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Madagascar's hidden crisis: Women's rights and human rights abuses

Zo Randriamaro

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64052

cc W R IWith Madagascar's political crisis still far from resolved, economic and social rights have remained outside of the concerns of the country's leadership and mainstream media alike, writes Zo Randriamaro. Incidents of human rights abuses have been much less publicised than developments around political competition, Randriamaro notes, a reality reflective of elite concerns for self-protection and personal enrichment at the expense of ordinary livelihoods.

The political situation in Madagascar is far from improving, after several unsuccessful attempts from national, regional and international mediators to resolve the political crisis during more than a year. This has overshadowed another worrying trend, which is clearly gendered: the crisis that affects not only political and civil rights, but also economic and social rights in the country.

HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS

The cases of human rights violations have been much less publicised than the power struggles among the proponents of the political crisis, not only because such information is not of the kind that the authorities would like to publicise, but also because it has not attracted the attention of the international mediators involved in the protracted process for the resolution of the political crisis, nor that of the mainstream media. Thus, very few local newspapers have reported on the ongoing campaign by human rights defenders for the immediate release of the so-called ‘political detainees’ who had been arrested by the police during the street demonstrations of September 2009 and had been waiting in vain for eighth months for their cases to be addressed. Among these are 13 women, who started a hunger strike together with male political detainees about one week ago to call for attention to their cases. Three of these women have reached a very critical stage (Madagascar Laza, 14 April 2010). While human rights defenders are mobilising locally and among the Malagasy diaspora to send as many letters as possible to the ministry of justice of the transitional government led by Andry Rajoelina to demand for the immediate release of these women, they also know from experience that the authorities are listening more to the voices of powerful outsiders than those of their own people.

This was clearly evidenced in the violence perpetrated by the armed forces against the workers of the COSMOS factory, which was closed down following the exclusion of Madagascar from the preferences under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) as a result of the decision by the transitional government to ignore the threats of international sanctions. 2,000 workers were laid off when the COSMOS factory could no longer export its products to the US market, like hundreds of other factories in the export processing zones of the country. Instead of the support that it had promised to these workers, the transitional government instructed the armed forces to throw teargas at the hundreds of workers who came to the factory to get their severance pay to no avail (Midi Madagasikara, 21 April 2010). Most of these workers are women, who constitute more than 70 per cent of the labour force in the export processing zones.

'PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE?'

Meanwhile, the internal tensions within the High Transitional Authority (Haute Autorité de Transition (HAT)) are increasingly visible, along with the weakening of its alliance with the military – some of whom have recently been accused of a coup d’état. As happened with the thousands of retrenched workers who have been abandoned to a future of poverty and destitution, an increasing number of ordinary people who supported Andry Rajoelina have come to realise that all these internal struggles are not about their wellbeing and rights as citizens, or about the nation’s interests. In this regard, civil society organisations have underscored that some members of the HAT have been able to buy brand-new cars and build big houses; those civil society organisations have also demanded for accountability from the transitional authorities for their governance of public resources (Madagascar Tribune, 7 April 2010). Thus, a small elite has greatly benefited from the political crisis, and the control of the state as a site of enrichment appears to be at the heart of current struggles among the proponents.

The latest development in relation to the political crisis is the leading role played by the presidents of France and South Africa in the design of an agreement between the current president of the HAT, Andry Rajoelina, and the former president, Marc Ravalomanana. While the content of this agreement is not yet known, there is every reason to believe that the control of the state’s resources will implicitly remain the key item on the agenda of the discussions. Once again, human rights are likely to be sidelined, given the poor record of Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana in relation to human rights. South African President Jacob Zuma is well-known among feminist and women’s rights activists for the controversial issues around his election, and President Nicolas Sarkozy clearly demonstrated during his visit to China that he gives priority to economic interests over human rights. With respect to the political crisis in Madagascar, it comes as no surprise that he is getting involved in its resolution at a time when the French oil company Total is in competition with Chinese companies for oil exploitation in the country.

In an earlier article, I have expressed hope as a Malagasy citizen and women’s rights activist that the political crisis in Madagascar could be an opportunity to transform unjust political, social and economic structures, and to build a new social contract based on human rights for all. Now, I am more convinced than ever that the sine qua non condition for this to happen is that we, the women of Madagascar, must fight for our rights and those of future generations.

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* Zo Randriamaro is a human rights and gender activist from Madagascar with extensive experience on gender and economic issues.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REDD: Seeing the forest for the trees

Khadija Sharife

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64056

cc Lel4ndThere’s a difference between carbon emissions in developed and developing countries – that of ‘extravagant’ carbon versus ‘survival carbon’, for the provision of basic services such as electricity. But it is a distinction that market-based responses like carbon trading, driven more by financial interests than a desire for sustainable development, fail to consider. Khadija Sharife takes a closer look at UN carbon trading scheme REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

All carbon is not created equal: One ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated in New York from several McDonalds burgers, for instance, clocking in at 16kg per 1kg of meat, is not the equivalent of one ton of CO2 emitted in a country like South Africa, where energy generated from coal provides basic services such as electricity. The difference – though blurred by mainstream media, which reduces the discourse to the democratisation of pollution impacts, strictly observed between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries – is that of extravagant carbon versus survival carbon. Thankfully, the developed nations that engage in the process of carbon-intensive industrialisation declare that they have found an equitable solution so rational it has never been put to a vote: Carbon trading.

Although anti-democratic ‘strong-men’ at the helm of ‘developing nations’ are deplored globally, there appears to be no problem in a global economic architecture controlled via a handful of ‘strong-states,’ such as the G7. This strange reality is evidenced in the fossil fuel consumption by the US (where 25 per cent of global oil reserves are devoured by 5 per cent of the world's population, emitting 19 tons of CO2 per capita), which is packaged by the media in vocabulary equating the former with the world's new largest polluter, China, despite the latter emitting just 4.4 tons per capita.

At a January 2010 conference titled, ‘Investor Summit on Climate Risk’ held in New York, more than 450 investors controlling over US$13 trillion, declared that action must be taken to pre-empt international climate change treaties in order to develop sustainable economies, chiefly through the carbon market. ‘Copenhagen was a missed opportunity to create one fully functional international carbon market,’ revealed Peter Dunsombe, head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IGCC), comprised of European financiers.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 85 per cent of the finance required to make the shift will be derived from private investors. And, as outlined by the Carbon Trading Summit, also hosted in Wall Street's hometown in January, and attended by systemically important financial firms ranging from Barclays Capital to Goldman Sachs, one primary item on the agenda is ‘creating the world's largest commodity market in carbon-backed securities.’

The commoditisation of pollution is inspired by the rationale of market efficiency: Major polluters issued with permits are incentivised to emit less, thereby enabling them to make a profit selling excess permits to those less efficient. In order to limit the pollution bubble, ‘flexibility points’ facilitate a process allowing for said polluters to finance carbon-light projects in countries that would otherwise engage in conventional methods of ‘development.’ By doing so, securities are generated through various ‘offset’ tentacles designed to exploit the ‘underdeveloped’ status of countries that fail to access and utilise their share of the atmospheric commons.

One tentacle is REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, which has been branded a revolutionary move by the UN. The initiative is designed to protect and conserve the world's remaining lungs and carbon sinks – forests – where ongoing deforestation and degradation currently accounting for 17 per cent of global emissions from stored carbon. Success, we learn, will be achieved through halting these destructive processes taking place primarily in nations that are under-resourced, punctuated by corrupt or diminished states, unable to police or protect forested land from illegal logging. The REDD initiative also intends to finance the protection and conservation of said lungs: One-fifth of the world’s fossil fuel emissions are absorbed by forests, with Africa acting as a sink for 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 annually.

REDD was first proposed in 2005, at the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP-11) by the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, composed of 15 member forested ‘developing’ countries, including Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia, with numerous participants from Lesotho, Kenya, Indonesia and Madagascar. The coalition's self-described goals are to generate revenue streams derived from a programme of ‘forest stewardship reconciled with economic development’ that is chiefly driven by communities. Branches of REDD range from the UN-REDD programme to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The bank, for instance, remains a key financier with a US$300 million fund.

The real agenda and primary incentive of the carbon market, however, was articulated by Jack Cogen, president of Natsource (recently labelled as the world's largest buyer of private carbon credits and managing over US$1 billion in ‘natural’ assets), who revealed, ‘The carbon market doesn't care about sustainable development... All it cares about,’ he continued, ‘is the carbon price.’ And Natsource would know. Kathleen McGinty, vice president of asset management was an aide to Al Gore, and key environmental advisor to Bill Clinton. Both were responsible for muscling the carbon market concept (via the pollution's trading system) through the Kyoto Protocol. Gore's Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), self-titled ‘the world's first and North America's only legally binding integrated emissions reduction, registry and trading system’, began motivating as far back as the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 for the climate change problem to be dealt with via a ‘market-based solution to global warming.’ CCX's board included a host of powerful players such as the UN's Kofi Annan and the World Bank's James Wolfensohn.

The carbon market system, which was eventually designed by Goldman Sachs (which incidentally holds 10 per cent of shares in CCX), draws on the tradition of Enron, a company that made its billions through exploiting the pollutions trading commodities market, enabled by an amendment to the US Clean Air Act. Ironically, it was the Enron ‘loophole’ – named as such for Enron's lobbying to remove regulation of derivatives from the Commodities Futures Trading Act – that upended systemically important financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, deliberately exploiting regulatory and oversight gaps, now on the receiving end of the US$11 trillion in bail-out funds from the US government. It was also the Enron debacle that catalysed the global recession, impoverishing those on streets with no name – and no safety nets.

Enron traders would later proceed to capitalise on the Enron ‘model’ such as Louis Bradshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, one of the world’s largest traders in carbon emissions and creators of the Global Carbon Index.

Goldman Sachs employees, such as Ken Newcombe, were architects of the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). Meanwhile the bank itself emerged as the most important financial instrument in the carbon market following the Rio Earth Summit, despite it bankrolling more than 130 major fossil fuel projects during the past decade, with a fossil fuel project calculated as being financed every 14 days. Since Rio, CO2 emissions from World Bank-related projects are estimated at 43 billion tons.

The interlocking nature of these relationships is clear. The percentage of officials at the World Bank composed of economists and bankers produced by institutions such as Goldman Sachs is 50 per cent, for example, as compared to development specialists at 8 per cent. And, 75 per cent of financial institutions use standards linked to the World Bank.

The winner of World Bank policies is none other than the US. A US Treasury report unashamedly reveals this cherished synergy: ‘The policies and programmes of the World Bank Group have been consistent with US interests. This is particularly true in terms of country allocation questions and sensitive policy issues. The character of the Bank, its corporate and voting structure, ensures consistency with the economic and political objectives of the US.’

Through the instruments of the World Bank, ‘developing’ the economies of heavily indebted regions is now subject to the free market agenda writ large, as forested regions become classified as natural assets that can be exploited through export-oriented activities, which are inevitably dependent on foreign investment.

Needles to say, given that there is a 92 per cent correlation between rising arms sales and oil sales, with 80 per cent of the world's oil reserves controlled by rent-seeking or rentier governments, the roots of climate change and Northern ‘wealth,’ remain intimately interlocked with that of Africa's suffering and poverty, particularly in those regions whose militarised regimes – such as Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and others – are dependent on oil exploitation for income.

It is in this context that the carbon market, estimated at US$3 trillion by 2020, will be realised, rendering it as vulnerable to gaming as derivatives.

Thanks to the Kyoto Protocol's ‘flexibility points’ – mechanisms that include Emissions Trading (also known as Carbon Trading), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation – major polluters need not reduce their own emissions. One example of gaming is evidenced in the more than 70 per cent of accredited CDM projects generating Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) directly related to trifluoromethane (HFC-23), a greenhouse gas used a refrigerant. The secretariat of the Clean Development Mechanism estimates that a ton of HFC-23 in the atmosphere has the same effect as 11,700 tons of CO2. However, records reveal that some refrigerant manufacturers deliberately produced excess HFC-23 in order to offset it and claim financial benefits. According to a 2009 paper, ‘Scaling The Policy Response To Climate Change [PDF],’ by researchers, Benjamin Sovacool and Marilyn Brown, the value of this scam exceeded €4.7 billion – well over the estimated €100 million.

(Sovacool and Brown’s study also evaluated 93 randomly selected CDM projects and found that ‘in a majority of cases the consultants hired to validate CERs did not possess the requisite knowledge needed to approve projects, were overworked, did not follow instructions, and spent only a few hours evaluating each case.’)

But the incentive for African states to receive funding via carbon credits by establishing ‘farming forests’ is certainly compelling from a financial and ecological point-of-view. After the Amazon, the Central African Rainforest remains the world's second largest forest cover at 18 per cent. Kenya's 400,000-hectare Mau Forest Complex – East Africa's primary water catchment area – for instance, may average 160 tons of carbon per hectare. The carbon stock trapped beneath the land is not the only sink: Each year, African forests sink over 1.2 billion ton of CO2, even though Africa alone contributes less than 3 per cent of emissions globally, with almost half of this generated from activities such as Shell and Chevron's gas flaring in the Niger.

Multinationals like Shell – precluded from the Copenhagen Climate Summit table as both a major industrial polluter and a duty-holder responsible for reparations – emit more carbon than 150 countries cumulatively. And, despite the intention of carbon markets (and architects) to grant rights to major polluters, by enabling such polluters to circumvent actual emissions reductions by purchasing credits from CDM projects in ‘underdeveloped’ countries, such ‘rights-talk’ remains narrow as it relates to climate change's geographically-fixed discourse composed solely of states and citizens. The former are pegged as duty-holders (whether developed or developing) and the latter as claimants with minimal enforceable rights.

Studies by the University of Berkeley in the US have calculated that industrialised States could owe US$2.3 trillion in climate change damages that have been inflicted on the ecosystems of developing nations through greenhouse gas emissions as well as depleted water sources and desertification.

The World Bank estimates the costs of adaptation and mitigation at US$400 billion per annum for developing countries by 2030 if steps are not taken to prevent continued degradation. But just US$10 billion per annum was allocated to all developing countries for the first phase (2010–2012). Paradoxically, in 2009 – the year of Copenhagen Climate Summit – developed governments subsidised fossil fuel industries to the tune of US$300 billion.

Copenhagen's vocabulary – limited to North-South binaries – was manipulated to represent financial reparations as foreign aid, shifting the discourse from that of equity to charity. It is no wonder, then, that an alleged 50 per cent of first phase climate funds was derived from diverted foreign aid, with little accountability and monitoring. Ethiopia's dictator, Meles Zenawi, who unilaterally decided Africa's fate with France's President Sarkozy, is at the helm of a country facing severe ecological crises due to mass deforestation caused by illegal logging. The country's under-resourced Agricultural Research Institute (EARI) reporting a loss of 200,000 hectares per annum. The head of Ethiopia's Institute of Forestry Development, Dr Alemu Gezahegn, revealed that Ethiopia would lose all forested land by 2020 if deforestation continued at the current ‘alarming pace.’

France itself maintains an extensive logging footprint in former African colonies and other ‘Francafrique’ territories, such as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the former being one of the world's top five wood exporting countries in the world, chiefly dominated by a small handful of French companies such as Coron and Rougier and Thanry.

Al Gore's industry-friendly convenient film, An Inconvenient Truth squarely placed deforestation via illegal logging on the shoulders of individuals; however, records reveal that logging companies exploit as much as five times an individual’s territory. In 2005, the Inter-Press Service quoted (’Corruption Rooted in Logging Industry’) a senior official at the Cameroonian Centre for Environment and Development based in Yaoundé as saying that NGOs could not name the logging companies for ‘fear of reprisal’ while ‘the police shy away from investigating the matter as well... because those who are profiting illegally from logging allegedly include senior police officials.’ As one French national involved in the logging industry revealed to IPS, ‘We're asked for bribes amounting to millions of CFA francs, and we often pay these out.’

Logging is big money. One aged or old forest Burmese teak can sell for between US$25,000–$30,000 dollars per log. Though wood from Africa and Asia is increasingly treated and finished in China, Europe remains the primary market. Illegal logging of forested lands, generally termed as common property resources (thereby indicating government ownership), or as customary or community ownership and/or lacking ownership altogether, has rendered barren millions of hectares within the Mau Complex in Kenya, and across the continent. Sudan, for instance, has experienced the loss of more than 8.8 million hectares (ha); the Democratic Republic of Congo, 6.9 million ha; Tanzania, 6.2 million ha; Nigeria, 6.1 million ha; and Cameroon, 3.3 million ha.

Paradoxically, REDD's process is capital intensive, allegedly requiring an average of US$2,000 for every hectare certified after ownership has been legally proved. This renders the process of establishing farming carbon projects similar to other enclave capital-intensive industries where States tend to lack the funds required to finance the ‘investment,’ thus paving the way for foreign financiers. And regimes, whether corrupt or democratic, automatically remain on the receiving end of ‘profit,’ so long as these forests remain open to investment designed to cash in on pollution as well as circumvent emission reductions. As Newcombe stated at 2004's Carbon Expo in Cologne, ‘The World Bank is reducing the risk for private investors.’

And for private investors, the opportunity is tempting. At the Mau's Rukinga ranch in Kenya, for example, wealthy ‘Western’ dotcom entrepreneur Mike Korchinsky and his partner Bob Dodwell spent over US$400,000 over a period of six months certifying and analysing the 80,000 acres of land they purchased for US$10 per acre, engineered as a deal that would benefit from the REDD scheme. They can expect well over US$2 million in returns annually, revealed the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

But for the Mau Complex's Ogiek peoples, who were marginalised from ancestral lands during the days of the British Empire, such conservation on the part of the Kenyan government, stealthily engaging in preparation for REDD, amounts to nothing more than criminality, resulting in the forced displacement of more than 1,650 families since November 2009.

Unsurprisingly, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia collectively rejected the rights of indigenous peoples in the December 2008 Conference of the Parties (COP)-14, as outlined by the heavily bracketed REDD text, discussed at Bali's COP-13.
Policies resulting in the displacement of vulnerable peoples like the Ogiek mark the general trend of REDD projects: Of 144 projects assessed by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), just one project ‘included a proposal to make community-managed forests or indigenous peoples’ rights a binding part of REDD,’ revealed the UK's Guardian newspaper.

And despite peoples such as the Ogiek possessing the complex knowledge base required to monitor and protect the Mau Complex, this cannot be done without according legal rights to indigenous peoples occupying such land through customary and community ownership – branded by the Kenyan government as squatters. According to the Washington-based Rights and Resources Institute, the process would cost just US$3.50 per hectare. But the ‘paper parks’ backed by the UN have failed to acknowledge forests as ‘socio-ecological ecosystems,’ preferring instead to protect ‘natural’ land devoid – or cleansed – of peoples, lending to the rationales of the conservation and privatisation tradition.

The intellectual structure of pollutions trading was initially created by economist John Dales in his 1968 essay ‘Pollution, Property and Prices’. The essay, which proposed a market for pollution rights and trading, did so by defining a set of ‘transferrable property rights’ that could be utilised using the vehicle of allowable quotas of pollution emissions that could be bought and sold. This, in essence, is used to justify the privatisation and propertisation of natural resources and ecosystems by financiers. As David Victor stated to the US’s Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), emissions permits ‘are assets that like any other property right, owners will fight to protect.’

In that same year, Garrett Hardin's infamous ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ essay, published in the prestigious journal Science, stipulated that without centralised control or private ownership, land that is ‘held in common’ by multiple users (such as the Maasai) would be subject to overuse and exploitation from individual self-interest and greed. Hardin, who advocate for the denial of food aid in ‘overpopulated’ countries and continents, would later amend this theory, declaring that an unregulated commons was the heart of the problem. Hardin's rationale has become a self-evident truth, with leading property rights specialist and economist Hernando de Soto claiming that property rights are ‘at the core of the capitalist system.’

It is a system that many in Africa – where just 2-10 per cent of land is privately held (usually acquired through State connections) – simply cannot afford to compete in, even less so under REDD. In Kenya, chunks of the Mau Forest Complex have been acquired by bogus companies related to the State with concessions large and small, such as the Moi-connected Sian Enterprises. Others include Olalarusi Inv Far (9,887 acres), the Catholic Church of St Francis (7,305 acres), Ilgina Contractors (3,202 acres) and the Kiptagich Tea Estate. Ironically, many like Ilgina, whose directorship is comprised of the powerful Ntutu family (Agnes Naropil Ntutu, Kiteleiki Ntutu and Kunini Ole Ntutu), were party to the registration and allocation of land via the Ntutu Presidential Commission (1986) demarcating the boundaries of the Maasai Mau Forest. According to the hard-hitting Nation newspaper, ‘members of a powerful [Ntutu] family in Maasai amassed chunks of land, virtually owning the entire Maasai Mau Trust Land Forest in Narok.’

Unlike Korchinsky and Dodwell’s plan at Rukinga ranch, where 50 community ‘shareholders’ will receive returns from the project, and US$600,000 will be ploughed back into protection, there exists little accountability for the bulk of forest concessions. ‘Logging companies may turn into carbon companies. In most countries in Africa you can do what you like, log out the trees, put in roads, do anything. There is little or no monitoring. The rewards could be 99 per cent for me and 0.5 per cent for the communities,’ stated Dodwell.

Nor is there input for law enforcement agencies in multinational home countries such as France, or host countries, such as Kenya and Cameroon, with leakages between markets and territories left at the discretion of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs and financial institutions like the World Bank.

