved for them since February. Schools are open but education is now unaffordable for large numbers; health care is even more impossible. Economic progress has not yet had sufficient impact on people’s lives to take their vision beyond the next day or the next week. Economically viable charges for basic services – water, electricity, telephones, rates – which had not been allowed throughout the years from 2000, are necessary, but with miserably low incomes no one can pay them.

A civil servant who earns between US$150 and US$200 receives a water bill for US$15, an electricity bill for US$100, a telephone bill for US$60, and a rates bill for US$40. She has school fees to pay for two or more children, transport, food, health care, clothing to add onto that. Everyone is reeling from the repeated shocks as they sink deeper and deeper into debt, and the number of essential services beyond their reach grows. Enormous numbers of electricity and telephone connections are being terminated, and water service tips in the balance as the cholera season approaches. Furthermore, it is impossible to assist oneself by selling assets as no one has money to buy second-hand televisions, fridges, stereos, etc. Those living from rents cannot collect their rent, those selling goods cannot sell. Second hand cars are unbelievably cheap and houses on the market stand for months and years, in the absence of significant mortgage loans or the capacity to repay them even if they were there.

In the face of such daily torment people were not impressed to hear that MDC-T had ‘left’ government. What did Morgan expect next? Loose talk from some MDC members of going back for new elections are surely preposterous in the current situation. What are they dreaming of? Of course, internationally administered elections are one possible solution which should have been resorted to years ago, but who is going to undertake that delicate mission, when a UN rapporteur can be refused entry and deported from Zimbabwe?

Will the appeal to SADC bear any fruit? Past experience does not give much hope. The initial responses coming from South Africa as well as others reflected the stance of family members telling an aggrieved wife to return to an abusive marriage – that’s the way marriage is, you have to accommodate, even suffer, it’s your duty, if you try you can work it out – with complete disregard for the realities of power relationships. MDC-T was told to go back into the GNU (Government of National Unity) because there is no alternative, sent on their way by the now monotonous and self-serving, Zanu PF-inspired refrain that Zimbabweans must solve their own problems.

However, in spite of the inauspicious beginning, reports coming from the initial confidential meetings of the troika foreign ministers suggested that perhaps something more substantial might be brewing. Mugabe was reportedly told that he has not been sticking to the constitutional agreement as he claims, and he must do so. The Maputo meeting which followed the first SADC troika interventions seems even more promising. The unexpected participation of Zuma when South Africa is not a member of the troika signalled a further change in wind direction. Mugabe emerged from that meeting tight-lipped and Tsvangirai announced that he would return to full participation in government, giving Zanu PF thirty days to comply with the key issues of the agreements.

But even if Mugabe seemed chastened and disgruntled after these talks, this is his wont. When he is cornered, he makes the appropriate noises of submission or keeps quiet, only to return to defiance when the cat goes away. Unless the SADC nations accept this reality and understand that Zanu PF is not going to give up power unless they are forced to do so by whatever pressure SADC can agree to apply, they will fail to achieve any break-through in Zimbabwe.

The MDC appear to have backed themselves into a corner which may not be easy to get out of. They have agreed to try again, without any clear concessions by Zanu PF having been announced. What if the thirty days expire and nothing has changed, or if minor adjustments are made but the real issues of power are ignored? What then? Any extensions while waiting for SADC to act will only make MDC weaker. If they decide to withdraw completely, they have no alternative strategy. They cannot mobilise the people to make the country ungovernable. Not only would they be crushed by Zanu PF’s security machinery; at this stage, this would be a completely retrograde step taking the people back into total destitution and more likely creating complete chaos and disintegration of the nation. Withdrawal would leave Zanu PF the field to govern or misgovern as they wish, unleashing further terror and open looting. If SADC does not act now to put pressure on Zanu PF, will they act in a scenario of complete MDC-T withdrawal? Not likely. And then…. check mate. Checkmate not just for MDC-T, but for all of us.

The conclusion is painful. MDC-T has taken a terrifying gamble for Zimbabwe. The odds are long. If they had not taken this step the outcome might not have been any different, as Zanu PF was becoming ever bolder in their defiant rejection of their responsibilities as governing partners. But the present limbo in which we find ourselves, with a 30-day government openly divided against itself, leaves us once again facing an uncertain, possibly disastrous future. There is still room to hope for a miracle. Politicians are elected to make the impossible possible. But if Morgan Tsvangirai fails to win this gamble, Zimbabweans will have no politician to whom they can look to achieve their dreams. And the future will have fear and chaos written all over it.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

‘Civilisation’ and the myth of African ‘savagery’

Wendy C. Hamblet

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60205

cc SokwaneleFollowing a five and a half year scholarly meditation to tackle explicitly the prejudices ‘still deeply embedded’ in the Western academy, Wendy C. Hamblet challenges the ‘popular assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain populations’, and offers ‘an alternative, more sympathetic, but also more realistic, account of some of the world’s current violences’.

In the spring of 2002, I shared a conversation with a learned man, the dean of Humanities at one of the most prestigious universities in the United States. That conversation disturbed me to such an extent that it clarified for me the focus of a philosophical mission that would carry me through the next five and a half years of my research life.[1] It clarified for me in the starkest terms the need for a scholarly meditation that would tackle explicitly the prejudices still deeply embedded in the minds of some powerful and highly educated persons holding positions of what Foucault calls Power/Knowledge in the Western academy.[2]

It was a spring afternoon. As I entered the dean’s office, I recall being struck by its sumptuousness. The bright sun flowed in the windows and danced across the softly tinted walls and plush furnishings of the spacious suite. The birds trilled from the trees outside, despite the windows being boxed up tight, as is the way in large institutions in security-obsessive nations. This was the first time that we had met, he the distinguished man with thoughtful eyes and a timely frost at the temples, and I a simple philosopher, not long tossed from the ivory tower of my graduate studies in philosophy into the cold realities of the academic marketplace.

We sat across from each other on matching lavender loveseats. The gentleman smiled amiably at me, and the conversation flitted breezily from topic to topic until it eventually settled on the subject of my research. At this point, I imagined the room to darken slightly, as it always seems to do when I attempt to explain my dark work to anyone outside my field. I shared with the man the burning question that had colonised my every thought and driven my thirst for study long before my doctoral studies forced the question into philosophical articulation for me: How do human beings, in seeming good conscience, come to do the dreadful things that they do to each other?

How are we to explain the immense abyss that divides the lofty ideals that ostensibly guide the behaviours of human societies from the stark fact of the bloody history of our species? Why, after these long millennia of ‘civilising processes’ does the madness of genocide and other crimes against humanity continue to stalk innocents everywhere? I lamented to my host: ‘Violence floods the globe; bloodletting drowns the dreams of newly developing nations across the third world; misery and carnage undermine hopes for peace and progress in the poorest and weakest countries.’

The gentleman in the plush office shifted in his seat; his eyes darted from left to right. He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a judicious whisper, clearly eager to share his wisdom with this naive and artless philosopher. ‘Wendy,’ he said solicitously, ‘These people have always been killing each other. There is nothing you or I can do about it. It’s just the way these people are.’

The facile myth whispered to me in the plush office suite that sunny spring day by my sophisticated interlocutor, the myth that global violence can be explained entirely by reference to character traits embedded in the nature of certain peoples – ‘the way these people are’ – I challenge here with heartfelt enthusiasm. I challenge the popular assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain populations. In place of this myth, I am offering an alternative, more sympathetic, but also more realistic, account of some of the world’s current violences.

Philosophers are generally reluctant to step out from the sheltering canopy of Socratic ignorance and into the stark light of soul-endangering truth claims. The philosopher worries, with good cause, what grand and sinister edifices may arise on the most humble of grounding soils. However perilous, an argument must begin from some foundation. The fundamental assumption that grounds and guides this paper is what I am naming the ‘rebounding’ nature of violence, after the expression coined by anthropologist Maurice Bloch in his fascinating study of the Orokaiva people of Papua, New Guinea, recorded in Prey into Hunter.[3] The grounding assumption is simple: When people are degraded, dehumanised, exploited, and demoralised for long periods of time, their wretchedness invades their cultural and political forms.

The violences we witness in Africa in the modern era, I contend, are best understood in their historical context, as ‘reboundings’ of earlier violences. Rebounding violence reveals itself in the agonising forms of ‘identity work’ through which suffering populations express their abjection and struggle to reclaim their sense of self-worth in the wake of denigrating histories. Long oppressed people emerge from histories of brutalisation with shattered self-worth, divided from, and suspicious of, their neighbours, and desperate for empowerment. Victim populations, cast by their oppressors as morally wanting, suffer fundamental changes to their worldviews. Having witnessed the horrors that accompany powerlessness and the efficacy of violence in the hands of the powerful, victims once freed adopt the worldview of their oppressors, and grasp the helm of power under the conviction that violence is a valuable and necessary political tool.

When colonial rule ended, therefore, it is hardly surprising that African leaders, taking back the seats of power, mirror the behaviours of the previous colonial rulers and repressors. Since the regimes they assume after independence have been historically designed for the express purpose of rigid social control, it is little surprise that the new leaders tend to mirror the harsh governing practices of the colonials. As sure as night-time follows day, violence follows sufferers long into their liberation, and drives them in the direction of a future, deeply burdened by the past. Victims emerge from their histories of suffering scarred, wounded, and abject. Their future behaviours often entail desperate efforts to bring closure to their suffering by projecting their miseries, resentment, and anger upon those in their immediate vicinity.

In the glory centuries of the various European empires, modern ‘civilised’ nations launched a vast assault upon small kinship groups of generally self-sufficient peaceful peoples around the globe. In the cause of moral and scientific progress and in the various names of king and god, about fifty million tribal peoples were forced to surrender half the globe to white Europeans bent on ‘civilising’ missions.[5] Though the invaders spoke of spreading the word of god and delivering the benefits of civilisation to the far reaches of the globe, in fact much of this assault composed deliberate extinction – murder undertaken on a mass scale as a blatant act of political and economic purpose. National and papal policy endorsed this global slaughter. The few indigenous peoples who survived the bloody onslaught of ‘civilization’ were then conscripted into murderous militaries to prey upon their neighbours, enslaved for cost-free labour, or ‘hired’ to work themselves to exhaustion or death as ambiguously ‘free’ people, toiling under the most miserable of conditions. Long after the mass graves had been transformed into cotton and sugar farms, long after the good Christians had rediscovered their consciences and abandoned their colonial holdings, and long after capitalist merchants had found new, more profitable ways to organise the armies of labourers for the strip-mining of their vast homeland territories, the conquests and slaughters of the imperialist era continue to be rejoiced in songs, films, and history books as grand episodes in the history of Western ‘civilisation’.

The routine harvest of insult and injury reaped by the people of Africa during centuries of colonial abuse caused the African people to discover facts about the frailty of the human condition better left unknown – the vulnerability of human flesh, the defenselessness of timeworn social forms, and the incapacity of an ethos of generosity and welcome to protect against sheer aggression. Through beatings, rapes, and myriad diverse humiliations, Africans discovered that unqualified trust in their fellow humans was naive and foolhardy. Worst of all, Africans discovered the inability of the healthiest mentality and most robust self-esteem to withstand prolonged indignity. Where insults are swallowed daily and moral outcries suppressed, where peoples are pushed from sacred lands, clans are scattered, and tribal solidarity offended, communal resentment eventually gives rise to agendas of revenge that turn the decent into the bloodthirsty. Like a time bomb, the colonial world, from the bloody moment of its birth, ticked away toward a vicious and brutal finale that would not suddenly abate with the advent of independence.

To calculate the damages afforded the colonial victims, one cannot stop at mere corpse counts and inventories of appropriated landholdings. One must consider the disintegration of families by long years of forced labour migration, the cultural and artistic losses, the corruption of time-honoured traditions, the loss of respect for the elders when children are trained in European-style schools, the effects of the bloody battles that won independence, and the long-term split those wars wedged between Africans conscripted into the colonial armies and those fighting for independence. Inimitable artefacts vanished forever; traditions of peaceful trade and ‘naturally democratic’, non-hierarchical governance were crushed. Vanished were the farsighted resource-utilisation practices that guarantee sustainability, the social traditions that render longevity and stability of cultural forms, the naturally egalitarian institutional forms, and the complex self-sustaining networks of social and economic exchange that promise self-reliance and political autonomy alongside sound neighbourliness.[5] A wealth of human life, social tradition, political skill, and artistic talent was crushed by ethnocentrism, cultural ignorance, and capitalist greed, renamed as ‘civilisation’.

Most importantly, the disfiguration of subjects and life worlds must be entered into the account of African losses. People change under long generations of indignity, fear, and abuse. People oppressed witness that violence is a highly effective tool that imposes order in situations of chaos; it is abundantly functional and proficient at this task. Once the oppressed break free of their masters’ stranglehold, they have a propensity to turn directly to violence to bring order to their world. Once the sword is taken up in a cause seen as moral, it is not easily relinquished again when the immediate goals have been achieved. Violence tends to persist in the arsenal of accepted practices of the individual and the community, ready to serve new masters and to endow future ends with the moral purity of past objectives.

Rarely does the practice of violence end with the burying of the dead. Violence is a commodity not ingested without remainder. Rather, it spawns endless mutations. Old forms of violence generate new forms, and consumers of those products become its new peddlers. Subjective spaces of identity are transformed, social scripts rewritten, and social action redressed in the light of violences suffered. Violence and subjectivity become inextricably entwined. Violence creates, sustains, and transforms patterns of social interactions, restructures the inner world of lived realities, and corrupts the outer world of social and moral meanings. Violence erodes the connectedness that binds people across generations and across cultural boundaries, and corrodes the trust that binds the social worlds of friends, family, and neighbours. Learned reactions to social stimuli have to be unlearned after violent histories. Repertoires of sensory memories have to be reprogrammed after brutalising experiences. In South Africa during apartheid, for example, black Africans had to diligently train themselves not to respond to the cries of torture victims in their housing projects, since response would spiral the repression far beyond the torture rooms and into the surrounding community. Dismissing a neighbour’s agonies is contradictory and offensive to the communal ethos typical of African peoples. Once South Africans learned to harden their hearts against a neighbour’s woes, they had abandoned an integral aspect of themselves and their social and moral identity.

The fact is that survival in zones where radical violence is the norm has to do with a people’s successful development of the capacity to cut themselves off from their neighbours and to learn the skills of furtiveness – dissimulation, deceit, and fraud – or join the cruelty of the powerful. During the centuries of slave trade in the hinterlands of the Ivory Coast, for example, native African populations protected their freedom by working for the slavers. Supplied with guns, they assumed the morally ambiguous role of hunting down their fellow tribes people and their neighbours. Others escaped the hunters by becoming skilled at ducking out of sight and hiding, keeping to themselves and avoiding their neighbours, and becoming accomplished liars. Some tribes built entire underground villages unknown even to their closest neighbours. Ancient African social rituals, such as inquiring after the health of neighbours and welcoming passersby to share food, drew suspicion and were soon abandoned.

The historical record is clear, but has never been truly philosophically examined to illuminate the implications. European colonials named Africans ‘savages’ to justify their treatment of the (for the most part) peaceful generous peoples that welcomed them into their villages. Europeans savaged the people of Africa, but justified their savagery by naming Africans savages. It is European savagery that rebounds on the African continent today, plaguing newly independent states. Violence effectively rebounds in individuals and in societies that have suffered degradation. It rebounds in ever new directions, serving new purposes, shaping new practices, and providing ever new justifications for harming others. Independence has been won and the oppressed have been freed from the tyranny of their past abuses, but after being savaged, people do not easily return to their peaceful ways; victim people do not simply step back into a lost past and pick up where they had left off, decades and centuries before.

Sometimes the historical savagery rebounds as a political problem. Some African peoples are loathe to accept in the ruling class of their nation peoples who, in the wake of colonial divide-and-conquer strategies, they now see, not as fellow sufferers in a common ‘community of the oppressed’, but as aliens infecting their nation. Other people seek revenge against their neighbours, as they recall the treachery of those conscripted into the colonial militaries to fight against independence. The historical savagery rebounds in the city streets, in the villages, and on the political stages of newly independent African nations, where the people desperately carry out pathological ‘identity work’ to recapture lost power and dignity. People continue to suffer from the humiliations they have endured in common, but their painful pasts, as similar as they are, also set them one against another, and set the exploited against the new leaders stepping into old elitist positions, maintaining the violences encoded within the inherited colonialist institutions.

The African continent of diverse and culturally rich peoples suffered long from physical, psychological, and structural violences imposed by colonial invaders under the rubric of ‘civilisation’. This meditation centres upon African peoples so abused, but the reflection could have been focused upon any of a plethora of peoples since European/Western nations began exporting their peculiar brand of ‘civilisation’. I could be describing the indigenous populations of half the globe, overrun, slaughtered, and enslaved by foreign invaders as ‘civilising projects’ swept away previous life worlds.

When we look out across Africa, we must admit that very little has changed. The rape of the African continent is still in full swing today. Enrique Dussel observes, ‘The heroes of neocolonial emancipation worked in an ambiguous political sphere, [but] Mahatma Gandhi in India, Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo [were] not aware that their nations [would] pass from the hands of England, France, or Belgium into the hands of the United States.’[6] In the breadbasket of Africa, people are eating dirt. They are boiling up grass to fill the hungry tummies of their children. Across the African continent, the vast majority of Africans continues to form a permanent underclass. They are still, in many respects, strangers in their own land. In many regions, there still exists the glaring paradox of indigenous poverty alongside the affluence of colonial settlers, still living like feudal overlords. The huge estates of colonials, who consider themselves indigenous after several generations on the African continent, stand just uphill from the run-down shacks of their African servants, postcolonial reminders of the violent past.

Africans are calling upon their mighty reserve of tradition to muster the solidarity that will free them from their cruel histories. Africa’s finest hour does not lie in a glorious past that has been smothered by colonial abuse. Africa’s future lies in the peculiarly African brand of peaceful socialism that keeps faith with the teachings of Africa’s great freedom-fighters – Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Julius Nyerere, and so many others. It falls now to the peoples of the ‘dark continent’ to demonstrate to the Western world that living humanly is not about material gain or power; it cannot be won by military troops and by ‘shock and awe’ blitzkriegs of innocents. Living humanly in the African tradition is about dwelling in peaceful companionship, where folks are ashamed to possess more than their poorest neighbours.

In the final analysis, the success of the independence struggles in postcolonial Africa must be measured in terms of the new nations’ ability to overcome their violent pasts, to recapture their traditions and histories. Africans must learn to heal the ruptures between traditional and modern modes-of-being, embodied in the lifestyle gap between the urbanised African and the rural hut-dweller. Africans must learn to hold firmly together in the face of sinister neocolonialist forces that continue to enslave their peoples, strip-mine their resources, and usurp their fishing waters and their farmlands.

Africa’s case is a particular tragedy with unique lingering effects, but, in many regards, the African historical experience symbolises the new global situation, as neocolonialism increasingly fractures third world communities across the planet, splicing them into the dual extremes of the wealthy few and the hopeless many. Where little hope exists for a decent life, there festers a hotbed, rife with resentment and riddled with religious fundamentalism, which will eventually explode into terrorism. This paper employs, as its primary example of the phenomenon of the rebounding of historical violences, the bloody conflicts we witness in newly independent nations of Africa, which continue to be interpreted by some Westerners as indicative of the essential inferiority of dark-skinned peoples, as ‘just the way these people are.’ By obliging a rethinking of the violences of modern Africa as pathological responses to, and re-enactments of, the sufferings visited upon them during the colonial era, I seek to disclose Western implication in that violence and to argue for the reparations and ongoing support that victim peoples are due.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Wendy C. Hamblet, PhD, SAC (Dip) is an associate professor at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] This project ended in the 2008 publication of the book Savage Constructions: The Myth of African Savagery (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Press, 2008).
[2] Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, Colin Gordon, ed. & trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
[3] Maurice Bloch, Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 3.
[4] John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress (Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing, 1990).
[5] See Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race From 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987), pp. 21, 26.
[6] Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 13.

South Africa struggles to shake off prejudice

William Gumede

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60192

cc T SlyUntil South Africa acknowledges that racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of its society, William Gumede writes in Pambazuka News, solutions will 'only paper over the deep divisions' and 'reconciliation across racial divides will remain elusive'.

Shouting ‘racism’ to sideline rivals for self-enrichment at the expense of the public good – or to deflect attention from our own wrongdoing – is simply wrong.

There appears to be increasing incidents of ‘shouting wolf’ cases of racism, which are clearly for purely opportunistic reasons. It will not help the fight against racism one bit – in fact, it undermines it.

It is obviously very naive to think that given the more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid, racist attitudes in South Africa will disappear in just two decades.

Until we acknowledge that racism is deeply embedded in South African society, instead of living in denial, arguing racial incidents are ‘isolated’ events, solutions will only paper over the deep divisions. And reconciliation across racial divides will remain elusive.

Racism has infused the DNA of almost every institution in society. Racist practices have often become so part and parcel of habits and routine, as well social and professional interaction that they are often not even recognised as such. In some cases individuals and institutions guilty of racism presumably have no intention of being racist.

Take for example, the electricity blackouts. Some white South Africans are tempted to blame the failure of Eskom as a failure of all blacks, rather than seeing it as a specific management failure. Another case in point is incidents of government corruption, which are sometimes often broadly viewed as general failure of all blacks, rather than seen in a specific context of a corrupt individual, whatever their colour, politics or class.

What we should not do is in our bid to debunk outrageous racial generalisations is defend individual incompetence, wrong-doing and even corruption, just because the person is black or white.

We should not hide behind racial solidarity to support often very undemocratic practices. For example, should the appointment of a black judge be applauded just because he is or she is black, even though they for example act untransformed? A case in point is the fact that in many rape judgements, many black judges’ values were as conservative as those of some of their white colleagues. Many black and white judges and magistrates still astonishingly blame the victims of rapes for being responsible for being raped. Surely, in such cases, a black magistrate and judge cannot be supported merely on the basis of his or her blackness, even if their judgements are blatantly against the letter of the constitution?

Furthermore, to deal with racism we must also be able to point out when an unskilled or inexperienced black person is put in a position where they are not performing – rather than keep silent, because at least ‘he or she is black’.

For white people to just glibly dismiss the continuing legacy of apartheid policies – on education, jobs and property bar, and the long sustained attack on black self-image – or to argue that the majority of blacks are poor because they are somehow lesser beings is deeply offensive.

Furthermore, to argue that achievement is only a white preserve – if blacks do well, it must be somehow to do with their ‘political connectivity’ – is equally outrageous. White instances of incompetence should not be ignored. The poor ultimately pay the price for incompetence, whether it is white or black incompetence.

The American scholar of race, Cornel West warns against the pitfalls of what he calls a resort to black ‘authenticity’ politics, whereby every issue is reduced to ‘racial reasoning’. He argues rightly that we must ‘replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black-freedom struggle not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics’.

Appeals to black (or white) ‘authenticity’ often demand the closing of ranks behind very dubious and corrupt personalities, instances of undemocratic politics and (black) government neglect of its (black) citizens. A case in point was pressure under the Thabo Mbeki presidency that we must rally behind Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zanu PF because of their ‘blackness’ and shared identity as victims of racial oppression. Ditto their terrifying oppression of ordinary black Zimbabweans themselves, let alone their looting of their country, while their own black citizens starve.

There is no simplistic solution to South Africa’s intractable societal, political and economic problems inherited from previous white governments, and which are now being compounded by the sometimes terribly selfish actions of our black government.

We need to a healthy dose of pragmatism, common sense and commitment to act in the widest public interest. Tackling racism effectively – and all of our other problems – will demand honesty, courage and importantly, social justice.

Finally, there should be no place for easy stereotyping, generalisations and prejudices – whether one is black or white.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in the Sowetan.
* William Gumede is co-editor (with Leslie Dikeni) of The Poverty of Ideas, which will be launched on Monday, 16 November 2009, at The Book Lounge, Cape Town, South Africa at 5.30 pm.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Che Guevara: Until victory always!

Fidel Castro

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60197

cc PodknoxOn 18 October 1967, 10 days after Che Guevara’s death, the details of the revolutionary hero’s last moments finally emerged. Before a nation in mourning, Fidel Castro gave this speech. In this emotive text brought to you by Pambazuka News, ‘El Lider Máximo’ revisits the journey of his comrade-in-arms, revealing Che’s human side, his military prowess, his philosophy and his great revolutionary pedigree.

It was a day in July or August of 1955 when we first met El Che. On that night, as he himself recounts, he became part of the future Granma expedition. Although up to this point, the expedition had neither ships, weapons, nor troops. This is how El Che, together with Raul, became one of the first two names on the Granma list.

Twelve years have since gone by: Twelve years full of war and history, during which the cruel hand of death has taken many valuable and irreplaceable lives. But during this time, we have also seen the rise of extraordinary people in this our revolution. During this period, we have seen bonds of affection and friendship form between these men of the revolution and the ordinary people that defy description.

So tonight we come together, you and I, to attempt to put into words the feelings we hold towards this man, one of the best known, most loved and admired, and undoubtedly the most extraordinary of revolutionary comrades. To convey to him and to those who fought and fell beside him, and wrote and glorious and indelible page in the annals of history.

Che was the kind of man who drew the affection of others, by virtue of his simplicity, his character, his nature, his personality and authenticity, not to mention his other extraordinary qualities.

At the offset, he was just our troop doctor. However, little by little, bonds and shared feelings began to develop. He appeared to us to be consumed by a burning hatred for imperialism. Not only had his political consciousness grown significantly at this point, but he had also witnessed first-hand the case of Guatemala, where foreign imperialist mercenaries had destroyed the revolution. For him there was no need for convoluted arguments. He knew that Cuba was in the exact same situation. He knew that there were men willing to fight this situation, that these men were inspired by patriotism and a fierce revolutionary spirit. This was enough for him.

Thus, he embarked with us on the journey to Cuba towards the end of November 1956. I recall that the journey was particularly arduous for him; the circumstances of our departure had not allowed him to take along the medications he depended on. He endured the voyage in the grip of a terrible attack of asthma, with neither respite nor a word of complaint.

We landed and began our first advance on foot. We suffered our first defeat and retreat, only to regroup – as you are well aware – as the small remaining band of the Granma expedition. El Che was our doctor.

Then came our first victory, and El Che became a soldier, all the while continuing in his role as troop doctor. By our second victory, Che was not just a soldier, but also one of the most courageous, displaying for the first time the remarkable individual prowess that would henceforth define him.

Our force continued to grow and soon we were faced with a decisive and crucial battle in our campaign. It was a difficult one. We had unreliable intelligence, and had to attack a well-defended position on the coast, in broad daylight, with our rearguard under constant attack. At this tenuous point, a Herculean effort was required: Comrade Juan Almeida in the fore was faced with an impossible task. One of our flanks was completely exposed and neutralised and risked compromising the entire operation. Suddenly, there was El Che, still just a doctor, assembling three or four men, only one of whom was armed with a carbine, and launching a support attack from that flank.

On that occasion, he both fought and treated the injured with equal valour. He attended to wounded comrades, as well as to the enemy combatants, where necessary. And when we were forced to retreat, leaving behind all our arms, we embarked on a long march, harassed by different enemy forces. At this point we had to leave someone behind to care for the injured. Che stayed behind, with a small group of soldiers, treated the injured and saved their lives before they all later rejoined the column.

Next came the battle of Uverro, which was much the same. There was another occasion, also in the earlier days, that has never been discussed. Our little troop was betrayed and came under heavy aerial attack. We were retreating from the bombs, when I remembered that some weapons had remained in the hands of a few peasant fighters who had earlier fought alongside us and subsequently asked to rejoin their families. There wasn’t, at that point, sufficient discipline within our ranks. And in that moment I believed that those weapons were gone for good. I had hardly verbalised the dilemma when Che offered to go and recover the weapons. While bombs rained down on us, Che sped off on his mission.

This was one of Che’s enduring qualities; an immediate willingness to undertake the most dangerous of missions. This no doubt gained him admiration, and in double measure, since he was a man who fought alongside us and yet he was a foreigner. He was a profound man, whose spirit overflowed with dreams of battles all over the continent. He was a man who consistently showed a spirit of altruism and abandon: Always ready to take on the most difficult task and risk his life.

He earned the rank of commander and leader of the second column that was based in Sierra Maestra. Here he grew in stature and earned a reputation as a brilliant soldier in a war that would take him to even greater heights.

Che was a peerless soldier and peerless leader. From a military point of view, he was extraordinarily capable, courageous, and aggressive. His only weakness as a soldier was his excessive taste for attack and obliviousness to danger.

Our enemies can draw whatever conclusions regarding his demise, but Che was a lord of war! A master guerrilla! And he had limitless faith. He showed this on two specific occasions: The first was when he traversed an entire island at the head of his column, not knowing where he was going and achieving, Like Camilo Cienfuegos, a remarkable military feat. Again during the incredible campaign in the province of Las Villas, he mounted an audacious attack, and infiltrated a town defended by heavy artillery, tanks and several thousand infantry… with barely three hundred men. These two campaigns cemented his status as a unique leader, an exponent of revolutionary war craft.

There are those who, in his heroic and glorious death, try to debunk the truth and validity of his ideas on guerrilla warfare. A true exponent can die in his craft, especially one as dangerous as revolutionary war. But what will never die is the craft to which he dedicated his life and mind. What is so strange about an artist dying in his work? To tell the truth, it is surprising that he did not die earlier, on the numerous occasions when he risked his life for our revolution. And how many times did we prevent him from risking his life on minor skirmishes?

And so it happens, that in one of the many battles he waged, he lost his life. We do not know enough to understand the circumstances of this last battle, to judge whether he acted with excessive courage. But yes, we reassert that as a guerrilla, his Achilles heel was precisely his excessive audacity and disregard for danger. It is on this score that I differed with him, because for me, his life, his experience, his leadership qualities, his prestige, and all that he embodied alive, were worth much more than he considered himself.

What shaped his character most profoundly however, was the idea that men possess a value that is relative to history, the idea that causes are not defeated when those who champion them fall, that the inexorable march of victory continues, and will not stop because the leaders die. This is a fact: Who can dispute it? This is evidenced by his faith in people, in ideas, in leading by example. More so, as I said a few days ago, how we wish it was him who was victorious, to see him lead the victorious march, under his command. There are too few men with his experience, his vision and unique capabilities. All the same, we know how to appreciate his example and we cherish absolute conviction that his example will be followed and will inspire similar men to lead the people.

It is not easy to find as many qualities in one person as Che possessed. It is not easy for one to develop into a man such as him. I must say he was a difficult man to measure up to, and impossible to surpass. But I will say that men like him have an ability to inspire similar qualities in others.

In Che we admire not only the accomplished fighter. We admire the fact that he was able to, with just a handful of men, fight against an entire oligarchic army under the control of Yankee imperialism and supported by neighbouring oligarchies.

Searching the pages of history, one would probably not encounter another example of one who stood with so few against such mighty forces. This demonstrates Che’s self-belief, belief in others and their ability to fight for what’s right. Our enemies believe they debunked his general concept of the guerrilla, by having defeated his ideas on revolutionary armed struggle. All they succeeded in doing, with a stroke of luck, was to end his life. We do not know to what extent even this stroke of luck was aided by Che’s excessive enthusiasm that I have spoken of, and was evident even during our own liberation struggle!

In the battle of Dos Rios, the apostle of our liberation Jose Marti was killed. In the battle of Punta Brava, Antonio Macco, veteran of a hundred battles, was felled. In this nature of struggle, many patriots die, but this has never signalled an end to the Cuban cause. The death of Che, as I have said, is a hard blow, a terrible blow for the revolutionary movement. Through his death we have lost our most experienced and capable leader. But those who believe that we have lost his tactical genius, his ideas on guerrilla warfare, are wrong. The fallen mortal, who was always at the mercy of bullets, was a soldier, a leader a thousand times more capable and worthy than those who, by a stroke of luck, killed him.

How then shall the revolutionaries face this blow? How do they face this loss? What would Che say if he could speak about this loss? Speaking at the Latino-American Solidarity conference, he said, ‘If somewhere in the world death comes unexpectedly upon me, I shall welcome her, as long as my war cry is heard by another ear, and another hand takes up a weapon.’ The war cry will not be heard by one ear, but by a million willing ones. And it is not one, but a million hands inspired by his example that will reach out and take up arms! New leaders will emerge. Eager men with attentive ears and ready hands will need leaders. Those leaders will emerge from among the people like they have done in all revolutions. Admittedly, they will never see as gifted and experienced a leader as Che. Nonetheless, these new leaders will be formed and hardened in battle and emerged from amongst the millions of keen ears and willing hands that will reach out to take up arms.

We do not seek to imply that Che’s death will have an immediate effect on the revolutionary struggle. Not even Che envisioned an immediate victory from his battles against oligarchies and imperialism. His revolutionary spirit was prepared for a long struggle – five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, if necessary. It is within this perspective that we must understand the invincible force of his legacy.

Those who rejoice in Che’s death seek in vain to deny his successes and leadership qualities. Che was an extraordinary military leader. But as we remember Che, when I think of Che, it is not essentially of his military qualities. No. War is a means and not an end. War is an instrument in the hands of the revolutionary. Revolution is the goal. It is in the realm of ideas, feelings and virtues, and acute vision that the loss of Che hits us hardest.

Che embodied a rare range of virtues within him. He was a man of absolute integrity, of unfailing loyalty, of total sincerity, a stoic and Spartan man, a man of blameless conduct. When a man dies, there is a tendency to give speeches extolling his qualities. Rarely, however, can we extol them as truthfully as we do here with Che. He was a true example of revolutionary virtue. But he had another quality, besides his intelligence, willingness, experience – his heart. He was extraordinarily human and sensitive. For this reason, I reflect on his life and conclude that Che was indeed a rare man. He brought together the revolutionary virtues, sensitivity, and iron character, a will of steel and incredible tenacity.

To future generations he bequeaths a heritage of experience both on the battlefield and in the intellectual domain. He wrote with classic virtuosity, and his accounts of battle know no equal. His intellectual depth was impressive. He wrote with gravitas, and I have no doubt that some of his writings will live on as classics in revolutionary thought. His vigorous mind leaves us with a multitude of mementos, accounts of events that would otherwise have been forgotten.

As a tireless worker for the fatherland, he never took a day off. He took on numerous responsibilities: Head of the central bank, head of the planning commission, minister for industry, head of the military divisions, leader of political, economic and social delegations. His versatile mind allowed him to tackle any task. He ably represented the country at numerous international conferences, in the same evocative way he spoke to his troops under enemy fire. It was with the same assiduous approach that he served as a model worker at the head of every organisation where he was deployed. For him, there were no days off, no moments of respite: Passing by his office, I would see lights burning late into the night. He was always working or studying, or both. He was a tireless reader of everything.

His thirst for learning about the human condition was insatiable. He sacrificed sleep to study, and on statutory holidays he threw himself into voluntary work. He was the inspiration for, and the leading example of volunteerism, which is today shared by thousands across the country and continues to grow.

As a true revolutionary communist, he had an infinite faith in moral values and conscience. For sure, he believed that moral resources are the leaven of communism in human society.

He thought, debated and wrote prodigiously. On a day such as this we must acknowledge one fact: The writings of Che will have a perpetual place in the history of the Cuban revolution and of Latin American. The value of his ideals as a man of action, as a thinker, as a moral beacon, as a man of spotless moral virtue and conduct has universal value.

The imperialists sing songs of triumph over the death of Che the guerrilla; the imperialists celebrate the stroke of luck that handed them this redoubtable soldier. Perhaps they forget – or pretend to forget – that the soldier was only one facet of this great man. And when we speak of the pain of loss, this pain is for the loss of not only a soldier but a man of virtue and exquisite humanity. Our pain is of a lost intellect, and this is our greatest loss. It hurts us that he was only 39 when he died, and yet there was so much more that we would have reaped from him.

I know well the extent of the loss to the revolution, but this is also the weakness of the imperialist enemy; they believe that by eliminating the man they have also killed his ideas, virtues and his example. And they believe it so firmly that they shout it out loud, as if it was the most natural thing to kill him after wounding him in battle. They see nothing repugnant in their actions and admit it openly. As if it was their right as oligarchs and mercenaries to kill a captured enemy combatant. Worse yet, they explain why they did it – that bringing Che to trial would have caused undue attention, and that it would have been impossible the contain the presence of such a revolutionary in court. And worst of all, they hid his remains.

Whether or not it is true, they announced the incineration of his remains, showing their fear, their lack of conviction that by killing the man they killed his ideas as well.

Che perished championing the cause of the oppressed and exploited of the continent: Che died for the humble of the earth. The commitment with which he waged this battle is beyond the question, even for the most callous of his enemies.

Those who follow and live by his example, and fight for the downtrodden arise each day among the people. The enemy has realised this: It will not be long before they realise that Che’s death was a seed from which many of his kind shall sprout. I am convinced that the revolutionary cause on the continent will sprout from his death: That the revolutionary cause in Latin America will survive this blow.

From a revolutionary perspective, from our perspective, how can we learn from Che’s example? Maybe we believe we have lost him? It is true that we shall no more read new fruits of his pen, neither shall we hear his voice. But Che left the world a heritage, a rich heritage, and as the children of this country, we are the most privileged heirs. He left us his revolutionary ideals, his character, his will, his tenacity and his love of work. In one word, he left us his example. Che’s example must serve as an ideal for our people!

What should our revolutionary soldiers, our men conform to? No question, they should be like Che! What should the men of our future generations conform to? Like Che! How should our sons be educated? They must be educated in the spirit of Che! If we seek the model of the future man in every sense, this model must be Che! And with all our revolutionary vigour we wish that our children become like Che!

Che has become the ideal man, not just for our people but also for the whole of Latin America. Che exemplified revolutionary stoicism, sacrifice, tenacity and work ethic in the purest form. He practised Marxist-Leninism in its freshest, purest and most revolutionary form. Nobody has, to this point championed the internationalist cause of the proletariat better. This, above all else, is the example of Che!

In his heart and mind, Che had no veils, no prejudices no egotism or chauvinism: He was ready to shed blood for all peoples. He shed blood on Cuban soil when he was wounded in combat, fighting for the freedom of the exploited and oppressed. He shed blood in Bolivia for the downtrodden. He shed blood for all the people of America. He shed blood in solidarity with the Vietnamese by combating the oligarchies of Bolivia. It is for this reason, Comrades, that we must look to the future with resolve, decisiveness and optimism. We will always look to Che’s example for inspiration in battle, in tenacity and resolve in the face of the enemy, and inspiration in the spirit of internationalism.

Tonight, through this massive display of recognition, incredible in size, in discipline, and in devotion, we show our people’s ability to honour our fallen comrades, we honour those who have served us, we show our solidarity with the revolutionary struggle. We show that we will forever hold aloft the banner and the principles of the revolution. Today, in this memorable moment, we lift our spirits to Che with absolute optimism in the definitive victory of the people. We say to him and all those who have fallen by his side, ‘Until victory, always!’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Fidel Castro Ruiz was the leader of the Cuban Revolution. This speech was his first official homage to Che Guevara, at the official announcement of his death. This text is an extract from ‘Eulogy for Che Guevara by Fidel Castro’ (Eric Losfeld, 1968).
* Translated from French by Josh Ogada.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Legitimating common property in Africa and the Nobel Prize

Korir Sing’Oei

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60172

cc D DennisWhile the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama has understandably enjoyed the lion's share of media comment, Elinor Ostrom's success in jointly receiving the economics prize with Oliver E. Williamson may well prove of greater significance for Africans, writes Korir Sing’Oei.

Much time has already been spent in justifying or dismissing President Obama’s selection for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. In contrast, little attention has been paid to the other Nobel awardees, particularly Elinor Ostrom, the 73 year old woman professor of development economics at Indiana University, who together with Professor Oliver E. Williamson, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. I argue here that the choice of Ostrom for this important award is perhaps more significant for Africa’s poor than the recognition bestowed upon president Obama, our collective pride for the latter’s international respect notwithstanding.

Since the 1960s, the predominant policy prescription for ensuring the sustainable exploitation of land resources in Africa has been the individualisation of land held under custom. This move was largely driven by neoclassical economists led by Garrett Hardin, who called his famous 1968 essay on shared resources 'The tragedy of the commons'. Hardin persuasively argued that a shared village grazing pasture would tend to get overused and eventually destroyed because more people utilised the common grazing ground without paying for the cost of maintaining it, a phenomenon known in economics as free-riding. This view has inspired a variety of land reforms with a general trend toward market-oriented access to, and the privatisation of, land through private entitlement. The premise was simple: individualised tenure offers the best certainty in land rights, which provides incentives for sustainable use and facilitates access to credit for investment in agriculture and natural resources, hence contributing to increased productivity and improved natural-resource stewardship.[1] Evidence now suggests that this individualisation of common property has neither yielded the economic and environmental returns envisaged nor improved living standards for those affected. For instance, according to Rutten, a Dutch scholar who undertook extensive research work in Kajiado – one of the three Maasai districts in Kenya where the individualisation of title was pursued through the establishment of group ranches with funding from the World Bank and DfID (UK Department for International Development) – grazing land had reduced by well over 40 per cent over the period 1982 and 1990, leading to increased vulnerability and destitution of pastoralists,[2] not to mention accelerated wanton environmental degradation.

By awarding Ostrom the prize, the Nobel Committee has peradventure indicated that a paradigm shift has occurred and that in fact Hardin's famous tragedy of the commons theory should no longer be treated with reverential deference. Consequently, the developmental superstructure based on Hardin’s theory must yield to more cooperative property regimes. Ostrom’s research suggests that far from a tragedy, the commons can be managed from the bottom-up for a shared prosperity, given the right institutions. In her study 'Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action' (1990), based on numerous case examinations of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, Ostrom observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterises the rules that promote successful outcomes. On this premise, she proceeded to propose eight 'design principles' of stable local common pool resource management, most of which principles are not too dissimilar to those already in place in pastoral commons in the Sahelian regions of Africa.[3] These Sahelian common property systems, now codified as 'pastoral codes' for instance, allow for the surveying, mapping and recording of 'all forms of existing and practiced land rights, such as they are perceived and presented by the holders of these rights themselves'.[4] Ostrom’s proposals suggest that while markets can organise production and consumption pretty efficiently, they can only do so when supported and nurtured by networks and communities. In Ostrom’s thesis therefore, private associations often, unaided through the instrumentality of state legislation, have managed to avoid the tragedy of the commons and develop efficient uses of resources.

The recent adoption by the African Union (AU) of the 'Framework guidelines on land policy in Africa' under the guidance of the late Professor Hastings Okoth Ogendo and the ongoing attempts by UN-OCHA (United Nations-Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and the AU to formulate a continental policy on pastoralism suggest increasing macro-policy recognition of the importance of common property regimes and, implicitly, the fact that standing on Hardin’s postulates is no longer holy ground. Similarly, the current emphasis on participatory forest management points to the importance of local community cooperation as the singular logic in sustainable environmental resource use. This is in contrast to the individual-responsibility models of the last three to four decades post-independence. Coming hot in the heels of these developments, Ostrom’s Nobel prize should serve to catalyse efforts aimed at the protection and promotion of indigenous systems of resource utilisation in Africa.

Because the resilience of indigenous systems of land management have time and again proven that commons do not have to end in tragedy, Ostrom’s Nobel is well-deserved. More importantly though, her prize is deserved because the utilisation of her economic theory will unlock the potential of common-property regimes which, if better deployed, could serve to ensure a more people-centred face of national development in Africa. Such a shift will protect vulnerable communities and individuals from the unchecked market and environmental shocks that presently imperil their existence and threaten global food security.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Korir Sing’Oei is a co-founder of CEMIRIDE and an international human rights lawyer with a focus on indigenous and minority rights law and policy.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] Economic Commission for Africa, Land Tenure Systems and their Impacts on Food Security and Sustainable Development in Africa (2004), p 15.
[2] M.M.E.M., Rutten Selling wealth to buy poverty : the process of the individualization of landownership among the Maasai pastoralists of Kajiado district, Kenya, 1890-1990 (1992, Verlag breitenbach Publishers, Saarbrücken, Fort Lauderdale)
[3] Volker Stamm Darmstadt, 'New Trends in West African Land Legislation? The Example of Cote d’Voire and Mali' available at http://www.iied.org/publications>
[4] Id.

West oppresses Ethiopia through Zenawi support

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60199

cc WikimediaWestern governments continue to support Meles Zenawi’s dictatorship because they believe that there is ‘no alternative in the opposition’, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. But not only could this diplomatic mindset have ‘devastating consequences on Ethiopia’ by providing the moral justification for totalitarianism and a police state, it also makes the West complicit in the sufferings of the Ethiopians under Zenawi’s government, Mariam argues.

‘No alternative in the opposition,’ they whispered anonymously. What a disgusting phrase to use in justifying support for a ruthless dictatorship. That is apparently the scuttlebutt on Embassy Row in Addis Ababa. Reuters’ Barry Malone reported last week, ‘Most Western governments want Meles to continue because there is no alternative in the opposition. As long as the elections are semi-democratic, they'll probably stay quiet, keep giving aid, hope for liberalisation of the economy and leave full democracy for later.’ Is this the ultimate proof of the triumph of Western moral relativism, hypocrisy and skullduggery in Ethiopia and Africa? Is this the new 21st century Western paradigm of moral capitulation and appeasement of evil? Is the West going to a moral hellhole in a hand basket?

We now have a clear answer to a question that had puzzled us for the past two decades: Why do Western governments and their multilateral lending institutions support Zenawi’s dictatorship with billions of dollars in loans and foreign aid? Answer: Because ‘there is no alternative in the opposition!’ Why do they turn a blind eye to the gross violations of human rights in Ethiopia? Turn a deaf ear to the bootless cries of the thousands of Ethiopian political prisoners rotting in Zenawi’s jail? Pretend to be mute on Birtukan Midekssa’s unjust imprisonment? Prop up a regime that ruthlessly decimates its opposition, crushes the free press, chokes civil society organisations, squanders and defalcates foreign aid and loans and lords imperiously over a famine-ravaged country? Why do ‘most Western governments want Meles to continue?’ Answer: ‘Because there is no alternative in the opposition!’

It is agonising to finally come face to face with the banality of depraved Western diplomatic indifference in Addis Ababa. It is heartbreaking to learn that Western governments have earnestly resolved to humanise and normalise a brutal regime while preaching to Africans in forked tongue that their dictators are on the wrong side of morality and history. They shed crocodile tears for the victims of African dictators. They comfort the helpless and frightened African masses with sweet words of hope and grand promises of democratic renaissance. Now we have come to find out that the hypocrites are secretly in bed with the very dictators they condemn in public! It must be true that ‘politics makes for strange bedfellows.’

The ‘no alternative in the opposition’ Western diplomatic mantra and mindset could have devastating consequences on Ethiopia and other African countries suffering under the stranglehold of dictatorial rule. It means the seeds of the rule of law will die on the barren soil of African dictatorships; that totalitarianism and police states are morally justified and compelled in Africa whenever Western governments conclude there are ‘no alternatives in the opposition’; that state-sponsored violence and repression are necessary moral imperatives for the nurturance of an ‘emerging democracy’; and that dictatorship is necessary to save Ethiopians, and Africans in general, from themselves. Simply stated, the triumph of dictatorship in Africa is a necessary precondition for the rapture of democracy in Africa. Such has become the pitiful logic of moral decay and duplicity of Western governments in Africa today!

Of course, the whole notion of ‘no alternative in the opposition’ is absurd and patently false in its premise and conclusion. There is definitely a viable alternative in the opposition in Ethiopia, but Zenawi ruthlessly eliminates and roots out any opposition before it poses a real challenge to him. Birtukan Midekksa and her Unity, Democracy and Justice party represent a viable opposition; but a year ago Zenawi jailed Birtukan for life on the ridiculous charge of denying a pardon. Medrek, an alliance of eight parties, is a viable opposition, but Zenawi refuses to jointly develop a consensus-based election code of conduct with it. He wants to shove down the opposition’s throat his own self-serving election code of conduct while grandstanding for Western governments that he is willing, ready and able to have free and fair elections.

Zenawi has completely paralysed the real opposition by intimidation and brutal repression. Just last week, ‘documents were given to Reuters by four opposition parties listing [450] prisoners’ names, the dates on which they were arrested and the jails in which they were being held.’ Gizachew Shiferaw, deputy leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party told Reuters, ‘These jailings stop our members running in elections. It has become a strategy for the ruling party. Ethiopia is a one-party state.’ The All Ethiopia Unity Organisation has recorded seven politically-motivated murders of its members over the last 12 months. Last month, Ethiopia’s former president, Dr Negasso Gidada, presented a mound of anecdotal evidence documenting the complete absence of a ‘level playing field’ for the 2010 ‘election’. If there is ‘no alternative in the opposition,’ as the Western governments claim, it is because a real opposition cannot survive in a totalitarian police state! In the Catch-22 diplomatic netherworld of Addis Ababa, the strategy is obvious: ‘It is better to deal with a devil you know than an angel you do not know.’ In Ethiopia’s case, one must grudgingly give the ‘devil his due.’ For the past two decades, Western governments have been confounded, hoodwinked, bamboozled, bluffed, duped, manipulated, seduced, beguiled, flimflammed and sandbagged by a master of deception into believing that there is ‘no alternative in the opposition’.

But the canard of ‘no alternative in the opposition’ could mask something more sinisterly selfish. Western governments apparently have their eyes transfixed on getting a lion’s share of the ‘lucrative telecommunications and banking industries in a nation of more than 80 million people’ and ‘exporting commodities and exploring Ethiopia for probable oil and gas deposits.’ They are scared that ‘if the opposition takes power, the future would be uncertain and investments delayed as foreign governments and lenders jostle for influence.’ Hidden under the thick layers of hypocrisy is a deliberate decoupling of dictatorship from democracy and good governance and a coupling of calculated long-term economic interests with the strengthening of a stable dictatorship to advance a scheme of globalised economic exploitation in Ethiopia. In the old days, they called such things neocolonialism. It is not clear what they call them these days, but there is no doubt that Ethiopian democracy and the Ethiopian people are held hostage in the grand cut throat global competition for oil, gas and exports.

Western governments and multilateral lending institutions know better. As President Obama said, ‘Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men.’ Or in the common idiom, ‘It is not about the man. It is about the plan.’ They should be engaged in institution building, not armour-plating the clenched fists of African dictators. They should use their financial leverage to help build strong multiparty institutions, facilitate clean fraud-free elections, establish structures of accountability, institutionalise the rule of law, fortify the protection of human rights and strengthening civil society institutions in Africa. That’s how viable alternatives in the opposition are created, nurtured and sustained in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa.

It is a truism to say that full democratisation will take time in Africa. There will be many uncertainties and obstacles to Africa’s democratic development. Having an ‘alternative in the opposition’ is not a panacea to Ethiopia’s decades-old problems. Any ‘alternative’ to dictatorship in Ethiopia would have to deal with the legacy of human rights violations, economic mismanagement, corruption and the social chaos spawned by the dictatorship’s catastrophic ‘ethnic federalism’ programme. There will be many false starts and trials and errors on the road to democracy under an ‘alternative opposition.’

Western governments should be careful not to cerate and perpetuate an insidious myth that Africa has no alternative to dictatorship. It is psychologically devastating to tell 80 million Ethiopians that Western governments will support Zenawi’s dictatorship because they believe there are ‘no alternatives in the opposition.’ Such a callous and cold-blooded attitude conveys a defeatist message to Ethiopians. It sends a signal that Ethiopians should abandon all hope of freedom and democracy because they are doomed and destined to eternal dictatorship.