‘Alarm bells are ringing. The potential for criminality is vast and has not been taken into account by the people who set it up,’ stated Peter Younger, an Interpol Environment Crimes Specialist, to the UK's Guardian newspaper. ‘Organised crime syndicates are eyeing the nascent forest carbon market,’ he said. ‘Carbon trading transcends borders.’

These syndicates operate through the same shadow networks established by financial firms, banks and accounting firms that facilitate illicit capital flight from the continent, artificially impoverishing Africa – at a price tag of US$148 billion per annum, according to the African Union.

The potential trade in carbon rights and carbon farming is already bringing out the big guns around the globe. More than US$100 million in bogus credits had been extended to indigenous tribes in South and Central America. Meanwhile, near Australia, Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea's Special Environmental Envoy and Ambassador for Climate Change, revealed: ‘We found that because Papua New Guinea was advocating a regime shift in forests, we had every carbon cowboy in the world descend upon Papua New Guinea and try to get a deal with some landowners ...that [would] somehow gave them some credibility.’ World News Australia reported, for instance, that Papua New Guinea leader, Abilie Wape was kidnapped at gunpoint by the police to ‘legally’ surrender the carbon rights of the Kamula Doso peoples forest. ‘Police came with a gun. They threatened me. They told me, ‘You sign. Otherwise, if you don't sign, I'll ... lock you up,’ Wape is reported as saying.

This warning was similar to that of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga in 2009, when he suggested that every single Ogiek would face arrest if they did not voluntarily move as part of the government's plan to ‘reclaim’ the Mau Forest Complex. This move had been promoted as part of the agenda to secure the Mau's crucial forested land, which also generates East Africa's primary water catchment area that supplies major rivers and lake systems, including the Nile and Lake Victoria, and feeds into Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.

This was, of course, never directly connected to the REDD process that is still in the planning stage. According to a source, a special consultation process is still being planned for indigenous peoples living in forests in the coming weeks, including issues related to compensation.

If any forest peoples remain, that is.

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* This article first appeared in The Thinker (April 2010).
* Khadija Sharife is a journalist and visiting scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS). She is based in South Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

WHAT IS A CARBON SINK?

A carbon sink is a reservoir that can absorb or ‘sequester’ carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and include forests, soils, peat, permafrost, ocean water and carbonate deposits in the deep ocean. Most of these carbon sinks are very large and very slow moving; human influence on these sinks is generally deemed fairly minimal, with the possible exception of soils and agriculture. The most commonly referenced form of carbon sink is that of forests. Plants and trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, retain the carbon component as the building block of plant fibre and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. Therefore, long lived, high biomass plants, such as trees and forests represent effective carbon sinks as long as they are maintained.
Source: International Emissions Trading Association

WHAT ARE THE KYOTO PROTOCOL FLEXIBILITY MECHANISMS?

The central feature of the Kyoto Protocol is its requirement that developed countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. By setting such targets, emission reductions took on economic value. To incentivise and help countries meet their emission targets, and to encourage the private sector and developing countries to contribute to emission reduction efforts, negotiators of the Protocol included three market-based mechanisms (also known as ‘flexibility mechanisms’) – Emissions Trading, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation. The CDM, for example, allows emission-reduction (or emission removal) projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one ton of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialised countries to meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
Source: www.globalissues.org

WHAT IS CARBON FARMING AND CARBON TRADING?

Carbon Trading is a market-based mechanism for helping mitigate the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Carbon trading markets are developed that bring buyers and sellers of carbon credits together with standardised rules of trade.
Source: www.carbontrading.com

WHO ARE POTENTIAL BUYERS FOR CARBON CREDITS?

Any entity, typically a business, that emits CO2 to the atmosphere may have an interest or may be required by law to balance their emissions through mechanisms of carbon sequestration.
Source: www.carbontrading.com

WHO ARE POTENTIAL SELLERS OF CARBON FARMING CREDITS?

Entities that manage agricultural land might sell carbon credits based on the accumulation of carbon in their agricultural soils either through preventing release of trapped carbon as well as potential sink capacity. Similarly, business entities that reduce their carbon emission may be able to sell their reductions to other emitters.
Source: www.carbontrading.com

Monitoring Sudan's elections: Increasing transparency

Sudanese Group for Democracy and Elections and the Sudanese Network for Democratic Elections

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64051

cc O DIn the wake of the Sudanese elections, the Sudanese Group for Democracy and Elections (SuGDE) and the Sudanese Network for Democratic Elections (SuNDE) offer their assessment of the electoral process and the problems associated with the election.

The Sudanese Network for Democratic Elections (SuNDE) and the Sudanese Group for Democracy and Elections (SuGDE) conducted the only coordinated Sudan-wide, non-partisan election-monitoring effort for the April 2010 elections. Together SuGDE in the north and SuNDE in the south received more than 13,500 reports from over 4,300 trained and accredited election observers who were deployed to over 2,000 polling stations across all of Sudan’s 25 states. The two coalitions used a common reporting form for observing key elements of the elections. Observers remained in their polling stations throughout the day and reported through their respective county and state coordinators to data collection and analysis centres for SuNDE in Juba and SuGDE in Khartoum, where the reports were verified for quality and analysed impartially according to standards for non-partisan election observation. SuGDE and SuNDE shared their observations and findings and developed this fact-based statement, released simultaneously at press conferences in Khartoum and Juba respectively.

SuGDE and SuNDE express their most sincere thanks and appreciation to all of their volunteers who dedicated their time to improving the transparency of the electoral process. SuGDE and SuNDE would also like to extend their thanks to the elections officials in the National Elections Commission (NEC), the High Elections Committee of Southern Sudan (SSHEC) and the State High Elections Committees (SHCs) for their cooperation and accreditation of SuNDE and SuGDE observers.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The April 2010 elections were a requirement for moving forward with implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). However, the elections did not fulfil the Interim Constitution’s and the CPA's aspirations for democratic transition and did not adequately meet the requirements of the National Elections Commission rules and regulations. Sudanese citizens demonstrated without any doubt their desire for democracy through their registering, voting and participating in lively political debate in these elections. Extraordinary efforts are required to achieve democratic governance, and SuNDE and SuGDE will seek to contribute constructively to securing peace and democratic progress. The hopes of citizens should not be allowed to slip away.

* SuNDE and SuGDE observed that the National Elections Commission (NEC) failed to adequately plan and prepare for the elections. The polling stations observed often lacked essential election materials to open on time or ran out of essential materials during the polling process. The inefficiency of the NEC to develop or publiciSe the polling station list and final voters’ lists in a timely manner also caused substantial confusion and potentially the disenfranchisement of a significant number of voters.
* SuGDE and SuNDE observed that while the administration of the elections was deficient throughout Sudan, in Southern Sudan the administration of the elections was observed to be more problematic.
* SuGDE and SuNDE observed several positive aspects to the elections. Voters turned out in large numbers and conducted themselves in a largely peaceful manner. Polling officials showed a strong commitment to fulfilling their responsibilities, particularly given the difficult circumstances. Thousands of citizens volunteered with civic organisations to observe the election and stayed through all seven days of the polling and the counting process.
* SuNDE and SuGDE recognise that this was the first election in Sudan since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and understand that the complexity of the electoral process and difficult logistical environment of Sudan made running this election challenging.
* However, SuGDE and SuNDE recorded significant flaws in the election process at the polling stations observed.
* SuNDE recognised that in South Sudan the political parties actively participated in the election. However, SuNDE observers noted a need for parties, candidates and their supporters or agents to better understand their roles in the electoral process, particularly regarding interfering with the polling process.
* SuGDE notes that in the north of Sudan leading political parties boycotted the elections, which deprived citizens of choice and made the elections confusing and less competitive.
* SuNDE was concerned by the troubling number of incidents of intimidation and harassment reported by its observers in South Sudan, particularly by party and candidate agents and supporters, and unknown and unauthorised security personnel.
* SuGDE was concerned by incidents of violence, intimidation and harassment in Southern Kordofan, Western Darfur, Northern Darfur and Sinnar.
* SuGDE and SuNDE are deeply concerned that the electoral process did not meet citizens' expectations and failed to fully embrace democratic principles at the polling stations observed.
* SuNDE and SuGDE urge all election stakeholders to learn from these elections and apply those lessons to improve the transparency and credibility of future elections, including the 2011 referendum.

SuGDE and SuNDE offer 24 recommendations, which are presented in the full elections statement.

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* The full statement on the elections from the Sudanese Group for Democracy and Elections (SuGDE) and the Sudanese Network for Democratic Elections (SuNDE) is available here.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Africa: Freedom not yet

Richard Pithouse

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64054

© Abahlali.orgAs South Africa’s Freedom Day rolls around each year, it has become something of a cliché for pundits and politicians to observe that while the country has political freedom, the majority of its people have yet to attain economic freedom. But this platitude masks an extraordinarily anaemic view of political freedom, writes Richard Pithouse.

‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all.’
 – Rosa Luxemburg, Berlin, 1920.


The assumption that political freedom begins and ends with the right to vote runs a real risk of overlooking escalating grassroots repression, the general conflation of the party and the state and the damage that is done to society by the wholly incorrect assumption that the economic realm is separate from the political realm and governed only by technical considerations.


Of course it is true that millions of people continue to have to make their lives in the most appalling material circumstances. And it is also true that, by some accounts, we are now the most unequal country in the world. It is outrageous that so many children are being put to bed on empty stomachs in leaking shacks at constant risk of fire and violent eviction. The excesses of private and state power compound that outrage. Gated communities for the rich continue to take the best land while the political elites find it impossible to provide toilets to the poor but can easily mobilise the political will to throw up new stadiums.


But the so obviously bitter realities of economic oppression should not blind us to the fact that political freedom was never completely realised in post-apartheid South Africa. The genuine flowering of political freedom enjoyed by the middle classes and elites after apartheid was never fully extended to the poor. Everyone has been free to vote but there are many communities across the country where there has never been freedom to organise independently of the ANC. There are communities where open opposition to the ANC puts one at the risk of expulsion from the community and there are communities were taking a position against the ANC puts one at real risk of violence.


This kind of aggressive political intolerance tends to be organised at the local level and in defence of local political interests. It is for this reason that local government elections are a far more dangerous time for grassroots critics of the ANC than national elections. The situation appears to be particularly bad in Durban and the 2006 local government elections were certainly not free and fair in that city.

There were two grassroots challenges to the ANC. In E-Section of Umlazi, a group of people with solid links to MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe), the SACP (South African Communist Party) and civic and trade union struggles decided to run an independent candidate against the incumbent ANC councillor. In the Northern suburbs on the other side of the city, the shack dweller’s movement Abahlali baseMjondolo decided to stage a boycott under the banner of ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’

The local ANC described the people behind the independent candidature in Umlazi as ‘reactionaries hell bent on destabilising the ANC.’ Over a period of three months, four people involved in the campaign for the independent candidate were assassinated and another was seriously wounded in an attempted assassination.


The Abahlali baseMjondolo election boycott resulted in the movement being declared a ‘third force hell bent on destabilising the country.’ Their marches were unlawfully banned, an attempt to march in defiance of an unlawful ban was met with severe police violence resulting in serious injuries and the police were even used to physically prevent the movement from taking up an invitation to debate the eThekwini mayor live on television.

For the last five years Abahlali baseMjondolo have organised an annual ‘UnFreedom Day’ on 27 April to mourn their lack of political freedom. But the situation in Durban has worsened since 2006. In March this year, Cope supporters were burnt out of the kwaShembe settlement in Claremont and in September last year Abahlali baseMjondolo was evicted from the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate by an armed mob openly backed by the police and the ANC. The ANC has simply ignored calls for an independent and credible inquiry into the ongoing violence in the Kennedy Road settlement. The middle classes can look forward to free and fair local government elections next year but there are no grounds to assume that the same can be said for the poor.


The second problem with the cliché about economic freedom needing to catch up with political freedom is that political freedom is being steadily constrained across society as the ANC lumbers, step by step, towards an increasingly authoritarian conflation of the party and the state. The steady chipping away at the rule of law, the entrenchment of corruption as a key mechanism for patronage within the party, secretive party funding and the party’s brazen abuse of its position to advance its own business interests all add up to a steady diminishment of political freedom in general. Liberal democracy operates on the assumption that parties represent competing constituencies within the electorate, but the fact of the matter is that the ANC has become an organisation with its own interests.


And, of course, freedom is not only about the right to organise nor is it only at risk from political elites. The general turn towards social conservatism with its sexism, homophobia, ethnic chauvinism and xenophobia are a serious assault on hard won principles that affirm, at least in principle, the equality and sanctity of every person.


But the limits to political freedom are not merely the set of our failures to live up to the commitment to constitutional democracy. All of the constitutional protections for political freedom need to be defended – but they are not, on their own, enough. Liberal democracies are unquestionably preferable to authoritarian states but they have a structural bias towards to the rich and the powerful. Party funding mechanisms, the ways in which elite interests are able to lobby policy makers, the substitution of professionalised civil society for popular organisation and the fact that the legal system is so profoundly commodified, are just some examples of the many ways in which liberal democracies have an entrenched bias towards the rich.


The only way to reduce this structural bias is via sustained popular organisation that can enable ordinary people to begin to subordinate the political class to the popular will. This kind of popular organisation may or may not take the form of contesting elections, but it certainly has to resist any attempt to limit it to electing representatives under top down party discipline. On the contrary, if popular organisation is to have any chance of creating a structural shift in power relations, it has to be an ongoing practice of freedom rooted in ordinary people’s ordinary lives. Once this has been achieved, even to some degree, it starts to become possible to drag the economic realm back into the social realm with the result that political freedom can begin to produce real economic freedom.


In recent years there have been important but highly contested experiments in popular democratic practices in places like Haiti and Bolivia. It is one of the great tragedies of our country that the ANC has chosen to respond to similar experiments on a much smaller scale in our society with repression rather than encouragement. Any political party or organisation that does not encourage oppressed people to organise themselves for themselves is an enemy of freedom.

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* This article first appeared on The South African Civil Society Information Service.
* Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Creating a new South African identity

William Gumede

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64049

cc F o MBuilding an inclusive South African-ness rests on recognising diversity as part of a broader commitment to a collective identity, argues William Gumede. Debates around 'African-ness' are misguided, Gumede maintains, and the country's true identity should be built on equality, the distribution of opportunities and an inclusive approach to nation-building.

The raging debate over what makes one South African, which currently focuses on whether a person is African enough, is simply the wrong debate.

Can we ever cobble together a common South African-ness?

To start with, diverse developing countries such as South Africa with such a politically divided past obviously cannot find a solution in a nationalism based on a shared culture, language or ethnicity. Neither can it rest on common citizenship or living in a shared space alone – often assumed in Western models of nationhood.

South Africa’s bitter history of more than 350 years of colonialism and apartheid – with its accompanied ethnic divisions, conflict and state-sponsored economic inequalities – makes the challenge of cobbling together a new South African-ness, from our divided past, so much harder, yet so much more urgent.

We must start from the premise that there cannot be one single definition of who is a South African. The obvious, basic building block is identifying oneself as South African.

The ethnic, language and regional diversity bequeathed by both colonialism and apartheid must mean that modern South African-ness cannot be but a ‘layered’, plural and inclusive one.

Former president Nelson Mandela’s 1962 statement in the dock during his political trial for inciting resistance against the apartheid government neatly put it that South African-ness cannot be defined in relation to a majority community. At the same time there cannot be one sole defining culture that indicates South African-ness.

The fact that we are so ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse should then be a central plank of a unique South African identity. South Africa’s democracy is based on a compromise between diverse political groups and acceptance of our differences. The fact that South Africa has a multiple identity should be the basis of its shared South African-ness. South Africa is a melting pot of people with their roots in Africa, the East and also the West.

Colonial and apartheid governments have insisted that South Africa is a 'society of self-enforced communities, always potentially – and in the absence of the [colonial or apartheid] state, actually – gruesome conflict with one another'.

Yet more than 350 years of colonialism and apartheid have meant that South African cultures are not ‘gated communities’ with fixed borders, but more often the site of considerable overlap, beyond just the occasional shared word or value. This means that South African-ness is one of ‘interconnected differences’.

The challenge for South Africa then is how to build 'a common sense of South African-ness' on the basis of our ‘interconnected differences’. What makes our situation different is that creating a new South African-ness will have to be based on politics. And because of this, South African-ness will always have to be continuously persuaded for; it is not going to be one that will be enacted by decree or good intentions alone. This is both a weakness and a strength.

What then is the basis of our common political identity? South Africa’s founding myths – based on politics – are the fact that the country managed to, out of the ashes of a civil war, peacefully construct a democratic dispensation based on a new democratic constitution, anchored in South Africa’s ethnic diversity and a new set of democratic values, rules and political culture.

The founding document of our political settlement is our constitution.

A common South African-ness will have to be weaved around the idea of an inclusive democracy. Included in this is solidarity for the vulnerable that must cut across the racial and political divide; this means that social justice must underpin governing.

Altogether these would be the basis for common interests and a ‘national consensus’ across the ethnic, political and colour divide. Our common ambition should be to mould a new democratic identity for South Africa. We must put the emphasis on the now and the future, rather than remain trapped in the bitterness of the past.

Because South African-ness is a political construct, there are some obvious pitfalls.

For one, leadership style matters very much. There is going to be a premium on South Africa’s political leaders to govern at all times for every South African, not one political party, faction or ethnic group.

A case in point is the fact that President Nelson Mandela, like India’s Mohandas Gandhi, consciously tried to evoke through his own personality a symbol of all-South African patriotism around which all South Africans could rally, no matter their colour, ethnicity or political allegiance.

Leaders must follow the rules applicable to everyone else. Flagrant ignorance of the new democratic laws by post-apartheid leaders won’t do.

Since democracy and the new constitution are at the heart of South Africa’s new identity, undermining both cannot but undermine the formation of a new South African-ness. Yet increasingly the constitution has often been treated not as a founding document by some political leaders.

President Jacob Zuma for example some time ago warned that ANC (African National Congress) MPs should serve the ANC before the constitution. That is not right.

Democratic institutions, such as the courts, the media and civil society are critical watchdogs to ensure the values of democracy that are important for nation-building are lived out in everyday routines.

Furthermore, a new democratic South African identity necessitates widespread public trust in the democratic system and institutions.

Because a democratic state is so central in building a new common South African-ness, the legitimacy of the state will hinge on whether it delivers. For example, public corruption that appears to go without punishment or with selective punishment (perceptions that if the person is closely connected to the right faction of the ANC than wrongdoing is often not punished or is just given a slap on the wrist), also undermines the legitimacy and credibility of government.

A combination of a lack of delivery, a seemingly indifferent democratic state and the perception that only a few blacks connected to the top ANC leadership and whites, who by virtue of education and pre-1994 policies benefit economically from the democracy, will erode the legitimacy of the state and undermine any nation-building efforts.

A common prerequisite for developing a common South Africa is allowing the space for differing opinions. Absolute loyalty must not be to a party, leader or tribe, but to the constitution.

Another prerequisite is for the vast talents of all South Africans, not only those of the same colour, party or faction, to be used. If it is the opposite, it will undermine nation-building, as it leaves those deliberately marginalised or excluded, whether black or white, excluded.

Opportunistically using the race for self-enrichment or to cover up wrong-doing undermines the building of a common South African identity. So it is with retreating into ‘nativism' – wanting to seek an exclusive definition of South African-ness or who is an African – which overrides the constitution’s core definition, which argues for multiple identities, diversity and inclusivity as the pillars of South African-ness.

A common South African identity and the future will have to be built as a mosaic of the best elements of our diverse pasts and present, histories and cultures. This does not mean that we must commit identity or cultural suicide. You can still be Afrikaner, Zulu or Indian as part of broader South African identity. However, there should not be one way of practising Afrikaner-ness or Zulu-ness; others may practice their identity differently, and others may even opt out of wanting to be viewed as Afrikaner or Zulu, even if they are born within those cultures – and they must be respected for that. But most importantly, we must practice or Afrikaner-ness or Zulu-ness in such a way that it does not conflict with the democratic values set out in the constitution: human dignity and respect and empathy for others.

Race, and the continued legacy of apartheid inequalities where most blacks are poor and whites better off, is one of the fault lines of the country’s efforts to build a common South African-ness. So at the heart of any economic development must be policies that genuinely uplift not only the poor, but the widest number of people at the same time – rather than a small elite, whether white or black or both. If the poor black majority is left out of prosperity, a common South African-ness will remain a fading dream. White and black hardliners will then continue to have fertile ground to manipulate black resentment and white anxieties to push for narrow definitions of South African-ness, which excludes others.

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* This article was originally published by City Press on 24 April 2010.
* William Gumede is the co-editor, with Leslie Dikeni, of the recently released 'The Poverty of Ideas' (Jacana).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Labour market shuts out women

Kimani Ndungu

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64055

cc M V BSouth Africa has one of the highest rates in the world of unemployment for comparable middle-income countries, writes Kimani Ndungu, with the latest official statistics showing that by December 2009, around 4.2 million people out of a total labour force of 17 million were officially unemployed. But this figure does not include almost 2 million individuals who have simply lost hope of ever finding a job. For women, says Ndungu, the situation is nothing but drastic.

Not only do women experience a higher rate of unemployment compared to men, but women also make up about two of every three discouraged work seekers. The recent economic crisis has also disproportionately affected women, with the number of females who are no longer economically active rising sharply between 2008 and 2009.

South Africa's long running problem of structural unemployment affects African women in particular. While there are no current composite statistics showing unemployment by race and gender, official data published two years ago indicated that by September 2007, the rate of unemployment among black African women was 31 per cent, while for those classified as coloureds, Indians and whites, it was respectively 21 per cent, 11 per cent, and 4.5 per cent. This means that for every one white woman without a job in South Africa, there were at least seven unemployed black African women.

Lack of employment opportunities and the absence of an independent source of income means that many women are forced to rely on their spouses, immediate family members, relatives or friends for survival. Furthermore, our country's social security system offers no form of income support to indigent people between the age of 17 and 60 years, unless they have a disability.

The fact that many women have to live off someone else has a multiplicity of negative social consequences, including the loss of independence, dignity and being forced to remain in abusive relationships.

On the other hand, while historically, the South African labour market excluded women from almost completely from participating in the economy, since 1995, slightly over two million women have found employment. A report published by the Department of Labour (DOL) a few years ago showed that the rate of women's participation in the labour market has been significantly higher when compared with that of men.

However, these statistics can be misleading because most women workers have been absorbed in the fast growing services sector, informal work and private households. To illustrate the point, between 2004 and 2007 when the South African economy was again growing at its fastest pace since the 1970s, the number of women working in the informal sector rose by a dramatic 105,000 to 1.1 million. On the other hand, the number of men working in this sector rose by only 15,000 to 1.3 million.

Interestingly, the DOL review mentioned above argued that the highest rate of women's participation in the labour force occurred in the 45-54 years age category due to a multiplicity of ‘push factors.’ This included more women choosing to remain longer in the labour market, women having no alternative but to stay in jobs, the need to continue to work as they become older, and the decline of female access to male income resulting from increased unemployment among males. In addition, the impact of HIV/AIDS has led to a rise in female-headed households, and consequently, more women forced to look for work in order to support their families.

Despite growing numbers of women working, gender equality is still far from being realised in the workplace. Twelve years since the passing of employment equity legislation and affirmative action measures, women continue to be seriously under-represented in the management and skilled trade categories. Women make up only 23 per cent of all employers and a mere 30 per cent of all managers in the workplace. On the other hand, almost 97 per cent of all domestic workers in South Africa are women.

For young women, pregnancy, marriage and family commitments, among other factors, have a bearing on their ability to continue with education and consequently, to find employment. The latest General Household Survey published by Statistics South Africa in September 2009 showed a considerable number of young women between the ages of 13 and 19 years who were not attending an educational institution. While lack of money was the main reason for not doing so, the reasons cited above together with failed exams were also cited as important factors.

Female unemployment is not a distinctively South African phenomenon, but it has a unique dimension in this country since race, class and gender have intersected powerfully to deny many women a foothold in the labour market. If we want to continue to develop as a country, this needs to be accounted for and factored into national economic planning.

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* Kimani Ndungu is a senior researcher at the National Labour and Development Institute (NALEDI) in South Africa. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Ethiopia: Information without interference

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64057

cc T S SPress freedom is now a core value of all humanity, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, but the ‘recent history of the independent press in Ethiopia is a chronicle of brutal crackdowns, arbitrary imprisonments and harassments of local and international journalists, shuttering of newspapers and jamming of external radio transmissions’. The Ethiopian people have the ‘inalienable right to have the information they need to make informed decisions about their form of government, leaders and lives,’ Mariam argues.

‘Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,’ fretted Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, as he summed up the informative powers of an independent press. All dictators and tyrants in history have feared the enlightening powers of the independent press because, as Napoleon explained, ‘A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns and a tutor of nations.’ It was the fact of ‘tutoring nations’ – teaching, informing, enlightening and empowering the people with knowledge – that was Napoleon’s greatest fear of a free press. He understood the power of the press to effectively countercheck his tyrannical rule, and he used censorship relentlessly to muzzle it. He harassed, jailed and persecuted journalists for criticising his use of a vast network of spies that penetrated every nook and cranny of French society’ exposing his military failures, and condemning his indiscriminate massacres of unarmed citizen protesters in the streets and for killing, jailing and persecuting large numbers of his political opponents. Total control of the media remains the wicked obsession of modern day dictators who believe that by controlling the flow of information, they can control the hearts and minds of their citizens.

The importance of an independent free press (media) in any society, including Ethiopia[1], can hardly be overstated. Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief architects of the American Republic was unrestrained in extolling the virtues of a free press: ‘The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’ Jefferson became singularly instrumental in the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the US Constitution which provided for sweeping and uncompromising protections of expressive freedoms: ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of the press.’ The free press is so vital to American democracy that the government is absolutely prohibited (‘no law’) from passing laws that censor, regulate, restrict or suppress its functions and operations.

Press freedom, along with other expressive freedoms, is now a core value of all humanity. The UN General Assembly in its very first session in 1946 adopted resolution 59 (I) which declared: ‘Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and ... the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.’ In 1948, freedom of the press became a core human right principle when the UN enshrined it in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.’ This universal right is today acknowledged robustly and expansively in Article 29 of the Ethiopian constitution:

‘Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression without interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of his choice. Freedom of the press and mass media as well as freedom of artistic creation is guaranteed… [and] censorship in any form is prohibited.’

In the past few years, Ethiopia has been ranked at the bottom of the list of nations with the worst records on press freedom. In the 2009 Freedom House’s ‘Press Freedom Rankings’, Ethiopia came in at a dismal 165/195 countries. Reporters Without Borders ranked Ethiopia at 140/175 countries in 2009. The Committee to Protect Journalists on 2 May 2007 ranked Ethiopia as number 1 among the ‘top 10 backslider’ countries ‘worldwide where press freedom has deteriorated the most over the last five years.’ When Zenawi ordered the jamming of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts recently, the International Federation of Journalists (the world’s largest organisation of journalists) on 1 April 2010 vehemently denounced his actions: ‘We condemn jamming of broadcasts. It is unprofessional, intolerant and flies in the face of promises that the Ethiopian Government is committed to press freedom.’

The recent history of the independent press in Ethiopia is a chronicle of brutal crackdowns, arbitrary imprisonments and harassments of local and international journalists, shuttering of newspapers and jamming of external radio transmissions. Meles Zenawi’s regime declared an open war on the independent press in Ethiopia in November 2005, following parliamentary elections in May of that year. He concocted a bizarre set of excuses and justifications to decimate the country’s small but growing independent press. He publicly alleged that the editors and reporters of the independent newspapers were engaged in a conspiracy with the opposition parties to overthrow the ‘constitutional order.’ He claimed they had incited violence and spread information that led to violence and genocidal acts. Zenawi told the Committee to Protect Journalists that ‘They [independent press] went beyond their normal bias and went for the jugular. They became part and parcel of the day-to-day preparation for the insurrection after the elections.’ But he has failed to produce a shred – a single speck – of evidence to link the occurrence of a single piece of any published material in the independent press to the occurrence of any violence or illegal acts in 2005 or at any other time.

Today Zenawi uses the same unhinged logic and the same old stale, discredited and patently absurd argument to justify jamming the VOA:

‘We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilising propaganda.’

As usual, he has been unable to give a single example of a VOA broadcast that even faintly resembles the ‘worst practices’ of the genocide-promoting radio station in Rwanda. The best he has been able to do is point to a dubious catalogue of complaints his regime has lodged with the VOA alleging overly critical reporting on his regime by the VOA’s Amharic service. Criticism of policies and leaders is a standard practice of an independent press in a democracy, but it must seem totally unnatural in dictatorships. Regardless of the irrefutable fact that there is not a single instance of independent press-caused violence or act of illegality, Zenawi’s regime for the past 5 years has used bogus and absurd justifications to jail, harass and intimidate Ethiopian and foreign journalists and close the vast majority of the independent newspapers in the country.

Why is freedom of the press so important that it has become one of the universal benchmarks of a free society?

Few have given a more definitive answer to this question than James Madison, the father of the American Constitution: ‘A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.’ A free and independent press serves as the eyes, ears and mouths of citizens in any society. It plays many important roles. As a watchdog, the independent press keeps those in power honest. Where there is a fully functioning free press, leaders no longer become untouchable gods sitting high on a pedestal to be worshipped, but ordinary men and women who are accountable to their citizens for their actions and omissions; and government institutions operate with transparency and openness. A well-functioning independent press will toil vigorously to expose the corruption, abuse of power, misuse and theft of taxpayer money and scandal among those exercising power and their supporting cast of invisible power brokers, influence peddlers and fixers.

When it informs, a free press educates citizens on public policies, choices and decisions. Citizens are informed on societal issues and problems, and are exposed to the range of competing potential solutions. An informed citizenry is better positioned to more effectively participate in public life and help shape its structure of governance and economic development. By informing, the free media becomes the lynchpin that connects citizens for collective action, and effective interaction with their leaders and institutions. Without free access to information and ideas, citizens are unable to participate meaningfully in the political life of their nation by exercising their right to vote or by taking part in shaping the process of public decision-making.

The free press is also plays a vital role in equitable and sustainable economic development, as articulated by the former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn:

‘A free press is at the absolute core of equitable development. If you cannot enfranchise poor people, if they do not have a right to expression, if there is no searchlight on corruption and inequitable practices, you cannot build the public consensus needed to bring about change. A free press is not a luxury.’

A society without a robust free press is a society condemned to live in darkness. Hate, like mushrooms, thrives in the hearts of those who live in the dark; fear grips the minds of those trapped in the darkness of ignorance; anger becomes the light at the end of the tunnel of darkness; corruption, like cancer, spreads in the dark corners of state and abuse of power roils the people in the dark vortex of despair and hopelessness. Without a vigorous free press in Ethiopia today, it is darkness at noon!

The functions of the independent press must be viewed in a broader context, and not only as a source of negative criticism. Leaders benefit from heeding the independent press and correcting their mistakes when it is pointed out to them. They can use the press to communicate with the people they govern and become more accountable, transparent and responsive to their citizens. Governance is not a private affair. When kings ruled by divine right, they claimed to be accountable only to divine authority. Thankfully, those days are long gone. At the dawn of the 21st century, those who lead and govern must accountable to the people; but a citizenry intentionally kept ignorant does not have the means to demand accountability. That is why an independent media is a vital civic organ in society. President John Kennedy captured the essential role of a vigorous press when he said that the media’s role is not just to entertain but more importantly ‘to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mould, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.’

An independent free press is not the enemy of good government. It is its strongest ally. It is through the press that leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of the people – learn about what ails them, angers them, pleases them, confuses and concerns them. When rumours and falsehoods spread and unfair criticisms are levelled, leaders have the opportunity to answer their critics and challenge them using the independent media itself. A government that persecutes the independent press and remains wilfully ignorant of what its citizens think and feel, and refuses to acknowledge and redress their grievances is like the proverbial ostrich that buries its head in the sand while a rumbling volcano cascades behind it. An independent press is ultimately a mirror for leaders and governments; sometimes the face in the mirror is the face of a monster. Breaking the mirror does not make the monster an angel.

The right of the Ethiopian people to receive and give information regardless of frontiers is their inalienable right to have the information they need to make informed decisions about their form of government, leaders and lives. Journalists cannot be made criminals because they speak truth to power, reveal the truth about those who wield power or because those in power abhor the truth. Civil and criminal defamation laws cannot be excuses to censor criticism and debate concerning public issues.

For any one who truly believes in the rule of law, it is impossible to understand how any leader or government could possibly fear public scrutiny and criticism in the press. A real leader is willing, able and ready to stand up and defend his/her policies, action and omissions in full public view. A real leader understands that criticism is a natural part of political and public life. The chief of state like the chef must get out of the ‘state kitchen’ if he cannot stand the heat.

Freedom of the press and media in general in Ethiopia is not about protecting the rights of newspapers, editors, journalists, reporters or foreign correspondents and radio broadcasters. It is fundamentally about the constitutional and internationally-guaranteed legal rights of every Ethiopian citizen ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and without interference, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of his choice and without censorship in any form.’ It is emphatically the duty of every Ethiopian who believes in the rule of law and freedom of expression to help deliver ‘information and ideas of all kinds’ to Ethiopians ‘regardless of frontiers.’ Let us all as Ethiopians join hands and resolve in our hearts and minds to become a thousand points of light shining brightly like the stars on the curtain of darkness that has enveloped Ethiopia today.

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

NOTES

[1] http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61056 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-in-defense-of-th_b_507773.html

Women's rights and Kenya's constitution: Challenging 'men of faith'

Beth Maina and Cenya Ciyendi

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64050

cc T MKenyan church leaders' opposition to the country's new constitution on the grounds of objecting to abortion is dishonest, argue Beth Maina and Cenya Ciyendi. In the current constitution abortion remains legal purely under circumstances of medical emergency – something that is not set to change in the new draft constitution – Maina and Ciyendi note, but this has not allayed a wave of church-based mobilisation designed to deny women the right to determine what happens to their own bodies.

What gives a church in which celibacy is equated with holiness, in which males have all the undemocratic power, the right to a place at the table where laws are made about women’s bodies?

A large number of contradictions have arisen in the Kenyan debate on the new constitution just passed through the Kenyan parliament in preparation for a referendum scheduled for 2 July 2010, and particularly around the clauses on the right to abortion.

We are Kenyan women in the diaspora who have struggled with other women in Kenya and other nations on the right to life for the mother as well as the unborn child. With CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, particularly the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, established, we wish to join a debate which is a fundamental concern over the fundamental right to life and which is critical in the bill of rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

However, we would like to state from the outset that this debate is currently moribund as far as the referendum is concerned as time has lapsed in relation to the act. Opening the door now to one group of people will raise further questions about democracy and the rule of law. As women, whose lives and bodies this is all about, we therefore cannot remain silent as we do not believe that those who purport to represent us either seek our view or care about our humanity. We have to question the protests by religious groups and politicians such as William Ruto, who hope to manipulate the ignorance and vulnerability of the faithful to jettison the new constitution on this specific aspect on emotive and pseudo-religious grounds. We believe that they are seeking power and hiding behind religion to derail what is a very important document in our lives as Kenyans, the new Kenyan constitution, which we unequivocally support as it gives all Kenyans greater protection, rights and freedoms than the old one.

In reality, the current position is that the clause itself to make abortion legal was not introduced in the new constitution, nor the old and existing law relating to the termination of pregnancy on medical grounds deleted. A vote, for or against the new constitution will therefore not change anything on this question.

The clause in question is Section 26 (2) of the new draft constitution, which says 'every person has a right to life and that life begins at conception', while Section 26 (4) allows the termination of a pregnancy when in the opinion of trained health professionals there is a need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger. Allowing abortion during a medical emergency is nothing new in Kenyan law. Under the current law it is legally permissible to carry out an abortion to save the life of the mother. Section 240 of the penal code, which was drafted in 1930 and has never raised any controversy, states: 'A person is not criminally responsible for performing in good faith and with reasonable care and skill a surgical operation upon any person for his benefit, or upon an unborn child for the preservation of the mother's life, if the performance of the operation is reasonable, having regard to the patient's state at the time and to all the circumstances of the case.'

All this means that the church leaders are being dishonest when they cite abortion as one of the main reasons for their opposition to the draft constitution.

Nonetheless, the NCCK (National Council of Churches of Kenya) has gone on record as saying they will and are indeed already mobilising their constituency to defeat the constitution in the referendum, and the Catholic church and conservative elements in the political classes have promised the same.

The key questions of women’s human rights – of a woman’s right to determine her life and destiny – will be left to institutions in which women have little democratic representation or say owing to their historical structures and cultural practices, for instance, in the Catholic church hierarchy and its make-up of only male priesthoods who are supposed to practice celibacy as religious norm. Furthermore, in the wider political context, such a significant voice cannot be said to be democratic in its representation nor sympathetic, by its experiences, to the plight of women and their bodies. How else can one explain that Article 43 of the new draft, which states that every person has a right to the highest attainable standard of health (which includes the right to healthcare services including reproductive healthcare), is similarly seen with suspicion by the men of the church as another way of smuggling in abortion?

We have witnessed the agony of women caught in catch-22 type situations. Some of these are married women in need of contraceptives to avoid those accidents of unwanted pregnancy especially, where they too cannot make decisions when and how to have sex.

Even when contraceptives are available and women are ready to use them or persuade their male partners to use condoms, the men of the church, especially those of the Catholic church, forbid contraceptive use and burden women with what they call the natural method. The women are thus forced to make a choice of the better evil. Often they choose contraceptives, but thereafter carry the psychological burden of perpetually 'living in sin'. If any misfortune befalls them or their family, say, they or somebody else in their family falls ill, they carry the burden of guilt as they believe this to be punishment for doing what the men of the church forbid. These are the lucky few compared to the millions of women who, even when mass- and gang-raped (as was the case during Kenya's post-election violence) and become pregnant, are not allowed to have a safe abortion.

With little choice, up to 300,000 women undergo backstreet, unsafe abortions in Kenya each year, though abortion is banned. If they are lucky not to be part of the 3,000 women who die annually as a result of these unsafe abortions, they may be injured and traumatised for life. This is because of the illegal nature of the abortions which they cannot talk about or seek medical, counselling or moral support for. The traumas associated with illegal abortion are well-documented, while the link with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is also only too clear. This further violates the women’s right to life in a context where she would find it difficult to violate her conjugal responsibilities.

The majority of those who seek abortion are young women under 25 years of age. This is of course termed as criminal because those who have the power to change the law for the benefit of women find no need to do so, and those who have the need to change the law have no power to do so. Instead the blame is solely on the powerless women, a blame-the-victim syndrome.

The message from the men of the church is that women should abstain or be faithful to avoid ungodly sex and abortion. No, being faithful is no option either because the men of the Catholic church neither allow contraceptive use within or outside marriage, nor sexual education for the young and unmarried. This prohibitive script and history of the church is loud and clear, as is evident from the following scenarios.

In February 1993, the Catholic church protested against a proposal by the Kenyan Ministry of Education to make 'family life education' an examinable subject, which would have meant making sexual education in schools universal. The protest by the Catholic church forced the government to abandon the idea, and this was by no means the only drama played or directed by the men of the church. During the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, the Catholic church in Kenya, for example, accused the Kenyan government of promoting abortion. This was followed in 1996 with the burning of condoms and sexual education books publicly. During this time different religious faiths joined in the staging of this act in what was then called the 'un-holy alliance'.

Neither is this drama just a local phenomenon. At international conferences, the Catholic church and the Holy See – which has observer status at the UN – frequently uses its power to block any reference to contraception and family planning, an action that intimidates and enforces consensus or silence among delegates from largely poor Catholic countries. And just as the un-holy alliance in Kenya, the Catholic church seeks alliances with Muslims and Protestant fundamentalist evangelicals and other religious and political conservatives to obstruct policies supporting sexual education, contraceptives and abortion.

For instance, in the international context, the alliances in support of prohibitive policies are evident in the 'gag rule' instituted in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, then known as the 'Mexico City Policy' by which aid to international family planning organisations that provided abortion services, abortion counselling or advocated for abortion access was withdrawn. Although this was suspended during the Clinton administration in 1995, it was reinstated by President Bush in 2001 and is now suspended in the Obama administration. The role of religious fundamentalists in US foreign policy go back to the period of the Cold War, when the US supported such groups to counter the Soviet Union's influence.

Should the moral persuasion fail, more aggressive scenarios unfold, including violence such as the anti-abortion protests involving vandalising abortion clinics and killing doctors – for example, the recent murder of Dr George Tilley, a gynaecologist performing late abortions to save women’s lives in the US. This sends out chilling messages across the world and leaves one to wonder, what happened to the fifth commandment 'thou shall not kill?'

Another tactic is to enforce 'abstinence-only sex education' by creating the fear of what would happen to teenagers who fail to adhere to the Christian sexual moral script. Condom use is highly discredited for being ineffective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, while premarital sex is said to lead to an unhappy marriage in the future. Sexually active teens are portrayed as more likely to be depressed and suicidal and are talked into adopting secondary virginity. All this is contrary to the power and ready availability of pornography, which sends out a message which is completely the opposite in both the published media and internet, on which these same righteous bodies have very little to say.

From these scripts and dramas, the men of faith and in particular those of the Catholic church would like everybody to be celibate, except that those already practicing celibacy according to the tenets of the Roman Catholic church are caught in worldwide sexual scandals involving the abuse of children and women, including nuns.

Perhaps it is not the abuse of children and women that is the problem, because as the men of the church preach to us, to sin is human and they too are human. Rather, the problem is the denial and silence and even cover-up of scandals by the church leadership and the failure to address human sexuality honestly. In her memoir entitled 'The Cannibal’s Wife', Yvonne Maes, a Canadian Catholic nun, gives a vivid account of the way she was sexually abused by a male priest who had been entrusted to help her recover from a work-related burnout condition and of her ordeal in getting justice, which in the end she did not get because the male hierarchy did everything to cover up and protect the offending male priest.

How many children in Kenya, Ireland, the USA, Germany, Belgium, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, Austria and indeed the entire world have been abused by the men of faith? What happened to the seventh commandment 'thou shall not commit adultery'? (Although for us, the abuse of children is not adultery, but rather a crime against humanity.) How many children have been violated by men of the church or religious men? How many girls and vulnerable women have been impregnated by these men? How many have died as the same men of faith deny them a safe abortion or force them into unsafe abortions? What is this hypocrisy by representatives of God? As Katha Pollitt would ask: Why should a paedophilia-ridden, paedophilia-hiding, child-abusing church be allowed to write or renegotiate already-agreed laws controlling women’s rights? What gives a church in which celibacy is equated with holiness, in which males have virtually all the power, the right to a place at the table where laws are made about women’s bodies? And when shall we see the paedophile priests or child molesters and their enablers and protectors held accountable under the law? What moral authority have such people to talk about conception or life for that matter?