This attitude inherently de-legitimises, disregards and ridicules the efforts of emerging opposition groups, and effectively tranquilises them into stunned silence, depriving them of the confidence needed to stand up for democracy, freedom and human rights. Iron-fisted dictators will no doubt be emboldened by this windfall of appeasement. Ultimately, this attitude of do-nothing-now and turn-a-blind eye to dictatorship will undermine the long-term policy interests of Western governments in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa by incapacitating them from using the vast financial leverage they have to aid Africa transition from dictatorship to democracy and pursue their geopolitical interests.

None of the foregoing is intended to suggest the Ethiopian opposition is blameless. Those genuinely in the opposition must accept responsibility for their inability to come together and articulate a vision for the country. They deserve blame for squandering valuable opportunities to build organisational alliances, develop alternative policies and train young leaders. Of course, there have been Judases in the opposition who have been willing to sacrifice the cause of democracy on the altar of dictatorship and kneel down and kiss the blood-drenched hands of Herod for thirty pieces of silver. But that is no excuse for not closing ranks against dictatorship now, and presenting a united front in support of democracy, freedom and human rights.

The catchphrases bandied around in the Western diplomatic cocktail circuits in Addis Ababa today probably go something like this: ‘Democracy is a dead end road in Ethiopia. Dictatorship is the beacon of light for Ethiopia’s future. Forget about the famine, human rights violations, corruption and the rest of it. Ethiopia is doomed because she has ‘no alternatives in the opposition!’

Excellencies, it is said you will support Zenawi’s dictatorship ‘as long as the [2010] elections are semi-democratic’. To believe a dictatorship can be semi-democratic is to believe a woman can be a little bit pregnant. Do not deceive yourselves, and do not write us off just yet. In the long run, Ethiopians, and Africans in general, will receive the blessings of democracy by evolution or revolution!

For now, we want you to know that Ethiopians are double victims of crime. They are victimised by dictators who have perpetrated upon them crimes against humanity with impunity. They are also victims of the crime of depraved indifference to their suffering by those who continue to coddle, aid and abet the criminals who have committed upon them crimes against humanity.

Let it be known that we make no distinctions between the two types of criminals. Excellencies, that is why every patriotic and human rights-loving Ethiopian shall face you in righteous indignation, and charge: ‘J’Accuse!’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Nigerians: Desperately seeking exile

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60178

cc ShawnLooking back at the immense optimism Nigeria's citizens felt for their country in the immediate post-colonial period, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde stresses that former pride has been entirely replaced by a pervasive desire to escape into 'exile'. In the face of corruption and poor healthcare and education, the average Nigerian cannot help but lament an absence of opportunities. This reality notwithstanding however, Abidde argues that it is incumbent upon Nigeria's youth to shape a better future for themselves and their children.

Two recent news items caught my attention: 'Desperate to go abroad' (Vanguard, 25 October 2009) and 'Nigerians, others top list of asylum seekers' (Guardian, 27 October 2009). Quoting United Nations’ statistics, the Guardian wrote: 'Pounded at home and desperate to keep hope alive, Nigerians are among the top nationalities fleeing their own country and seeking asylum in industrialized nations … by the end of the first quarter of 2008, 2,471 Nigerians had been registered, while for the same period this year, that number is now 3,793.' No numbers were given for asylum seekers in developing countries.

The Vanguard tells us that: 'the desperation on the part of many Nigerians to travel out of the country is believed to have reached an alarming level in recent times … visits to some embassies in Lagos revealed scenes of absurdity involving many Nigerians, both young and old, desperate to flee their country … always a crowd of visa seekers jostling and fighting desperately under the sun or rain to be attended to … the visa they seek is as important as the Holy Grail, which explains why they are prepared to sacrifice anything, including their dignity, comfort and personal safety in their quest for it.'

In a recent essay, I wrote: 'Although conditions differ from one country to another, by and large, what we have is a continent where a sizeable number of the people – especially those between the ages of 18 and 45 – cannot wait to go into exile. They cannot wait to get out of their respective countries. Nigeria is an archetypal example of a country where, if embassies assured travel visas, 70 per cent or more of the college students would leave on their own volition.' The general conditions are also dire for non-students. The fact is that the practical reality of everyday life in Nigeria, for most, is that of misery and nothingness.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Things are so bad and sad and unfortunate and incomprehensible that, Sonala Olumhense, one of Nigeria’s great commentators, is calling for a revolution of some sort. But of course, things have been getting worse by the month every year for the last 30 years. Really, Nigeria is a sad and sorry case. Our nationalists endured all kinds of maltreatment, inconveniences and deprivations at the hands of colonial Britain so that we and the coming generations might have a better life, a life of great possibilities and boundless opportunities.

There were political miscalculations here and there, challenges here and there, but for the most part the early years of our independence were periods of immense optimism and sanguinity. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we were going to extend the frontiers of knowledge, and we were going to go into the world and make our country and the global community a better place for all. It was wonderful to be a Nigerian. And for a long time, our presence was felt in all the great institutions of the world. Within two generations – four at the most – Nigeria was going to be a member of the industrialised community. We had the human and natural resources. The energy and the creativity were also there.

But it was not to be. Painfully, the civil war came, followed by several years of military coups. In between, there were civilian administrations that were no better than military autocracies. Into this mix of maladministration were several incidences of religious and ethnic cataclysms, corruption and various forms of political malfeasance. Gradually the political space became corrupted by men and women with no regard for the law or for ethics and morality. With no sense of nationhood, or of belonging to a caring nation, the people became detached, and in some cases, turned against the government and its institutions.

Almost 50 years after Awolowo, Dappa Biriye, Azikiwe, Osadebay, Balewa, Ikoli, Enahoro and hundreds of extraordinary men and women risked their lives so that Nigerians could be free from the manacles of humiliation, servitude and oppression, we are back where we started, struggling. Today we struggle against tyranny and want; we struggle against fetid social conditions and diseases; we struggle against ignorance and mental slavery. We struggle for the most basic of all basic human needs. And so, one cannot but believe that the goal and the labour of our nationalists have been wasted.

THE PUSH FOR EXILE

Today’s Nigeria does not even resemble the Nigeria of the 1960s and 1970s. Optimism has faded. In so many ways, one feels sorry for the next generation. To think we are not leaving a better life and a better legacy for them is just so painful, unconscionable. You look around the country, and you wonder: what does this country have to offer? For instance, the educational system in 2009 is not even half as good as that of earlier times. The country cannot boast of a quality healthcare system. Its network of roads and bridges and rail lines cannot be considered 'modern' in any sense of the word.

The political system is such that it does nothing but encourage corruption, mediocrity and third-rate leadership. The entire system – economic, cultural, social and political – stifles creativity, brilliance and good citizenship. We have a country where, unless you are of the wealthy and/or influential class, you, beginning at age 16 or so, know and believe that Nigeria is a wasteland, with nothing to offer. And so you plan. You scheme. You cast your mind to a country or group of countries where you could realise your full potential, a country where you can be more than your raw self. At that age, you know that Nigeria is just a space, a mere space. Not a country that cares.

And even if you had managed to achieve a measure of success, by the time you turn 45 or 50, you may come to the realisation that you have wasted the last 25 years of your life, doing and achieving nothing of substance. No job security. No investment portfolio. No retirement benefits. Nothing! You get desperate. You look into the future. What you see – assuming you see anything – is bleak. You look at your children and wonder if they too will go through a similar life experience you’ve had. You wonder and you panic. At midlife, you may begin to plan for a life in exile.

A BLEAK FUTURE

You plan for a life abroad. At 40, 45 or 50, you become a stranger in a strange country. For some, the immigration process can be easy and smooth. They may have all the paperwork and have a family abroad that will accommodate them and show them the ropes. For the vast majority, however, they may have to take the illegal or not-so-easy route. Year after year, hundreds die crossing the Sahara Desert. Hundreds get arrested and are incarcerated in various African countries. Hundreds lose their lives crossing turbulent seas. Hundreds get enslaved or go into prostitution in various African and European countries. Either way, lives are lost and shattered; hopes and aspirations abridged.

That is the destiny for some Nigerians. Their country failed them and they may also fail abroad. But does it matter? No! What matters is that they get the hell out of the hellhole called Nigeria. At that point, all they want to do is turn their back on a country that has turned its back on them. The destination of choice for most is the industrialised countries of the West. In recent years, Eastern European countries also feature prominently on the list. Within the African continent, South Africa and Ghana are the two top destinations, otherwise, any country will do – Iraq or Iran or Pakistan, Iceland, India or Malaysia, Burkina Faso or Chad, Mali or Madagascar. It doesn’t matter. Overseas is overseas. Anywhere but Nigeria will do.

In their desperation – and because embassies in Nigeria have sensed the desperation of many Nigerians – they are subjected to all manner of ill-treatment. By all accounts, some embassies have taken to treating visa-seeking Nigerians as though diseased or less than human. Dogs and cats in America and Britain are treated far better than most Nigerians who visit these embassies. I don’t know what the requirements are for gaining entry into the kingdom of God, but whatever the requirements may be, they surely must be less stringent when compared to the sadistic hoops and loops at these embassies. In spite of all the abuse and dehumanising treatments, Nigerians still flock to these embassies.

THE FUTURE OF NIGERIA

It wasn’t too long ago when people flocked to Nigeria. That was the time when Nigeria was the place to be, when Nigeria was considered the Mecca for all black people and people of various colours and nationalities. We have lost that aura, that power. The country has been in decline and is declining fast. It was David Brooks who said: 'Centuries ago, historians came up with a classic theory to explain the rise and decline of nations. The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.'

Nigeria was tough-minded and energetic, no doubt about that. Without going through any of the predictable stages, it, in a spate of 35 or so years, found itself in decadence and decline. This was a great nation – at least potentially a great nation – but one that has now become a tragedy, a calamity, a wasteland.

In spite of the ongoing reality, and in spite of one’s sense of loss and disillusionment, one has to be hopeful about the future. However, the future of Nigeria lies in the hands of the younger generation, mostly the under-45s. But they must truly want their country back and in the process redesign the type of country and system they want for themselves and their children.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Sabella Ogbobode Abidde 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.

Hardships faced by transsexual people in Kenya

Audrey Mbugua

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60177

cc WikimediaReferring to the misunderstandings, discrimination and at times outright hostility faced by Kenya's transsexuals, Audrey Mbugua discusses the day-to-day hardships faced by transsexual people in the country.

The term 'transgender people' refers to those who identify with a gender identity and role different from the one assigned by birth. Among transgender people is a group referred to as 'transsexual people' which consists of individuals suffering from severe dysphoria and social and occupational functioning as a result of their assigned sex at birth. This dysphoria, which some refer to as 'transsexualism', is the most severe form of gender-identity disorder. It is also crucial to note that transgender people can identify themselves as transsexual people.

Transsexualism is a highly misunderstood subject in Kenya. Some conflate it with inter-sexuality and hermaphroditism. Inter-sexuality consists of an array of conditions in which an individual is born with ambiguous genitalia or with atypical karyotype. Hermaphroditism on the other hand denotes the existence of both testicular and ovarian tissues in an individual. Inter-sexuality and hermaphroditism are an array of atypical sex development and differentiation, while transsexualism is the cacophony between one's self-identity as male or female and one’s anatomical sex.

Transsexualism is also conflated with homosexuality. Homosexuality refers to same-sex attraction among humans and animals. Transsexual people can be homosexual, heterosexual, asexual, pan-sexual or bisexual, just like diabetic or cancer patients. It is regrettable that a section of Kenyan society has mounted a misguided moral horse and subjected people to gross human rights violations because of the sex of people they love.

The management of transsexualism is in many nations of the world guided by the internationally renowned Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for the Management of Gender Identity Disorders. These stipulate issues such as the diagnosis of transsexualism, readiness criteria, the triadic treatment regimen, post-care, the qualification of healthcare providers offering care and support and much more.

Transsexual people face an array of hardships in Kenyan society. The mundane activities of life can best be termed a matter of life or death for transsexual people. Lack of information about transsexualism is still one of the major reasons for the stigma and shame that transsexual Kenyans suffer in silence. Parents of transsexual children will normally interpret cross-gender identification among their kids as signs of homosexual inclinations. To discourage this the children end up suffering physical and verbal abuse from their parents.

Hostility from members of the public against transsexual Kenyans continues to be the hallmark of transsexual people's lives. These can take the form of name-calling, physical assaults, rape and the destruction of one's property. The excuse Kenyans give to justify such hostility is that transsexualism is un-African and un-Christian and so must be discouraged within Kenyan society. It is often too sad because people have come to accept such lame excuses to commit crimes. Religious and cultural fundamentalism plays a big role in promoting and condoning these dehumanising acts.

Transsexual Kenyans face entrenched prejudice in Kenya’s medical sector. Despite incessant requests for medical services such as hormone therapy and sex-reassignment therapy, government officials and public hospitals continue to play the dirty games of tossing transsexual people from one government official to another. Discrimination in the medical sector is both overt and covert. For example, there was an incident of a chief executive officer of a hospital cancelling gender-reassignment therapy for a 25-year-old transsexual woman and asking her to have her parents send him a 'no objection' letter. This individual then revealed in the company of his friends that he will never allow his hospital to change what God had created. Public offices should not be allowed to sponsor people’s religious beliefs. It is unacceptable in a sane, civil and democratic nation, and the perpetrators of these injustices should be sacked and imprisoned. There is no room for religious fundamentalism in Kenya.

Let me remind these people that although the constitution gives them the right to worship whatever they find divine, it does not grant them the right to shove their religious doctrines down people’s throats. Religion isn’t a cough syrup to be shoved down people’s throats. It's just a horrible mind virus with a remarkable psychological appeal and fecundity.

The Kenyan police has gained a reputation in the transgender community for violating their humanity and dignity. There have been numerous cases of police officers beating up transsexual Kenyans, both on the streets and within police stations. Arbitrary arrests are not uncommon and so are cases of sexual assaults and rape in these police stations. It becomes too depressing when prisoners in police custody have resorted to protecting transsexual inmates from police officers.

Discriminatory policies, laws and practises also despoil the lives of transsexual Kenyans. The policy that birth and academic certificates can only be issued once to an individual and that no amendments can be made to these documents is a case in point. A grace period of one month is granted by the Kenya National Examination Council after issuance of academic certificates. One month is not enough to undergo gender transitions. And consider the fact that there are transsexual people who transition later in life. These laws and policies need to be reviewed to integrate transsexual Kenyans, otherwise what we have is tyranny against transsexual Kenyans.

Kenyans as a society haven’t made the situation any easier for transsexual people. Cases of members of the public orchestrating violent attacks against transsexual Kenyans are too tragic. There are no sober reasons for such attacks other than the obligation of Christians or Muslims to 'safeguard the morals of Kenya’s society'. It might be worth mentioning that this is the worst form of naivety among humans. Richard Dawkins states that, 'That alternative source (of morals) seems to be some kind of liberal consensus of decency and natural justice that changes over historical time, frequently under the influence of secular reformists.'[1] No human (worth their salt) needs God’s love letter to humanity to know that messing with the weigh machine in a butchery is wrong. You have a brain that tells you it's wrong. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone reading these is an earthworm or a plant. Put yourself in the shoes of other people and you will get the logic.

Crude reductionism towards transsexual Kenyans is another reason for the myriad problems faced by transsexual Kenyans. The example of a government official working with the Ministry of Medical Services justifying the withdrawal of medical services from transsexual people – with the callous statement that 'transsexualism is not killing Kenyans so we don’t have business treating transsexual people' – is plainly barbaric. What sort of a mentality is this? How do we humans end up surrendering our ability to be compassionate and responsible for such idiocy? Unless one is too hungry to be an imbecile then I don’t understand why we have become so crude.

Additionally, consider the hostility some doctors face from their colleagues whenever they try to offer the right medical services to transsexual Kenyans. They range from being threatened with the sack, to transfers to remote areas of Kenya and smear campaigns. It is unacceptable and the government should crack the whip and get rid of these errant civil servants. We just can’t have any patience for such sloppy thinking.

This hostility is further replicated by a section of Kenyan society. Consider this, if an astrophysicist explained the process of stellar nucleosynthesis in a documentary aired for Kenyans to learn, nobody at any level of ignorance would get away with criticising the lecture for simple reasons of 'gut feeling' or the 'Bible' (but I won’t bet on this one) or because it is unnatural. But put a psychiatrist in a similar situation and have them explain gender-identity disorder and its management and they become a subject of criticism, even from the pets of extremists. And that’s not enough. These bigots expect their criticism to be taken seriously otherwise there’ll be trouble.

Prosperity is not something nations achieve by denying justice and equality to a section of their population. You don’t become immortal because your stripped a transsexual person in the streets. You don’t add a kilogram because you denied a transsexual Kenyan medical services. You don’t become handsome because you denied a transsexual person employment. You get nothing by subjecting people to human rights violations. Instead, you break people's dreams and aspirations. You tear people’s last shreds of hope for a better tomorrow, all for nothing. Is it really necessary?

We reach out to you Kenyans who have purposed to respect human life, and also to those with bitter minds against innocent Kenyans. By the way, you would be screeching were such violations directed at you. I urge you all to focus on the problems that are interwoven in the fabric of our lives. We all pay taxes for the services we demand from government institutions. You may need dialysis services and such are non-existent or are inaccessible because of cost implications. But medical services are not luxuries; the government should support you when you can’t support yourself. The same applies to diabetic and cancer patients. We all have a right to medical services irrespective of what other people’s sky gods think. Let's think before we act.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Audrey Mbugua is a member of Transgender Education and Advocacy, a Kenyan organisation formed to address social injustices committed against the country's transgender community.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTE
[1] When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf: The Alleged Separation Between the Two is not Tidy
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_18_2.html

Adokiye Amiesimaka: The man who told the truth

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/60174

cc DeF ForumFollowing the revelations around the true age of Nigeria under-17 captain Fortune Chukwudi, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde writes in full support of the honesty of one of the player's former coaches, Adokiye Amiesimaka. As Amiesimaka faces ridicule and defamation of character, Abidde decries the behaviour of the supposedly religious individuals attacking a man who was only telling the truth.

The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) has been caught with its pants down. The Eaglets Skipper, Fortune Chukwudi, is said to be at least 25 years old, and not 17, as the NFF and the national team claims. For a country trying to re-brand, trying to clean up its image, this has to be a terrible blow to the face and chin. In one fell swoop, Nigeria’s image sinks deeper into the cesspool.

There is a contradiction, an ironic twist, to the over-age saga. Most Nigerians, privately and publicly, are quick to point to their religiosity. Usually the first to point to their born-again status, or to having a direct phone line to God, they usually cannot wait to shoot themselves in the foot. They cannot wait to expose their hypocritical nature. And as usual, they will not take the blame for their personal and official irresponsibility. They have God to blame or to praise for everything under the sun – even if God had no hand in it.

From all indications, the Nigerian Football Federation is made up of Muslims and Christians. Considering the nature of the country, vis-à-vis religion, one can safely assume these are men and women who attend church and mosques on a regular basis, and who wear their religions on their sleeves. As is the practice in some government ministries and government agencies, one can safely assume they hold prayer vigil at the NFF too.

The Qur’an, we are told, says, 'Truly, Allah does not guide one who transgresses and lies' (Surah 40:28). In the Hadith, Mohammed was quoted as saying: 'Be honest because honesty leads to goodness, and goodness leads to Paradise. Beware of falsehood because it leads to immorality, and immorality leads to Hell.' Two other passages in the Qur’an are also instructive: 'Cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is)' (2:42), and 'Take not your oaths, to practice deception between yourselves' (16:94). One wonders if the Muslims within the NFF who engaged in this deception and falsehood, read or are familiar with these passages.

Luke 16:10 tells us that 'Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.' We trusted the NFF to be honest with us and with the international community, but see what they’ve done? They lied! Heb. 13:18 wants us to 'conduct ourselves honourably in all things'. We also know, as Prov. 12:22 tells us, 'Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.' And then this, from Rev. 21:27: 'No one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into heaven.' The Christians at the NFF, Coach John Obuh and the members of his team must have read these passages too. God’s injections must not be taken lightly.

We know Coach Obuh to be a Christian. We know because the Vanguard newspaper, in 'Obuh takes eaglets to church for Thanksgiving' (1 November 2009), reported that, 'after guiding the Golden Eaglets to a hard-fought 2–1 win over Argentina, Coach John Obuh took time to attend a special thanksgiving service to God at an Abuja church'. The coach was reported as saying: 'Without God, there is nothing that one can achieve. How far and how well we have fared can be attributed to the divine handiwork of God … today is my day to give thanks to God and I know that I would have more reasons to give thanks to God in the future.' I hope he confessed to God for this grand deception.

Now that the Nigerian Football Federation and the Golden Eaglets have been caught with their pants down (for lying and for rubbishing Nigeria’s image), they have decided to shift the blame, refused to take responsibility, but have instead blamed the truth-teller. The move is in full gear to attack, to condemn and heap vituperations on the man who dare tell the truth, Adokiye Amiesimaka. As a result of his moral and enviable act, he has now become the object of hate, ridicule, and slander by the Nigerian Football Federation.

At a time when the nation is expending a lot of resources on re-branding our country, men and women like Mr Adokiye Amiesimaka should be commended, honoured and emulated. He has not committed a crime – be it legal or ethical. The current attacks against his person and reputation are therefore unwarranted. All he has done is appeal to our conscience, to our moral base. All he has done is help us believe in ourselves that we need not cheat in other to win sporting championships. He is telling us that, as a nation striving to be great within the international system, integrity matters.

If we allow duplicity within the sporting arena, what hope do we have in the economic, cultural and political arena? If the establishment turns a blindeye to the transgression of our young minds, what then do we expect of such men and women when they grow up and are in a position of authority? This is the time to re-brand and reorient our youth. If we lose the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) championship, that’s fine. If we win, that’s also fine.

Win or lose, we must be confident in our ability; we must be proud that we played the game according to laid-down principles. Why celebrate a winning performance that’s based on duplicity? This, in essence, was what Amiesimaka was getting at. He deserves our collective praise, not condemnation.

But no, for speaking the truth, he has now become the target for crucifixion. Is this the type of nation we have become, a nation of liars? Are we saying it is now acceptable to lie and lie and lie until the last man lies? And that it is okay to lie and to deceive not only ourselves, but the international community. When Coach Obuh went to church to speak to God, to give thanks, he also lied to God. Three or more of those players also lied to themselves and to their country. They lied to FIFA and to all those young boys and girls who look up to them for inspiration and as inspirations.

For those who lied, why didn’t their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews say something, anything? Didn’t their pastors and imams and teachers know? Any one of them could have told the truth, but none did. instead, all partook in a mass deception. Instead of accepting the blame, they now want to shift culpability on a man who decided to tell the truth?

According to newspaper accounts, Adokiye Amiesimaka asserts that 'In the 2002/2003 season, I was chairman of Sharks Football Club of Port Harcourt. I decided to have a feeder team of fresh school leavers not older than 20 years. One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-called Under 17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old… If we are not utterly irresponsible, how can he be eligible for this tournament when he is not less than 25 years old now?'

Coach John Obuh and his technical team could not have perpetrated and perpetuated this scam without the active connivance of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the sports ministry. Reacting to the scandal, acting General Secretary of NFF Musa Amadu said: 'We are not claiming to be perfect, as that is a virtue that belongs to only the Almighty God. But Nigerians are aware of the efforts we made to ensure that we put forward a genuine team.' No one demanded perfection, only honesty – which is one of God’s injunctions.

Other than the bold-faced lies and their habitual lying, the NFF is now accusing Amiesimaka of evil designs, claiming that a man who decided to tell the truth – a moral and ethical action members of the NFF seem totally incapable of – wants to destroy the Golden Eaglets and Nigeria’s reputation. Which is more egregious to a nation’s reputation, lies or the truth?

Musa Amadu went on to say: 'We are only stunned that there are Nigerians who so passionately hate their own country, simply because they are not at the helm… We should learn to celebrate excellence some of the time, not trying to bring down other people all the time. Has Amiesimaka been obsessed with so much hatred for our successful players because he never played in the World Cup? It is possible.' What nonsense! Who hates his country more, the truth-teller or peddlers of falsehood?

Along with Musa Amadu, others, including Taiwo Ogunjobi and his posse of impostors, are now accusing Adokiye Amiesimaka of the 'destroy them by-all-means' syndrome, instead of being grateful to him for being truthful and upright. How could a man who spent the better years of his life in the service of Nigerian sports and the judiciary be so accused of 'discrediting Nigerian football' as Ogunjobi has alleged. Now, who is a credit to Nigeria? Document forgers or the harbinger of truth?

In recent years, many Nigerians, privately and publicly, have been acting as though they are more catholic than the Pope, more saintly than St Michael, more righteous than the righteous ones in all the Abrahamic religions. These are people, including Musa Amadu and Taiwo Ogunjobi, who may have knowingly engaged in fraud. Yet they have the temerity to accost a truth-teller, a man who has for several decades been a credit to the country.

The action of the Nigerian Football Federation, directly and indirectly, encouraged older boys to falsify their age; their incompetence made it possible for deception to take place; their inaction made cheating FIFA possible. Collectively, the actions and inaction of the personnel in and within the Nigeria Football Federation has made a nonsense of Nigeria’s re-branding efforts. We speak of re-branding, of a new image, yet we made it possible for the global community to deride Nigeria. We owe Adokiye Amiesimaka a world of gratitude.

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* Sabella Ogbobode Abidde 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.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea

Why Guinea’s Camara is unlikely to surrender any time soon

Joseph Kaifala

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/60193

cc WikimediaThe international community’s hasty decision to investigate Guinea’s Captain Camara for crimes against humanity has led to serious setbacks in solving the country’s political crisis, Joseph Kaifala argues in Pambazuka News. Since the only way for Camara to avoid trial at the International Criminal Court is to remain in power, it’s unlikely he’ll be willing to relinquish his military dictatorship any time soon, says Kaifala.