We call on the right-minded and democratic men of the church to give Kenyans the space to get an improved constitution that will help deal with the many ills confronting them. We are fully in support of the reasoning of the retired Anglican Church of Kenya Archbishop David Gitari and we urge them to think in similar ways. Like him, we doubt the ability of the church to rally Kenyans against the draft constitution. Dr Gitari also cautioned church leaders on the issue of abortion, stressing that the church does not know everything and should always give the benefit of doubt to the doctor and the woman.

We believe that religious bodies have an important place to play in the democratic space. They continue to say very little about greater ills such as the death of mothers through abortion and rape and other forms of sexual violence. They risk being left behind in the dark ages if they do not honestly and urgently face up to their modern responsibilities. Is it too much to ask them before God to support women’s rights for a just and equitable life here on earth? This matter goes far deeper into the heart of the nature of the church and women’s place in it. We are your mothers, sisters and may even be your daughters – we are also people of faith.

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* Beth Maina is a professor of international health living in Sweden.
* Cenya Ciyendi is a writer living in London.
* This article is for and on behalf of Kenya Women in the Diaspora Network (KWID).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Naturalisation of Burundian refugees in Tanzania: A new home?

Lucy Hovil

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64063

cc WikimediaTanzania has taken ‘the bold and commendable decision to offer citizenship to 162,000 Burundian refugees who fled their country in 1972’, writes Lucy Hovil. But, warns Hovil, it seems premature to refer to the refugees as ‘citizens’, as recent telephone interviews with them suggest that they are ‘neither allowed freedom of movement, nor the security of having the necessary and vital documentation to prove their new status’.

It is rare for host countries to offer refugees citizenship, especially in a context such as the Great Lakes region where millions have been displaced. Instead, most governments wait for circumstances to change so that refugees can go back to their home country.

Tanzania, however, has taken the bold and commendable decision to offer citizenship to 162,000 Burundian refugees who fled their country in 1972 and who have since been living as refugees in Tanzania. While it is important not to detract from the level of generosity that this demonstrates, the process itself has revealed a fundamental disjuncture between rhetoric and reality. Only when the gap between the two has substantially reduced, it is argued, can it be judged a success.

First, official UN reports claim that the refugees have been granted citizenship. Yet recent phone interviews with those who have apparently just received citizenship show that they have not been given their certificates of citizenship and have been told not to leave the settlements in which they are living. The reason for this, they are told, is that their citizenship status is actually contingent upon them being relocated to other areas of Tanzania. Only when they are moved will they get their certificates. To refer to them as citizens seems somewhat premature given that these ‘Tanzanians’ are neither allowed freedom of movement, nor the security of having the necessary and vital documentation to prove their new status.

These former refugees have spent the past 38 years cultivating the land kindly provided to them by the government and have built up strong communities with those around them – not least because they have lacked freedom of movement so have been unable to integrate freely with Tanzanians living in the surrounding areas. The government of Tanzania is free to encourage movement, but as Tanzanian citizens they have the right to choose where they want to live and can only be moved forcibly in narrowly circumscribed circumstances. They certainly should not have to undergo what essentially amounts to another displacement. In addition to potentially violating their rights as citizens of the country, such movement will also undermine their economic self-sufficiency – which is concerning in a country where livelihoods are already precarious. Previous research has shown that this group are hugely concerned about the social, cultural and economic viability of being relocated across the country. For instance, moving them away from the place that has been their “home” for the past 38 years means they will lose their extended family connections and their current fixed assets (such as their houses). Yet they are caught: without their certificates, they are unable to access their rights as Tanzanian citizens, including the acquisition of business licenses, equal access to secondary education and medical treatment (for more information see Going Home or Staying Home).

Furthermore, history has shown that public statements about the granting of citizenship do not always translate into full citizenship for individuals. Rwandan refugees who were offered mass naturalisation by the Tanzanian government in the late 1970s with a similar public profile were still waiting ten years later for their certificates, despite having been “naturalised”. At the end of the day, the proof of the success of this exercise is not in the declaration that these former refugees are now Tanzanian citizens, but in ensuring the realisation of the rights attached to citizenship.

Second, there is concern about what will happen to those whose application for naturalisation is rejected. Currently there appears to be no system for informing those whose applications are unsuccessful, and there is no understanding of what will happen to them. As previously documented by the International Refugee Rights Initiative, many of those who missed the opportunity to apply for naturalisation did so as a result of basic administrative errors. Yet with no process for appeal in place, the future for those who are not accepted remains unknown and needs to be clarified urgently.

The third concern relates to the situation of other Burundian refugees living in Tanzania who have not been included in the naturalisation process, many of whom are refugees who fled Burundi in the 1990s and are therefore not being considered eligible. These refugees fall into two main categories: first, 36,000 refugees living in the last remaining camp for Burundian refugees, Mtabila, who are coming under intense pressure to return to Burundi regardless of whether or not they have legitimate concerns about repatriating; and second, self-settled refugees (or irregular movers as they are known officially) who have fallen off the official radar. In the case of the latter, there has been some indication that those in this group who fled in 1972 might be offered the option of applying for citizenship. However, uncertainty remains.

Of specific concern is the fact that conditions in Mtabila camp have deteriorated rapidly over the last year. Schools have been closed for months leaving more than 12,000 children without education, income-generating activities have been officially suspended, and even going to church was no allowed until recently when prayers were allowed to resume under strict conditions. Only basic medical and relief services are still being provided – as one refugee put it grimly, “only services to keep refugees from dying are still being given.” With such considerable push factors, questions have to be asked as to why this group of refugees is not returning to Burundi where, surely, life could not be any worse? Yet many continue to insist that they fear individual persecution if they return to Burundi (see I Don’t Know Where to Go). Burundi is making progress in its painful transition out of decades of violence and conflict towards stability. Yet not surprisingly, numerous problems remain unresolved, not least the massive deficit of justice in the country and enormous problems relating to the re-acquisition of land (see Two People Cannot Wear the Same Pair of Shoes). The situation in Mtabila, therefore, represents something of a standoff between a government that refuses to do anything that might encourage them to stay, and a group of refugees who stubbornly refuse to return. But it is a deadlock that cannot be allowed to continue to serve as an excuse for violations of the rights of the displaced.

So what is the outlook for Burundian refugees in Tanzania? For those in Mtabila camp, it is imperative that protection continues to be offered to this group of refugees. The cessation clause in the 1951 Refugee Convention – which would effectively rescind refugee status for Burundians living in Tanzania – has not been applied. Even if it were to be applied, refugees must have an opportunity to make an individual case for continued protection. The government must guarantee that refugees are not forcibly returned and alternative solutions are sought. Likewise the government needs to be clear about the situation for self-settled refugees.

For those in the midst of the current naturalisation process, it is vital that successful applicants receive their citizenship certificates and are not forced to move from the settlement. In addition, the Tanzanian government, along with UNHCR, needs to be far more transparent and accurate in how it is portraying the situation. We hope that the time will come when the international community – and Tanzania’s new citizens – can genuinely congratulate and thank the government for offering this group the opportunity of citizenship and all the rights which are bound up in that. But in the meantime, rhetoric needs to be translated into a reality that allows these new Tanzanians to fully realise their rights as full citizens.

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* Dr Lucy Hovil is a senior researcher at the International Refugee Rights Initiative.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

There's no such thing as plain Kiswahili

Chambi Chachage

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64058

Makwaia wa Kuhenga’s recent call to use plain Kiswahili deserves our attention, not least because of its goodwill. However, the road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions.

My conscience is particularly pricked by Makwaia’s assertion that ‘Kiswahili is being bastardised’, as in being ‘creolised’, notwithstanding his good intentions. This claim ignores the very definition and history of Kiswahili. It also works against his defence of cultural autonomy.

Kiswahili, as my secondary school teacher correctly taught me, is neither Pidgin nor Creole. It is plainly a Bantu language. This definition might seem contradictory when one counts the large number of words that Kiswahili has taken from Arabic, Hindi, English, German and Portuguese.

So, what makes it distinctly Bantu and thus strongly resistance to creolisation? It is the fact that throughout its history, it has managed to maintain its Bantu grammatical and literary structure. In other words, it has managed to take as many words as possible from other languages without losing its basic way of constructing and intonating sentences. This is a sign of cultural resistance.

Even the two examples Makwaia employs to prove his assertion actually affirms this structural consistency:

‘Jana si ulini-call?’
‘Wewe umesema mambo ambayo yame-insult intelligence yangu.’

What Makwaia misses is that through ‘Bantusation’/‘Kiswahilisation’ ultimately the ‘ulini-call becomes ‘ulinikoli’ and ‘yame-insult intelligence’ becomes ‘yameinsalti intelijensi.’

That is how Kiswahili evolves. One can now construct such a sentence:

‘Nilipobatizwa nilienda shuleni kuhesabiwa kisha nikala chakula mezani na kupanda gari kwenda hotelini.’

A quick look at it reveals that it is made up of words from at least seven languages: Baptise (English/Greek), Schule (German), Hisab (Arabic), Meza (Portuguese), Gari (Hindi) and Hotel (English/French).

Hence what Makwaia is erroneously lamenting as the transformation of Kiswahili to ‘something that one may call Kiswa-English’ is nothing more than Kiswahili under further construction. It is another phase of expanding Kiswahili’s rich vocabulary by incorporating new synonyms. By the way, synonyms (known as ‘Visawe’ in Kiswahili) are words with more or less similar meanings.

To use Makwaia’s example again, one can assert that the term ‘intelijensi’ is in the process of being adapted into Kiswahili as another synonym of ‘Akili,’ other being ‘ufahamu’, ‘ujuzi’ and ‘uelewa’. Similarly, ‘insalti’ would simply turn into a synonym of ‘kejeli’, ‘dharau’ and ‘kebehi.’

It is in this regard I rhetorically argued elsewhere that ‘Kiswanglishi’ should be a national language. Why? Simply because the majority of Tanzanians are increasingly using it, and it is, in fact, Kiswahili. If we allow students to freely use it in examinations, they will explain things better.

By Kiswanglishi, I don’t mean English that throws in one or two Kiswahili words. I mean Kiswahili that incorporates words we are adapting through cultural encounters within a highly globalising world. Here I am thinking of words like ‘kompyuta’, ‘televisheni’ and ‘selula’.

This is not cultural synchronisation, which Makwaia claims is happening with our beloved Kiswahili. It is cultural synthesis. After all cultural liberty is the ability to choose what suits you.

If there is one single proof of cultural resistance then it is Kiswahili. It has survived slavery and colonialism. Its structure is still intact even after the onslaught of neo-liberalism and imperialism.

Makwaia’s prediction that ‘very soon this country will lose even the little it could have kept for the people of this country – cultural autonomy’ (The Citizen 5 April 2010) as far as Kiswahili is concerned is thus farfetched. What we should lament is the fact that we are not bold enough to replicate Kiswahili’s form of cultural autonomy in our political and economic decision-making.

It might appear to the Makwaias that English is taking over. But, as Shabaan Robert foresaw, this will be temporal as Africans won’t be content. Ultimately, and as usual, Kiswahili will prevail.

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* This article first appeared on UDADISI: Rethinking in Action © Chambi Chachage
* Chambi Chachage is co-editor of 'Africa's Liberation: the Legacy of Nyerere', forthcoming from Pambazuka Press.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Why Kenya’s constitution should recognise Kadhi's courts

Yash Ghai

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64062

There are few more critical factors to building Kenya as a peaceful and united nation than the way we resolve the controversy over the Kadhi's courts. As is painfully clear, we have become a deeply fragmented nation. Avoiding emotions, dogma and arrogance, we must seek a principled approach to the question of the constitutional recognition of Kadhi courts. That approach appears in the preamble of the Proposed Constitution, which says, echoing the widespread sentiments of Kenyans, that we are proud of our ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, and must build peace and unity on that diversity. In multi-ethnic states, it is wisest to search for an appropriate balance between national values and identity and communal values and identity. Denying a community its identity as expressed in its most cherished values, and which do no harm to others, is the surest way to conflict and disintegration.

WHY THE OPPOSITION TO KADHI COURTS?

Is the real opposition to the principle of Kadhi's courts and Muslim law, or merely their constitutional recognition? The former is unjustified since Kenyan law recognises different cultures and values, including several regimes of family law. Nor can we say that Muslim values are so antagonistic to national values that they should be curbed, as one might say in Europe (even there, there is no outright rejection of Muslim law – Germany applies it, and the head of the Anglican Church has strongly advocated sharia courts for Britain). And we should remember that the general law and courts in Kenya, transplanted from England, are based on Christian values and practices.

The constitutional recognition of Kadhi's courts is necessitated by Kenya’s legal obligation to guarantee them in exchange for receiving sovereignty over the Coastal Strip, which is most appropriately reflected in the constitution. Secondly, the constitution’s definition of the judicial system would be incomplete without reference to Kadhi's courts.

SECULARISM VERSUS RELIGIOUS LAWS

Another argument against Kadhi's courts is that religious laws have no place in a secular state. Secularism does not exclude religious laws in personal domains. Secular India has not abolished religious personal laws. Secularism there means that the state would not favour one religion over another, and for the most part the public space would not be dominated by religious beliefs or dogma (e.g. qualifications for public office would not be based on religion, nor would the beliefs or practices of one faith be imposed on others). The application of Muslim law in only personal matters by Kadhi's courts is fully compatible with these principles.

Nor does the recognition of Muslim law violate the principle of equal treatment of religions. Since religions have different conceptions of marriage and family, the most sensible thing is not to force the state in choosing between different religious traditions, but to respect them all. Kenya laws do precisely that.

It is ironic that those Christians who oppose the inclusion of Kadhi's courts have successfully opposed gay marriages and reproductive health on religious grounds. Many Christians groups have cited authority from the Bible for these and other proposals, which people of other or no religion find unattractive, even offensive, and which cause humiliation and suffering to thousands.

NATIONAL INTEGRATION VERSUS DIVERSITY

Some argue that the recognition of diversity prevents national integration. In the Indian Constituent Assembly, some Hindu fundamentalists said that Indian unity would be under threat unless Muslim personal law was integrated with other systems. The assembly rejected forced assimilation of this type. Since then successive governments have said that an integrated law will not be imposed on Muslims against their will. On the whole this position has reinforced rather than threatened unity.

Unity comes from each community feeling that it is free to pursue its values and diversity (within overarching common values). Forced assimilation is the sure way to conflict. Non-Christians in Kenya have tolerated many aspects of the de facto ‘Christianisation’ of the state. Recognition of Muslim law is less, certainly no more, threatening to national unity than these practices. No non-Muslim suffers any harm due to the existence of Kadhi's courts, but they mean much to Muslims. Surely here we have a clue to solving the Kadhi's court issue.

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* Yash Ghai is a professor of constitutional law. He is the head of the Constitution Advisory Support Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal and a special representative of the UN secretary general in Cambodia on human rights.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Denudation: Remembering Dr Bala Mohammed Bauchi

(1944–81)

Richard Ali

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64048

cc M HWithin the backdrop of Nigeria's post-colonial history, Richard Ali remembers Dr Bala Mohammed Bauchi, assassinated on 10 July 1981 and a man who 'in the 16 years before his murder … had established himself first on the radio waves and then in academe as the most lucid of the Nigerian leftist theorists'.

'So pray for a deluge, that this blighted expanse
Would burst forth into a lusty bloom;
Pray that far from being a wasted effusion
Rapids of tears may turn the turbine of cause.'
'Pray for a Deluge', David Odinaka Nwamadi

Twenty-eight years ago, a government residential building stood burning in the hot Kano sun. The smoke-filled air from it was one of three black billows seen from the sky. Within, the 35-year-old occupier lay burning amidst a ton of papers and scant furniture. Who was he, and why? His name was Dr Bala Mohammed Bauchi and he was political adviser to Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the state governor, erstwhile political science don at Bayero University, Kano, and before that an ace broadcaster on the Voice of Nigeria. He was also an ideologue of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) and a committed socialist. Exhuming the past is a sort of undressing and understanding the why of Dr Mohammed’s death, and the subsequent years is a denudation of the Nigerian story that we may see it more clearly.

The current political apathy and fractionising tendency of the Nigerian people – so well understood and yet misinterpreted by journalists like Karl Maier – is a part of an ongoing dynamic; it is an organic. It is not an unalterable social trait, like the colour of eyes or the ridging of fingerprints are physical ones. If apathy is a social evil that must be cured then its root strain, found in Dr Mohammed’s assassination, needs to be isolated and cauterised because every political event is an expression that is significant.

Dr Bala Mohammed was an archetype of the socio-political genus known in this country as the 'radical leftists'; he was the first of them to be assassinated at the height of Nigeria’s second republic, on 10 July 1981. The man who emerges from the memorial service held a fortnight after his death at the BUK Preliminary Studies School was a Bauchi-born scion of the neo-Malikist Uthman dan Fodio jihad which established the Sokoto Caliphate over the northern-central Sudan; he was, by birth, conservative. Yet in the 16 years before his murder he had established himself first on the radio waves and then in academe as the most lucid of the Nigerian leftist theorists. And, indeed, he died precisely because he was an ideologue of the socialist PRP party. Yet his murderers sought to justify themselves as acting in honour of Alhaji Ado Bayero, the emir of Kano, in defence of 'traditional institutions', ostensibly against one of its own.

His intellectual credentials were attested to by his colleague and postgraduate peer at Howard University, Dr Asikpo Essien Ibok, who said: 'I am really sad today to talk about Bala because he is dead. If I speak about Comrade Bala as a political militant, I am speaking about him as a revolutionary intellectual. That is to say Bala was not only a teacher, but a theoretician-cum-practitioner. He postulated many theories and put them to practice. His concern was with theories of liberation. Who did he want to liberate? His people; from ignorance, illiteracy, nepotism, corruption, bad government, everything.'

Dr Mohammed’s then student, Alhassan na’Ayuba Zakaria said: 'Dr Bala Mohammed is all the teachers you can remember put in one person. He is a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, put together. Dr Bala Mohammed represents in no uncertain terms some of the qualities of Moses of the Israelites, when they were under the tyranny of the Pharaohs; the qualities of Jesus leading the disciples under Jewish persecution and qualities of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, before Islam conquered Mecca in 632AD.' From the words of his students and contemporaries, Bala Mohammed was one of the last of the true intellectuals: 'Bala argues with capitalist social theories to justify socialist theories.' The men who mourned him ranged from Drs Y.B. Usman and Mahmud Tukur to Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Adenike Adejobi, Tunde Obadina, Mudi Sipikin on to Wole Soyinka who wrote: 'The master plan, long decried, long forewarned, is implacably unfolding. We do not know whose turn it will be tomorrow – yours or mine. But we must be prepared. Our deaths must bring no regrets as long as our cause remains to sanctify our brief existence. We will not mourn our brother, Bala Mohammed; let our acts simply perpetuate his memory and honor him for eternity.'

How did such a man find himself macheted in a burning house on 10 July 1981? How does any country allow such a man, who made the 1978 'Who’s Who in American Universities' list, be murdered with such barbarism during a democratic government? Furthermore, two coups d’état succeeded in the 1980s, the Buhari and Babangida coups – what was the dynamic of these coups? For every political action is a consequence of a people's underlying, unspoken, zeitgeist. And nations are the expression of accretive human forces, each cause being defined by the accentuation of interests held in common.

The destruction of the Sokoto Caliphate by the British was followed, for their own interests, by its reformation into a civil service and it, like its counterparts in southern Nigeria, performed tax collection services. The emirs, who never fully controlled their territories anyway, lost even more credibility amongst the socially conscious elements, for the people of northern Nigeria saw them clearly as British agents and obeyed in matters of tax for the sole reason that the British and their courts were feared. The internal decadence of the Fulani feudalists, expressed in their expedient abandonment of the canons of the Fodio philosophers, Uthman, Bello and Abdullahi, explains the fin-de-siècle fear they had of ibn Rabeh’s counter-reformist reforms in the Sudan, a fear that of course disappeared with the arrival of the British and the French. The emirs would rather be British clerks than lose privilege to ibn Rabeh; moral authority over the Hausawa could be sacrificed for the backing of a powerful European patron. The loss of effective power, which Uthman dan Fodio and his direct descendants guaranteed, was redressed by two wars, the Second World War and Nigeria’s civil war.

The forces that killed Bala Mohammed knew themselves to be despised by the talakawa (plebeian elite) and indeed by the non-Fulani elements that were already regrouping at the start of the Second World War in various northern towns. The fear of the feudalists was the same one feared from Rabeh earlier, that of an anti-caliphate uprising that would obliterate their privilege. After the war, the Jamiyar Mutanen Arewa (which became the Northern People’s Congress) was formed by returnee soldiers and the few educated northerners. With the ascension of the blue-blooded Ahmadu Bello, the caliphate elements saw that they could continue their parasitism in the coming democracy and they lost no time in doing this upon his assumption of the premiership. Their strategy was based on a systematic infiltration of public office. Sardauna Bello was a skilled administrator and an altruistic dictator who unstintingly held the progress and unity of the piebald Northern Region dear; but he could not, nor had he any desire to, police the fellow scions of unearned patronage who were formed by the same system as he. Yet his power was political and democratic and he showed this severally, most notably in the public humiliation, deposition and banishment of the corrupt Emir Sanusi of Kano to Azare in Bauchi. He kept the north together the same way the Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa kept the country together, as anyone who must run a multiethnic state does, by political compromise and appeasement. But then came the second war.