The problem with the international community is that it is either acting too slowly, with unnecessary consultations taking the bulk of its time, or acting too swiftly without proper thinking. The latter has been the problem with international response to the situation in Guinea. While the crisis warranted severe international condemnation, the hasty move to openly commence investigation for crimes against humanity, which means possible indictment for Captain Dadis Camara, has led to serious setbacks in finding solutions to the current political crisis. One would think that the international community is aware of this scenario by now.

Captain Camara knows, from the experiences of Charles Taylor on the one hand and Omar al-Bashir on the other, that the only way one can possibly escape the arms of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is to remain in power, especially when such power is sanctioned by the military. Proper thoughts on the part of the international community would have revealed that one does not invite a handshake with a fist. The international community’s call for Camara to be tried for war crimes, even before completing the investigation of the atrocities committed on 28 September this year, seems to me like a sentimental approach to a complex political problem. Their actions risk putting Guinea on track for many more years of military dictatorship.

The hasty actions were spearheaded by former colonial master France, especially by foreign minister Bernard Kouchner. This makes me wonder, as Camara might be thinking, whether the entire condemnation from France is just a 21st century revenge for Guinea’s 20th century rejection of La Republique when everyone else was falling for it. The massacre in Guinea obviously warrants judicial action, but the international priority should have been luring Camara out of power and reconstituting a democratic process in Guinea, as they did so well in the case of Charles Taylor and Liberia. But whether it was due to French interest in prosecuting their former recalcitrant child or the recklessness of international thinking, the consequences of their haphazard solutions will be far-reaching for Guineans. One thing is for sure, Camara is not going to offer himself as a sacrificial lamb out of fear from international sanctions.

Here is my revelation to those trying to find solutions to the crisis in Guinea. Camara is in the typical dilemma of standing between the devil and the deep blue sea. He could surrender and join his comrades in The Hague, or stay in power and risk becoming a pariah state. Of course the latter really just affects innocent civilians, such as those in Darfur or Harare. There will still be some clandestine international commercial desperados out there wishing to supply weapons and food in exchange for some of Guinea’s precious resources. Therefore, my suggestion to anyone with the goodwill to want to help ordinary Guineans, is to forget the easy and futile talk of sanctions, and focus on attractive solutions that can get Camara to hand over power.

The international community should put a halt to possible indictment for crimes against humanity until they find a solution to the future governance structure of Guinea; otherwise they might as well give up altogether. No amount of outside sanctions is going to threaten Camara, certainly not one from Ecowas or the African Union. A commission consisting of opposition leaders and members of the junta should be established to come up with recommendations for the way forward, and please, while you’re at it, no more power sharing deals.

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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.

The Commonwealth: Promises, promises

R. Iniyan Ilango

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/60179

cc J HarneisWith this year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) fast approaching – in the year of the 60th anniversary of the institution no less – the Commonwealth needs to do much more in support of civil society and the protection of human rights, writes R. Iniyan Ilango.

This year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) takes place in the year of the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth. For the past six decades, notably since the 1970s, every CHOGM has seen the Commonwealth taking a progressive stance on human rights. Eighteen years ago, at the 1991 CHOGM in Harare, the Commonwealth reiterated past promises and enshrined them in the Harare Declaration as a 'fundamental political value' of the Commonwealth. Four years later in 1995 the CHOGM in New Zealand created the Millbrook Action Plan to operationalise the Commonwealth’s fundamental values and ushered in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), a group mandated to act on serious and persistent violations of the Commonwealth’s fundamental values. Fourteen years have passed since then, yet much of the Commonwealth, which contains about a third of the world’s population, is still bedevilled by egregious human rights violations and lack of freedoms. The CHOGM promises nevertheless have continued unceasingly throughout the 1990s up till now.

Upholding human rights commitments is a fundamental imperative for any partnership that aspires to create equitability and sustainability in the future. The Commonwealth’s record in this regard is disheartening. For example, while the 2007 CHOGM at Kampala and the 1999 Law Ministers Meeting underlined the importance of access to information, so far only 15 Commonwealth countries have access to information laws in place. Twelve years ago in 1997, the CHOGM at Edinburgh expressed the belief that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would be an important development in the international promotion of the rule of law, yet 23 Commonwealth countries have yet to ratify or accede to the Rome Statute.

Two years ago in 2007 at Kampala, the heads of government pledged to end impunity for perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Throughout 2008 and most of 2009 numerous allegations of serious international humanitarian law violations were made against Sri Lanka, and serious doubts were raised about the way the country had conducted its campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Yet despite these doubts the country continued to sit as a CMAG member for a third consecutive term, this against the decision of the 1999 CHOGM in Durban that countries should be allowed to sit on CMAG for only two consecutive terms.

The 1999 CHOGM at Durban, the 2002 CHOGM at Coolum, the 2003 CHOGM at Abuja, the 2005 CHOGM at Malta and the 2007 CHOGM at Kampala have all reiterated the importance of civil society participation. However, the Commonwealth’s own meetings are yet to achieve even the degree of transparency and civil society participation that has become the norm at the United Nations and other intergovernmental organisations. In the meantime civil society in Commonwealth countries continues to suffer. Human rights defenders in particular find their activities restricted and curtailed by sometimes subtle, sometimes draconian, legal regulations that target their ability to engage in activities to promote and protect human rights. Drawing attention to human rights violations, calling for change through peaceful assembly and documenting and disseminating information on human rights violations are central to the work of human rights defenders, yet these activities are often criminalised in the Commonwealth. The latest outburst from President of the Gambia Yahya Jammeh, calling for human rights defenders to be killed, indicates what civil society in the Commonwealth has to deal with. As yet reaction from the Commonwealth to the president’s statement has ranged from muted to non-existent.

On 21 October, as in years past, the Committee of the Whole (CoW) met in London to set the agenda for the CHOGM. It is of utmost importance that the CoW takes into account the fact that as long as human rights commitments remain unfulfilled it will be impossible to build partnerships for equitable and sustainable futures. The CHOGM should recognise this and create the necessary infrastructure to practically achieve past promises in a quantifiable manner. Benchmarking and reporting mechanisms which have so far been scanty in the Commonwealth may be useful in such an endeavour, as well as providing a standard against which applications for membership of the Commonwealth can be objectively assessed. Rwanda’s application for membership will be considered at this year’s CHOGM, but there has been a failure to judge the country against the highest human rights benchmarks in the enthusiasm for Rwanda’s membership.

2009 to 2011 is a historic time for the Commonwealth as 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the organisation and 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Harare Declaration, and the Commonwealth should use this period to demonstrate that its human rights promises really do hold water.

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* R. Iniyan Ilango is a consultant with Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's Human Rights Advocacy Programme.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Zambia's government is the problem, not the media

Henry Kyambalesa

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/60176

cc EdanWhile the Zambian government is seemingly content to make nonsensical noises on the subject of the country's Freedom of Information (FoI) bill, it should accept critical perspectives as the words of people who love their country, writes Henry Kyambalesa.

The statement made in the Zambian parliament recently by Vice-President George Kunda – that the government was treading carefully on the Freedom of Information (FoI) bill because it could be used for espionage by irresponsible and unpatriotic media houses – does not make sense. State secrets are not supposed to be made available to the media even if the bill was to be enacted.

Besides, voices of dissent and criticism of the government come from citizens who love their country. There is a need for George Kunda to avoid using rehearsed statements designed to brand Zambians who are critical of mediocrity in the governance of the country as being unpatriotic citizens. We are fed up of such language, which was often used during the UNIP (United National Independence Party) era, and which has now been adopted by the MMD (Movement for Multi-party Democracy) government.

In fact, the preoccupation by President Rupiah Banda’s administration with enacting legislation designed to regulate the operations of NGOs and the private media is a clear case of misplaced priorities. Zambians have now become tired of asking MMD leaders to address their demands on the government. Among other things, Zambians want a smaller and more efficient government, free formal education, merit-based scholarships for vocational training and university education, low-interest educational loans, free life-saving healthcare for all Zambians, greater and sustained food security and greater employment opportunities.

Moreover, they want lower PAYE (pay-as-you-earn) and value-added taxes, lower interest rates, safer local communities, improvements in garbage collection and disposal, improved socio-economic conditions in rural areas, improved public infrastructure, lower water charges and electricity tariffs, a system of justice that is free and impartial in both word and deed, greater care for children and the handicapped, a genuine effort to address the scourge of corruption, sustained protection of the fragile natural environment, and consolidation of our oneness and common future as members of the Zambian family.

Criticisms of the MMD government by some segments of Zambian society are clearly a result of the government’s failure to address these demands. If the government can start tending to these demands and set timeframes for meeting them, they will be surprised how quickly the criticisms will subside and give way to genuine praise from both the private media and the general public. It is as simple as that.

Private media institutions are, therefore, not the problem. It is an inept government that is actually the problem, a government that has clearly failed to address the sources of discontent among citizens and continued to castigate the private media through which such discontent is expressed.

If Zambians expect the Banda administration to address their basic needs, they are fooling themselves. They will eventually realise that they have government leaders who are more interested in lining up their pockets and the pockets of their kith, kin and sympathizers.

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

Citizens must speak out for better Nigeria

Babatunde Oyateru

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/60196

cc J BrackenApathy and a failure to speak out on the part of Nigeria’s citizens is fuelling the country’s leadership crisis, Babatunde Oyateru argues in this week’s Pambazuka News. Exhorting his fellow citizens to hold their political representatives accountable, Oyateru says: ‘We do not whisper, we should not cower, we should let our voices ring so loud … so that the generations that come after us will not have to scream, but sing songs of a delivered Nigeria.’

Nigerians are not without hope or agenda. This story is far from finished; we cannot now tire of telling it. This is not to disallow for opinion or dissent – with a population of over 140 million, every man and woman is a political party unto themselves. However with the ink barely dry on the page, we cannot now stop telling our story. A story the way we want it, a story that you want to leave the next generation, to cheer, caution and cajole them.

And there it is, there it lays, here revealed is the problem. We are not writing this story, there are no more complete characters, and there is no sense of a plot, just a serial set of anti-climaxes, a resolute band of plot twists. We cannot remain absent in the character build-up and expect a rebounded Nigeria. Once more, this is not to disallow for a discount on government, but if we hold statistics and numbers to reason, government in all its might, its personnel, isn’t now nor has it ever been, a quarter of our population.

So it remains a case of many continually following few. Even Goliath must have had his lucid moment. Somewhere between being pelted with the fear of God, and submitting to the ground, he must have had it cross his mind, just how his significantly smaller opposition floored him. It feels like we have been in free-fall for 40 something odd years now. Between the buckling of its knees and the exact moment when the feet give way, the giant Nigeria still hasn’t figured out what tipped its balance, and the floor is getting awfully close.

I have not missed the larger point of Goliath being felled by divine intervention. I have witnessed our leadership, there isn’t anything divine about it, but I will concede they need intervening. So, apathy can no longer remain a fashion-statement or ‘cool’ for the larger population. Apathy is only permissible for teenagers, who by biological requirement and temperamental inclination, are about everything and nothing all at once. That’s fair, they belong to the ‘whatever’ generation. Perhaps also, apathy wears well on hippies, who despite their best herbal wishes of sticking it to the ‘man’ fail to stick anything, and that’s fair. It’s hard to stick anything to anything when you have to filter through many images, unicorns, trolls, smurfs et al. Stereotypes are apparently permitted too.

However apathy cannot, does not, wear well on a general population. Teenagers that have grown into adults can no longer disassemble themselves from a process that will hold the future for our own born or unborn teenagers. A random sample will reveal that most constituents do not know who or where their representatives are – this writer included. We cannot become adhesive to the ‘man‘ and the many men and women behind him without active participation.

Any nation deserves the government it gets. True. And while many will attest to the fact that that we didn’t put them our government in place, we have yet to remove them from place – acceptance by tolerance. There are countless arguments for not acting; and they will forever remain that – arguments, blessed by distant, spaced arm-chair quarter-backs, forever agitated, forever one step behind indecision, forever academic.

Ours is the never-ending Cinderella story, we have been waiting for our pumpkin to change to a carriage for a mighty long time. Nothing. Time and lesson are allowed to tell us to carry the bloody pumpkin to the market and trade it in for a decent carriage! To admit that we have a constant leadership problem is to admit that we also have a constant followership problem. If the citizenry have not engaged actively in a process, then they share in the results from that process, or maybe more precisely, lack of results thereof.

Nigeria has been asking questions for a long while now, and we its citizens have remained quiet, the country is not telepathic. We cannot continue to be mute; the reluctant whispering of 140 million is not the same as the consonant bellowing of several millions. ‘The Man’ has built himself a Jericho, raising its walls, shielding himself from the harsh Nigerian rays, allowing the walls to cast the perfect shadow for him. He has laid his walls with sharp objects, not because he fears that if were to be mounted he would be in serious danger, but that the faces of his constituents might remind him of his duties.

These walls will not fall with knocking on the doors, or worse still silence. We should bellow till the walls around his Jericho submit, and he is exposed to the same rays, and in the Nigerian faces he has hidden from so deftly, he remembers his call to duty. Silence is the best answer for a fool. True. Only when that fool, has not been in your way for 49 years. If he has, then the larger question should be who is the fool? Silence is not our best answer. We cannot remove ourselves from the problem, if we have not attempted to be the solution.

A thief is the mystery, the fellow or lady that you cannot identify, not the lad that lives down the street who you know, whose car, house and luxuries you have admired. Silence in the face of brazen thievery means acceptance. Time shouldn’t have to wait for some distant, removed self-described freedom-fighter journalist to denounce them – these men and women exist in most neighbourhoods, call them their names, not under whispered breaths. It is only fair; everyone wants to be recognised in their function and duties, they deserve credit and recognition. Thieves!

We are a beautiful people, borne to a beautiful nation. We do not whisper, we should not cower, we should let our voices ring so loud, that the nation expels the last contents of its lungs, so that the generations that come after us will not have to scream, but sing songs of a delivered Nigeria. Our range is limited, our choice short. There are no alternatives, this is not a drill. Nigeria must work. A crowd of single-minded people has more command than they realise – it is the fellow that has to stand in front of one to address them, that understands how much they can move.

Fortunately, the good architects at whatever foreign firm charged with building our national assembly – after all it is Foreign Direct Investment – designed the offices and lobbies of the assembly to hold more than one person at a time. The import of this is that the structure will not collapse if it were to be overwhelmed with an unprecedented number of constituents visiting their representatives, in essence performing the task it was purposed for.

Never a silent people, our countenance in the face of our collective national paralysis is curious. Observing Nigerians closely or from a distance, which might be the preferable, given the many decibels we can congregate when we feel cheated or slighted – observe the Lagos Taxi driver, hell observe any Lagos driver! Observe the Igbo spare parts dealer – stereotypes apparently are also observed – defending to the death his right to add hidden cost to his products to an irate customer. Consider Iya Temedun, who will swear to her Lord and all the many other Gods that are either married to, or gave birth to her God that her fellow shop owners have violated the market women’s code of professional and ethical conduct – which they were all given during their market women induction course – by stealing her customers. Watch the Alhaji that will disrobe himself and sharpen verbal daggers when a negligent driver grazes his Honda car. He himself in his misery will neglect that he was grazed by a Mercedes and the owner of the car is well within means to compensate him.

These are all Nigerians, and are more likely to keep silent when Nigeria continues to ask her questions. Perhaps you could even argue that because a contract exists between parties, or because there is an expectation or a hope, they are more vested. But when leaders enter service, that is a contract, and we are to expect and hope from them, how much more do they need to do before they get the attention they deserve? What happened to our national righteous indignation?

These leaders owe us nothing more than we owe ourselves, no one takes from you what you are vowed not to release. Every country owns its story – it should decide its own plot and twists, the full volume of its content and the development of its character. Nigeria continues to have the trappings of a bestseller, but continues to read like the never sold single-print paperback novel, growing dusty on the back shelves.

It is time that our leaders are informed that Nigeria as it is written now is not being bought. We are not buying. There remains a problem with leadership, and it is not being solved by followership.

Maybe this is just being overdramatic; perhaps there is no need to make noise or be active citizens, after all silence is not all that bad. In the silence of an entire nation, when all that is left is the hollow sound of the absence of a national conscience, we will all be able to place clearly, the rasping painful respirations of an already ailing giant.

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* Babatunde Oyateru has a Bsc in International Relations and an MSc in Business Management. He worked for a period as a management consultant in the Republic of Ireland and has relocated back to Nigeria.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Fahamu seeking program manager

Nairobi, Kenya

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/60222

Fahamu is seeking an experienced programme manager in its Nairobi office to take responsibility for managing its growing portfolio of projects. Please send your CV, cover letter and names of three referees to: winnie@fahamu.org Applications close 27th November 2009. This is a full time position. Competitive salary commensurate with experience.
Fahamu is seeking an experienced programme manager in its Nairobi office to take responsibility for managing its growing portfolio of projects. Reporting to the Deputy Director, you will be responsible for:

• Development and management of an effective project and financial management system
• Ensuring timely submission of reports from the field or from partner organisations
• Supporting staff in the planning and implementation of project activities
• Preparation of financial and narrative reports to funders
• Liaison with funders in relation to project implementation
• Preparing monthly project management reports, including financial management accounts and cashflow forecasts
• Assisting with the development and submission of proposals to relevant funders
• Such other duties as may be required from time to time by mutual agreement

You must:
• Have at least five years experience in a similar position in an international organisation
• Have demonstrable project management skills
• Be highly organised and able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Be experienced in analysis of project expenditures in multiple currencies and in the preparation of variance analyses
• Have an excellent knowledge of project budget preparation
• Have a working knowledge of NGO accounting
• Have excellent writing and communications skills
• Be experienced in communicating with funders
• Be able to work with people from diverse backgrounds and who are located at a distance or in other countries
• Be proficient in the use of word processing and spreadsheet software
• Be based in Nairobi with the ability to travel when necessary

Please send your CV, cover letter and names of three referees to: winnie@fahamu.org

Applications close 27th November 2009.

This is a full time position. Competitive salary commensurate with experience.

About Fahamu:

Fahamu is a pan-African organisation that supports the movement for social justice in Africa. We work with social movements that address the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. Fahamu seeks to nurture these movements to become significant agents for change by enhancing individual, collective and organisational leadership, skills and knowledge, as well as by creating platforms and networks for effective advocacy, enhancing the use of diverse and innovative tactics and strategies for change, and amplifying Africa centred voices, perspectives and solutions.

Badilisha Poetry X-Change

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/60220

cc Badilisha

Badilisha! Poetry X-Change ° produced by the Africa Centre°, is an international poetry project based in Cape Town, South Africa. For the past 5 years poets from around the world and across the African continent have been featured at our annual festival engaged with wider audiences and local poetry networks via dynamic interactions in the form of workshops, discussions and multi-media collaborations. Badilisha! Poetry X-Change is now proud to announce a brand new dimension to the live poetry project. We are soon to launch Badilisha!
Badilisha! Poetry X-Change ° produced by the Africa Centre°, is an international poetry project based in Cape Town, South Africa. For the past 5 years poets from around the world and across the African continent have been featured at our annual festival engaged with wider audiences and local poetry networks via dynamic interactions in the form of workshops, discussions and multi-media collaborations. Badilisha! Poetry X-Change is now proud to announce a brand new dimension to the live poetry project. We are soon to launch Badilisha!
Poetry.com an online poetry radio station which will produce weekly podcasts of poets from Africa and the Diaspora. Our blog will also facilitate relevant poetry discussions and open the way for continued conversation amongst poets featured on the podcasts, greater exposure of the work of African poets to the world and to each other. South African writer and performance poet Malika Ndlovu will present weekly shows. At our Africa Day celebration this past 25th May, guest poet Uche Nduka reminded all “Africa is alive wherever Africans are living.” In this spirit, BadilishaPoetry.com aims to encourage, expose and celebrate the work of African and Diaspora poets, answering to the need for an Africa-centred platform where these African voices and works from all over the globe can be accessed and enjoyed, as well as serving as a networking space for these artists within and beyond the literary arena.
We hope that you will be as excited as we are about this initiative and we would like to invite you and/or your poetry network to submit recordings of their work to BadilishaPoetry.com for podcasting. Although the site will only be active from end November 2009 we are researching and connecting with the wealth of African & Diaspora poets in advance, to ensure that we have a steady flow of rich and diverse voices and styles represented.
See submission criteria and process below.

A. Submissions Guidelines
Poet/Poetry Selection Criteria
1. Poet being resident in Africa or be part of the African Diaspora.
2. Writing and Performance / Recital of the work being of a high standard with dynamic expression and strong vocal delivery.
3. Professional-quality recordings or private recordings including live performances , as long as the sound quality is not compromised
4. Music vs. Voice Only. While pieces that contain music are accepted, the poet’s voice and poetry content must be the core focus. Also, if the piece is more "sung" than"spoken", it is likely to be more appropriate for a music platform than this poetry portal.
5. Number of Pieces. We encourage poets to make more than one submission, up to and including entire poetry albums since this assists us in selecting the particular pieces best suited to our programme format. Some poets work may be featured three or four times each year, with pieces initially selected being broadcast in future programmes.
6. Transcripts and translations. Should your poetry not be written or recited in English, we require you to submit a good translation of the text or a summary (a minimum of 1 paragraph and maximum of 1 page) on the essential meaning of the poem and any other information you feel is relevant in terms of the content style and source/s of inspiration.
7. Additional Work Available. Poets wanting to be featured should be established enough to have an Internet presence where our audience can take the next step and learn more about them. Ideally, this means you have your own website/page containing your detailed profile and ideally products available i.e. CDs, books, etc. If you are a poet without a website/page or products available yet, we suggest that you establish at least establish a facebook profile or mySpace page with a few pieces of poetry posted to showcase more of your work.

B. How to Submit Poetry for Podcasting on Badilisha Poetry Radio
• Via a linked MP3 file: Use the "submit" link on http://badilishapoetry.com, where you can fill out a web form to make your submission. (Note: We don't charge a fee for submissions to Badilisha Poetry Radio) This process will expect you to have a downloadable MP3 file to which you can provide a link in the 'Linked MP3 file'. NB:
MySpace pages are usually not appropriate, since the pieces cannot be downloaded there. If you don't have a downloadable piece, consider one of the options below. Be sure to fill out the form completely.
• Via www.YouSendIt.com: If you don't have a direct MP3 link available, you can fill out the form at http://badilishapoetry.com/submit and then send the MP3 track(s) directly to http://badilishapoetry.com using www.YouSendIt.com This is a free service that will allow you to upload your file directly to us. Please be sure to add your full name and contact details in the YouSendIt message field.
• Via email: Fill out the form at http://badilishapoetry.com/submit and then send the
MP3 track(s) directly to project researcher Mimi Cherono Ng’ok mimin@africacentre.net . NB: Send only 1 MP3 per email to ensure that files are clearly identifiable and unlikely to result in timeouts during downloading. Please be sure to add your full name and contact details in the email message field.
• Via CD: You are always welcome to post CDs of your work directly to us. Be sure to include an e-mail address where we can contact you and/ or a website if you have one. Our address for sending CDs is:

THE PRESENTER: BADILISHA POETRY RADIO
C/O THE AFRICA CENTRE, 1ST FLOOR, 44 LONG STREET
CAPE TOWN, 8000, SOUTH AFRICA
Spread the Word!!!
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African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights statement on Gambia

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/60190

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
International Federation of Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture
Rencontre africaine pour la défense des droits de l'Homme (RADDHO)
Interafrican Union for Human Rights (IUHR)
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)


PRESS RELEASE

African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights

« We will not Participate in the 46th Session of the
African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to be held in The Gambia »


Paris, Nairobi, Dakar, Ouagadougou, Geneva, 11 November, 2009 – On September 21, 2009, appearing on state-owned radio and television, the President of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, threatened to kill anyone who sought to sabotage and destabilise his government, in particular human rights defenders and those who support them[1].

Considering it inadmissible that a President of the Republic threaten to undermine the physical integrity of human rights defenders with complete impunity, and recalling their support for the resolution adopted on October 11, 2009 by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) - the headquarters of which are in Banjul, The Gambia - on the deterioration of the human rights situation in The Gambia[2], our organisations will not participate in the 46th ordinary session of the ACHPR to be held from 11 to 25 November 2009, in Banjul. This decision has been taken in the absence of a change in the attitude of the Gambian authorities on the question of human rights defenders since President Jammeh's statements and in the absence of a public position of the African Union (AU) on these statements as well as on the possibility of transfering the headquarters of the ACHPR.

Our organisations are deeply concerned about the hostile context in which human rights defenders and journalists operate in The Gambia where hindrances to freedom of expression, arbitrary arrests and detentions, murders and judicial harassment against them are recurrent. We recall that the murder in December 2004 of the renowned Gambian journalist, Mr. Deyda Hydara, has not yet been solved. These violations blatantly contravene to previous resolutions of the ACHPR on the human rights situation in The Gambia, which called on the national authorities to “respect the rights of journalists and other human rights defenders”[3]. This blatant hostility against human rights defenders is moreover contrary to the headquarters agreement between the AU and The Gambia. Therefore, the maintaining in The Gambia of the ACHPR headquarters, the AU organ established to promote human and peoples' rights and ensure their protection in Africa, undermines significantly the credibility of this body which is an essential forum in which human rights defenders can express themselves.

Our organisations call on the Gambian President to withdraw his threats and to publicly declare his support to the work of human rights defenders. Our organisations recall that the Gambian authorities committed to guaranteeing the physical and moral integrity of the human rights defenders who will participate in the 46th session of the ACHPR[4].

Once more, our organisations call on the AU to firmly condemn the Gambian President's statements and to consider the relocation of the headquarters of the ACHPR to a state party which guarantees the respect of fundamental freedoms, in particular freedoms of expression, association, assembly and opinion so as to enable human rights defenders seeking to participate in the ACHPR sessions to express their concerns and recommendations on the human rights situation in their respective countries openly and without fear of reprisals.

Even though our organisations will not participate in the 46th ordinary session of the ACHPR, they will monitor the conclusions and recommendations resulting from this session. The ACHPR remains the fundamental body for the protection and promotion of human rights on the African continent.

Contact for the press: OMCT: Alexandra Kossin: + 41 22 809 49 39

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Kenya: Kibaki and Raila must cooperate with ICC

Partnership for Change

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/60198

Mwai Kibaki And Raila Odinga Must Cooperate With The ICC And Ensure The Special Tribunal Bill Is Passed And Enacted Into Law Within Two Weeks: Fail To Do This And Kenyans Will Starve Your Government Of Money.

A Statement by the Partnership for Change issued at Nairobi on 9th November 2009

We are fed up with war lord politicians. Kenya must comply with the Rome Statute by cooperating with the ICC, and cooperation extends to making arrests of the Masterminds behind the Post Election Violence which killed 1,133 Kenyans and displaced over half-a-million citizens in less than 60 days last year. We need to be clear to the Grand Coalition Government that there is no issue of choice here.

Reports in the Press today November 9, 2009 that Kenya may back out of arrest deal with ICC are disturbing to say the least. Who do these people think they are? Kenyans are not idiots to be joked around with by war lord politicians whose vision is one of greed and ruling by the sword. Kenya is a Democracy, where the Rule of Law must prevail at all times.

We wish to remind the two Principals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga that any attempts to derail the ICC will result in a direct indictment against them as individuals who would bear the greatest responsibility for their troops - in this case loose talking Members of Parliament, including Cabinet Ministers and senior Government officials who appear to making statements on their behalf.

We watched on television as Kibaki, Odinga and Ocampo briefed Kenyans on the outcome of their “constructive” discussions. These so called senior Government officials and ministers did not address Kenyans. Who are they to speak now? Whom do they purport to speak for? Kibaki and Odinga should take responsibility and sack anyone who appears to be contradicting the position they presented to Kenyans in the presence of the ICC prosecutor. Failing to act and allowing this irresponsible behaviour can only be construed to mean that these individuals speak on behalf of the Principals.

In such event, then Kibaki and Odinga should also be aware of Article 27 and 28 of the Rome Statute and that they would be facilitating the cover up of Crimes against Humanity. These two citizens, have a sacred constitutional duty towards facilitating justice for all in Kenya. They must not fail Kenyans. If they do they should be regarded as bearing the greatest responsibility for what happened in Kenya in January and February 2008, and face the Hague on the crime of obstructing justice. There is no such thing as power without responsibility.

There are others who are telling the International Community to “Shut Up!” Why? Why should they shut up? Is it because the International Community has taken a decision to support a law abiding public rather than Law breaking Senior politicians and Government Officials? Is it because these individuals believe they can act with Impunity and get away with it? If this is what they believe then they are badly mistaken. Kenya has changed. The sign of the times is that days are numbered for these kind of people in Kenya. They have no support among the Kenyan Public and can only flex muscle using stolen public funds without which they are just common thugs!

Parliament resumes tomorrow. What Kenyans want to see is a repeat of what we saw that afternoon in March 2008 when all members entrenched the National Accord agreement into our Constitution. Where NOT ONE member objected! We want to see the Gitobu Imanyara Special Tribunal for Kenya constitutional amendment bill passed – without amendments - and fast tracked and signed into Law on the same day! We know that this can happen and we are waiting to see which Member of Parliament will dare vote against a Special tribunal to try perpetrators of post election Violence. The ICC will in December decide the fate of the Masterminds. President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga are advised to ensure that this Bill is passed before the Appropriations bill currently before Parliament, failure to which, we the public will move to stop financing this Government by lobbying our MPs to block taxes to Government that does not listen to the wishes of its people.

The Partnership for Change, a non violent people’s movement for democratic change in Kenya hereby states as follows:

Cognisant that the Government of Kenya raises over 80% of its taxes through VAT – consumption tax, STATE: that if the two Principals, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga of the Grand Coalition Government fail to pass through Parliament and enact into law within two weeks the Special tribunal Bill, the Partnership For Change will ask all Kenyans to consider a National Boycott of all products that attract VAT. This is what every responsible Kenyan (every Kenyan – rich or poor - pays VAT) can do to end impunity in Kenya. It will send a very clear message to the Government that Kenyans want the National Accord reforms implemented.



Signed,
Partnership for Change
9th November 2009

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*This statement was published by Mars Group Kenya on November 9, 2009.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis Progress Report

Progress Report

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/60191

At the end of April 2008 the United Nations’ Chief Executives Board established a UN System High Level Task Force (HLTF) as a temporary measure to enhance the efforts of the UN system and International Financial Institutions in response to the Global Food Security Crisis. The mandate of the HLTF was to ensure a coherent system-wide response to both the causes of this crisis and its overwhelming adverse consequences among the world’s most vulnerable populations. The UN Secretary-General serves asask Force Chair with the FAO Director General as Vice-Chair.

Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA):

At the time the HLTF was established, many of its 22 member entities were already working to help responsible bodies to address both the immediate and longer term aspects of the food security crisis. They developed a Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA) as an overarching strategy for their work: this recognises the global threats posed by widespread food insecurity and outlines the comprehensive and coordinated approach required to ensure access to, availability and utilization of food. It details two sets of actions: those that contribute to short-term outcomes related to immediate needs and long-term outcomes needed for sustainable food systems that can withstand shocks associated with food price volatility, economic contraction, demographic change and adverse climatic events.

During the latter half of 2008 the UN Secretary-General introduced the CFA as the HLTF’s approach to increasing investments in agriculture, food security and nutrition and encouraged greater international support for country-led responses based on this comprehensive approach. He advocated a combination of investments – both to support the institutions that ensure social protection, safety nets and emergency food assistance and to support sustained investments in smallholder-based agriculture, reversing the decades-long decline in spending on food security both within national budgets and in international development assistance.

Assessing the Impact of the High Level Task Force:

This progress report describes the overall impact of work undertaken by the entities within the High Level Task Force since its establishment 18 months ago. It is also designed to enable assessment of the added value of the HLTF itself as a mechanism for intensifying and coordinating the work of the UN system, International Financial Institutions and other stakeholders. The outcomes spelt out in the CFA are used as a basis for assessing the overall impact of HLTF entities, and the HLTF’s programme of work is used as the basis for assessing its added value.

A concern about language

Paul Ssenteza

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/60203

Activists intimidated at national healing conference

Frances Lovemore

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/60204

Dear Sir,

I note that no mention is made of the two people who accompanied Mrs Sekai Holland to this conference [Zimbabwe: Healing, reconciliation and reconstruction], Mai Zembe and a lady by the name Kachakamadzo. These two ladies intimidated Gertrude Hambira and Jestina Mukoko at the conference, particularly over a DVD that they tried to show as part of their presentation.

On return to Zimbabwe, Gertrude Hambira, whose flight was delayed overnight, was greeted with the news that there had been an attempt to abduct her at gunpoint, and as she was not yet home, a shot was fired toward her husband, who was unable to physically produce her. Her five-year-old son and 70-year-old mother were in the house at the time. At present Gertrude and her family are in hiding in Harare. It is suspected that there is a direct link between the presence of these two ladies, and the attempt to abduct Gertrude.

It is worth noting that the Organ of National Healing has not commented on any of the violent acts that have occurred since its inception, not on any violent attacks on farm workers, union members (who have suffered gun shot wounds), activists or innocent bystanders. There has been no attempt to counter the profound hate speech and disinformation campaign being run by Zanu PF. There was no public comment from the Organ of National Healing when the Special Rapporteur on Torture was denied entry at Harare International Airport and was forced to spend the night in the airport lounge, despite having received an official invitation from Patrick Chinamasa, which was rescinded while he was in transit to Harare. The silence from the Organ in all of these events has been deafening. At present there is an MDC driver, who was abducted at gun point 10 days ago, and tortured while Manfred Nowak was detained at the airport, and remains without adequate medical treatment, in Harare Remand. All attempts to provide suitable treatment for his injuries have been thwarted. There is no method of requesting the Organ to intervene on his behalf.

I find it disturbing that ministers are granted public International platforms, when they refuse to tackle the very real issues of ongoing violence in Zimbabwe. The story of Gertrude Hambira is one that must be followed and investigated, if it is true that this attack occurred as a result of this meeting, then Ms Holland needs to comment publicly and apologise for the presence of her 2 associates.

* Dr Frances Lovemore is director of the Counselling Services Unit, Zimbabwe.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Congratulations to Abahlali baseMjondolo

Jacques Depelchin

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/60202

Election rigging no excuse for Kenya's post-election violence

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/60175

- International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor
- United Nations Secretary General
- African Union chair
- President of Kenya
- Prime minister of Kenya

Dear Sirs,

RIGGING OR STEALING THE ELECTION IN 2007 WAS NO EXCUSE FOR THE POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE

Since 1963 only three elections have been genuine, all others were rigged. Shortly after the 1963 elections, President Jomo Kenyatta declared himself president for life. Thereafter President Kenyatta continued to rig elections in favour of himself, his relatives and his friends.

When President Daniel arap Moi took over from President Kenyatta, he followed in the same footsteps. The only year the Moi regime allowed for a free-and-fair election was 1979. All other elections which followed were always rigged. The worst election malpractices and rigging in Kenya's history took place in 1988. Most prominent and popular Kenya politicians lost their political positions. In a conspiracy to ensure new faces in Kenyan politics, the Moi regime rigged out most Kenyans who were in politics at the time. Despite the disappointing scenario, those affected did not resort to killing others in the name of election rigging. They rescinded and regretfully accepted to live with their fate. Whether the 2007 elections were rigged or not, there was no good reason for any person or any community to go on a killing spree of other communities. Prior to the post-election violence, there was evidence of thorough preparation for war by the Kalenjin militia. Training camps were evident in different locations in Kenya where young Kalenjin men were being trained. Was the training done before the disputed elections associated with the rigged election?

If there was election rigging, it was done by senior Kenyan politicians. Why then did the Kalenjin youth attack ordinary innocent Kenyans? How were the children and women killed involved in the stealing of an election? Ordinary Kenyans exercised their democratic rights by voting peacefully in the 2007 elections. But immediately after going home after voting, they were attacked and killed on the grounds that they stole the elections.

President Moi knew exactly why a Kalenjin militia killed more than 800 innocent Kenyans in 1991. He had strongly warned of war and chaos prior to the killings. It is believed that most of those young men who killed Kenyans in 1991 were the same people who killed innocent Kenyans in 2008. One of the suspected organisers, financiers and sponsors of the post-election killings was a senior official of KANU '92 and one of the chief actors and commanders of the 1991 killings. The similarity of the methods of the killings in 1991 and 2008 and the reality that the attackers were the same in 1991 and 2008 provide an understanding of the reasons behind the continued series of killings since 1991. The 2008 killings were alleged on the one hand to have been associated with the land problem and on the other with the stealing of elections. The previous killings since 1991 were alleged to have been associated with cattle rustling, tribal clashes and ethnic cleansing. The uncertain, indefinite classification, references and renaming of the killings are an indication that the real reason behind the killings has never been revealed and/or understood. It has been as though some people somewhere had been trying all names to see which suit the attacks and the killings best.

But going by the warnings of war and chaos by Moi for two consecutive years before 800 innocent Kenyans were killed in 1991, one would deduce the actual reasons for the killings as those of fear of prosecution for past crimes, corruption and the introduction of the multiparty system of governance. This is what led to the birth of those killings in 1991. Rigging or stealing the elections in 2008 cannot be an acceptable reason for the killing of innocent children and women, as there had been worse scenarios of election rigging and malpractice before, and never had there been such chaos and killings. Why 1991 and why 2009?

Isaac Newton Kinity
Former Secretary General
Kenya Civil Servants Union and Chairman
Kikimo Foundation For Corruption and Poverty Eradication

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

Why Kenya needs to act on inequality

Samuel Abonyo

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/60195

The search for an equal society is perhaps futile. Some theorists like Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore even opine that social inequality is beneficial to society. But a society having too much inequality is doomed. That is why, unless we Kenyans radically reduce the horrendous inequalities afflicting us, our country is heading to certain doom.

Inequalities in Kenya, measured by income distribution, are so wide that even rabid advocates of inequalities cannot approve of them. According to the figures from the 1969 World Income Inequality Database V2, the bottom 10 per cent of Kenyans obtained 1.8 per cent of income. By contrast, the top 10 per cent got 54.9 per cent. The corresponding figures for 1999 were 0.76 and 42.7 per cent.
Poverty rates in Kenya are revoltingly high. In 2005, according to Growth, poverty and income inequality in Kenya: Suggested policy options, by Anthony Wambugu and Boaz Munga of the Kenya Institute for Policy Research and Analysis, 45.9 per cent of Kenyans were poor. And the population of the poor is swelling. The percentage of the rural poor rose from 46 per cent in 1992 to 53 per cent in 1997, and the percentage of their urban counterparts increased from 29 per cent to 49 per cent in the same period. Not surprisingly, poverty in Kenya varies with factors such as region, education, occupation, human capital and household size.

Regional variations in poverty constitute clear calls for action against inequalities in Kenya. With an estimated poverty rate of 74.9 per cent – a figure that is 52.6 per cent higher than Nairobi, which had the lowest poverty rate in 2005/2006, the year for which there are poverty data about all the provinces – North Eastern is being treated most unfairly. These highly aggregated figures, also obtained from the work of Wambugu and Munga, conceal more than they reveal about the contours of Kenyan inequality. But they clearly show how far Kenya has run towards death. And if Kenya does not pay heed to the voices telling it to fight inequalities, then, as Proverbs 29:1 says, it will ‘be destroyed, and that without remedy’.

To alleviate poverty, experts say, Kenya must have sustained economic growth. Economic growth is important with regard to alleviating poverty; however, poverty is primarily a problem of distribution. If distribution is made fair and just, it will in fact contribute to economic growth, lowering poverty rates. There is even empirical evidence suggesting that inequality negatively impacts on economic growth. What we should therefore do is to redistribute what we have, to achieve both economic growth and poverty reduction.

We should establish legally guaranteed and protected minimum standards of living for all Kenyans. We should introduce maximum income – both wage and capital income – that one may lawfully earn, the highest limit of space one may be allowed by law to live in, etc., in other words, we should establish the highest limit of resources that an individual may legally own or use. We should use the state to govern and regulate greed, because, if it is not governed and regulated, greed destroys society.

The redistribution and poverty reduction in Kenya would rest on the progressive taxation of personal and corporate wealth and earnings. Everybody and every business should contribute to the redistribution and poverty reduction. But the more you have, the more you should contribute. That is the main way in which societies reduce inequalities and alleviate poverty.

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* Samuel Abonyo is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Oslo.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Lost Ones

Amira Ali

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/60173

Lion of hearts
turned to
desert's
dust
blown'n
to wilderness
you
soul of sev'n
part'd years

con-se-quen'tial
supa-politico
text of
world-ly
men's heart
burn'st
you

crack'd dreams
suns and stars
scatter'd
into flight
you
left origin
erstwhile

made you
swallow d'tongue
lockt your lips
once
river-lips
made
voice-less

you, now
turn to
phantoms
of false night
to love
your lips
phantasm-iz'd

bury'n
d'lion's heart
that d'scended
from a place
of saints and sages
you
bend'n anew, to
d'cultured will

dom-in-nance
veild d'lamp
that shun'
on darkenss
ef-face'n
you

folly pillag'd
you
unequal halves
deceiv'd you
foolish thrust
of two world's
hollow'd
your hol

abode
in d'destined hour
tower of darkness
morph'd
you
identity
expropriat'd
you

perch'd behind
colors, blows of red
you, buri'd
what bled
hid'n from
d'night and dayz
masquerad'd
dust of soul
you
now
lust on
d'modernize dayz
daze'd

you
lost what is of "I"
dispossess'd
of "I" by him
to become
another him
to be at all
in relation
to whom?
...to him?

lost, not here nor there
you get closer
to what's there
you, now
shamed to speak
ours, mine, your
mother tongue
you
fall over names

you
stride profess'n
prophet-like
enunciat'n
d'Lord's wisdom
you
perfect'd d'accent
venerating
d'colonized tongue.
You, not here nor there
leaves of life keep falling
again, and again, and again, and again...

Africa and the Collapse of the Berlin Wall

Dibussi Tande

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/60181

Scribbles from the Den revisits the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 and its impact on Africa:
“Just as in Eastern Europe where images of the consumer societies in the west had contributed to the revolt, so too did images of unarmed citizens heroically standing up to communist dictatorship have a profound effect in Africa. Pictures of the collapse of the Berlin wall, and later, of the Romanian revolution and later and the bullet-riddled body of Ceauşescu, made Africans believe that their time too had come…

Although African regimes tried desperately to deny it, the similarities between the discredited regimes of Eastern Europe and Africa were obvious – bureaucratic strangulation of the economy, excessive and crippling centralization, the unbearable weight of an ever-increasing debt burden, a dramatic drop in living standards for the majority of the population, a massive exodus into the black market sector, very severe austerity programs, a loss of confidence in the official ideology, the squandering or dilapidation of valuable human capital through coercion and terror leading to what Achille Mbembe described as “the inertia of political and intellectual structures”, etc.
The climate in Africa was therefore a very fertile one where the seeds of political liberalism brought in by the “East wind” could blossom into beautiful plants.”


Louder than Swahili laments about the state of education in Tanzania:
“Tanzania has not gone through the same conflicts and problems [like northern Uganda and South Sudan], and have moreover received non-stop development support since the 1960s.

That makes me rather emotional. Not just about the state of education in Tanzania,but the fact that this vast human potential, creativity, personal drive, eagerness and motivation 365 days a year in a large range of Tanzanian villages just isn't utilised, but ignored...
In many cases, the schools are there... but often they don't provide enough space for the pupils enrolled... some teachers don't show up; don't teach; don't speak the tribal language of the children in that area; that they take bribes or demand other services.

But teachers are also directed by the government where to work, paid an absolutely ridiculously little salary considering their role and tasks. According to the teachers I spoke to last week, a Tanzanian teacher makes about 75 - 300 USD monthly, that is if they are paid at all...
The list is long, however, what is fundamental is that Tanzania has an educational system which simply doesn't meet the need for the vast majority of the watanzania.”


Moses Kimbaro writes about his recent experience of being connected to social media networks during a nationwide blackout in Kenya:
“Last night was indeed interesting on many levels. There was a countrywide blackout in Kenya from around 6.00 pm to around 11.00 pm. Since I was sitting in the dark at home for most of the time, the first thing I did was whip out my smart phone and decided to get on Twitter and Facebook via Safaricom’s 3G connection that was working in spite of the blackout. In a matter of seconds, I had replies that it was not just in Westlands and Kileleshwa that had a blackout but that it was indeed countrywide! This is kind of “peculiar” since even though I did not have access to television or radio the whole time, here I was able to get the latest news via the Internet on Twitter and Facebook on the extensive Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) blackout. It was Citizen Journalism at its best! I soon found out that Mombasa, Busia and Nakuru we’re also in the dark as Facebook and Twitter users living there replied…Whatever the case, it goes to show that the Internet is truly mainstream in Kenya, even when there is no electricity, but Safaricom, Twitter and Facebook are still online!”


African Loft comments on a recent BBC documentary on African hair:
“In a recent BBC debate “The good, bad and ugly hair days” (African Manes), a documentary examining the culture of African hair, I read a troubling comment that:
‘In Africa, the preferred look seems to be straightened hair over natural, kinky hair. Natural hair wearers are perceived as being deliberately non-conformist or religious.’

Wait a minute! Why the stereotypical perception on going natural? What is so wrong with the natural African look? It is obvious the ideal of beauty in most African countries has changed, and continues to change by the season. The typical African has dark ebony skin, big brown eyes, big lips and a short nose but not anymore! Many are going Western!

My fear is if we Africans continue to view things through the ‘Western eye’, our unique African identity will vanish totally. From our hair, language, and even our music, all of those things that make up ‘the African identity’ are undergoing drastic modification into Western stereotype. It’s like Africans are ashamed of their indigenous identity — and the only way to cover-up the shame is to wear that foreign identity even if it is ill-fitting. No doubt, the rich and buoyant African culture is going extinct!


Gathara’s World


cc Patrick Gathara

Gathara's World uses homophobia in Kenya as the backdrop for a discussion on privacy, and the clash between personal and community rights:
“In common with many of my countrymen, I found the recent wedding in London between two homosexual Kenyans quite disturbing. For very different reasons though. Many condemned the ceremony itself, with some even calling for the dreaded Mungiki to take vengeance on the two for allegedly besmirching the name of the House of Mumbi...

I, on the other hand, was saddened that these two citizens were not allowed to celebrate their union in their homeland. In fact, the very act of consummation would have landed them behind bars (and that’s assuming they were able to escape the blood-thirsty mob). It led me to ask a series of questions. What gives society the right to determine what two consenting adults may or may not do in the privacy of their own home? Since there was no victim of any kind, no coercion, and nobody was harmed, shouldn’t free citizens, in such circumstances, have the right to do as they please? What does it mean to “include gay and lesbian rights” in the constitution? Is it necessary for us to have language that enumerates each and every right that a citizen may exercise? In a free and just society, what rights are reserved to the individual and which to the state?”


Nigerian Curiosity comments on a recent World Bank report on remittances from Nigerians in the Diaspora:
“Nigerians abroad send at least $10 billion in remittances to their loved ones at home. This amount makes Nigeria the 6th highest destination for remittances according to the World Bank. That also makes Nigeria the top remittance destination on the African continent...

In a country like Nigeria with anywhere between 8 to 15 million Nigerians living abroad, remittances are a way to provide financial assistance. This is crucial on a personal level because of Nigeria's high unemployment rate...
On a fiscal level, remittances act as a source of capital second only to foreign direct investment... In 2005, remittances constituted 5% of Nigeria's GDP. With many Nigerians abroad sending remittances home for investment purposes (i.e. real estate purchases), this money allows those in the Diaspora to play a role in the country's development while bettering themselves.
Additionally, considering that Nigerians abroad have been granted the right to vote in Nigerian elections, their remittances do not just signify financial importance, but could also translate to political collateral...
It will be interesting to see how the federal government or state governments take advantage of the desire of Nigerians to not only send money to their relatives, but also use their money to improve the nation.”

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den.

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

Building the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership

Speech by Premier Wen Jiabao

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/60183

Your Excellency President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak,

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government,

Your Excellency Mr. Jean Ping, Chairperson of the AU Commission,

Your Excellencies Heads of Delegation, Ministers and Ambassadors,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to join you in the beautiful coastal city of Sharm El Sheikh on the occasion of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This conference gives us the opportunity to renew friendship and explore ways to further cooperation. As the Premier of the co-chair country of the conference, I would like to extend, on behalf of the Chinese government, a warm welcome to all the participants and express sincere thanks to the government of Egypt for the thoughtful preparations and arrangements it has made for the conference.

Since its founding nine years ago, FOCAC has played a major role in guiding and promoting the development of China-Africa relations and become a bridge of friendship and a platform of cooperation between China and Africa. In the three years since the Beijing Summit in particular, the two sides have worked together to build the new type of strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchanges. Together, we have opened a new chapter in China-Africa cooperation.

-- We have enhanced political mutual trust. The two sides have had more frequent high-level exchanges and stepped up diplomatic consultations and strategic dialogue. African countries have given even stronger support to China on issues concerning China's core interests. China and Africa have cooperated and coordinated with each other on major international and regional issues and jointly safeguarded and expanded the common interests of developing countries.

-- We have strengthened economic cooperation and trade. Last year, China-Africa trade exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars and the number of African countries trading with China grew to 53. China has begun construction of the six economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa. Nearly 1,600 Chinese enterprises have started business in African countries with a direct investment stock of 7.8 billion U.S. dollars. Project contracting and labor services cooperation between the two sides have been expanding, and financial cooperation is gaining momentum.

-- The increase in China's assistance to Africa has produced practical results. Despite the impact of the international financial crisis and the many difficulties we face at home, we have honored the commitments we made at the Beijing Summit in an all-round way. Our assistance to Africa has been doubled. The plan to cancel 168 debts owed by 33 African countries is near completion. The 5 billion U.S. dollars of concessional loans will be fully in place soon. The China-Africa Development Fund, whose first tranche reached 1 billion U.S. dollars, has become operational as scheduled. These measures have not only added to Africa's capacity for self-development but also helped African countries in their effort to counter the financial crisis.

-- We have witnessed vigorous people-to-people exchanges. Exchanges and cooperation between China and Africa in culture, education, health and human resources training have grown rapidly. By the end of this year, China will train a total of 15,000 people of different professions for African countries. Interactions among the youth, women and sister provinces and cities have been more frequent. All these developments have led to deeper mutual understanding and stronger traditional friendship between China and Africa.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

The rapidly growing relations and cooperation between China and Africa have attracted the world's attention in recent years. I would like to point out that it was not just a few years ago that China suddenly started its presence in Africa or Africa started its support for China. As early as in the 1950s and '60s, China and Africa fought shoulder to shoulder in the historic struggle against imperialism, colonialism and hegemony and worked side by side in the hard endeavor to revive our respective national economies. The Tanzania-Zambia Railway, the Chinese medical teams and the young Chinese volunteers in Africa are vivid examples of China's selfless assistance to this continent, while Africa's tremendous effort in helping restore China's seat in the United Nations, the successful Beijing Olympic torch relay in Africa and Africa's generous donations to the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake in China give full expression to the friendship of the African people toward the Chinese people. The Chinese government and people respect the right of African countries to independently choose their social systems and support the African people in exploring development paths that suit their national conditions. We firmly believe that Africa is fully capable of solving its own problems in an African way. The economic cooperation and trade between China and Africa are based on mutual benefit, win-win progress, openness and transparency. China has never attached any political strings to its support and assistance to Africa, and nor will it do so in the future. China welcomes the active involvement of other countries and international organizations in Africa's development so that we can jointly promote peace, development and progress in Africa.