The impact of the civil war and the trauma that followed it, with Bala Mohammed’s death, are instructive if the current stupidity equation of Nigeria is to be understood. Here we have popularly elected politicians assassinated for reasons no more cogent than tribal-dominist ones: dominist, clear from the barbaric manner of the killing of the Bauchi-born Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa; tribal, clear from the selective pattern of the killings.

In one swoop, the mechanism of balance, Ahmadu Bello was removed, leaving the opposed forces of both patronage and progress in northern Nigeria in disarray. And the army, not political organisations like Jamiyar Mutanen Arewa, became the arena for a struggle of interests. Had Jack Gowon not showed up on 14 January 1966, it might have been a different story; in those crucial days and months later, he was to assume the role of Ahmadu Bello, a human mechanism of balance. Had Ironsi done what he should, the trauma that followed would have been less, even unnecessary.

Our writers, from Ben Okri to Isidore Okpewho to Wole Soyinka have expressed the trauma so well that there is no need to rehash the pervasive despair of the 1970s here. In the aftermath of that war the forces that killed Bala Mohammed realised they could guarantee continued patronage by dominating the army on the one hand and undermining the talakawa on the other by keeping them out of schools. They had achieved the dubiously sophisticated genius of ruining the educational infrastructure of their class enemies. Yet at this time, other men like Bala Mohammed, Y.B. Usman and Mahmud Tukur felt that common oppression was the lot of many Nigerians and this same oppression could unite them all; that thus, socialism, would be a news basis to realise all other aborted pan-Nigerianisms. Bala, who was a lucid thinker gifted at simplifying the most complex relationships so the petty trader could grasp it, decided on postgraduate study in political science at Howard University so he could attack oppression by education, this time in academe, as he had earlier as a broadcaster on Voice of Nigeria, Lagos.

The trouble with parasitism is that it cannot, by definition, be creative. And though the parasites of patronage across Nigeria, especially the traditional conservatia, found a successful platform for the 1979 general elections in the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), they could not create a Sardauna Bello or Tafawa Balewa or Saadu Zungur, the first two who animated the NPC (Nigerian People's Congress) and who, with the third, animated the Jamiyar Mutanen Arewa before it. So the country again became starkly polarised between the representatives of patronage (NPN), and the representatives of progress (opposition parties) in which Bala Mohammed found himself on being appointed political adviser to the Kano State PRP governor, Abubakar Rimi in November 1980. And nine months was enough engagement to get him killed. Apart from the corruption flowing from a lack of ideals and hence fiscal restraint, Dr Bala Mohammed communicated clearly to the common people in simple language what he saw, that the NPN and its puppeteers had no ideas and thus no policies except a vague, pitiable and eventually dangerous nostalgia for a dead sardauna’s days. And so he had to die.

The milieu of Dr Bala Mohammed’s death was one intrinsically related to Cold War politics, and being a socialist from post-colonial Africa who studied political science in the United States gave him a unique awareness of economic oppression and its dynamics. The national space of his politics was that of a rising fascism; bereft of ideas, the NPN could only but maintain by force its intellectual vacuity, a stick-and-stick approach to those already beaten. Evidence of this fascism was: the deportation of Shugaba Darman, a Nigerian citizen and opposition party leader; the massacre of peasants at Bakolori, Sokoto; the harassment of PRP supporters at Ningi, Bauchi; the killings of citizens in Keghara Dere, Rivers; and the impeachment of Governor Balarabe Musa of Kaduna. Wole Soyinka, expressing popular progressive views, wrote an open letter, 'You are not the state', to the Police Inspector-General Sunday Adewusi in which he declaimed 'a virulent outbreak of the rash called folie de grandeur … familiar historic delusions'. Professor Soyinka decried attempts to turn Nigeria into a police state, of a sort quite different from Spain and Italy, one where police bullets sometimes 'fly off' in the direction of civilians! And so, Bala Mohammed, who could explain the why of all this simply and lucidly, died.

Fatedly, for there are no mistakes in any nation's political expression, two stern-faced major-generals showed up in answer to the prayers of Wole Soyinka, Y.B. Usman, Umar Santuraki, Tunde Obadina, Darman, Rimi and other radical leftists. The Buhari regime was a progressive one; it paid its respects to Bala Mohammed’s death by avoiding the political mistake of misjudging the desperation of threatened privilege. They did this by imposing their will on and locking up the venal politicians and their feudalist supporters, including this writer’s uncle, thus seeking to cauterise them.

This imposed sanity, unlike Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, was eclipsed in 1985 by the finest agents the killers of Dr Bala Mohammed had: General Ibrahim Babangida and Dr Jibril Aminu. The intellectual spirit looming behind that regime was Dr Jibril Aminu and he it was who ensured eight years of venality, eight years that bequeathed Sani Abacha, then Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’Adua – all agents of patronage with the exception of Abacha, who was a misunderstood dictator quite in a class of his own. If there is a god, he was not listening to the cries of the oppressed, nor to Dr Asikpo Essien Ibok who prayed Bala Mohammed’s soul not rest in peace, to the first we see a logic-defying resilience, to the second the reality of amnesia.

But I remember Dr Bala Mohammed Bauchi now. I remember him in this denudation, I who am aware of the subsequent careers of Rimi and the other radical leftists turned tepid, turned collaborators in a double murder. And why do I remember him? Because I mourn the dying of the Nigerian quality now in catalepsies, since a needless civil war, a commonality that has received no expression since the morning of 10 July 1981. I remember because though sophistry of thought pervades all strata of the country, though arrogance marks the leadership and dissembling keeps my countrymen’s thrall, there was the self-sacrificial choice of one man, Bala Mohammed Bauchi, and a 'once upon a time'. In that last 'once upon a time' lies hope that the three-decade dormant expression of my country will stir again and raise another, less forcedly tragic, Bala Mohammed, and hope that the steel and concrete sealed despair of my nation's trauma will burst into a life-flower of patriotism and progress.

And since I am denuding time and remembering the past, I shall recall lastly a couplet from a poem the Hausa poet and PRP activist Mudi Sipikin read at the memorial service of my mentor Dr Bala Mohammed, who was killed for a noble cause, the ideal of a just, democratic Nigeria he cherished – for Dr Bala Mohammed was a patriot:

'Patriotism is a badge of honour
Derived from solid truth without any falsehood.'

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* Richard Ali is editor and administrator of www.sentinelnigeria.org and former secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Plateau State, Nigeria.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The parasite class: The ultra-rich and global inequality

Glenn Ashton

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64047

cc U B TPerched at the very top of an iniquitous global economic pyramid, the world's financial elite are nothing more than parasites leeching off the lifeblood of the world's poor and middle classes, writes Glenn Ashton. While the hold on wealth and resources of the top 20 per cent is deeply concerning, the power of an elite 1 per cent is simply perverse, Ashton stresses.

Wealth is relative. Anyone with enough to eat and a house to live in is rich. If you are reading this you are probably rich.

Around 80 per cent of people live on less than US$10 per day. The top 20 per cent consume around 75 per cent of the world’s goods. The elite, upper and top half of the middle class constitute no more than 10 per cent of the world's population, yet control nearly 60 per cent of global wealth.

Despite global promises to achieve greater equality, we are living in a world that is becoming ever more economically polarised. The rich become gleefully richer while the poor majority remain mired in an inescapable morass. The middle class is squeezed between the two.

The upper one per cent, those inhabiting the economic stratosphere, constitute a global financial elite. They control a disproportionate share of the world's wealth. It is estimated that global dollar billionaires, numbering around 1,000 individuals, account for more than 7 per cent of the world's gross domestic (GDP). The top one per cent, according to the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, own 40 per cent of the world's wealth.

This global elite are portrayed in the media as an ideal to aspire to. What else is Paris Hilton but the name of a hotel owned by her father? It is only the perverse focus of a sycophantic media that has turned this ditzy bint into an icon.

The media is largely controlled by the very same global elite, consequently projecting a self-serving worldview. Nowhere is this better illustrated than through the prurient self-interest of the global media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch, specialising in style trumping substance, feeding the populace on a diet of intellectual drivel.

The reality is that the financial elite is the problem, not the solution. The world simply cannot support these perverse, fairytale lifestyles. The unsustainable environmental and economic demands they place on our increasingly limited resources undermine any positive contribution they may offer. Financial elites constitute nothing more than parasites feasting on our collective lifeblood.

The fact that some 8 million people control over 25 per cent of global assets epitomises the perversity of this situation. More worrying yet is the fact that this wealth continues to gravitate upwards, stripping away the limited wealth of the middle and lower classes.

The middle class is really the jam in the sandwich, stuck between the wealthy and the poor. They provide much of the expertise and hard work to facilitate economic activity, yet are constantly squeezed, by the tax burden on one side, and by inflationary pressures on the other.

The middle classes are prone to proportionately far higher levels of taxation than the ultra wealthy. The economic elite employ an army of advisers and investment brokers to multiply their wealth on the one hand with inordinate amounts to avoid taxation on the other. They have evolved into a vampire-like anti-social parasite, feeding off an ailing host.

Their wealth has to come from somewhere. Generally, it is made on the backs of the poor and middle classes, just as has been the case throughout history. But given the increasing global population and the limits to growth we face, this situation is no longer sustainable.

Inflation is largely the product of predatory corporate profiteering. This is largely overlooked by economists in the mainstream media, controlled as it is by the interests described above. The lie of trickle-down economics is contradicted by the reality of economic exploitation, where the rich continue to get richer while everyone else becomes poorer.

Even during the most recent global economic downturn – which was actually the systemic failure of oversight mechanisms to manage the global economy – the rich continued to accrue wealth. While there was a brief drop in the number of actual billionaires, the number recovered sharply and the actual proportion of wealth owned by this sector continued to increase.

This is all far more obvious to those of us living in the global South. Given that most wealth is concentrated in developed nations, this is unsurprising. The daily flaunting of conspicuous consumption by the economic super-class is a collective challenge that spurs instability, especially in profoundly unequal nations like South Africa and Brazil.

My home city, Cape Town, has recently been discovered by this vampire elite. We now see houses owned by the corrupt African oligarchs from Equatorial Guinea and Angola perched alongside those of the no less reprehensible members of the Western economic elite they seek to mimic, seeking yet another fashionable place in the sun. Ostentatious mega-yachts equipped with submarines, helicopters and all the accoutrements of these parasitic classes bob in our marinas.

We really need to question precisely what value these financial vampires actually contribute to the world, or even to our local economy, for that matter. The claim that employment is created and services rendered by the casting about of excessive wealth and largesse again echoes the discredited theories of trickle-down economics. If there is any benefit to hosting parasitic invaders, it is apparently no greater than that of hosting any other upper-middle class plebeian.

The reality is that the advisers and investors employed by these economic parasites actively hide this wealth from prying eyes. Taxation is avoided at great cost to national economies. Money is secreted in tax havens; corrupt, poxy-little proxy states like Belize, the British Virgin Islands or the Turks and Caicos Islands, or perhaps in rather more respectable financial 'superpower' nations like Panama, Liechtenstein or Uruguay. What may be legal is not necessarily moral.

Instead of ethically sharing these vast fortunes, they are sequestered in search of the highest returns. One such favoured vehicle is derivatives, described by über-investor Warren Buffet as 'financial weapons of mass destruction'. Derivatives fleece the global financial system while benefiting only speculators.

Taxation is a democratically agreed upon and managed means of transferring excess wealth to those with insufficient resources to cope. The extent to which this vampire class is fixated upon avoiding and evading any form of taxation is symptomatic of the extent to which the system has become broken, largely through their focused interventions.

This dynamic creates pressure upon the 'lower' classes through the mechanism of diminishing available resources. The geographical proximity between the poor and the middle class exposes the latter to a far higher degree of criminality than the ultra-rich, who insulate themselves through high levels of security or geographical isolation. Equally the poor turn upon themselves as the middle classes echo the behaviour of the ultra-rich, enclosing themselves in virtual jails to prevent the encroachment of reality.

Instead of redistributing this wealth through legitimate taxation, the financial elite divert criticism by 'investing' into pet projects. Significant resources are diverted to lobby for lower tax rates, for opening global financial markets and other self-interested interventions.

Philanthropy is directed according to personal whims. While some may be neutral, there is an increasing trend to supplant mandated international oversight by imposing privately funded, high input, technological approaches to systemic problems such as those touted by the Gates–Buffet foundation in Africa, where high input agriculture is being pursued as a solution to hunger. The end result is that instead of money being placed under democratic control it is redirected into ideological projects that override the democratic mandate and international institutions of governance, such as the United Nations.

The social analysts Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket of The Equality Trust emphasise that unequal societies cannot remain stable, secure or enjoy a decent quality of life. Interestingly, the USA – the richest nation on earth – is also one of the most unequal societies.

While the USA is romanticised as a place where one goes to seek their fortune, this is only because of selective perspectives projected by the elite-controlled media. The American reality is as ugly as some of the worst inequality on earth, comparable to deeply unequal developing nations like Mexico, Brazil and of course South Africa.

The time is overdue for the excesses of the parasitic ultra-wealthy to be reined in. While this tiny minority has managed to hang in there for an awfully long time, there is no longer any place for this disconnected elitism in an increasingly connected world that increasingly shifts toward more egalitarian value systems.

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* This article was originally published by the South African Civil Society Information Service.
* Glenn Ashton is a writer and researcher working in civil society. Some of his work can be viewed at www.ekogaia.org.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Obama expands military involvement in Africa

Daniel Volman

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/64053

cc U S ArmyThe escalation of US militarisation in relation to Africa reflects the centrality of counter-insurgency to current White House policy, writes Daniel Volman. The US is keen to avoid direct intervention by building up local capacity to root out terrorist threats, Volman observes. Or, as one senior US military officer put it, '[W]e don't want to see our guys going in and getting wacked … We want Africans to go in.'

When Barack Obama took office as president of the United States in January 2009, it was widely expected that he would dramatically change, or even reverse, the militarised and unilateral security policy that had been pursued by the George W. Bush administration toward Africa, as well as toward other parts of the world.

After one year in office however, it is clear that the Obama administration is following essentially the same policy that has guided US military policy toward Africa for more than a decade. Indeed, the Obama administration is seeking to expand US military activities on the continent even further.

In its 2011 budget request for security assistance programmes for Africa, the Obama administration is asking for US$38 million for the Foreign Military Financing programme to pay for US arms sales to African countries.

The Obama administration is also asking for US$21 million for the International Military Education and Training programme to bring African military officers to the United States, and US$24.4 million for anti-terrorism assistance programmes in Africa.

The Obama administration has also taken a number of other steps to expand US military involvement in Africa.

In June 2009, administration officials revealed that President Obama had approved a programme to supply at least 40 tonnes of weaponry and provide training to the forces of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia through several intermediaries, including Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya and France.

In September 2009, Obama authorised a US Special Forces operation in Somalia that killed Saleh Ali Nabhan, an alleged al-Qaida operative who was accused of being involved in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, as well as other al-Qaida operations in east Africa.

In October 2009, the Obama administration announced a major new security assistance package for Mali – valued at US$4.5 to US$5.0 million – that included 37 Land Cruiser pick-up trucks, communications equipment, replacement parts, clothing and other individual equipment and which was intended to enhance Mali's ability to transport and communicate with internal security forces throughout the country and control its borders.

Although ostensibly intended to help Mali deal with potential threats from AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), it is more likely to be used against Tuareg insurgent forces.

In December 2009, US military officials confirmed that the Pentagon was considering the creation of a 1,000-strong Marine rapid deployment force for the new US Africa Command (AFRICOM) based in Europe, which could be used to intervene in African hotspots.

In February 2010, in his testimony before a hearing by the Africa Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson declared: 'We seek to enhance Nigeria's role as a US partner on regional security, but we also seek to bolster its ability to combat violent extremism within its borders.'

Also in February 2010, US Special Forces troops began a US$30 million, eight-month-long training programme for a 1,000-man infantry battalion of the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the US-refurbished base in Kisangani.

Speaking before a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing in March 2010 about this training programme, General William Ward, the commander of AFRICOM, stated 'should it prove successful, there's potential that it could be expanded to other battalions as well'.

During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Ward also discussed AFRICOM's continuing participation in Ugandan military operations in the DRC against the Lord's Resistance Army. Despite the failure of 'Operation Lightning Thunder', launched by Ugandan troops in December 2008 with the help of AFRICOM (including planning assistance, equipment and financial backing), Ward declared, 'I think our support to those ongoing efforts is important support.'

And in March 2010, US officials revealed that the Obama administration was considering using surveillance drones to provide intelligence to TFG troops in Somalia for their planned offensive against al-Shabaab. According to these officials, the Pentagon may also launch air strikes into Somalia and send US Special Forces troops into the country, as it has done in the past.

This growing US military involvement in Africa reflects the fact that counter-insurgency has once again become one of the main elements of US security strategy.

This is clearly evident in the new Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) released by the Pentagon in February.

According to the QDR, 'US forces will work with the military forces of partner nations to strengthen their capacity for internal security, and will coordinate those activities with those of other US government agencies as they work to strengthen civilian capacities, thus denying terrorists and insurgents safe havens. For reasons of political legitimacy as well as sheer economic necessity, there is no substitute for professional, motivated local security forces protecting populations threatened by insurgents and terrorists in their midst.'

As the QDR makes clear, this is intended to avoid the need for direct US military intervention: 'Efforts that use smaller numbers of US forces and emphasize host-nation leadership are generally preferable to large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns. By emphasizing host-nation leadership and employing modest numbers of US forces, the United States can sometimes obviate the need for larger-scale counterinsurgency campaigns.'

Or, as a senior US military officer assigned to AFRICOM was quoted as saying in a recent article in the US Air University's Strategic Studies Quarterly: '[W]e don't want to see our guys going in and getting wacked … We want Africans to go in.'

Thus, the QDR goes on to say, 'US forces are working in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Colombia, and elsewhere to provide training, equipment, and advice to their host-country counterparts on how to better seek out and dismantle terrorist and insurgent networks while providing security to populations that have been intimidated by violent elements in their midst.'

Furthermore, the United States will also continue to expand and improve the network of local military bases that are available to US troops under base access agreements.

The resurgence of Vietnam War-era counter-insurgency doctrine as a principal tenet of US security policy therefore has led to a major escalation of US military involvement in Africa by the Obama administration, something that seems likely to continue in the years ahead.

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* Daniel Volman is the director of the African Security Research Project in Washington DC and a member of the board of directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars. He is a specialist on US military policy in Africa and African security issues and has been conducting research and writing on these issues for more than 30 years.
* This article was originally published by the Inter Press Service.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Particle physics opens up new sense of purpose for Africa

Horace Campbell

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/64060

Since the dawn of time, Africans had a conception of the universe where there was an understanding of the different forms of energy. There was also an understanding that there was no separation between spirit and matter. Meanwhile, the crude materialism of Western ‘modernity’ emanated from an understanding of the world where rational man developed capitalism. The definition of the essence of the human was determined by the extent to which these humans believed that human life was based on the accumulation of material wealth and this material wealth as the basis for ‘progress’.

Humans who did not internalise this understanding of the accumulation of wealth – a form of accumulation that took perverse and genocidal forms when it matured into the capitalist mode of production – were considered backward and primitive. The Western ‘enlightenment’ approaches to life were considered ‘scientific’ and hence objective and neutral.

Western modes of economic organisation engendered a tremendous boost in the production of goods, and this unprecedented production of goods was worshipped to the point where commodity fetishism was like a new religion. Spirituality and commodities were conflated to lay the basis for a robotic society, where cloning and bioengineered creatures were the promise of the future.

Like many of the old and indigenous cultures in the world, the African peoples had resisted this ‘robotisation’ of persons and held onto a link with the wider universe. This understanding of the ancestors and the infinite universe gave the majority of African people a deep sense of humility and a relationship with the universe where it was impossible to develop ideas of domination over nature. This humility is best expressed in the African links to the ancestors and the links to animals through totems. It is this humility that inspired and influenced the African ideation plane and held the societies together.

In the middle ages, Europeans developed a new sense of themselves and created conceptions of the universe and of nature that placed humans at its centre. This mechanical world view meant that humans could determine the future of all life and that humans could dominate nature.

This view of life has brought humanity to a tipping point where the future of the planet is threatened. Global warming and the threats to life are forcing new ways of thinking and new ways of knowing. Africans who had organised their life based on a spiritual energy and based on an understanding of the geometry of nature had resisted the ‘rational’ and mechanical point of view and this resistance retreated waiting for the moment to re-emerge. It was as Amilcar Cabral noted that African cultures and ideation system was like a seed awaiting the conditions for germination.

African peoples at the grassroots are now reflecting on whether the convergence of the new breakthroughs in particle physics and the challenges of the threats to the planet have created the conditions for a break with mechanical thinking.

On Tuesday 30 March 2010, Western European scientists moved one step further in seeking to understand the building blocks of life. At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, scientists who have been building the Large Hadron Collider advanced the experimentation to the crack the fundamental laws of physics said they had recreated in miniature the conditions just after the start of the universe. In what has been called a groundbreaking moment, the researchers combined two opposing beams of sub-atomic particles travelling at almost the speed of light, as they attempted to simulate events in the fraction of a second after the ‘Big Bang’, the most widely accepted theory. Ever since the time of Albert Einstein when he developed the theory of relativity, scientists have been seeking to expand and develop experiments to test the basic laws of quantum physics.