China-Africa relations have withstood the test of international vicissitudes and maintained the momentum of robust growth. Our relationship is based on mutual support, particularly during times of adversity. It is guided by the core principle of mutual respect and equality. It is driven by our joint endeavor to pursue mutually-beneficial cooperation and common development. The world today is undergoing unprecedented changes and adjustments. We are all developing countries and face both rare historic opportunities for faster development and complex global challenges. We should enhance mutually beneficial cooperation. Cooperation between us will enable us to bring out our respective strengths and achieve common development. Cooperation between us will encourage the international community to pay greater attention to Africa and help it attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at an early date. Cooperation between us will catalyze South-South cooperation and enhance the collective standing of developing countries in the international political and economic architecture. Cooperation between us will promote democracy in international relations and justice in the international order and contribute to the effort of building a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity.



Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

Like other parts of the world, Africa is faced with various global challenges, including the financial crisis and climate change. Your task of meeting the MDGs has been made more difficultby the financial market volatility, sharp economic slowdown, drastic decline in foreign capital and the turmoil in some countries and regions in Africa. And your effort to achieve sustainable development has been seriously threatened by the frequent floods and droughts, the spread of desertification, extinction of some species, drop in food production and environmental degradation caused by climate change.

Africa is home to one seventh of the world's population and has more developing countries than any other continent. Africa' s development is indispensable to development of the world economy. As a true and tested friend, China fully understands the difficulties and challenges facing Africa. We call upon the international community to have a greater sense of urgency and take more concrete steps to support Africa's development. First, the international community should not waver in its resolve or weaken its effort to help Africa meet the MDGs. It should take credible steps to honor the commitment of assistance to Africa and actively foster an enabling external environment of international economy, trade and finance. Second, the international community should have a keen appreciation of African countries' pressing need for stronger capacity in adapting to climate change, understand and support their legitimate concerns and demands, and help them better meet the climate challenge in the larger context of enhancing Africa' s ability for achieving sustainable development. Such a holistic approach will help Africa realize all-round and balanced development. Third, the international community should show more understanding of the special difficulties facing Africa in addressing such global issues as food security, energy security and epidemic diseases, and render them greater support and assistance.



Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,



Under the new circumstances, China is ready to deepen practical cooperation with African countries in diverse areas and push forward in an all-round way the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership. I wish to make, in this connection, the following proposals:

First, strengthen strategic coordination to uphold common interests. The two sides should maintain high-level exchanges, engage in closer political dialogue and consultations and step up coordination and cooperation on major global issues of mutual interest, so as to increase the voice and representation of developing countries in the international system and jointly build a more just and reasonable international political and economic order. China will, as always, speak up for Africa and safeguard the interests of African countries on international occasions. We will make greater effort to share strategies and experience with African countries in meeting global challenges and help them enhance capacities and achieve self-development.

Second, meet the MDGs and improve the livelihood of the African people. Economic development, poverty eradication and improvement of people's lives are top priorities for African countries. China will continue to increase assistance to Africa and reduce or cancel debts owed by African countries within the realm of its capabilities. We will restructure our assistance programs to better meet the needs on the ground. We will put more emphasis on agriculture, education, health, poverty reduction and clean drinking water and other areas that are vital to people's well-being when providing assistance, and help Africa attain the MDGs at an early date.

Third, enhance economic cooperation and trade to realize mutual benefit and win-win progress. The strong economic complementarity between China and Africa offers us broad prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation. We should work hard to increase trade, speedily reverse the trade downturn since the beginning of this year and increase export of African goods to China. China will encourage more enterprises to invest in Africa and ask them to shoulder more social responsibilities and live in amity with the local people. We will combine economic cooperation and trade with technology transfer and take active steps to train technical and managerial personnel for African countries.

Fourth, promote people-to-people exchanges to solidify China-Africa friendship. Both China and Africa have a rich and splendid culture. The two sides should step up cultural exchanges and mutual learning, encourage the organization of culture festivals, art exhibitions and sports events, and support closer interactions among non- governmental organizations, news media and academic institutions. China will continue to support Africa in developing education, health, science and technology and other social programs. We welcome African countries to participate in the Shanghai World Expo to showcase Africa's development achievements in various fields.

Fifth, expand areas of cooperation and advance FOCAC institutional building. China is willing to increase involvement in the settlement of issues concerning peace and security in Africa, provide more support to African integration and expand cooperation with sub-regional organizations in Africa. We will work with you to promote FOCAC institutional building, strengthen cooperation between the functional departments of the two sides within the FOCAC framework, and enhance and expand FOCAC's role in promoting and guiding China-Africa relations.



Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,



The Chinese people cherish sincere friendship towards the African people, and China's support to Africa's development is concrete and real. Whatever change may take place in the world, our friendship with Africa will not change, our commitment to deepening mutually beneficial cooperation and achieving common development with Africa will not change, and our policy of supporting Africa's economic and social development will not change. During the next three years, the Chinese government will take the following eight new measures to strengthen China-Africa cooperation:

First, we propose to establish a China-Africa partnership in addressing climate change. We will hold senior officials' consultations with African countries from time to time, and enhance cooperation on satellite weather monitoring, development and utilization of new energy sources, prevention and control of desertification and urban environmental protection. We have decided to build 100 clean energy projects for Africa covering solar power, bio-gas and small hydro-power.

Second, we will enhance cooperation with Africa in science and technology. We propose to launch a China-Africa science and technology partnership, under which we will carry out 100 joint demonstration projects on scientific and technological research, receive 100 African postdoctoral fellows to conduct scientific research in China and assist them in going back and serving their home countries.

Third, we will help Africa build up financing capacity. We will provide 10 billion U.S. dollars in concessional loans to African countries, and support Chinese financial institutions in setting up a 1 billion U.S. dollar special loan for small and medium-sized African businesses. For the heavily indebted poor countries and least developed countries in Africa having diplomatic relations with China, we will cancel their debts associated with interest-free government loans due to mature by the end of 2009.

Fourth, we will further open up China's market to African products. We will phase in zero-tariff treatment to 95 percent of the products from the least developed African countries having diplomatic relations with China, starting with 60 percent of the products within 2010.

Fifth, we will further enhance cooperation with Africa in agriculture. We will increase the number of agricultural technology demonstration centers built by China in Africa to 20, send 50 agricultural technology teams to Africa and train 2,000 agricultural technology personnel for Africa, in order to help strengthen Africa' s ability to ensure food security.

Sixth, we will deepen cooperation in medical care and health. We will provide medical equipments and anti-malaria materials worth 500 million yuan to the 30 hospitals and 30 malaria prevention and treatment centers built by China and train 3,000 doctors and nurses for Africa.

Seventh, we will enhance cooperation in human resources development and education. We will build 50 China-Africa friendship schools and train 1,500 school principals and teachers for African countries. By 2012, we will increase the number of Chinese government scholarships to Africa to 5,500. And we will train a total of 20,000 professionals of various fields for Africa over the next three years.

Eighth, we will expand people-to-people and cultural exchanges. We propose to launch a China-Africa joint research and exchange program, which will enable scholars and think tanks to have more exchanges and cooperation, share development experience, and provide intellectual support for formulating better cooperation policies by the two sides.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,



Egypt was the first African country to enter into diplomatic relations with the People' s Republic of China. The establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Egypt 53 years ago opened a new era in China-Africa relations. Today, Egypt is playing host to the 4th FOCAC Ministerial Conference, which will mark a new starting point in China-Africa relations. There is an African proverb which says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." There is also a Chinese saying that goes, "As distance can test a horse's strength, so time can reveal a person's heart." I am convinced that as long as China and Africago hand in hand with an enterprising spirit and cooperate on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, we will seize opportunities and overcome challenges to take the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership to a new level, and make China-Africa friendship and cooperation even more fruitful.

In conclusion, I wish the 4th FOCAC Ministerial Conference a crowning success!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This text was first published by Xinhua News Agency on November 9, 2009

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

FOCAC: Transrcipt of press conference by Premier Wen Jiabao

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/60182

The Fourth Ministerial Conference of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC) opened in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 6 2009. Pambazuka News brings you a transcript of a press conference by Premier Wen Jiabao held on November 9, 2009.
Wen Jiabao: Friends from the press, good afternoon. Sharm El Sheikh is beautiful. The host told me that it would take at least seven days to fully enjoy the city. But I have only less than twenty-four hours. During my stay here I attended the opening ceremony of an important meeting, the Fourth FOCAC Ministerial Conference. I met with thirteen leaders from African countries. Now I have set aside some time to meet with the press and answer your questions.

I. Egyptian newspaper "Pyramids": You have announced at the opening ceremony of the Forum eight new measures for developing China-Africa cooperation. In 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao announced at the FOCAC Beijing Summit eight measures to strengthen China-Africa practical cooperation. What are the differences and similarities between theses measures? What role will these measures play in promoting China-Africa relations?

My second question is: During your stay in Egypt, you met the Egyptian President and Prime Minister. You have also talked to the Egyptian people. What are the topics you discussed during these meetings? What is your impression of the Egyptian civilization?

Wen: During the FOCAC Beijing Summit in 2006, President Hu Jintao announced on behalf of the Chinese government eight measures to strengthen China-Africa practical cooperation and support the development of African countries. Reviewing the progress of the last three years, the eight measures have basically been implemented. The eight new measures that I announced this morning at the opening ceremony of the Fourth FOCAC Ministerial Conference are aimed at the same goal of improving the capacity of African countries for self-development. The new measures focus more on the improvement of people's well-being, health care, education and other social development programs, the construction of agricultural and basic infrastructures, and the protection of eco-environment. For instance, we have proposed to help African countries build 100 clean energy projects like solar power, biogas, and small hydro-power plants, provide RMB500 million yuan worth of medical equipment and malaria-fighting materials to thirty hospitals and thirty malaria prevention and control centers built by China, build fifty schools, and help Africa train more personnel.

I had an in depth exchange of views with Egyptian President Mubarak. We both agreed that following the establishment of strategic and cooperative relations between the two countries in 1999 and the formulation of the Implementation Outline for Deepening Strategic and Cooperative Relations Between China and Egypt in 2006, China-Egypt relations have entered a new stage of development. This is manifested in stronger political mutual trust, further growth of economic and trade cooperation, and more active exchanges in culture and education. Both Egypt and China are ancient civilizations. Egypt was the first African and Arab country to recognize New China. It was also the first to establish strategic cooperative relations with China. The consolidation and development of China-Egypt friendly and cooperative relations will not only benefit our two peoples, but also promote China's relationship with African and Arab countries.

II. Business Daily, South Africa: Due to the international financial crisis, G8 members and other developed countries are slowing down their delivery of fiscal and financial assistance to developing countries as they had committed. Countries in Africa have also suffered adverse impacts from the financial crisis. Will China take measures to help African countries cope with the financial crisis?

Another question, we are lagging behind schedule in implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Do you still see any possibility for the international community to meet the MDGs on schedule through cooperation?

Wen: The current international financial crisis is unprecedented in the course of last one hundred years. It has not only exerted serious impact on developed countries, but also brought grave consequences to developing countries, particularly the least developed ones. Due to the international financial crisis, some banks are downsizing their loans for African countries. However, China has promised that it will not cut its assistance or decrease its credit and loan support to African countries and other developing countries. I announced at the opening ceremony of the Fourth FOCAC Ministerial Conference the plan to give US$10 billion preferential loans to support African countries.

In the global financial crisis, what people tend to easily ignore is the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. On many occasions including the UN meetings last year and this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, I appealed to the international community to place importance on the implementation of the MDGs and the support and assistance to developing countries, the least developed ones in particular. It seems to me this issue remains serious. Here I would like to once again appeal to the international community to work hard with firm determination and effective measures to reach the MDGs while tackling the global financial crisis.

III. Macao Asia Satellite TV: You have visited the training center of Huawei and the factory of the Brilliance Auto. At the opening ceremony of today's conference, when you announced eight new measures to strengthen China-Africa cooperation in the coming three years, you mentioned the development of new energy resources and projects for environmental protection and energy conservation. In fact, there have been quite a few Chinese enterprises specialized in this field. Do you believe we will see more success stories like that of the Brilliance Auto in Africa?

Wen: Many people are trying to offer prescriptions for Africa's development, such as the "Washington Consensus" or the "Beijing Model". Yet it seems to me that Africa's development should be based on its own conditions and should follow its own path, that is, the African Model. All countries have to learn from other countries' experience in development. At the same time, they have to follow a path suited to their own national conditions and based on the reality of their own countries. In the final analysis, the development of a country depends on the efforts of its own people. Any enterprise that wants to do business in Africa has to take account of local conditions.

IV. Reuters: Some people said that China is only interested in the natural resources of Africa, that China has exploited the African people while plundering Africa's natural resources. How do you respond to such criticism?

Second question, you once mentioned that you were concerned about the security of China's investment in the United States. Now more than seven months later, is your concern growing or abating?

Wen: There has long been the argument that China is plundering Africa's resources and pursuing the so-called "neo-colonialism". This is not worth refuting. Any one who is familiar with history would know that the friendly relations and cooperation between China and Africa did not start just yesterday but as early as half a century ago. In those years, we helped Africa build the Tanzara railway and sent to Africa large numbers of medical teams. But we did not take away a single drop of oil or a single ton of mineral ores from Africa. Objectively, what changes has China brought to Africa through its assistance measures? Since 2006, thanks to the implementation of the eight measures, more African products have entered the Chinese market and the annual trade volume between China and Africa has surged from more than US$50 billion to more than US$ 100 billion. Under the impact of the international financial crisis, the whole world has experienced investment downturn. However, in the first three quarters of 2009, China's investment in Africa increased by 77%. China has helped Africa build many schools, hospitals, and malaria prevention and treatment centers, which benefited more than 100 million African people. In fact, China's assistance to Africa has never had any political strings attached. We believe the destiny of a country is in the hands of its people.

In terms of energy, I want to tell this journalist, China is not the largest importer of Africa's oil. Our import takes up only 13% of Africa's oil export. China's investment in Africa's oil and natural gas accounts for less than 1/16 of the global investment in this field. CNPC is China's largest petroleum company. But its annual turnover is less than 1/3 of ExxonMobile. Why should China be singled out for criticism? Is this an African view point or rather a Western viewpoint? A line from a Chinese poem is sufficient to respond to this question: "A time-honored friendship is like the gold. After repeated smelting, it keeps its true color".

For your second question, I did say at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year that we were concerned about China's foreign exchange assets in the United States, because it is China's money. Our principle for the foreign exchange reserve is to ensure its security, liquidity and good value. Now the US economy is showing signs of recovery and we have seen positive changes. We hope that the United States, as the largest economy and the major reserve currency issuing country, will fulfill its responsibilities with concrete measures. Most importantly, it should keep its deficit within a proper scale and ensure the basic stability of its exchange rate. This will facilitate stability and recovery of the world economy.

V. Al Jazeera: China often claims itself a reliable friend of Africa, but Western countries are accusing China of practicing neo-colonialism aimed at African oil and market on the ground that China is trying to expand its influence by getting actively involved in African affairs. We have also found that China's investment in and imports from Africa concentrate on oil and raw materials, but China exports manufactured goods to Africa. What's your comment on these criticisms? When will this cooperation model between China and Africa be changed? When will China invest in Africa's industrial sector, new technology and new industrial sectors instead of concentrating on infrastructure and agriculture?

My second question is: African countries support China in the international arena without any reservation, abide by the one China policy and do not develop official relations with Taiwan. Yet we find that China would sometimes decline to give full support to Africa. One example is when the UN Security Council resolution on the Sudan was put to vote in 2005, when China did not veto it. Consequently, the International Criminal Court was able to prosecute the Sudanese President Bashir.

Wen: I have already answered your first question, but I want to add a few words. We hold the view that support between China and Africa is mutual. At the time when Africa struggled for independence, China supported it and the independent African countries also supported China in restoring its lawful seat in the United Nations. That's why we often say it is our African brothers and sisters who carried China into the United Nations. In other words, we feel indebted to the African people. I often say that one should always remember with gratitude the help one receives from others, while one should forget the help one renders to others. Our assistance to and cooperation with Africa is selfless and has no political strings attached. This is clear for all to see. Over the years, in our cooperation with and assistance to Africa, we have laid emphasis on infrastructure development and closer cooperation in agriculture, education, health and social programs, as these are what the African people need. I may give you an example. We have built a total of about 3,300 kilometers of roads and 2,200 kilometers of railways and we are now helping Africa build communications networks. We have sent a large number of medical teams to Africa. They have helped treat African patients and some of them have lost their lives and been laid to rest on this ancient continent. The ultimate goal of our assistance to and cooperation with Africa is to strengthen the self-development capacity of African countries. That is why we have placed priority on the development and utilization of mineral resources and the raw material processing industry, areas in which Africa enjoys comparative advantage. Among the projects that are being carried out to implement the eight measures we pledged to take in 2006, over 1,600 projects are related to the processing industry, including the joint copper mine development project in Zambia which have created many jobs for the local people. If you visit the training centers of the Huawei Technologies Company in Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, you will find that they employ many African people who not only are highly skilled but also speak Chinese. In our assistance to and cooperation with Africa, we will continue to improve policy measures, with greater emphasis on training, capacity building and corporate social responsibility.

The blame you laid on China over the issue of the Sudan is unfounded. Besides, I wish to emphasize that China's position on the UN Security Council reform is consistent and clear-cut. The Security Council should increase the say and representation of developing countries, particularly African countries. We have done a lot to achieve this goal.

VI. The October Magazine of Egypt: Firstly, what are the specific figures of China's assistance and loans to Africa? Secondly, some people say that the current problem the Sudan faces arises from the China-US rivalry for the spheres of inference in that country. What is your response to such claim?

Wen: China's assistance to and cooperation with Africa have always been transparent and open. China's assistance to Africa reached 76 billion yuan by September 2009 and its total sum of loans 46 billion yuan by 2008.

Africa was colonized for 600 years. China shares similar experience with Africa as it was subjected to colonization after 1840. China has a population of 1.3 billion. Although the size of China's economy ranks in the forefront of the world, the development is very much unbalanced, with a big gap between the rural and urban areas and between different regions. Many people in China are still living in poverty. I wish to tell this lady that we are too busy with our own affairs to interfere in others' internal affairs. What's more, we have no intention at all to do so.

Speaking of the issue of the Sudan and Darfur, we, indeed, did several things there. First, we tried to facilitate the reconciliation between the North and the South of the Sudan. Second, China was the first non-African country to send peacekeeping troops to Darfur. Besides, China has provided selfless assistance to help the people in Darfur living in poverty. On these issues, we do not pursue any selfish interest, nor will we compete with any other country.

VII. Cameroon Daily: Mr. Premier, a meeting of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa will be held in Gabon soon to discuss the issue of global climate change. The African Union has asked the European Union to provide some financial assistance to help Africa address the challenges of climate change, for instance, to set up a fund for that purpose. Can China also provide us with some money? How will China help Africa better cope with climate change?

Wen: I have noted that the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa will hold a meeting on climate change. This will be an important meeting of African countries before the Copenhagen Conference. At this morning's opening ceremony, President Jean Ping of the African Union Commission introduced Africa's position on climate change on behalf of the African Union. He stated that the Copenhagen Conference should uphold the principles defined by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, its Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Road Map and follow the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities". China and Africa all belong to the developing world. Industrialization in its real sense has been going on in China for only a few decades. We are all victims of climate change. The Chinese side fully supports the legitimate demands presented by African countries on behalf of the under-developed countries. Developed countries should provide technical and financial assistance to developing countries to uplift their technological level and enhance their ability to adapt to climate change. We stand ready to make joint efforts with the rest of the world to strive for good outcomes of the Copenhagen Conference.

VIII. China Radio International: You have had an intense and highly efficient visit to Egypt. You said that this trip was aimed at promoting dialogue among civilizations and developing friendship and cooperation. Now that you are about to conclude your trip, how do you feel about this visit and do you think you have achieved your goals?

Wen: I want to draw your attention to views of many African leaders, including the remarks by 17 African leaders this morning. You should also listen to what the African people say. I have read a book titled Dead Aid written by an African woman writer. The author talks about her personal experiences and draws the conclusion that China's assistance to Africa is sincere, credible, practical and efficient and is welcomed by the African people. We in China have a saying that goes, "As distance tests a horse's strength, time reveals a person's heart." I am confident that time will prove that friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and African people have a bright future.

I am scheduled to meet with six African leaders now and leave Egypt for Beijing at 10 p.m.. I am sorry I do not have time for more questions. Thank you! I wish you all the best!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

Pambazuka News 122: Que Beijing soit une réalité et non un mirage

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/60206

Pambazuka News 23: Transparência, eleições e conflito de interesses em Moçambique

2009-11-10

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summarypt/60171

Soldiers tortured to death in custody

2009-11-13

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news121109/soldiers121109.htm

There is rising tension in the Zimbabwe National Army after a number of senior officers allegedly died from torture whilst in military detention. The Herald reported on Wednesday that Major Maxwell Samudzi, a 48 year-old deputy officer commanding One Engineers Support Regiment at Pomona barracks was found dead in his detention cell. The paper said Major Samudzi committed suicide, but army insiders contend he was tortured to death.

Unlawful use of POSA must end now

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/60216

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) unreservedly condemns the unlawful arrest and detention in Victoria Falls on Sunday 8 November 2009 of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President, Lovemore Matombo, together with four other union officials.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) unreservedly condemns the unlawful arrest and detention in Victoria Falls on Sunday 8 November 2009 of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President, Lovemore Matombo, together with four other union officials.

Once again, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) have resorted to malicious and unjustifiable action against human rights defenders (HRDs) using their tool of selective repression – the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) – knowing full well that it does not apply to meetings of the labour body. This position has been acknowledged by the High Court of Zimbabwe, and therefore the ZRP are acting in defiance of an order of the court and in contravention of the law.

In the past few weeks, the ZRP in Victoria Falls have unlawfully arrested, detained and charged various HRDs under this repressive law. The Chairperson and the Chief Executive Officer of the National Organisation of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) and two employees of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) have been the most recent victims of the unlawful actions of the police and a justice delivery system which is failing to protect their fundamental rights and freedoms.

It is in this light that the motion in the House of Assembly to introduce a Private Members’ Bill to amend POSA is welcomed, and we urge all peace-loving and progressive legislators in the House to move swiftly to ensure that the provisions of POSA which continue to be selectively applied to muzzle free speech and democratic action by HRDs becomes a phenomenon of the past.

ZLHR calls for the urgent establishment of an independent Parliamentary committee inquiry into the continuing unlawful actions of the ZRP, including the Law and Order section of the Victoria Falls and Hwange police stations, the Officer Commanding the province, situated in Lupane, the Commissioner-General of Police, who bears overall responsibility for the actions purportedly perpetrated by his subordinates in the course of their duties, and the Co-Ministers of Home Affairs who seem unable or unwilling to bring this lawlessness to an immediate end.

This inquiry should also include an investigation into the actions of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General who, as the legal representatives of the ZRP, have failed and/or refused to execute their constitutional and professional duty to advise the police of their continued misinterpretation and misapplication of the law, and must therefore be perceived by all reasonable people to be complicit in this continued harassment of HRDs. This perception is further bolstered by the state’s resurrection of old charges against the ZCTU leadership in two matters set to be considered by the court on 10 November and 23 November 2009.

ZLHR will continue to provide legal support services to the ZCTU and all other peace-loving HRDs who continue to be targeted until POSA and other repressive legislation cease to be selectively and vindictively applied to muzzle their free speech and prevent their fundamental freedoms of movement, assembly and association.

Zimbabwe Inclusive Government Watch : Issue 10

Sokwanele : 6 November 2009

2009-11-13

http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/zigwatch_issue10_061009.html

October has been a month characterised by violence, lawlessness, corruption and the complete abuse of power for partisan and personal objectives. Despite Robert Mugabe’s outrageous claim to the contrary, Sokwanele has logged an incredible 3850 breaches of the GPA by Zanu PF since the start of the ZIG Watch project, making this party responsible for 88.8% of all breaches logged up until the end of October.

Global: Addressing gender-based violence through health programming

2009-11-13

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/299306/cchangepicks/

According to this September 2008 document from USAID entitled "Addressing Gender-Based Violence Through USAID's Health Programs: A Guide for Health Sector Program Officers", research demonstrates that gender-based violence has implications for almost every aspect of health policy and programming, from primary care to reproductive health programmes, because it not only results in injury and death of its victims, but also it can contribute to the spread of HIV. Reducing violence and coercion is among five high-priority gender strategies of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Madagascar: Letting girls call the shots

2009-11-13

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/297072/cchangepicks/

Red Card is a component of a health communication campaign led by C-Change in Madagascar that was designed to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and to curb associated risky behaviours by "letting girls call the shots" and sparking conversation between parents and adolescents. The campaign appropriated the signal soccer referees use to kick aggressive players out of a game; paper Red Cards were distributed to 1.5 million young women across Madagascar.

Morocco: Need to involve women, children in development initiatives

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/y9z8j5g

Morocco's National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) has done a solid job of developing a charity network, but still needs more participation by women, children and local councils, according to a recent report by the initiative's oversight body.

Swaziland: Senator calls for assistance to sex workers

2009-11-13

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49242

It is one of the world's oldest professions, dating so far back that it is even mentioned in the Bible. But in the deeply cultural and religious country of Swaziland, Senator Thuli Msane stirred a hornet's nest when she publicly challenged a new strict bill opposing prostitution. Msane spoke out against arresting sex workers, when she said government should first address the humanitarian challenges that drive them into the trade.

Angola: Christian Aid partners win Civil Society Human Rights awards

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/60188

On November 5, 2009, Christian Aid partners OMUNGA and SOS Habitat were awarded the Civil Society Human Rights National Award, organized by the Human Rights Coordination Committee and Open Society Foundation –Angola. The award was implemented for the first time this year and is granted to organisations and individuals that have contributed to the defence, respect, protection and guarantee of human rights in Angola. This is a fantastic recognition of our partner’s human rights work in the country.
Christian Aid partners OMUNGA and SOS Habitatwere awarded the Civil Society Human Rights National Award, organized by the Human Rights Coordination Committee and Open Society Foundation –Angola. The award was implemented for the first time this year and is granted to organisations and individuals that have contributed to the defence, respect, protection and guarantee of human rights in Angola. This is a fantastic recognition of our partner’s human rights work in the country. The awards include:

The National Award for an individual was awarded to Luiz Araujo, coordinator of SOS Habitat, a civic and community organisation that protects poor people´s housing rights especially in Angola´s capital Luanda. In October 2008, Araujo participated in a session in the Parliament of Ireland to speak on the situation of land, housing and violation of human rights linked to land evictions in the country’s urban areas.

The National Award of Human Rights Civil Society Organization was awarded to Associação OMUNGA, a children´s rights lobby group based in the provinceof Benguela that promotes street children rights, children and youth protagonism, community and civil education. It is one of the five CSOs representing the Southern African country in the African Commission on Human and People´s Rights and it has had made an important contribution to helping enlarge the civic space in processes such as the review of the Angolan Constitution.

The journalist Domingos da Cruz, from opposition newspaper Folha 8, was awarded with The National Award of Human Rights Ricardo de Melo, as an Angolan journalist who stood out for his work in the promotion and defence of human rights.

Cote d'Ivoire: Fears over compensation

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yh729zu

Thousands of people in Cote d'Ivoire poisoned by toxic waste face being cheated out of $45m in compensation after the money, which was deposited in a bank account in the West African country, was frozen. At the same time, a local figure, claiming to be president of the National Co-ordination of Toxic Waste Victims of Cote d'Ivoire and who is unknown to the victims' lawyers, has now applied to have the cash moved to the association's account.

DRC: Report on copper mine nominated for award

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yhjwa23

A Dan rarther report entitled "All Mine" focuses on an American company, Arizona's Freeport McMoran, which, when it bought a massive copper mine from the government of Congo, also took control of part of the impoverished country's economic future. Critics of the purchase said that the contract for the billion-dollar mine left the war-torn African nation with little in return, and that the U.S. government played a part in what many are describing as a modern day land grab. The episode originally aired on September 23, 2008

Global: Rendition redux?

2009-11-13

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49229

On the heels of a federal appeals court ruling that only the U.S. Congress and the executive branch of government - not the courts - can interfere with government-sponsored "extraordinary rendition", a U.S. citizen from New Jersey is asking another court to tell the government it wasn't okay to secretly imprison and abuse him in three different African countries over a period of four months.

Morocco: Human rights violations in the Western Sahara occupied territory

Konstantina Isidoros

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/60223

On the 8 October, seven prominent Sahrawi human rights advocates were arrested at Mohamed V airport in Casablanca, Morocco. They were driven away by Moroccan security forces immediately after disembarking from a flight returning from Algeria where they had been visiting the Sahrawi refugee camps between 26 September and 8 October.
On the 8 October, seven prominent Sahrawi human rights advocates were arrested at Mohamed V airport in Casablanca, Morocco. They were driven away by Moroccan security forces immediately after disembarking from a flight returning from Algeria where they had been visiting the Sahrawi refugee camps between 26 September and 8 October.

The ‘Casablanca Seven’ are currently being held in Zaki prison in Sale City near Rabat awaiting trial before a military court. This has sparked fresh condemnation from politicians, human rights organisations, NGOs, academics and regional analysts from around the world, who have expressed serious concerns for their physical safety and psychological wellbeing.

A Moroccan official news agency statement, dated 8 October 2009, claims the arrests were made because the Casablanca Seven had meetings with ‘bodies opposing Morocco’, thereby undermining national interests. The Moroccan media and various political parties have branded the Casablanca Seven as ‘traitors’ and their visit as ‘tantamount to treason’, calling for them to be punished,1 sparking fears amongst the international observers that they will face lengthy sentences or even the death penalty.2 Morocco claims the visit was an attempt to ‘undermine the Moroccan proposal of autonomy in the Sahara region’. All visits ‘to the Tindouf camps are considered ‘anti-Moroccan’ and those who make the journey to the camp run the risk of severe consequences.3

Amnesty International argues that if this reference refers to the seven’s visits to the Polisario-administered Tindouf refugee camps on the Algerian border, then ‘all of these activities should be regarded as peaceful and legitimate exercise of freedom of expression, association and assembly as guaranteed in international law and standards.’ Amnesty International reports that four of those now detained have previously been imprisoned, including Ali Salem Tamek, who was subsequently adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and Brahim Dahane, who was forcibly disappeared in the 1980s until his release in 1991.4 Moreover, Brahim Dahane was earlier this year nominated for the Swedish government’s Per Anger Peace Prize 2009. The award is due to be awarded in Stockholm on 16 November, but now Brahim is in a Moroccan prison.

Rippling around the arrest of the Casablanca Seven are more allegations of human rights violations, with reports that detainees’ family members have also faced harassment following their arrest.5 Harassment of Sahrawi activists has been reportedly on the increase. In August, six Sahrawi teenagers (the ‘Oxford Six’) were arrested and prevented from flying to a peace camp in the UK, and Nguia El Haouassi was abducted by Moroccan police (see Pambazuka News, 10 October 2009).6 September saw over 20 documented reports of police torture being forwarded to Amnesty International: e.g. Boujdour Sultana Khayia who had her arm broken by police, Mohamed Brakan (21 years old) being thrown from the roof of a house by police, Mohamed Tahil assaulted by police and his nose broken and Ayzan Amydan being arrested.7 On 6 October, five Sahrawi activists were prevented from travelling to Mauritania, and their identity documents confiscated before being released. (.).8Efforts to suppress activists are not only directed towards Sahrawi living in the southern Occupied Territory – one can cite Morocco’s violations against its own media’s freedom of speech. On 4 November, the International Press Institute (IPI) issued a statement expressing disappointment at US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s lack of mention of press freedom during her 2-day visit to Morocco to an international G8-backed forum in Marrakesh. IPI’s press statement lists examples of recent deteriorating press freedom in Morocco itself. For instance in August, the government seized copies of the current affairs magazines, Tel Quel and Nichane, after they published the results of a poll on how Moroccans regarded the King’s first decade in power.9

These latest Moroccan human rights violations have attracted worldwide responses. In the US, the Robert F. Kennedy Centre (RFK) for Justice and Human Rights issued a press statement on 9 October, urging the Moroccan authorities to comply with human rights obligations under international law such as International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Morocco has ratified, and the Basic Principles for Treatment of Prisoners, adopted in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution, 45/111 of 14 December 1990. Also on the 9 October, the United Nation’s Fourth Commission of Decolonisation held in New York attracted 84 petitioners who addressed the Committee on the human rights and political dimensions of the conflict. Three US Senators wrote the Moroccan King stating ‘We believe that this action will not advance the confidence building between your government and the Polisario in the conflict in the Western Sahara and could be detrimental to the success of the U.N. sponsored negotiations’. In London, the Guardian newspaper published a letter on 16 October signed by eight British MPs and Ruth Tanner (Campaigns Director of War on Want), expressing concern for the safety of the seven detainees.10 A Western Sahara athlete, Salah Hmatou Amaidan, addressed the British All Party Parliamentary Group on Western Sahara concerning the human rights situation in the Occupied Territories. On the 26 October, four Swedish MPs also wrote to the Moroccan authorities demanding the immediate release of the seven. On 30 October, the Swedish Social Democratic Party announced that if it won the elections in 2010, that it would recognise the Western Sahara, which would make it the first member state of the European Union to do so.

Until now, Morocco has fairly successfully kept the beatings and killings of leading Sahrawi human rights advocates and civil society groups in the Moroccan Occupied Territory beneath the radar of the global media. But two phenomena are successfully breaking through Morocco’s ‘wall of human rights shame’. Firstly, internet and mobile phones enable rapid communication to channel evidence through Morocco’s ‘propaganda wall’, such as video clips of Moroccan police’s excessive use of force at peaceful student demonstrations, thereby enabling external observers to monitor the ongoing state of affairs. 11 Secondly, these observers comprise a growing network of NGOs, human rights organisations, academics and regional analysts as an intellectually informed ‘Green Line’ against Morocco’s belligerent ‘tools of persuasion’. 12 Both these phenomena provide – as Pazzanita so aptly put it – the ‘antidote to the propaganda’.13

Following the 1975 Spanish colonial withdrawal and the ICJ opinion sought by the United Nations14, Morocco ‘ignored or discounted’ that opinion (1983: 60-62)15 and invaded the Western Sahara annexing approximately eighty per cent of the territory and now commonly referred to as the Occupied Territory (Hodges 1983; Damis 1983; Shelley 2004). A sixteen-year war ensued between the Moroccans and the Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front. A 1991 United Nations brokered ceasefire has been successfully maintained, but the ceasefire agreement carried a promise of a referendum for Sahrawi self determination which has been repeatedly stalled or blocked by Morocco. For the last 34 years, an estimated 165,000 refugees have lived in exile in refugee camps administered by the Polisario Front on the Algerian desert border town of Tindouf. The Polisario formed their nation-state in exile in 1976, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), and control the remaining twenty per cent of the Western Sahara, often called the ‘Free Zone’ or ‘Liberated Territory’. The Polisario continues to seek self-determination and a return to homeland, while the remaining Sahrawi population live under Moroccan occupation.

* Konstantina Isidoros is a doctoral researcher in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her field of specialisation is on nomadic pastoralism across the Sahara Desert with a particular interest in the hassaniyya-speaking Sahrawi nomads of the western Sahara.

Africa: Mubarak calls for summit to alleviate the pains of refugees

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/60187

President Mubarak has called on the Extraordinary African Summit for Refugees and Displaced Persons to alleviate the pains of the refugees, to protect them and to facilitate their safe return to their homelands, as he said “we are capable to do this with our own resources and with the support of the international community and our international partners”.
President Mubarak called on the Extraordinary African Summit for Refugees and Displaced Persons to alleviate the pains of the refugees, to protect them and to facilitate their safe return to their homelands, as he said “we are capable to do this with our own resources and with the support of the international community and our international partners”.

And Mubarak added in his speech that was given on his behalf by Dr. Ali Moslhi the Minister of Social Solidarity, in front of the African Extraordinary Summit which started on Thursday in Kampala in Uganda and will be held for two days:

"We all know the complexity of the issue of migration and displacement in Africa; therefore, we have to cooperate with our international partners, with the coordination of the African Commission and the United Nations to alleviate these pains”.

And he emphasized Egypt’s continuous commitment in dealing with refugees, through its responsibility to international law and the founding charter of the African Union. He stated that Egypt in this endeavor is cooperating with the UNHCR, and its regulations and policies through assisting refugees, according to the available resources as all the other African states do.

Following, is President Mubarak’s speech to the Extraordinary Summit for Refugees and Displaced Persons in Africa that was given on his behalf by Minister of Social Solidarity Ali Moslhi:

Your Excellency President Youri Mossveni

Presidents and Leaders of Africa

Ladies and Gentlemen

First, allow me to express my gratitude to my dear brother President Youri Mosivni for holding this important summit in his country. I am sure that his wise leadership will contribute to the success of this summit that we all look forward to.

This Extraordinary Summit is held within times of unprecedented international conflicts and crises in level and consequences; and in a time when Africa is witnessing ongoing armed conflicts that reflect suffering on many refugees and internally displaced persons. This is considered as a fundamental challenge, which we have to deal with in this Summit with the highest level of efficiency and responsibility to overcome its causes and consequences, and to provide protection to refugees and displaced in Africa.

Brothers and Sisters

This summit is the first summit of its kind on the African level, as it allows us to discuss all the aspects of this issue; its causes, political, economic, social and humanitarian consequences. This is an issue that has been highly debated in the United Nations and outside it; in relation to regional and international security and its link to the issues of human rights , women rights, specifically children rights; considering that they are the most affected groups among refugees and displaced persons.

Yes, the debated issue in this Summit is closely linked to the current situation of peace and security in Africa, and our collaborative efforts within the framework of the African Union to reconcile the armed conflicts, to entrap its causes and to achieve the required reconciliations between brothers connected through bonds of neighborhood and common interests for the good of their countries and their people.

The problems of refugees and forced migrants and their suffering will continue to be confined to our ability, for, we, the Africans, to reconcile the armed conflicts, to provide the reasons for economic and political stability. It will also be confined to our ability to deal with natural disasters, the phenomena of desertification and aridity. Until this happens, we should take responsibility towards alleviating their pains, protecting them and helping them return to their home countries. We are able to do this our own resources and with the assistance of the international community, our international partners and the United Nations, its bodies and the UNHCR in particular.

We all know how complex and inter-connected the problems of seeking refuge and migration are. We know of the difficulties facing hosting countries to refugees and displaced people; in providing for their needs, and how this is considered an additional burden on these countries. We should work together with our international partners and coordinate between the African Union and United Nations to alleviate those burdens.

Dear presidents

The number of refugees and internally displaced persons in Africa are around 17 to 22 million refugee and displaced persons. And it is a huge number that reflects the magnitude of this problem, the challenges it creates and the economic, humanitarian and social suffering it imposes. We; in Egypt are hosting a big number of refugees from 36 different nationalities, mostly from African countries. We provide them with the needed support as stated in international and regional treaties that put in consideration human factors that force people to seek refuge and become displaced.

Egypt always emphasizes on its commitment – when dealing with refugees- and its responsibility according to the International Law and the Charter of the African Union. It cooperates with UNHCR in this endeavor, in accordance with the statues and regulations it formulates. It supports them according to the available resources; and in this; it is not different than all the fellow African countries, each according to its capacities.

The responsibility of protection is recognized as a fundamental principle of Human Rights, and it is considered as a high priority for International work on the governments and non-governmental organizations levels. This important Summit, with its released declaration and the African treaty it will adopt to provide protection to refugees, is a huge and important step in the common African efforts in this issue.

Hereby, I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to President Musivini and the African Commission, for their efforts in holding this Summit and its preparatory process.

Thank you

Peace Be Upon You


* This article appeared in 7th Day newspaper website

* Translated by the Psycho-Social Training Institute of Cairo 9-11-09

Chad: Young people in refugee camps need hope for better future - UN official

2009-11-13

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/AZHU-7XR2XL?OpenDocument

Without adequate security or resources for education, young women and men in refugee camps would turn to prostitution or violence, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Chad said at a Headquarters press conference.Michele Falavigna, reporting on the humanitarian situation in Chad after his first three months, said the country had been at war for 40 years and had virtually "never known peace and development".

Djibouti: 40 Somali asylum-seekers forcibly repatriated

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32923

The United Nations refugee agency has voiced regret at Djibouti’s forced repatriation of 40 Somali asylum-seekers, including 13 women and children, who were rescued by a Dutch ship in the Red Sea last month.

Somalia: Women and children benefit from health initiative

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32935

At least 83,000 Somali children and women benefited from the Child Health Days Campaign carried out with United Nations support in the Afgooye corridor, which hosts displaced people who fled their homes owing to the violence in the capital, Mogadishu.

Global: UN General Assembly declares July 18 Nelson Mandela International Day

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yf782kv

The Nelson Mandela Foundation and its sister charities are pleased with the United Nations General Assembly’s declaration of July 18, Nelson Mandela’s birthday, as “Nelson Mandela International Day”, an international day of activism.

South Africa: Albert Park moves into action

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yz7rgfw

“It’s only us who can really understand our challenges and come up with appropriate solutions. The time for talking is over. It’s now time for action.” These words, from a participant in the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s community conversations on social cohesion, expressed the determination with which the Albert Park community began its second series of community conversations. This community in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), stressed by poverty and insecurity, clearly views dialogue as the way to unearth the causes of their problems and take decisions.

Zimbabwe: ZCTU leaders acquitted & set free

2009-11-13

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news121109/zctu121109.htm

The President of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Lovemore Matombo, and four other unionists were set free on Thursday after a Victoria Falls magistrate threw out charges against them. The 5 were arrested on Sunday for holding consultative meetings with workers in the town. Police, acting on instructions from Mugabe’s regime, claimed the leaders had violated the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) by holding the meetings without police permission. The magistrate however ruled that trade unions were exempt from seeking police authority for their meetings.

Emerging Powers news roundup

Sanusha Naidu

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/60224

A. FOCAC NEWS

1. Declaration of Sharm El Sheikh of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation
For the purpose of “deepening the new type of China-Africa Strategic Partnership for sustainable development” on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, reviewed with satisfaction the implementation of the follow-up actions to the Beijing Summit of the Forum, and agreed that the set goals had been accomplished.
More

2. FORUM ON CHINA-AFRICA COOPERATION SHARM EL SHEIKH ACTION PLAN(2010-2012)
In keeping with the purposes of deepening the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership to seek sustainable development, and in order to implement the outcomes of the conference and chart the course for cooperation in all fields in the next three years, the two sides jointly worked out and adopted this Action Plan.
More

3. Chinese premier pledges funds, aid to Africa - by Nampa-AP
China’s premier pledged US$10 billion in low interest loans to African nations over the next three years and said Beijing would cancel the government debts of some of the poorest of those countries.
More

4. Ellen: Development Impacted By China AS China Pledges US$10bn Aid To Africa
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says Liberia’s development has been greatly impacted by the measures implemented by China under the China-Africa Cooperation initiative, as China has pledged US$10 billion in concessional loans to Africa.
More

B. Development Needs

1. Africa needs to spend US$ 93 billion per year on Infrastructure
A new study by the World Bank says sub-Saharan Africa needs to spend US$ 93 billion per year on infrastructure to maintain growth - equivalent to about 15% of GDP.
More

2. Africa needs R600bn a year for infrastructure – OECD
African countries need to invest $80 billion (R594bn) a year in infrastructure for the next 15 years if the continent is to catch up with development in Latin America and Asia, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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3. Chinese commerce minister sees brilliant future of China-Africa trade co-op
The economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa is brilliant in the near future, said Chen Deming, Chinese minister of commerce, when commenting on the just-concluded ministerial conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
More

4. President praises China for support
President Kibaki on Tuesday saluted the Chinese Government for supporting infrastructure development in the country.
More

5. Africa needs China
The African continent's biggest banking group, Standard Bank, announced that it supports the new and enhanced initiatives announced at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) and remains committed to ensuring that the opportunities arising from the China-Africa cooperation are beneficial for all parties.
More

C. Corporate Activities

1. CDB opens first Egypt office
China Development Bank (CDB), the State-run bank for public works projects, opened its first representative office in Egypt's capital Cairo Tuesday after more than one year of preparations.
More

2. China’s Premier Visits Huawei’s Regional Training Center in Egypt
Premier Wen Jiabao officiated the inauguration of Huawei’s new Training Center in MENA region, located at Smart Village Cairo, Egypt’s prime technology cluster and Business Park, in Cairo.
More

D. Agricultural Issues

1. SPECIAL REPORT-Is Africa selling out its farmers?
With memories of Ethiopia's devastating 1984 famine still fresh in the minds of its leaders, the government has been enticing well-heeled foreigners to invest in the nation's underperforming agriculture sector. It is part of an economic development push they say will help the Horn of Africa nation ensure it has enough food for its 80 million people.Yet Ethiopian farmers do not share their leaders' enthusiasm for the policy, eyeing the outsiders with a suspicion that has crept across Africa as millions of hectares have been placed, with varying degrees of transparency, in foreign hands.
More

2. U.N. Probes rich states’ ‘African land grab’
Fifty heads of state will meet in Rome Sunday to examine the way that rich Middle Eastern and Asian states are buying up vast tracts of farmland in Africa, often secretly, in what is seen as a massive land grab that will worsen conditions in the world's hungriest continent.
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3. 4. China's Farming Ambitions Take Shape
China is sending its farming expertise to Mozambique in a drive to increase the African country's agricultural productivity.
More

E. Trade and Investment
1. China buys Zimbabwe prison
A Chinese firm bought a prison in Zimbabwe to convert the facility into a manufacturing plant.
url=http://en.afrik.com/article16442.html/]More[/url]

2. Global Sources' China Sourcing Fairs expand to South Africa in 2010
Global Sources announced that South Africa will be the newest location for its expanding series of China Sourcing Fairs to be held in December 2010.
More

3. China grants $349m for Ethiopia’s road construction
China has signed a 349 million US Dollar loan to Ethiopia to finance the horn of Africa’s nation first modern highway road project.
More

4. Guinea's Chinese mining accord - deal or no deal?
A reported $7 billion deal between Guinea and China Investment Fund (CIF) has left Guinean government officials in the dark and foreign diplomats worried the ruling junta could use the cash to ride out sanctions.
More

5. China extends tax exemption to products from Africa
China is to extend zero tariff treatment to 95 per cent of products from the least developed countries in Africa as it wrestles with the United States and the European market for clout.
More
6. 'Made in China' now made in Egypt
With cheap labour, investment incentives and unrestricted exports, one Chinese textile group has turned to Egypt as an ideal location to produce its ready-made garments, beating stiff competition at home.
More

F. Opinions, Rivalries and Cooperation
1. What China’s $10 billion means for Africa
Economists and analysts have long viewed China’s efforts in Africa as a way of garnering political and cultural support vis-a-vis Western nations who still view Beijing skeptically, but one Chinese official told Bikya Masr that these efforts are mainly economical, not political.
More

2. China wants a lead role in fight against Somali pirates
China wants to take a lead role in anti-piracy operations off the Somalia coast, underscoring Beijing's desire for greater influence in Africa's affairs and global diplomacy.
More

3. Emerging Powers: India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) and the Future of South-South Cooperation
Due to the current trends of political and economic restructuring, South-South cooperation is expected to play an increasingly important role in the post-recession world. India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) established a dialogue forum to increase multilateral collaboration on a number of issues, especially those relating to development.
More

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* * Sanusha Naidu is the research director of Fahamu’s China in Africa Programme, based in Cape Town and Oxford.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

North Africa: 'Made in China' now made in Egypt

2009-11-12

http://tinyurl.com/yzst53w

With cheap labour, investment incentives and unrestricted exports, one Chinese textile group has turned to Egypt as an ideal location to produce its ready-made garments, beating stiff competition at home. The Chinese-owned Nile Textile Group has set up shop in the Port Said free zone, overlooking the north entrance of the Suez Canal, and developed an industrial estate now hiring 600 workers, 20 percent of which are Chinese and the rest Egyptian.

Sudan: China defends decision not to veto Darfur ICC referral

2009-11-12

http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article33085

The Chinese government defended its decision not to block a UN Security Council resolution in 2005 referring the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC).Beijing, despite being a strong ally of Khartoum, abstained from voting on the resolution outraging Sudanese officials who accused China of failing to “protect its friends”.

Africa: Is clientelism at work in African elections?

2009-11-13

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3629

Does clientelism play a major role in the voting decisions of African elections? Which factors are most important to African voters when choosing a candidate to vote for? This Afrobarometer working paper argues that clientelism is not a major factor in voting decisions. Instead, voters focus on issues relating to the provision of local public goods and the frequency of an MP's visits to the constituency.

Côte d’Ivoire: UN begins transporting provisional voters’ list

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32927

The United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) has begun transporting the provisional voters’ list to polling stations around the country as part of the latest phase of preparations for the upcoming presidential elections.

Mozambique: Victory for frelimo amid claims of election fraud

2009-11-13

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49225

The incumbent, President Armando Guebuza, has won the Mozambican 2009 elections in a landslide, obtaining three quarters of the votes, according to official results. Leopoldo da Costa, the chairman of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), announced that Frelimo’s Guebuza has been re-elected for second five-year term, winning 75.4 percent of the votes.

Zimbabwe: Botswana president calls for new election

2009-11-13

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE5AC09E20091113

Botswana's president accused Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday of failing to honour a power-sharing deal with his foes and called for new elections to resolve the political deadlock. In a state of the nation address after his re-election last month, Botswana's leader Ian Khama made clear he believed the blame for the political paralysis in neighbouring Zimbabwe lay at the hands of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

Gabon: Presidential aide quits in financial scandal

2009-11-13

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/685038/-/1352uq5z/-/index.html

A crony of the newly-elected Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, has been forced to resign from the government due to a magazine report that links him to a financial scandal. Mr Jean Pierra Oyiba who is President Ali Bongo Ondimba’s Chief of Protocol, resigned but has denied links with the scandal that was reported this week by the Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine.

Africa: $93 billion a year needed for infrastructure - report

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/ychhu8n

Sub-Saharan Africa needs to double its infrastructure spending to $93 billion a year, 15 percent of regional output, to drag its road, water and power networks into the 21st century, a report said on Thursday. The research compiled by the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) identified the continent's woeful electricity grids as its most pressing challenge, with 30 countries facing regular blackouts and high premiums for emergency power.

Africa: Civil society demands action, not words on water

2009-11-13

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49246

"No more commitments... We have had enough of the promises. Can we please see something happening on the ground? Right now, it is business as usual and that’s why Africa is off-track on the MDG target." Jamillah Mwanjisi, executive secretary for the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation attending the Second Africa Water Week in Midrand, South Africa, is not happy WITH what's happening in the water and sanitation sector.

Lesotho: A mountain of challenges

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86910

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-sufficiency. Time to overhaul the approach, aid agencies say. WFP generally only ships and provides food in crisis situations like civil conflicts and natural disasters. Programmes sometimes linger on after the emergency has passed, when food aid used is to help communities rebuild, but the goal is usually to move out.

Sierra Leone: War-wounded get micro-grants

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87007

Some 20,000 people wounded in Sierra Leone's war are receiving micro-grants as part of efforts to rebuild lives and livelihoods in the still fragile country. The initial grants of 300,000 leones (US$80) each are part of a government "reparations" programme, implemented by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA).

Africa: Developing men as a means of HIV/AIDS prevention

2009-11-13

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/282032/cchangepicks/

Published in January 2008 in the journal Political Perspectives, "As a Man This is How You Should Behave! A Critical Look into Methods of 'Developing Men' as a Means of HIV/AIDS Prevention in sub-Saharan Africa" looks at two HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in Uganda that both focus on changing men's attitudes and behaviour. According to the author, both programmes, Operation Gideon and the "Be a Man" campaign, tend to reinforce the same "truth" about Ugandan men, namely that they are the ones in control of their families or society.