According to a newspaper report in the New York Times (30 March), after ‘two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light and to record-high energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.’

This collision of protons at 99 per cent the speed of light marked a new epoch in the ability of humans to recreate new forms of energy. The breakthrough heralds the beginning of a new era in efforts to try to understand profound scientific questions, including whether the sub-atomic particles – quarks – inside the protons and neutrons can be freed; and why these latter particles weigh some 100 times more than the quarks of which they are composed.

As the scientists said in the newspaper interviews, ‘We are really starting physics.’
This admission by the scientists is an actual wake-up call that the old is dying and the new is about to be born.

For two hundred years mainstream western physicists used a mechanistic view of the world to develop and refine the conceptual framework known as classical physics. Matter was thought to be the basis of all existence, and the material world was seen as a multitude of separate objects assembled into a huge machine. Like man-made machines, the cosmic machine was said to be made of multiple parts. Consequently it was believed that complex phenomena could always be understood by reducing them to their basic building blocs and by looking at the mechanisms through which they interacted.

It was a form of materialism internalised by both capitalists and some socialists. Fritjof Capra, in the book The Turning Point more than thirty years ago, alerted humans to the great possibilities if humans broke the mechanical conception of the world.

Scientists who took the time to understand the African world view had understood that Africans did not make the separation between sprit and matter. What is now called energy is what is understood as great spiritual forces.

Ordinary Africans had learnt long before modern astronomy that the universe was immense and that there were as many stars as grains of sands in the Sahara desert. The Dogon people of West Africa were one of the many African societies who possessed deep astronomical knowledge. This knowledge of the Star Sirius B series had confounded western anthropologists and astronomists. Charles Finch, author of The Star of Deep Beginnings, sought the authority of one of the pre-eminent physicists to make his point on the importance of the spiritual energies of the African village community.

Thus Finch argued: ’The Newtonian model is one valid for the objects and events of everyday experience but Einstein’s model gives us a more complete description of cosmic phenomena. Nonetheless, Einstein saw his model as amplifying and extending Newton’s not replacing it. But quantum mechanics challenges the basic Newtonian model, in effect; things are not what they seem.’

In this century, scientists now have to deal with the realities of ‘uncertainties’ and the fact that things may not be what they seem. The explorations in relation to fractals, ‘particle’ physics and chaos theory are manifestations of the search for a grasp of the forces of the universe and demonstrate a search for new insights into the interconnections between humans and all aspects of the universe. This is the force behind a new appreciation for the spiritual forces at work in the universe. The physicists and scientists of the period of the enlightenment would have dismissed much of what is going on in the realm of theoretical physics in this era as superstition. The fact that there was uncertainty and elements of the unknown had inspired a level of humility in pre colonial villages for it was understood in the village that there were other ways of knowing other than observation. Finch in discussing the elimination of the distinction between reality and illusion and between objectivity and subjectivity added:

‘In quantum theory, the properties of an electron or a photon do not exist until they are perceived and measured. Thus, what a photon is going to be – wave or particle – depends on how and when it is measured; it comes into existence as one or other by virtue of being measured. If the most neutral, unencumbered experiment imaginable could be designed, the results of the reaction would be altered by the very act of observing it.’

This means that the perceiver and the thing perceived, are indissolubly linked, absolute objectivity is impossible. Moreover, from the quantum point of view, things exist because they are perceived. This realisation has created an intellectual crisis that is still to be worked out. What many scientists seem reluctant to face is the fact, in some sense; consciousness itself is infused into the ‘stuff’ of space-time. The positivistic rationalism, imbued with assumptions of ‘realistic’ objectivity that has dominated science for the last two centuries is a paradigm requiring radical revision.

The experiments at CERN are an attempt by Western scientists to work out the intellectual crisis that emanated from the separation of spirit and matter. African epistemology and ontology on the relationship between spirit and matter are not backwardness as the Western ideation system and modernisation theorists have claimed. The CERN experiment was an acknowledgement that the old myths of modernity and progress, in short, capitalism, must give way to the new.

African peoples must be engaged to give birth to the new society and a new sense of human purpose.

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* Horace Campbell is a peace activist who is working to realise the dream of the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem of building African unity by 2015.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Haters are back and their target is Muslims

L. Muthoni Wanyeki

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/64046

Hate speech is, yet again, rearing its ugly head. Carefully prepared PowerPoint presentations are doing the email rounds, as are equally meticulous articles.

The focus of their attentions: the retention of the Kadhi's courts in the proposed constitution. The ostensible aim: to garner a 'no' vote from the Christian faithful during the referendum.

What the detail of their preparation does not obscure, however, is their real objective, which is nothing less than to create fear and a sense of siege occasioned by what they allege is a real Muslim threat.

What the supposed analysis and logic they contain fails to hide is the prejudices and stereotypes their authors hold vis-à-vis Muslims, whom they treat as homogenous.

They do, in that sense, make for scary reading – I, for one, felt the same chill I felt in the lead-up to the 2007 general election on reading the latest one that crossed my desk. The hatred they embody is almost palpable, as is the violence that such hatred can so easily invoke.

Fortunately, this time round, at least some of us seem to have learnt the lessons from 2007 and 2008. The Kenya National Human Rights Commission, our statutory human rights institution, has responded, as has the new National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Communications Commission of Kenya. At least one has been traced, as was the case in 2007 and 2008, to a website run by a Kenyan organisation operating in the diaspora.

We can only hope that criminal charges will follow – and soon. Even given the dearth of adequate new provisions on hate speech, there are, in fact, still old provisions in our Penal Code relating to religious tolerance that could be applied.

But we must also all take responsibility for responding ourselves, individually to those who send us such missives with such apparent abandon, as well as more formally by reporting them to any and all complaints bodies that exist.

It is one thing to campaign against the proposed constitution on that particular basis. It is quite another to invoke and peddle not just lies in so doing, but also prejudice and stereotypes to bolster fear and hatred.

Fact: The existence of the Kadhi's courts dates back to treaty agreements reached with the then sultanate of Zanzibar regarding the inclusion of the 10-mile coastal strip in the territory of what would become independent Kenya.

Which does not imply that only Muslims within that 10-mile strip are entitled to access the Kadhi's courts; Muslims, like all Kenyans, enjoy freedom of movement within Kenyan territory.

And, just as we have tried to expand the reach of formal courts across the country to better enable access to justice (not terribly successfully yet), so have we tried to expand the reach of the Kadhi's courts for the same reason (also not terribly successfully yet).

Fact: Voting against the proposed constitution, if the 'no' vote succeeds, merely leaves us with the current constitution – in which the Kadhi's courts are entrenched.

Fact: The Kadhi's courts deal only with family and personal law, not criminal law (or sharia). That is to say, matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance – and only where both parties to the marriage or where all parties to the succession profess the Muslim faith.

Fact: The above being the case, those affected by the Kadhi's courts are, actually, Muslim women. And the Muslim women who have spoken out on and made submissions on the issue have made their needs clear.

To improve on the quality of judgments by the Kadhi's courts, they wanted criteria for the appointment of Kadhis that included Islamic legal scholarship.

They wanted a more transparent process of appointments for all Kadhis, including the chief Kadhi. They wanted more equitable representation of all of Kenya’s diverse Muslim community among the Kadhis.

But, sadly, given the heat generated on this issue by the sudden and surprising hue and cry by most of the Christian leadership, they have essentially been forced to drop all of those demands, the thinking being that if the Kadhi's courts were so apparently controversial, the best option is to simply retain the current provisions.

In short, those most affected by the Kadhi's courts are compromised on the possibility of improvements to advance their human rights. And for that compromise, they have merely seen the onslaught towards them grow.

Fact: The Kadhi's courts are actually under-resourced, as the demands made known by Muslim women have made clear. Yes, what resources exist to support them come from the public purse.

But to imply that this is somehow unequal treatment absolutely flies in the face of the history of public financing for the Christian churches in this country.

Just think of the landholdings of the mainstream and older Christian churches – most granted for free during and immediately post-independence – or the still retained tax incentives for Christian churches involved in educational and health service provision. Which, by the way, several Muslim foundations have always also been involved in (think, for example, of the social service provision of the Aga Khan Development Network).

When those mainstream and older Christians decide to pay the state back for those landholdings, at current market rates, and to ditch their tax incentives, then perhaps we could entertain that argument. But not now.

These are all facts. Facts are different from prejudice and stereotypes (generalisations ascribed to entire communities of people sharing one common characteristic – in this case, the Muslim faith).

It seems ridiculous to even have to say it – especially in our context, which is one in which we have grown up side by side, aware of each other’s religious particularities in a manner that has generally enhanced our lives and understandings – from the simple things (such as partaking in the feasting at the breaking of fasts) to the more complex things.

But, for the record, let me say it anyway: Muslims are as heterogeneous as any other community – even religiously, they range from the more fundamental to the more liberal (just as those of any other faith do). Politically, they range from the left to the right.

Not every Muslim is intolerant of those of other faiths. Not every Muslim seeks the establishment of Islamic republics all across the world (and every Islamic republic that does exist is home to spirited Muslim faithful who believe in the restoration of secular states).

Not every Somali is a pirate keeping our property prices unrealistically high. Not every Somali is a refugee running a small sub-state of business and political interests out of Eastleigh. Not every Muslim is a terrorist or a terrorist-in-waiting.

Like I said, it seems ridiculous to even have to say it. But say it we must. Because there are, so clearly, those among us saying exactly the opposite. It is a betrayal of the very way we have all grown up here. It is hateful. And, if not checked, it can only lead us down the path to violence.

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

We will not stand for the grab for our land!

African Biodiversity Network

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/64066

African civil society claims that the voluntary guidelines will do nothing to prevent the continued threat to food security, forests, and the rights of African rural and indigenous communities to live on their land and feed themselves. The African Biodiversity Network held a press conference in Nairobi, and read out a statement condemning the developments. Other groups such as La Via Campesina and others also held simultaneous press conferences and events in Africa and around the world.

Anne Maina of the African Biodiversity Network said:
“The rush to grab land in Africa is being aggressively driven by the push for biofuels and international investments in land for agricultural exports. This is based on a convenient mythology that Africa has plenty of land available. Africa’s small-scale farmers, pastoralist herders and indigenous peoples are being displaced, and forests and water resources disappearing. Land grabbing is a serious threat to African food sovereignty, and must be stopped altogether.”

Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation based in the UK added:
“The World Bank’s efforts to develop ‘principles of responsible investment’ will legitimise the land grab, with disastrous consequences for Africa. 65% of Africa’s land is communally owned. These investment deals aim to facilitate the takeover of rural people’s farmlands through privatisation and the transfer of land rights. Africa urgently needs its land for local food production, and putting the continent’s most fertile and well-watered lands to foreign investors’ export interests threatens food security.”

NOTES:
1) The World Bank report “Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respects Rights, Livelihoods and Resources “ Available at:
http://www.donorplatform.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,1280
2) For the statement “Stop Land Grabbing Now” developed by La Via Campesina, FIAN, Land Action Research Network and GRAIN, co-sponsored by over 120 civil society groups from around the world, see http://farmlandgrab.org/12200
3) For more information about land grabbing see http://farmlandgrab.org/
4) For more information regarding Gaia or the African Biodiversity Network, or to arrange interviews with members of either organisation please contact Rowan on 0207 428 0054 or email rowan@gaianet.org

Kenya: Arbitrary arrest and torture of human rights defender

Front Line

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/64067

On the morning of 22 April 2010, plain clothed police officers arrested Keneth Kirimi and two individuals who were with him on Thika road in Nairobi. The arrest occurred near the headquarters of the General Services Unit (GSU), a special unit of the Kenyan police established to deal with special operations and civil disorder. One of the individuals arrested alerted Bunge la Mwananchi immediately after his release, at approx 2.45 pm of the same day. He reported that they were forced to enter a vehicle and driven around the Eastlands for a few hours while they were being interrogated. The officers addressed most of their questions to Keneth Kirimi, and released the other two individuals one by one.

Keneth Kirimi's whereabouts were unknown from the time the second individual was released. He was reportedly detained in Thika, before being blindfolded and taken to another isolated house in Suswa, in the Narok district. During his detention he was subjected to various forms of torture and ill-treatment including genital mutilation, intimidation through gunshots being fired in a small room, being beaten and threatened that the police officers would sleep with his wife if he did not own up. According to Mr Kirimi, he was interrogated about links between the RPP and the Mungiki (an illegal politico-religious group in Kenya); his role in RPP and Bunge la Mwananchi; the work carried out by Stephen Musau, Executive Coordinator of RPP, and the organisation generally with regard to the Mt. Elgon military operations; the work of Stephen Musau and the RPP regarding extrajudicial killings and the subsequent sharing of their report with Professor Philip Alston; why Stephen Musau is so vocal regarding extrajudicial killings, and so concerned with government operations on matters of security, among other questions.

Keneth Kirimi was found on 25 April at Suswa Market, reportedly in serious physical pain. He is currently undergoing treatment at the Independent Medico Legal Unit.

Front Line believes the arbitrary arrest, detention, and alleged torture and ill-treatment of Keneth Kirimi to be directly linked to his legitimate work in defence of human rights. Front Line is seriously concerned for the physical and psychological integrity of Keneth Kirimi. Furthermore, taking into account the subject matter of Keneth Kirimi's interrogation, Front Line is gravely concerned for the physical and psychological integrity of Stephen Musau, who has also reported the receipt of threatening phone calls and text messages. Front Line sees this as part of an ongoing pattern of harassment against Keneth Kirimi and Stephen Musau.

Front line urges the authorities in Kenya to:

Carry out an immediate, thorough and impartial investigation into the arbitrary arrest, detention, and alleged torture and ill-treatment of Keneth Kirimi with a view to publishing its results and bringing those responsible to justice in accordance with international standards;
Guarantee the security and physical and psychological integrity of Keneth Kirimi and Stephen Musau and their families;
Ensure in all circumstances that human rights defenders in Kenya are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities, free of all restrictions and reprisals, including juridical harassment.

Front Line respectfully reminds you that the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1998, recognises the legitimacy of the activities of human rights defenders, their right to freedom of association and to carry out their activities without fear of reprisals. We would particularly draw you attention to Article 6 (b) and (c): “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, as provided for in human rights and other applicable international instruments, freely to publish, impart or disseminate to others views, information and knowledge on all human rights and fundamental freedoms; To study, discuss, form and hold opinions on the observance, both in law and in practice, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and, through these and other appropriate means, to draw public attention to those matters; and Article 12 (2) “The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration.”

Yours sincerely,

Mary Lawlor

Director

Development and its discontents

Review of Rasna Warah's 'Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits'

Anna White

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/64044

Last year, former World Bank economist Dambisa Moyo made waves with the publication of her controversial book, ‘Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa’. Over the past 60 years, she laments, at least US$1 trillion of development-related aid has flowed into Africa, yet the number of people living on less than a dollar a day has nearly doubled. She is not the first observer to contrast the size of the multi-billion dollar development industry and the blatant lack of progress on its stated goals. Over the past few decades, a number of development insiders – William Easterley, Robert Calderisi and the like – have condemned the impotence of the aid industry and offered their critique of its failings.

With the publication of her edited anthology, ‘Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits’, Kenyan newspaper columnist Rasna Warah adds her voice to this disillusioned set. It was whilst working as a UN bureaucrat herself that Warah first began to question not only the effectiveness of development assistance, but its entire philosophical basis. 'Like most professionals in the development industry,' she writes in her lucid introduction, 'I had failed to see that my work and the structures within which I operated were self-serving.'

Echoing the arguments of post-development provocateurs such as Susan George and Arturo Escobar, her conclusion is that ‘development’, in the form of donor-inspired policies that perpetuate the exploitative economic relations of the colonial era, is largely to blame for perpetuating poverty in Africa. What distinguishes this radical perspective from that of others frustrated with current aid practice is the belief that development cannot be ‘fixed’ – that change must instead be conceived in completely different terms.

While it is scepticism of the development paradigm that links this assortment of essays together, the book itself offers no sweeping theoretical justification for its position. Rather, it gives the reader a series of diverse, often quite personal glimpses into the contradictions and failings of the development industry in Africa. The contributors, who range from journalists and activists to leftist scholars, are for the most part either based in East Africa or have worked in Africa as developmentalists, providing a much needed local critique of a process driven largely by outsiders.

In a fascinating account of the Maasai’s struggle for land rights, Kenyan writer Parselelo Kantai reveals modern ‘development’ taking the form of a US$100 million loan from the World Bank’s private sector lending arm granted to a foreign-owned company exploiting soda ash on traditional Maasai land. When the Maasai demonstrated against the renewal of the illegal leases upon which the loan agreement was based, the Kenyan government violently suppressed the movement. Kenyan independence, he argues, merely led to a 'change of guard', with nationalist elites protecting a profitable post-colonial arrangement rather than addressing the legitimate grievances of one of the country’s poorest ethnic groups.

While Kantai’s account focuses on the complicity of African governments and the World Bank in replicating colonial power structures, Fahamu director Firoze Manji draws attention to how development NGOs have, wittingly or unwittingly, played an integral role in reproducing the unequal social relations of post-colonial Africa. The very existence of the ‘development experts’, he argues, is justified by a discourse framed not in the language of rights and social justice but in a 'vocabulary of charity, technical expertise, neutrality, and a deep paternalism which was at its syntax.'

This inherent inequality between ‘developers’ and ‘developees’ is at the heart of many of the narratives to be found in this anthology. Whether a UN bureaucrat on an inflated salary or an NGO volunteer 'doing their bit' to help Africa, the very existence of this advantaged development set depends on and is justified by the gross inequality that exists between local and foreign elites and the majority poor. By treating poverty as a ‘problem’ to be solved by technical expertise and outside assistance, the donor-driven development process ignores, and even contributes to, the very issues that are at the heart of Africa’s ‘underdevelopment’: the erosion of African peoples’ sovereignty by aid dependency; the perpetuation of post-colonial economic and social relations by corrupt elites; and the negative impact of the donor-prescribed neoliberal policies on African economies.

It is not only the big development players whose failings are scrutinised. Social justice activist Onyango Oloo targets the anti-globalisation antics of the ‘activist elites’ at the World Social Forum. Often seen as the antithesis of donor-driven and top-down development, he claims this 'annual jamboree of navel-gazing, self-referencing civil society global trotters' merely hijacks the ideals, struggles and aspirations of real social movements. In a call echoed by many of the book’s contributors, he challenges self-proclaimed champions of the poor and marginalised to get down from their high horses and do some serious introspecting on their activities. Author and scholar Issa G. Shivji extends this rebuke with his admonition of what he calls the 'silences in NGO discourse'. If African NGOs are to become true catalysts of change, he maintains they must not only re-examine their relationships with donors, but the entire philosophical and political premises that underpin their activities.

Presumably, the main target audience of the book are the very protagonists whose professional raison d'être is being questioned. For anyone actively interested in the plight of Africa’s poor, it has the potential to provoke some serious soul-searching on the value of ‘development’ – not only as an industry, but also as a paradigm for understanding the relationship between the rich and the poor.

While this thought-provoking and often entertaining look at the failure of Africa’s development machine tears apart the romantic illusions upon which the aid industry is based, it does not seek to offer any grand alternatives. There are a few scattered, and in some ways contradictory proposals for the way forward, but these act only to further illustrate the diversity of perspectives that challenge the status quo. Warah’s anthology is not an introduction to a world beyond development, but rather a challenge to begin imagining one.

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* Rasna Warah's 'Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An Anthology' (ISBN: 9781434386038) is published by AuthorHouse.
* This review was originally published by Share The World's Resources.
* Anna White is the editorial assistant at Share The World's Resources. She can be contacted at anna [at] stwr [dot] org.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa is not a commodity

(Mis)Investment in agriculture: The IFC and the global land grab

Oakland Institute

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/64061

‘Africa needs investment in agriculture – better seeds and inputs, improved extension services, education on conservation techniques, regional integration, and investment to build local capacity. It does not need policies that enable foreign investors to grow and export food for their own people to the detriment of the local population. I'll be even bolder – such policies will hurt Africa, fuelling conflict over land and water. Africa is not a commodity. It must not be labelled "open for business."’– Howard G. Buffett, Foreword, ‘(Mis)Investment in Agriculture’.

‘Land grabs – the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors – has led to the acquisition of nearly 50 million hectares of farmland,’ said Shepard Daniel, Oakland Institute's fellow and author of the report, ’(Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab’. ‘While rising food prices, demand for biofuels, and investors seeking quick returns have been emphasised as the principal drivers of this trend, the role of the World Bank has gone virtually unnoticed. (Mis)advice from IFC's Technical Assistance and Advisory Services (TAAS) and Foreign Investment Advisory Services (FIAS) to developing country governments to spur foreign direct investment in agriculture has fuelled the dangerous trend of vast land deals in some of the world's most vulnerable countries,’ she continued.

‘Following the 2008 food and financial crises, World Bank was to play a central role in what was intended to be a massive overhaul in international food policy and a vast improvement to food security in the developing world,’ said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute. ‘Evidence, however, reveals that World Bank Group policies and efforts are doing just the opposite. IFC has actually increased the ability of foreign investors to acquire land in developing country markets. It is promoting "products" – such as the “Access to Land” and the “Land Market for Investment” whose purpose is to open land access to investors. Further more the creation of "investment promotion agencies" and rewriting of national laws, has provided the institutional back up for such investments. In doing so, it has overlooked the urgent problem of hunger that persists in client countries, and lost sight of its principle mission, which is to alleviate poverty,’ she continued.