East Africa: Kenya hopeful it can eliminate malaria

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/y93yxty

Kenya hopes to eliminate malaria by 2017, a malaria conference heard last week. The disease has been in decline in the country in recent years and scientists say they are optimistic that it can be eliminated by then.

Global: Global Fund approves US$ 2.4 billion in new grants

2009-11-13

http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/pressreleases/?pr=pr_091112

It is the ninth time the Global Fund Board approved new proposals to support programs fighting the three diseases. The total two-year value of the programs recommended for funding was US$2.4 billion; the second largest ever approved by the Global Fund, following a US$2.75 billion round in 2008. The Global Fund has now approved a total funding of US$18.4 billion for 144 countries since it was created in 2002.

Kenya: More education needed on emergency contraception

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86953

Three years after the Kenyan government began to promote emergency contraception as part of its family planning strategy, the “morning-after pill” remains as controversial as ever: critics argue that unless the public is better educated about its purpose, it risks undermining the messages of abstinence and protected sex, putting impressionable young people at risk of HIV.

Niger: Reinforcing sex education in high schools

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87013

High school students in the Niger capital, Niamey, learned to put HIV/AIDS and reproductive health in a broader context during a recent essay contest. "In preparing my essay I learned that AIDS is not a death sentence," said one female student who requested anonymity. "This kind of exercise should be encouraged because it allows students to increase their knowledge of AIDS and its consequences."

South Africa: 'Charge Mbeki and Manto with genocide'

2009-11-13

http://www.timeslive.co.za/news/article185290.ece

Former president Thabo Mbeki, together with his controversial health minister, Manto Tshabalala- Msimang, must be charged with genocide, says the SA Communist Party youth league. Young Communists League leader Buti Manamela said Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang denied hundreds of HIV-positive people access to antiretroviral drugs when they were in government.

Sudan: Kala azar "epidemic" in south

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87027

Reported cases of kala azar infection, a deadly disease also known as visceral leishmaniasis, have continued to rise in Southern Sudan, according to medical workers. "We are clearly in the midst of a kala azar epidemic," Jill Seaman, working in the Old Fangak clinic in Jonglei State, run by the Sudan Medical Relief organization, said.

Senegal: Report denounces decline in early childhood education

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/y9yqlf3

The findings of a study on early childhood education in Senegal shows that 92 per cent of children in that country are out of the pre-school system. According to the report, out of 1,306,214 who can get pre-school education in the country, only 99,038 attend a development structure for early childhood. This means that 1,207,176 are not supported by the pre-school system.

South Africa: Will dialogue stop church-gay clash?

2009-11-13

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=2394

Can religion and homosexuality ever be reconciled? Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM) strongly believes so and says dialogue is a biblical way in which people of faith should tackle “sensitive and painful” issues, rather than debate which “only polarizes and divides people.”

Africa: Africa facing climate data shortage

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yatg8hr

Africa must increase its collection and analysis of data about climate change's impact on water supplies, a meeting has heard. The continent needs information about water resources at local, national, regional and transboundary levels, said scientists at the 2nd Africa Water Week this week (9–13 November), organised by the African Ministerial Council on Water in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Africa: China needs to address environmental challenge - Report

2009-11-13

http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/4817

On November 8/9, China’s and Africa’s governments will meet for the 4th summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt. A report published by International Rivers finds that China and Africa have been successful in boosting their financial and economic cooperation, but have failed to deal seriously with the environmental challenges that have resulted from their growing cooperation.

Biochar land-grabbing: the impacts on Africa

2009-11-12

http://www.gaiafoundation.org/documents/Biochar%20Africa%20briefing.pdf

A new technology called "biochar" is being promoted as a major “geo-engineering” solution to global climate change, as well as a means of improving soils and addressing poverty according to this new report by The African Biodiversity Network, Biofuelwatch and The Gaia Foundation. However, this technology raises serious scientific and social concerns. Many questions need to be answered before claims about biochar can stand up to scrutiny.

Africa: Is Africa selling out its farmers?

2009-11-13

http://farmlandgrab.org/8868

For centuries, farmers like Berhanu Gudina have eked out a living in Ethiopia’s central lowlands, tending tiny plots of maize, wheat or barley amid the vastness of the lush green plains. Now, they find themselves working cheek by jowl with high-tech commercial farms stretching over thousands of hectares tilled by state-of-the-art tractors — and owned and operated by foreigners.

Africa: Is Africa’s land up for grabs?

2009-11-13

http://farmlandgrab.org/8861

An apparent surge in the purchase of African land by foreign companies and governments to grow food and other crops for export has set alarm bells ringing on and off the continent. The headlines have been strident: “The Second Scramble for Africa Starts,” “Quest for Food Security Breeds Neo-Colonists,” “Food Security or Economic Slavery?”

Global: Large scale land acquisitions, climate change, and urbanisation

Laura Hughston

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/60194

The universal declaration of human rights stipulates that everyone should have access to adequate standard of living including sufficient and appropriate food. Whereas the legal instrument to make the right to food enforceable are still being developed and debated, it is undeniable that states have an obligation to respect, protect and promote the progressive realisation of the right to food for all the populations under their jurisdiction
Large scale land acquisitions, climate change, and urbanisation: new challenges that call for NGOs to change their approach from food security to the right to adequate food for all

The universal declaration of human rights stipulates that everyone should have access to adequate standard of living including sufficient and appropriate food. Whereas the legal instrument to make the right to food enforceable are still being developed and debated, it is undeniable that states have an obligation to respect, protect and promote the progressive realisation of the right to food for all the populations under their jurisdiction. It is equally undeniable that the realisation of the right to food in many countries will take concerted effort and international support and that climate change, population growth, urbanisation and the land grab, represent new challenges particularly for the most vulnerable. According to a recent study between 2006 and mid-2009, some 37 million to 49 million acres of farmland have changed hands or are under negotiation1 most of these in developing countries; and when we consider that the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that by 2050 climate change will decrease food and agricultural production by up to 30 percent in parts of the developing world, the challenge of ensuring that the world’s food production is not only sufficient to feed its entire population in a sustainable manner, but also to ensure that adequate food is accessible to all, appears even greater.

Traditionally NGOs have focused on supporting local communities to increase their food security with great success, and advocating locally and internationally for human rights; however if we truly adopt a human rights approach in our work, we must apply the same sharp analysis we direct at global trends to our work and be compelled to recognise that adequate food is a human right and that our work should focus on its progressive realisation, not just for one group, but for all. Increasing the food security of one group is not sufficient or even acceptable if it weakens the enjoyment of other rights by the same or another groups, including those who are not born yet. Aside from being an enforceable right under international law (at present 153 States have ratified the ICESCR main legal instrument for enforcing the right to adequate food); adopting a right to food approach over a food security one, also presents the advantage to allow a broader analysis, both in terms of the spectrum of activities and in terms of the populations concerned, promoting their human dignity as rights holders and calls for more equitable sharing of the benefits of development.

Whilst most people in the world realise their right to food through work, in developing countries the majority of people are dependant on the direct production of food for their survival and rely on small scale farming with little or no access to inputs, technology and research to improve production. At the same time, most developing countries, confronted with chronic food insecurity, low levels of employment, low levels productivity in the farming sector, and also now the effects of climate change and increasing urbanisation; struggle to develop systems that would allow the realisation of the right to food and many other human rights, with too little cash in their coffers and generally only natural resources to pay for the required investment.

Attracting investment and modernisation in agricultural production systems and promoting employment could certainly be a way in which developing countries can foster the progressive realisation of the right to food and these investments look even more attractive when considering that land is often under utilised and the profit from sales and long term leases would bring into the country’s coffers some much needed funds, that would allow, among other, the fulfilment of other human rights such as health and education. However, the lack of transparency and allegation of corruption and mismanagement, on the way such contracts have been drawn, have also contributed to the sense of preoccupation with which the local and global civil society is regarding this issue.

The great majority of small scale farmers with whom NGOs partner to increase food security at household or community level, draw their productive means from land to which they only have customary rights but no legal rights, should it be sold, leased or be irreparably deteriorated, they are unlikely to be able to claim compensation in the courts. Also, land that appears to be left idle is, very often carefully utilised and managed but the economic contribution that these resources make to the lives and livelihoods of local people are equally not documented or quantified. Preventing individuals and communities from accessing the resources they need to feed themselves would, of course, constitute a violation of their right to food; but equally, if preventing them from accessing other natural resources required for their livelihoods, such as firewood or other products would result, as it is likely, in reducing of their ability to access adequate food, that would also constitute a violation of their right to food. Supporting therefore partner communities in documenting the utilisation, economic contribution and customary rights to natural resources is one way in which NGOs could support them in both claiming their rights legally, should such need arise, but also would provide evidence against the too often generalised assumption of under-utilisation of land resources under traditional use and of its negligible contribution to the economy.

Secondly, there is increasing evidence that small scale farmers who have begun to experience the adverse consequences of climate change have been experimenting and introducing innovations in their farming techniques and that they do this as a matter common practice. NGOs could play an important role not only in supporting these efforts, but also in documenting and sharing these practices, contributing to dispelling the assumption that innovative practices to counteract the effects from climate change would require high technology solutions and high levels of investments. In fact indigenous low-tech innovations can be more easily transferred and often make a remarkable contribution to the local economy, even if seldom receive due credit for it. Highlighting examples of success and innovation could also contribute to promoting farming as a viable career, with dignity and respect for indigenous knowledge and entrepreneurship, and perhaps prevent some the rural youth from joining the ever growing multitudes of urban unemployed.

Finally, ngo programmes supporting local communities in setting up small business activities to enhance their economic development (and hence access to food and other rights), too often, in my experience, allow these economic activities to remain as part of the informal sector, even when they become successful. By not becoming registered, not paying taxes and not complying with the same rules and regulation of mainstream business, including employment and health and safety regulations, these activities benefit greatly the families and groups involved, but not their communities and countries at large; furthermore they can actually weaken them through loss of tax earning and social protection. Moreover, since the economic contributions of the informal sector are almost impossible to quantify, and do not contribute to the greater good of the country, they can more easily be sacrificed in favour of larger enterprises, but also rights to compensation for loss of earning would be more difficult to claim.

An instinctive sense of indignation accompanies the consciousness of large tracts of fertile land in food insecure countries, becoming unavailable for food production either because of permanent degradation or because of being utilised to produce food for export to rich nations or for the production of fuels, whilst millions in the world do not have access to enough food to eat.

It is time for NGOs, who have aptly harnessed global solidarity, to mainstream their sharp analysis of global trends and commitment to human rights, into their everyday practice to ensure the most basic of all human rights is realised for all.

Africa: Millions of poor set to suffer deepening food crisis - UN report

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32900

Despite good global cereal harvests this year, millions of people in dozens of poor countries are in desperate need of emergency humanitarian aid due to stubbornly high food prices, the United Nations agricultural agency warned in a new report.

Africa: Ghanaian scoops Nobert Zongo Awards

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yzxnjzt

Ace Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas of the New Crusading Guide grabbed two awards at the 2009 edition of the Norbert Zongo Awards. He scooped the Norbert Zongo Grand Prize in Investigative journalism and the Segbo Excellence in Investigative Journalism 2009, for his groundbreaking expose on the work of Chinese human traffickers in Africa.

Ghana: Police assault, briefly detain radio journalist

2009-11-13

http://www.ifex.org/ghana/2009/11/12/donkor_detained/

James Donkor, a journalist working with community radio station Radio Progress, in Wa, the capital of Ghana's Upper West region, was reportedly assaulted on 24 October 2009 and briefly detained by two policemen in the area. The journalist, who had photographed a man the policemen had allegedly tied to an electric pole, was accused of "disrespecting" the police officers.

Togo: IFJ denounces the adoption of a new law threatening freedom of expression

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yclbpug

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has denounced the vote on Friday October 30, 2009 by the National Assembly of a legislation reinforcing the powers of the High Authority of Audio-visual and Communication (HAAC) and which seriously threatens press freedom and freedom of expression in Togo.

Tunisia: Opposition papers protest 'clampdown'

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yfjgn2w

Three Tunisian newspapers tied to key opposition parties are withdrawing from circulation for a week to protest what they call the government's "unprecedented clampdown" on the independent media.

DRC: Civilians escaping tribal violence on the rise

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32905

The number of civilians fleeing tribal violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into neighbouring Republic of Congo since last week has topped 21,800, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.

DRC: Un prioritizes civilian protection

2009-11-13

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32937

The top priority for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the protection of civilians from abuse, be it from the Government forces that it is mandated to support or armed rebel groups, a senior official has said.

Guinea: Political crisis only sharpens daily hardship

2009-11-13

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86924

Even when Guinea is not facing political crisis and reeling from a massacre, daily life is gruelling for many and instability is never far away. In this country that holds 30 percent of the world’s reserves of bauxite, the primary ore in aluminium, most people live hand-to-mouth; only about 19 percent of the population have access to proper sanitation facilities; malnutrition is widespread.

Africa: Half of improved growth from ICT

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/yey3nnb

Market liberalisation has encouraged massive private investment in Africa's cellular networks, according to a report released by the World Bank. The result was a major revolution in information and communications technology (ICT), which helped boost economic growth to an annual 4 percent between 2001 and 2005, the report on Africa's infrastructure by the World Bank said.

Africa: Donors retreating on AIDS

AfricaFocus Bulletin Nov 6, 2009 (091106)

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/enewsl/60250

A new report released by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors without Borders, documents both extensive achievements in expanding AIDS treatment in recent years, and the threat that funding slowdowns will not only stall expanding treatment, but also force life-threatening cutbacks for patients already on treatment.

Annual Conference of the New York African Studies Association

Call for Proposals/Abstracts

2009-11-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/60184

The New York State African Studies Association (NYASA) will hold its 2010 annual conference on March 26-27 at Binghamton University under the auspices of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies. In view of the impending change in the global order and power relations, and in light of the accelerating interactions between Africa and Asia, the annual conference invites abstracts and proposals for presentations, panels and roundtables on the above general theme and its variations.
Annual Conference of the New York African Studies Association (NYASA), State University of New York at Binghamton, March 26-27, 2010

Call for Proposals/Abstracts

Deadline: December 20, 2009

Global-Africa, Global-Asia: Africa and Asia in the Age of Globalization

The New York State African Studies Association (NYASA) will hold its 2010 annual conference on March 26-27 at Binghamton University under the auspices of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies. In view of the impending change in the global order and power relations, and in light of the accelerating interactions between Africa and Asia, the annual conference invites abstracts and proposals for presentations, panels and roundtables on the above general theme and its variations such as the following:

* Asia’s major Powers and Africa
* Strategies for Afro-Asian Solidarity
* Civil Societies in Asia and Africa
* African and Asian Diasporas in Comparative Perspective
* Education Systems in Africa and Asia
* Comparative Regionalism in Africa and Asia
* Black Pacific and Black Indian Ocean
* Science and Technology in Asia and Africa
* Religion and Politics in Africa and Asia
* African Union and Association of South East Asian Nations: Comparative Regionalism
* Knowledge Production and Knowledge Distribution
* Music in Africa and Asia
* Africa, Asia and International Relations Theory
* Race Relations from Gandhi to Obama
* Africa and Asia in the World Capitalist System
* Culture and Development: What can Africa and Asia Learn from One Another?
* Democracy and Development: Lessons from the Afro-Asian Experience
* Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Africa and Asia
* African and Asian Studies: State of Research
* Afrabia and the Black Crescent
* Diaspora and Development
* Between Bollywood and Nollywood: Comparative Cinema in Africa and Asia
* Language and Politics
* African and Asian Art: Influences and Interactions
* Africa in the International System
* African and Asian Diaspora, Foreign Policy and Economic Development
* Ecological Catastrophe, Environmental Justice and Social Movements

Other topics for papers will also be considered as are proposals to organize complete panels and promote student participation. Please send abstracts of papers and panels of not more than 150 words by December 5, 2009 to the Local Organizing Committee at igcs@binghamton.edu and nyasa10@binghamton.edu Please also indicate, if you could, which category of the sub-themes suits your topic, and specify if you would need for your presentation media resources (such as PowerPoint).

The local organizing committee will notify those who have submitted successful proposals on January 7, 2010. For general updates please visit the website of the conference at http://igcs.binghamton.edu/ or http://www.nyasa.org/

We expect that Africanists and Asianists as well as comparativists who are also based outside North America would attend the annual conference and share their perspectives.

In the context of the 2009 launching of proposed Ali Mazrui Chair and Ali Mazrui Center for Global Studies in Makerere University, Uganda, there will also be high-powered plenary panel about public intellectuals and intellectuals in politics. (For more details about Mazrui Chair & Center please visit http://igcs.binghamton.edu/igcs_site/mazruichair.html)

Contact Address:

NYASA 10 Organizing Committee
Attention: Dr. Seifudein Adem
Institute of Global Cultural Studies
Binghamton University
PO Box 6000 LNG-100
Binghamton, NY 13902 USA

E-mail: nyasa10@binghamton.edu
Telephone: (607)777-4494
Fax: (607)777-2642

Conference Fees

$100.00 includes all events and membership
$ 50.00 students and senior citizens, includes all events and membership
$ 50.00 one day events without membership
$ 25.00 one day events for students and senior citizens without membership

All Binghamton University faculty, staff, students with a valid ID card can attend the conference without paying conference fees.

Conference Venue

The conference venue is

Binghamton University
Downtown Campus (UDC)
67 Washington Street,
Binghamton
NY 13901


Hotel Information

Holiday Inn Arena
2-8 Hawley St.
Binghamton, NY 13901
P: 607-722-1212
F: 607-722-6063

[For the special conference rate, please make your reservation before March 4, 2010.]

East Africans on the Information Superhighway

November 12 – 13, 2009

2009-11-13

http://www.ict4all.or.ke/

In preparation for this Regional Conference as well as to facilitate informed input to the draft regulations as published by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the Kenya ICT Consumers Association in partnership with Akiba Uhaki Foundation, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Article 19, the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights(KNCHR) and the International Commission of Jurists-Kenya Chapter(ICJ-K) has organized the 2-day Kenyan Convening in Nairobi to discuss the key issues and where necessary offer innovative Civil Society alternatives.

Global: Human rights towards gender equality

April 17 – May 14, 2010, Stockholm, Sweden

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/y8wslga

The International Training Programmes are specially designed for persons qualified to participate in reform processes of strategic importance on different levels and who hold a position in their home organisation with a mandate to run processes of change. This methodology is based on the assumption that your country wishes to carry out changes and is willing to invest its own resources to achieve these changes.

The Reckoning: Understanding the International Criminal Court

Free online workshop for educators

2009-11-13

http://tinyurl.com/ybrxfp5

Facing History is working in close partnership with Skylight Pictures to bring the documentary film, The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, and additional film modules into classrooms around the world. This is an invitation to join a free online workshop about justice, genocide, and the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Consultancy Announcement

Office of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women

2009-11-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/60221

The newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Rashida Manjoo, wishes to carry out a comprehensive research project on the topic of reparations for women who have been subjected to violence. The findings of the research will inform her first annual report, which will be presented at the 14th session of the Human Rights Council in June 2010. The consultant is expected to undertake a study that addresses in a comprehensive and coherent manner the main issues raised above and identify the challenges in the field of reparations to women who have been subjected to violence as well as any good practices and lessons learnt.
Consultancy for the thematic report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences on “Reparation to women who have been subjected to violence”

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Subject and aims of the consultancy

The newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Rashida Manjoo, wishes to carry out a comprehensive research project on the topic of reparations for women who have been subjected to violence. The findings of the research will inform her first annual report, which will be presented at the 14th session of the Human Rights Council in June 2010.

Most human rights and humanitarian law treaties provide for a right to a remedy. In the context of gross and systematic violations of human rights, the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, adopted by the General Assembly in December 2005, start with the premise that “the State is responsible for ensuring that victims of human rights violations enjoy an individual right to reparation”.

Both the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women place upon the State the duty to prevent, investigate, punish and provide compensation for all acts of violence wherever they occur. Article 4 of DEVAW states that women who are subjected to violence should be informed about and provided with access to the mechanisms of justice, as well as to just and effective remedies for the harm that they have suffered, as provided by national legislation. However, as pointed out by the previous Special Rapporteur, when it comes to implementation of the due diligence obligation to reparation, “very little information is available regarding State obligations to provide adequate reparations for acts of violence against women […]this aspect of due diligence remains grossly underdeveloped”1.

The research will aim to draw on previous work done on the subject - in contexts of peace, conflict, post-conflict and transitional justice- by a variety of actors, including the UN special procedures and treaty bodies, as well as international agencies, academics, civil society organisations and Governments.

Conceptual framework

Over the past fifteen years, the international legal response to violence against women has experienced a number of positive developments that have resulted in the explicit recognition of violence against women as a human rights concern within the United Nations2. This is further illustrated by groundbreaking judgments by the ICTY and ICTR and the explicit inclusion of some forms of gender violence (rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, sexual enslavement, enforced sterilization and sexual violence) as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Rome Statue of the ICC. In this context, largely because of the work of women’s rights activists and victims’ groups, the issue of gender and reparation has received increasing attention.

The obligation to provide adequate reparations involves ensuring the rights of women to access both criminal and civil remedies as well as the establishment of effective protection and support services for women survivors of violence. Compensation for acts of violence against women may involve the award of financial damages for any physical and psychological injuries suffered, for loss of employment and educational opportunities, for loss of social benefits, for harm to reputation and dignity as well as any legal, medical or social costs incurred as a consequence of the violence. States are also required to ensure that women victims of violence have access to appropriate rehabilitation and support services. The notion of reparation may also include an element of restorative justice.

While it is evident that violence affects women in conflict or post conflict situations, as well as women in stable societies that are not exposed to the fallout of conflict, reparation programmes have mostly been designed in transitional justice contexts, in an attempt to address the claims for justice of victims and survivors of mass scale human rights violations and to consolidate long-term peace based on equity, respect and inclusion. However, important challenges linger, as most reparation programmes have remained insensitive to gender specificities and have failed to address the differential impact and subsequent different needs of women and men in a post conflict situation. It is in this framework that the Nairobi Declaration on Women’s and Girl’s Right to a Remedy and Reparation was adopted in March 2007, putting forward a vision of reparation and transitional justice process that includes gender sensitive compensation and material solutions, restorative justice aspects, as well as broader political demands for a change in the overall status of women in society3.

Reparations programmes, be it in contexts of peace, conflict or post-conflict, need to address the pre-existing inequalities, injustices, prejudices and biases or other societal perceptions and practices that enabled violations to occur, including discrimination against women and girls. This is indeed crucial for women initiating reparation claims to surmount practical impediments - such as lack of familiarity with public institutions, difficult access to legal assistance because of poverty or illiteracy- as well as deeper obstacles relating to the emotional and physical scars caused by the violence, including feelings of guilt resulting from societal negative stereotypes, increased vulnerability resulting from economic instability (in particular in cases where women have survived the former head of a household) and negative stereotypes that often result into revictimisation.

Scope of the Consultant’s Duties

The consultant is expected to undertake a study that addresses in a comprehensive and coherent manner the main issues raised above and identify the challenges in the field of reparations to women who have been subjected to violence as well as any good practices and lessons learnt. The consultant will look into the matter in contexts of peace, conflict, post-conflict and transitional justice.

This entails the following activities, inter alia:

a) Review and analyze existing studies, surveys and reports which focus on women’s access to justice (and reparations in particular), including academic literature, relevant reports from United Nations agencies, regional organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations.

b) Carry out consultations with individuals, institutions and agencies working on issues related to reparation to women subjected to violence. Consultations should include, among others, States, United Nations agencies and other intergovernmental bodies, human rights and women’s non-governmental organizations and academic institutions. They could take various forms, such as an online forum, questionnaires, and targeted email and phone contact.

c) Based on a preliminary research and in consultation with the Special Rapporteur and relevant OHCHR staff, develop an outline and define concretely the parameters and key issues to be addressed in the thematic report. If possible, depending on time and resources, seek feedback to the proposal elaborated from a peer group or other mechanism, including through the consultant’s possible participation in an expert meeting convened by the Special Rapporteur on the subject.

e) Prepare a first draft report, which identifies the main challenges in the field of reparations for women who are subjected to violence, and outlines good practices and lessons learnt.

f) Prepare a final draft report, incorporating final comments provided by the Special Rapporteur and OHCHR staff. The report should include a set of conclusions and recommendations which provide guidance to the Special Rapporteur in the preparation of her report to the Human Rights Council, and suggest areas for future research.

Duration of the consultancy: approximately 3 months (starting as soon as possible in December 2009).

Location: Any location would be acceptable, as long as the consultant maintains close email and phone contacts with the Special Rapporteur and relevant staff at OHCHR.

Fee: A lump sum will be paid depending on the experience of the selected candidate in accordance with consultancy rates of UN Secretariat.

Consultant’s qualifications

* Advanced university degree or equivalent knowledge in the areas of international human rights law and social sciences.
* At least 7 years of experience / research on human rights, preferably in the field of gender issues, and with a particular focus on violence against women. Experience / research on the issue of reparations, preferably with a focus on women, is highly desirable.
* Demonstrated ability to conduct research, synthesize inputs and analyze extensive research material.
* Ability to work in a team and independently.
* Fluency in English and excellent drafting skills. Ability to read French / Spanish would be an asset.

Application: Candidates fulfilling the indicated requirements are requested to send a completed P11 form (hereto attached) and a letter of motivation to vawconsultancy@ohchr.org by 17 November 2009.

by fax to: +41 22 917 9006

or by post to:

VAW Consultancy
Special Procedures Branch
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Applications by email are strongly encouraged

On all correspondence, please include the following subject line:
VAW Consultancy Application– Candidate’s name

Fahamu