For instance, in Ethiopia, IFC's recommended changes to policy and legislature have completely transformed the landscape of Ethiopian investment climate. Accordingly, huge investments in the land market have followed. ‘Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people in need of food aid,’ said Daniel, ‘but paradoxically the government has already offered at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food back to their own countries.’

‘(Mis)Investment in Agriculture’ concludes that the promotion of investor access into developing country land markets threatens local food security, displaces local populations, and therefore operates in direct violation of IFC's Performance Standards as well as several UN Human Rights Conventions. The report contends that it is crucial that IFC be investigated and held accountable for the land grabs promoted by its technical assistance and advisory services. The World Bank's current practices that promote land grabs must be stopped in order to protect the food security and livelihoods of the world's most vulnerable populations.

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* (Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab is a publication of the Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic and environmental issues.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Afreeka for Afreekans

redINK

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/64065

Firstly, and most importantly, this aggressor colonial mindset of the western world must be understood by all Africans. Lack of clarity to the complex mechanics of the market economy and scattered reactionary activity in the name of human rights defense, have for long delayed meaningful action and progress in the struggle to redeem Afrikan dignity.

The imperialist strategy to dominate and control Africa was evoked at the Berlin conference of 1884. This primitive convergence of thugs, rapists and land grabbers led to the privatisation and occupation of our motherland. History suggests that this invasion was not a necessity to the development of the human race but a mere inspiration of the white man aggression and his phenomenal tendency of war and destruction. All that the Afrikan people have known ever since is hunger, disease, poverty, war and humiliation. Our only hope is an informed fight.

Africa has a true enemy. Africans have a real enemy. To better comprehend the 21st century Afrikan condition, it is important that we understand the state of affairs of our oppressor, our enemy. Why do they hate Africans and why do they need Africa? We must critically and honestly evaluate the theories and ideologies inherent in the organizational culture of imperialism. We must agree that Africa has multiple enemies – Asians, Arabs, Europeans and Americans. They all hate Afrikans; they all exploit Afrika and they all want Afrika without Afrikans in it. Lets remember that America was founded through the conscious and systematic extinction of the red man. USA was built on the sweat and blood of the African slaves. Our enemy has a similar homicidal, genocidal and exploitative ambition for Africa and its people. They are about half way through.

2010 has been declared the year of African unity. The 8th Pan-African Conference (1st Afreekan Congress) is due in Nairobi-Kenya from the 22nd to the 25th of May, 2010. The congress will move to nullify activities of the Berlin conference and mid-wife the nationalisation of the Afrikan continent. We shall work to call out the occupation of Afrikan soil; the exploitation of Afrikan people and the degradation of Afrikan culture. Our effort that we denounce and reject the neocolonial governments in Africa. We shall demand for reparations and call for the ejection of all forms of occupation. We shall institute the nation of Afreeka. Dedan Kimaathi vowed ‘we would rather die on our feet than live in our knees’. We vow ‘Afreeka for Afreekans. Life, Land, Freedom or Death’.

Afreeka HURU, Afreeka MOJA!

The perils of polygamy

An interview with Lola Shoneyin

Tola Ositelu

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/64059

‘I don’t know how to be a hypocrite,’ says the refreshingly outspoken poet and novelist Lola Shoneyin. This, one of many bold statements made by the Nigerian author, is perhaps the reason she has no qualms speaking openly on whatever issues are close to her heart, be it the socio-political challenges facing her native land or the state of feminism in the West.

Shoneyin’s latest book ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ and its audacious questioning of the validity of polygamy in contemporary Nigerian society, is indicative of the forthright manner with which she tackles uneasy topics. Lola doesn’t underestimate the value of creativity as a platform, which, understandably, has a bearing on which art form she chooses to express herself:

‘I’ve seen myself as a poet for many years, so it’s going to be difficult now to start describing myself as a novelist,’ she reflects, ‘It’s like being asked which one of your children you like more rather. I find both forms really thrilling.

‘Poetry is great for me because it’s short, it’s sharp, you can be witty; if you want you can be controversial. You can be anything you like in just a few lines. It’s also a great tool because I can respond almost immediately. If something moves me, if something disgusts me or I’m extremely happy about something I can express it in a very clear and concise way.

‘Whereas writing a novel or prose is totally different; for one it just takes forever and you tend to have to focus on the same story for a very long time. There are times where one actually gets a little bit tired and you want to move on but I put that down to my restless spirit. Poetry works for me in that sense because I can just jump from idea to idea.’

This restlessness of spirit might be the reason why, unimpressed with sequels in general, Lola has no plans to do a follow-up to ‘The Secret Lives’ stating that she has said all she needs to say about polygamy in the book. To be fair, Shoneyin is very vocal about her displeasure regarding this particular marital arrangement, in the novel as well as in interviews. She describes the different reaction she gets from the sexes:

‘It’s funny; when you talk to women [they] understand my point of view immediately. My mother came from a polygamous home as well. Everyone knows a woman who’s been a wife in a polygamous household especially in Africa and they know how bitter they are. They’ve all seen this transformation- you have a beautiful, lovely young woman, they become a wife in a polygamous household and they change completely. Not because they want to but because [in] that small family set-up they have to become monsters to survive or else you will be beaten down or you could be killed as well, sometimes it’s that bad.

‘So you’ve got to stick up for yourself, you’ve got to find ways to be a bigger bitch than the next one. And you’ve got to make your own kids really defensive. Sometimes these things are completely outside the ordinary personality of the person whose doing them which is very sad. And because you have all these children and just this one father and they’ve got to get this man’s attention they’ll do anything, they grow up being very competitive. So women understand immediately.

‘The men...they’re the ones who will always say “But it’s African culture...” – as if African culture is just completely stupid. They often refer to the animal kingdom like gorillas that have lots of females hankering for them.’ At this thought Lola becomes even more animated: ‘Such people...I often wonder where they are coming from. Do they really want to come out and say ‘Monogamy is unnatural, let’s all be polygamous’ is that what they want us to do? And then if it’s natural for men to have multiple partners are they saying that women should not? Or is it that women too should be allowed to have multiple partners? What kind of chaos are they intending to introduce to the world?

‘I also get a lot of men saying polygamy is useful in society... especially those who say it’s good for communities so no woman is left without a husband. Why is it then that the second, third and fourth wife get younger, they have bigger breasts? They don’t take older women as their second and third wives. I mean everybody wants to have a bit of variety. So I don’t blame them, but I do think they are giving into their more selfish instincts rather than thinking perhaps about the women as well, looking at it from the women’s perspective.’

Does Lola ever come across women who defend polygamy?

‘No, never. The only ones who might are Muslim women who say Islam allows [it] but of course the Qur’an says if you are going to take more than one wife you have to be perfectly equitable. So where they take that to mean, yes that’s okay for a man to have more than one wife, the side that they are not looking at is just how difficult it is... actually it’s impossible to have four women and to treat them all exactly the same. For one if you have four women there are only seven days in the week.’

Lola’s clear cut views on polygamy do not get in the way of ‘The Secret Lives’ being multi-faceted and the author’s attempts to present a fair and balanced viewpoint on the subject are by and large successful.

‘I do believe in balance. It’s easier for me when I’m doing interviews or when I’m speaking to people to express my views freely, but when you’re putting a story together you really have to take all the different perspectives, all the different life stories into consideration. Of course we can sit here and say polygamy is terrible but there are lots of women who decided to go into polygamous households for economic reasons, for psychological reasons. There are all sorts of reasons why people go into a polygamous household and we must look at those. That’s one of the things I was trying to do in the novel, to help people understand why.’

The male characters are almost relegated to the background in the book and their voice kept to a minimum although their brief insight is helpful in its own way. Lola admits this is a deliberate move on her part, to give the female characters more prominence:

‘In the average polygamous household the man is the main character. He’s the one that you see all the time, he’s the one who gives them seed; he’s the one who provides for them. In order to maintain their places within the household these women all have to be very subservient. That’s not to say they don’t have stuff to say. So I really wanted to give them a platform so they could speak.’

Despite her misgivings and the sympathetic response from many women, Shoneyin isn’t convinced that attitudes towards polygamy in Nigeria are becoming more progressive:

‘The problem I have with the approach to polygamy is that they are not trying to develop in the right direction.’ Lola highlights her concern with the story of a friend, whose father banned his mother from working in order to avoid any disparity when he took on a less educated second wife.

Lola laments, ‘This must be going on in a lot of polygamous households. We’re missing out on a lot as a country [Nigeria]. What the West has done is that they’ve empowered women. When women have self-esteem, they begin to develop themselves. What does this do? It contributes hugely to that country’s economy. Basically in Nigeria, if we continue to encourage polygamy, [then] women are not developing, not making as much progress.’ Lola concedes, however, that there are exceptions:

‘There are some who work, and this is not a hard and fast rule. I might be generalising a bit but polygamy does have that [negative] potential. The other thing it does of course is that it perpetuates that myth that women are just property owned by the men.’

Nonetheless Lola doesn’t feel that the West has got things right in every way. She believes some more positive cultural exchange would do the world good:

‘There are lots of elements of African culture that the West can learn from. One of them is how we take care of a lot of the most vulnerable people in our communities. The community spirit, the way we look after our elderly, how we bring them into our homes how they live with us. How it’s so natural, we don’t even really think about it. Whereas of course in the West when people are of a certain age, they go into homes and people are very quick to disconnect. In the West they’re really quite selfish, even in the way they look after their children.

‘At the same time there’s a lot that Africa could learn from the West. There’s a certain romanticism that we have with the way we talk about African culture. I think it’s especially the generation that had the contact with colonialism; “we were fine before them and we’re going to be fine now that they are gone”. We have our culture, we have our way of doing things but that’s not going to take us into the 21st century. We need to be looking outwards. Even if it’s from Japanese culture, we see something that is good and we take it, we imbibe it, we start practising it. We take the good things; the positives that will help us make progress. I don’t think we should be so static. I think all cultures at this point should interact’.

Shoneyin recently returned to live in Nigeria after being based in the UK for many years. Does she see any correlations between the sexual politics of polygamy in West Africa and those to which she was exposed whilst living and working in England?

‘When I came here [to the UK] in the 1990s, I was quite surprised about how fashionable one night stands are and the way they talk about them. You know what’s “comforting”? It’s that the women talk about it as much as the men do. In fact women probably talk about it more. I don’t necessarily think that the solution is for women to have the same kind of sexual power men believe that they have. I would just want everybody to step back and have a little bit more respect for each other and be more considerate. Think a little bit about the feelings of the other person. The idea of monogamy is one that’s attractive to me.’

Where some women in the public eye shy away from explicitly espousing proto-feminist ideas, Lola is clearly not afraid to identify herself with the meatier side of gender politics. However that is not to say that she has a knee-jerk anti-male attitude towards the debate:

‘When it comes to the side that I take on issues, I don’t by default just side with women. There are issues where I think “No actually, I don’t think that’s completely fair on the men folk”. It really depends on what [it] is. If it’s an issue where I feel that the women are being unfairly treated I will side with them instantly. It’s very easy for me to do that of course given that I’m a woman, to feel their pain. So probably I am more passionate when it’s an issue that affects women, that’s something I really can’t deny.

‘But I’ll always say this – where I think men are getting the short end of the stick or are being unfairly treated, I will [speak out] because I love men. I have five brothers and no sisters. I have two sons, one husband, and one father,’ Shoneyin chuckles ruefully, ‘There are lots of men in my life. I love, love men.’

Still, Lola is hard pressed when asked if she can think of any such instances where men are the victims of gender-based injustice. ‘It’s still very much a man’s world,’ she admits.

Lola however is not a single-issue spokeswoman. There are several other matters that evince the passionate side of her personality; her views on the controversy over the use of the term ‘African writer’ for instance.

‘If somebody referred to me as a Nigerian writer, that’s what I am, but I’m also an African writer, there’s no getting away from it. What one has to consider though is perhaps – and this is why a lot of people have issues with that label – is the motive behind whomever it is actually saying it. Why are they making that particular reference, why are they using that particular adjective? Sometimes the very reason some people will buy a book is because it’s [by] an African writer. But it’s also the very reason why a lot of people will not buy a book. It’s all sorts of expectations that they have of people who are writing in Africa... It’s going to be some sort of misery memoir of being a child soldier, it’s going to have lots of foreign words, it’s perhaps not going to be particularly intelligent. This is something a lot of people say... “African writers, oh God it’s never that good.” Even conversations with other African writers, when we talk about what’s been pushed out there as African writing, sometimes it’s really quite sad. We wonder how much that is representative of the ability of African writers.’

Lola then shares some of the shocking reactions she encountered when previously trying to pitch her work to publishers:

‘We’d go to certain [publishing] houses and they’d say “Oh, no, no we’ve already got our own African writer... we’ve already got a black author.” Some would even be so moronic as to say, “Oh we’ve already got our own little Chimamanda in the house.” It is like “No matter how good [you are], we’ve filled our quota...” It’s tokenism of the worst kind.’

Lola’s main concern about this patronising approach is the adverse affect it’s having on the quality of output from some writers of African descent. Some publishers appear to lower their expectations of authors from the continent.

‘You start asking yourself why have they got that African writer in the first place if it’s not one that they particularly respect? Is it equal opportunities here? And the saddest part is it that in the process of assuaging their colonial conscience, have they then forgotten to push this author to the point where the quality of their work can be at par with some of the Western authors? It’s almost like “that’s probably all she’ll be capable, she’s only African”. This annoys me because when you see the quality of the African writing that is actually out there, you start asking yourself, what on earth were the publishers thinking?’

Undoubtedly one subject that is extremely close to Lola’s heart is the socio-economic state of Nigeria and she comments vociferously on the injustices that go on in Africa’s most populous nation. Shoneyin is not unaware of the risks of expressing her opinion so freely:

‘It’s very difficult for me to sleep a lot of the time. Sometimes I worry about the things that I say, whether that might cause any harm to come to me or to my family.

‘In Nigeria, lovely country that it is, there are serious issues with safety and security. And you just think to yourself “I don’t have any money. I’m not wealthy. I don’t have any fancy cars. These people who have so much money and so much clout and so much security, if they can be killed what chance do I have?”

Lola contemplates further:

‘There’s too much poverty in Nigeria; 70 per cent of the country lives below the poverty level. Look at the crisis in Jos. Yes, ethnicity and religion... but the biggest problem is poverty. You have all these people who can be given a pittance to go out and burn to death women and children. But you know what? If those people had jobs where they could feed their families and they were getting their salaries, it would be more difficult to convince them. They [Nigerian politicians] box themselves in with all this ill-gotten wealth. The wealthier you get the more you feel you need to protect yourself and the less you’re doing for your community. The money should be going into making everybody more secure, everybody happier.’

Still, Lola is not a pessimist and has hope for the various grassroots civil movements on the ground in Nigeria:

‘In Nigeria one of the most difficult things these days is to be an upstanding citizen who is doing the right thing. A lot of the middle class won’t go into politics because it’s murky, a minefield – so they’ve stepped back. For a long time it’s kind of been left to the criminals. But what’s gradually happening, which is nice, is that there have been the civil societies, various groups – ‘Enough is Enough’ – the youth, the ‘Save Nigeria’ group... You’ve got a lot now coming up who say “no, we’re not going to stand for this anymore.”

Thankfully for such organisations, they have individuals like Lola Shoneyin, who still give a damn, speaking earnestly from the heart and championing their cause.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is published by Serpent's Tail (ISBN 1846687489).
* Tola Ositelu is a solicitor and freelance journalist based in London.
* An abbreviated version of this article first appeared on Soulculture.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

On safari

Lawrence M. Mute

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/64045

The eighth wonder of the world boasts its banality

Tame wildebeest clogging the clean concrete of Mbagathi

Which arrows smartly past low and high rise tenement

It coerces the zooming traffic to slow down and look

At humanity swarming from Kibera’s troubled slumberland

To uncertain industry in Industrial Area

And the motorist’s camera has long-since seen this jaded parade

Far too often for it to remain a juicy titbit

At tonight’s bush dinner table or on Face book

Or to goad righteous anger when State functionaries

In their pubescent dalliance with 2030 Vision

Seek to herd this wildlife into Nairobi National Park

Faraway from the gaze of well-heeled elites …

The sort of innovative strategic thinking, you

Explain to your inquisitive daughter

Which may compete with the Mara’s majestic beauty

And so your imaginative chic daughter twits

Amazed at this constitutional moment’s flaunted profundity

Perplexed by the nightmare of human wildebeest migrating at sundown –

As they trudge on safari from hungry toil at a Processing Zone

To far-off scenic home that’ll assuage their entitlement to shelter

With monkey and hyena lining the dirt route

To their wretched idyll in the Park.
_

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

South Africa 2010: The countdown is on!

Dibussi Tande

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/64068

It is precisely about Zaminamina Waka Waka, is a remix of a Cameroonian military parade song, which Myweku writes about:

'Growing up in Africa exposed me to iconic African songs like “African Queen” and “Sweet Mother” which became the staple of most hip and self respecting radio stations across Accra, in my case. Most of these songs were great and brought joy to many at parties and occasions.

'However, as students we had our own favourites. Songs that had “naughty” lyrics and were seen by parents as befitting the dregs of society. These were mainly cheer (or cheer leading) songs, we called jama (in Ghana), that we sang during inter school sporting occasions and favoured by so called “uneducated” soldiers (mostly junior officers) during training sessions. None was bigger than Zaminamina, a Cameroonian song that swept through the African continent with its special brand of humour, subtle political connotations and authentic African chorus during the 1980’s when the “big men” of Africa and the military elite seemed to hold sway over their populace. The song is in the Fang language and sang by the group Zangalewa, originally called Golden Sounds. Zangalewa, which was a makossa group, were distinct in their use of military fatigues of a bygone era, exaggerated grey facial hair, quirky self indulgent “old man’s” dance routines and “stuffed” bellies and behinds (not dissimilar to those of the military elites).

'It is, therefore, heartening to know that the first ever FIFA World Cup in Africa will be forever remembered, long after the closing ceremony by one of Africa’s beloved iconic songs. One that parodies those who have, those who continue to and those who have designs on imposing their will, through the use of the barrel of a gun, on a people who will rather live by the mantra “Backwards Never; Forwards Ever”!'

The Flipside doesn’t seem particularly excited by the World Cup fever. On the contrary:

'Just for a bit of negativity, coz you all know we feed off of it… I am not feeling the soccer world cup vibes… and I don’t think the ‘whole’ country is behind it. I have quite a few friends who couldn’t care less, some even leaving the country during that period. I remember before the Soccer World Cup in Germany, Switzerland marketed themselves as a great holiday destination… cleverly however that marketing campaign was aimed directly at women, women who had men in their lives going to the World Cup. I wonder if Zim has been doing the same?

'I actually cannot wait for the World Cup to be over, then we will really be able to take stock of how much good it has done for SA. I also wonder if I should be stock piling food, due to supposed price increases, like many of my friends (those friends who are not leaving SA) are doing.

'On a positive note, the fixing of our roads is awesome! High Five to SA for getting that sorted, but did we really need a world sport event to kick us into gear to fix the roads? What about all these flower beds and trees that have been planted in and on traffic islands throughout the country. Who’s gonna continue to look after those or will the flowers just die, weeds grow between all the rocks and the trees grow so big that they actually become a problem.'

Sore Eye is ecstatic about the new infrastructure being developed in Cape Town as a result of the World Cup:

'I've never been a fan of the beautiful game but that's gonna change. This sleepy city is suddenly waking up - which is astounding because nothing bursts Cape Town's self-insulated bubble.
But the anticipation is tangible. Not electric yet but starting to spark...

'Ah well, it's all good. In my lifetime there's never been such dramatic change to the city's infrastructure. I'm sure it's the same in all WC cities across SA. Yes, FIFA might be a kleptomaniac bunch of rogues slapping priority rights on everything, and yes we have yet to survive the English hooligans, but consider the WC legacy.

'These infrastructure changes have already made a huge difference, and we needed it. Cruising down an upgraded highway into Cape Town is sheer pleasure compared to, say, Nairobi in Kenya. It too has three million people, and the roads have not been upgraded since the 1960's...

'As far as I'm concerned, I could kiss FIFA's ass thank-you. The city's improved forever and we're on the threshold of a global sporting event. Cities in developing countries get few chances to upgrade on a massive scale - especially when corrupt governments cream money into their own pockets - so SA's been lucky. The rest of Africa's cities are like Nairobi with not much hope for the future.'

But it is not all about the World cup on the continent as Ghanaian blogger Nana Yaw Asiedu comments about the accidental death of a college student on Anti Rhythm:

'A college girl dies. Her friend is between a rock and a hard place. They were only leaving a hostel as students do. A canopied walkway avalanches on them. The building was erected decades ago. Money is not for maintenance in Ghana. It is for creating, and then creating some more. Already existing infrastructure can take care of itself.

'Her parents were expecting a smarter girl back. They are getting a corpse. It happened in school; on school property. Somebody has to pay. Her parents are grieving, I know. But, they should PLEASE not simply leave it to God. Sue somebody. Sue everybody who should have cared. It won't bring Eva back, but do it anyway. Start with university authorities!

'God, I did not know her – why am I so upset?'

This week the shortlist for the Caine Prize for African writers were announced launching a series of discussions about the state of African literature. Naija Blog links to one of these discussions in the Guardian newspaper which questions whether the 'African Writer' really exists:

'But how can one prize possibly claim to assess the literary output of a continent of over 991 million people and its Diaspora? Is there any such thing as an "African writer"? Does the very existence of the prize encourage a continued inclination to ghettoisation of these writers and their work? Surely we've come far enough that Africans no longer need (if they ever have) the special consideration this categorisation implies? ...

'Many of the conversations around the prize will focus on the argument that writers from Africa do not want or need to be defined merely by their place of origin. Instead, they demand an engagement with their work that does not place limits on their imaginations or potential audience. But even if I could persuade myself to accept the idea of an "African writer", although three of the five judges are Africans, this is a prize decided in England, awarded in Oxford for work written in English. There are no stories translated from French or Arabic. And what about Shona, Twi, Hausa, Chewa, Lingala, Swahili or Afrikaans?'

Island in Crisis is dismayed by calls by former Mauritian President, Cassam Uteem , for Facebook to be blocked in Mauritius following the creation of a Facebook group that has been insulting Islam:

'Well this is what we call, destroying a planet to eliminate a worm! For the fact, there are about 180,000 Facebook users in Mauritius and Facebook receives a daily Mauritian access of around 75,000 people. So basically Mr Cassam Uteem (with all respect we do have for him) is implying that we block access to Facebook so that all these Mauritians cannot use it until a silly message against Islam is removed.

'We’ll dare to say this is RIDICULOUS Mr Cassam Uteem! ...

'Yesterday some people complained about it to ICTA and a request to delete the page was sent to Facebook Headquarters.

'While we do agree that the page consists of insults and unacceptable things, we can’t just go around and ask that the site’s access is denied to Mauritians! What’s the difference between Iran and Mauritius then? Any mature person will not access the Group’s page. So let those who wanna expressed themselves in a barbaric way do it among themselves. We all just have to avoid them. That’s all!'

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 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.

Rethinking the idea of the South: A new class division and rivalry is in the making

Saliem Fakier

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/64073

The shaping of the alliances between these powerful new emerging economies raises questions both about themselves and their relations to other developing countries, especially the G77 group.

This was brought to the fore by the recently held BRIC meeting in Brazil (which South Africa is desperately trying to be part of), followed very quickly by the IBSA meeting, attended by president Jacob Zuma where he launched a joint satellite initiative, and the somewhat unknown BASIC meeting on climate change held in a secret location in Cape Town.

Will the “emerging economies” go it alone and leave the rest of the poor world behind?

Their emergence in global geopolitics signals a major shift in the South and that at least for Brazil, China and India, their economies will collectively overtake the developed economies in terms of contribution to global GDP and income.

South Africa’s status within these various groupings is still an open question. It has presence because it is the largest economy in Africa and contributes about 20% of the total GDP output for the continent.

But, the grouping's pursuit of global eminence and power is not without rivalry. Neither are they free of internal conflicts and contradictions, both within each of their countries and amid the countries.

Nations don’t live statically with each other or within their own body politic. Once there was a wide class distinction between the Western World and developing countries, today that class distinction is increasingly between the new rising powers and the rest of the developing world.

As their own internal rich and elites rise and begin to share similar aspirations as the middle class and rich of dominant Western economies, so too, will the disparities between rich and poor within their domestic body politic become a source of friction and resistance. The class division will be between nations in the south as well as within the citizenry of these powers.

The World Bank estimates that the number of people classified middle class in these countries will soar by 200% by 2030 or something like 1.2 billion people will fall within this income category.

The very pursuit of their external foreign interests depends on what deal they carve amongst themselves as nations and how they resolve their domestic internal tensions; notably the chasm between the externally focused cosmopolitan elite and the internally subjected poor who carry the yoke of demands for cheap labour.

We can be sure of one thing: no matter how the rivalry unfolds between this lose alliance of countries; the curtailment of existing Western hegemony is on the horizon. We are certainly in the throes of a transition to a new type of world order and nothing, as we know it, is for certain.

Besides, the old world order did not come to us from mere passivity of relations between countries and this preaching of ‘free trade’. If anything, strong-arm tactics brought the desired balance of power in favour of western hegemony.

People forget the gunboat diplomacy that went into the emergence of the old order. Think of Commodore Perry’s black ships as they coasted along Japan’s coastline threateningly and eventually compelling Japan to open trade to the west in 1853. Recall the two ‘Opium Wars’ Britain imposed on China because of its trade surplus, which led to Britain claiming Hong Kong. And finally, think of the explicit task of the British East India Company, which ruled and ransacked India’s wealth through a few men until its rogue behaviour become intolerable, leading to the Indian mutiny and Britain slowly losing grip over India.

Geopolitical shifts in the world are forcing us to rethink the conception of the South. There is a new South in the making -- a very different kind of South that will force us to discard old concepts that don’t speak to the new facts on the ground.

The question remains whether the rise of these countries will be a benign phenomenon. Is it to be trusted and will it amount to a gain for the swathe of the world’s underclass, under-privileged and destitute?

Will the transition be stable and will there be enough of an income shift for those at the bottom of the ladder to benefit and share in the prosperity?
In the meantime, developed economies are facing a quandary and it has to do with demographics. Their decline is inevitable. The developed economies’ populations are aging. Over the next decade, several countries will have significant retirees and smaller numbers of economically active people.
As populations age welfare costs go up, pensions get depleted and medical costs increase. All the major developed economies are most likely to have growth rates of less than 2% per annum and 80% of the world’s GDP growth and contribution will come from developing economies.

At the same time, as the income shift is happening, developing countries are urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. The US for instance only reached urbanization levels of 65% when its per capita income was around US$13, 000.
However, some developing countries, with massive populations, are reaching similar rates of urbanization with per capita income only between US$1,800-US$4,000. This may be insufficient to meet all the needs of the newly urbanized poor and/or to deal with the related discontent.

China, which is about 40% urbanized, is expected to be 73% urbanized by 2050 and India which is 30% urbanized is expected to be 55% urbanized by 2050. The pace of urbanization is happening with lower levels of income per capita. This could be a source of major internal political tension.

Urbanization itself will force states to seek paths that will lead to rapid national economic growth, which will generate new types of tensions and contradictions. The demand for internal distribution of income share will force its way into the global geopolitical sphere as the imperatives for national economic growth and stability may well intensify economic rivalry at the global level.

As this shift from West to East is beginning to take shape, projections of economic power are an interesting ingredient in the dynamics of power relations and will define the nature of friendships that are being fostered between states.

Relations are expected to be time-bound and expedient. In some instances, these countries will co-operate for mutual strategic advantage and in other cases they will be rivals seeking to out manoeuvre each other in the game of global power.

After China annexed Tibet in 1950, India and China went on to fight a petty border war in 1962 for a strip of land in Aksai Chin considered crucial for China’s control over Tibet. The point of this is that even then when these countries are friends, they are not without rivalry and conflict.

While India and China may be in sync with each other on many global issues, they are also mutually suspicious. India’s nervousness stems from its own relations with the US, which is being countered by China’s ties with Pakistan, Nepal and Burma (where India and China both have interests in Burmese oil, gas and minerals).

National economic interests will not go without prudence. They become paramount in the context of internal challenges to manage the apportioning of wealth where disparities are of such a nature that they produce instability and conflict.

The whole sentiment on which the idea of the South, as a geographic and ideological construct is based, has to change given the nature of this income shift and the nationalistic projections of this simultaneous dalliance of friendships and rivalries within the groupings mentioned above.

A new class division is on the horizon, as the West’s presence wanes. The class division will be between rich and poor nations in the South and rich and poor citizens within the South. It is a fissure that already existed, but will become more pronounced and its true implications we do not know yet.

* Saliem Fakir is an independent writer based in Cape Town. This article was first published on 26 April 2010 in SACSIS

Pambazuka News 143: Les éclairages du passé et les pistes vers un Congo nouveau

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/64064

An analysis of Electoral reforms

Zimbabwe Election Support Network

2010-04-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/64078

In 2008, Zimbabweans welcomed the signing of the Global Political Agreement between the three political parties in Zimbabwe namely MDC (T), MDC (M) and ZANU PF. This agreement has led to considerable peace and stability in Zimbabwe. While the agreement was a positive development, its implementation has been fraught with hiccups and a number of stumbling blocks which has resulted in tensions between the parties to the agreement. This led to the recalling of the SADC Mediator President Jacob Zuma to iron out outstanding issues between the principals to the agreement.
An analysis of Electoral reforms agreed to by parties to the GPA and the newly constituted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission

Special Issue: April 2010

Introduction

In 2008, Zimbabweans welcomed the signing of the Global Political Agreement between the three political parties in Zimbabwe namely MDC (T), MDC (M) and ZANU PF. This agreement has led to considerable peace and stability in Zimbabwe. While the agreement was a positive development, its implementation has been fraught with hiccups and a number of stumbling blocks which has resulted in tensions between the parties to the agreement. This led to the recalling of the SADC Mediator President Jacob Zuma to iron out outstanding issues between the principals to the agreement. The media has been replete with reports of how the parties were failing to agree on a number of fundamental issues and had resolved to agree to disagree. While they failed to agree on many important issues, they were able to agree on a gourmet of electoral reforms. While ZESN does not speculate, the fact that parties agreed on electoral reforms gives credence to calls by political actors that an election is imminent in 2011. This issue provides an analysis of electoral reforms political parties agreed on and assesses whether these are sufficient for the conduct of democratic elections in Zimbabwe.

A list of reforms agreed on:

Handling election results

The creation of ward centre for the collation of results for councillors
The creation of house of assembly constituency centre for the collation of results for members of parliament
Creation of senatorial constituency centres for the collation of results in the senatorial constituency for senators
Post election results outside polling stations
Post local authority results outside ward centres
Post house of assembly results outside house of assembly constituency centre
Post senatorial results outside senatorial constituency centre
Post presidential results at the house of assembly constituency centre
Direct transmission of local authority election results from the polling station to the ward centre and to the appropriate house of assembly centre for records purposes.
Direct transmission of house of assembly results from the polling station to the house of assembly constituency centre
Direct transmission of senatorial results from the polling station to the appropriate house of assembly constituency centre
Direct transmission of presidential results from the polling station to the house of assembly constituency
Direct transmission of house of assembly return of senatorial results to the senatorial constituency centre
Direct transmission of results of presidential results return from the constituency house of assembly constituency to the provincial command centre en route to the national command centre.
Provide candidates or their agents with copies of returns at polling station, ward centre, house of assembly constituency centre and the senatorial constituency centre
At the house of assembly constituency centre and senatorial constituency centre, capture returns data for transmission to the national command centre.
ZESN welcomes the creation of these centres as they will increase transparency and reduce manipulation of election results. ZESN hopes that the spirit of these provisions will be carried out so that electoral fraud can be minimised.

Postal voting

Postal votes now limited to officers outside the country on state duty
Polling officers, security officers and any other persons involved in the running of elections will be permitted to vote a week before the election.
Voting will be done at designated places in the country
These ballots will be sent to the relevant polling stations.
ZEC will send a schedule of those who have voted in advance to the relevant polling stations.
The presiding officers in the presence of polling officers will cross out the names of those in the ZEC schedule from the voters roll.
ZESN advocates for the numbers of officers that are eligible to vote through the post to be known in advance. Early voting for those running the elections is a welcome move but this needs to be transparent and open to observation. This means using accessible polling stations. The names of those who would have voted in advance should be cancelled from the voters roll before polling.

Clearance certificate for candidature

The parties agreed to do away with the clearance certificate from Zimbabwe Republic Police or local authorities for candidates. ZESN welcomes the removal of bureaucratic procedures in clearance of candidates.

Voter education

While the law provides that voter education will take place 90 days after the proclamation, the time frame between the Proclamation is usually less than the stipulated time and so parties agreed to remove the 90 days time frame. Voter education will take place a week after the proclamation dissolving parliament and calling for elections.

ZESN is concerned that the issue of 90 days which was given importance is not the most important issue regarding voter education. It is important to open up space for civic society and non-governmental organisations to provide non partisan and accurate voter education to the electorate. The issue of the capacity of ZEC to provide voter education given inadequate resources was not interrogated and so the issue of voter education remains a contentious issue that needs to be addressed. ZESN urges political parties to take voter education as a continuous and comprehensive process and not a once off event.

Announcement of result

Parties agreed it is the sole responsibility of ZEC to announce results. Presidential results will be announced no later than five days from the day after the last day of polling. ZESN welcomes the provision of announcing results timely given that timely release of results gives credibility and integrity to the ballot as late release of results gives room to suspicion of tempering with the ballot and reduces transparency of the electoral process.

Polling station specific voter registration/voters roll

This new system abolishes the ward based voters roll in which the voter’s name was duplicated in the entire ward’s voters roll. There were usually five or more polling stations in every ward in which a voter could cast his or her vote. Under the polling station specific voter roll, only voters registered under a polling station can vote at that station. The system seeks to decentralise voter registration as voters will be required to register at a polling station in their locality.

While this system may make identification easier and makes voting quicker, it may not have the same results implemented in a country experiencing high levels of election related violence. This system makes it easier for intimidation and retribution to take place as has been experienced in the past when voters experienced violence after the polls.

Issues of equal numbers of voters has to be taken into account, some polling stations will have more people than others and this may result in apathy if not addressed, hence more polling centres may have to be placed within a polling stations for those polling stations with more voters. In addition, there is need for voters to identify polling station close to them to avoid going to wrong places on polling day.

ZESN poses a few questions regarding the introduction of a polling station based voters roll: in the process of implementing these reforms, is the old voters roll going to be the basis of the polling station specific voter registration/voter roll? Is Zimbabwe going to have a fresh voters’ registration to make it compliant to the polling station based voters roll? These issues remain vague in the reforms and need to be clarified.

Nomination of candidates

Parties agreed that nomination of candidates supported by political parties benefiting from the Political Parties (Finance) Act [Chapter 2:04] shall be nominated by way of a nomination form endorsed by the political party. In addition, the political part should appoint and submit to ZEC not more than three authorised persons to make nominations on its behalf. The old procedure remains for independence candidates.

ZESN welcomes this move as it reduces the problems of duplicate candidature for one party in the same constituency that took place in 2008 which is not good for political parties as it results in vote splitting. ZESN calls for improved intra-party democracy, which will reduce imposition of candidates and cause cracks within parties. In addition, political parties and ZEC need ensure the participation of special groups and women in electoral processes.

Police officer in polling stations

The parties agreed to remove the police officer from the polling station as was provided for by the electoral act by the amendment of 2008. The police officer was installed back into the polling station using presidential regulations. Parties agreed to stand by the amendment to remove the police officer in the polling station.

In addition, parties agreed that the police officers should not take part in electoral processes such as the assistance of voters as was done in previous elections.

While ZESN welcomes the removal of the police officer from the polling station, there are no guarantees that presidential regulations will not be made again that will overturn this provision as has happened before. The fact that assisted voters bring someone of their choice removes the intimidation that existed when someone was surrounded by four electoral officials. ZESN advocates for the creation of Braille materials for blind voters.

Election agents

Parties are entitled to two (2) election agents one inside the polling station and an alternative outside the polling station. ZESN calls for the safety of election agents as they conduct their duties and after the polls. ZESN has noted that in the past, the gazetting of election agents in the newspapers with their places of residence has resulted in them being targeted and harassed. Thus, ZESN calls for measures to ensure the safety of election agents.

Assisted voters

Parties agreed to remove the clause that assisted voters such as the blind will be assisted by a person of their own choice in the presence of the presiding officer to make sure the will person fulfils the wishes of the voter.

In the case of illiteracy, the person may choose a person of their choice and will vote without the presence of a presiding officer.

This provision removes the police officer and two electoral officers. ZESN welcomes have advocating for the removal of all officers and the police officer who may intimidate the voter and obscure free choice.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Act

Parties agreed to repeal the ZEC Act and for its provisions to be incorporated and consolidated into the Electoral Act [Chapter 2:13].

This move has a number of implications on the independence of ZEC which include more executive authority as the act is implemented by the Minister of Justice and Legal affairs. While ZEC has power to make regulations, these are subject to ministerial approval and ZEC can only received donations on ministerial approval who is also a contestant in the elections which can result in partiality.

Transparency relating to printing and distribution of ballots

Parties agreed to make an amendment in the electoral act that required ZEC to provide to political parties and candidates participating in an election, the number of ballots printed and distributed to each polling station. The security of ballots papers need to be guaranteed to avoid manipulation of election results.

Audit of Presidential Election Results

Parties agreed to amend the electoral act and provide for an audit of presidential results to make sure that the numbers add up. This process will ensure more transparency and ZESN advocates that the same audit can be applied to parliamentary and senatorial elections.

Availability and accessibility of the voters roll

Parties agreed to make the voters roll available to political parties and candidates upon request. However, this is on condition that while CD is open and capable of electronic analysis will not be tampered with. While this is a commendable move, ZESN notes with concern that access to the voters roll for free is only made to political parties and not civil society which has the role to monitor the roll which can lead to electoral fraud if not accurately made. Currently the voters roll is very expensive to buy and only hard copies are available.

Run off

Parties agreed that where there are more than two candidates in a presidential race, there will be a run-off if no one candidate is able to master votes greater than the totality of votes cast for his/her rivals. In addition, parties agreed that in the proclamation where parliament is dissolved, there should also be an allowance made for a run-off and a date should be set for this eventuality. This is a welcome development and ZESN suggests that parties should agree on a realistic timeframe that does not create a huge vacuum in the governance of the country. This will address the biases that are created when a candidate in the same election has a prerogative to announce the election.

Residence qualification of voters

Parties agreed that ZEC should have documents that can be accepted as a proof of residence and it can be an affidavit of the person intending to vote or a set of persons with authority in the community who can vouch for the person. This leaves it open to ZEC as to which persons they will deem will have such authority as this was an issue that disenfranchised a number of Zimbabweans from voting as they failed to get supporting letters from prescribed persons if they were perceived to have different political alignments.

Delimitation of constituencies

The following issues were agreed on regarding delimitation of constituencies:

The president in proclamation calls on ZEC to begin the delimitation process.

ZEC commences the process and presents the report to the president. The report is tabled in parliament within seven days from date of receipt from ZEC and issues are raised to ZEC about the report. After receiving the preliminary report ZEC prepares a final report within 14 days and submits it to parliament. Within 14 days of receiving the report from ZEC, the president gazettes the delimitation report. After that, the president will make a proclamation to dissolve parliament and announce the election date.

ZESN notes with concern that the commission reports to the executive who is also a candidate in the election and yet independence of ZEC would be ensured if report is presented to parliament.

Amending the constitution

ZESN notes with concern that, parties agreed that amending the constitution to make these provision enshrined in the highest law of the land was cumbersome and they agreed to shelve the matter of amending the constitution and agreed to amend the electoral act to make the provision that the final delimitation report must be gazetted before the issuing the proclamation for the nomination court.

Election observers

Parties agreed to remove veto powers to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the proposed accreditation. This is a welcome move as it reduces the propensity to “cherry pick” regional and international observers which has been a problem in the past. The composition of the accreditation committee for observers gives way to executive interference as it is composed of representatives from the Office of the President and Cabinet, a representative nominated by the Minister and a representative nominated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. ZESN is concerned by the way role of the executive arm as it relates to election observation issues which should be the sole mandate of ZEC.


Politically motivated violence

Politically motivated violence has characterised the pre and post election periods in Zimbabwe and parties agreed to a number of measures to be included in the electoral law to deal with political violence which include:

Set up a special body to receive complaints or allegations or politically motivated acts of violence and to monitor and carry out investigations of such reports

Refer allegations to the Zimbabwe republic police for expeditious investigations and prosecutions

ZEC is to be empowered to warn candidates, election agents or political parties whom allegations of violence have been made on their own behalf.

Set up electoral courts at the magistrates’ court level to try cases of politically motivated violence committed during the election period.

Request the attorney general to set up a special unit in his office dedicated to prosecution of cases of politically motivated violence during the election period.

Provide for a special law that upon conviction, the court can make a special order banning candidates from further participation in the electoral process. The Special body is to liaise with the police and multiparty liaison committees.

ZESN welcomes these efforts to curb politically motivated violence during electoral processes however there is concern that most of the provisions have more results in places were there rule of law and equality before the law. The police for example was not able to help victims of politically motivated violence in 2008 and there is very little confidence in this body by the citizenry as a body for their protection hence referring cases of violence for investigation and prosecution with the institutions that looked on as the electorate were harassed, killed and maimed seems futile. Political parties work better with a code of conduct they agree to and which is enforceable and not vague prescriptions that work in the presence of certain preconditions such as independence from executive influence.

Electoral court

The electoral court will be given powers to review administrative decisions taken by officers of ZEC in terms of the electoral act. The court will be empowered to hear appeals on election matters against special decisions of special courts. All disputes that are election related will be presided over by the electoral court and it is to have monopoly jurisdiction, judgements, orders and terms of the electoral court will be enforceable in the same way as judgements, orders or directions of the high court. ZESN notes with concern that in the past, the electoral court has been moribund due to lack of resources. The electoral court needs to be well resourced for it to be functional and effective.
Issues the reforms did not address:

While the parties agreed on a number of issues, there were a number of issues that were not taken into account which include: the executive monopoly in stating dates of elections where he is a player which could be done by ZEC guided by the constitutional provisions. The president is a contestant as such may call for elections at a time he deems it favourable for his party which may not be democratic.

Violence has been a significant issue in Zimbabwean elections and while the electoral act makes provisions for various types of offences such as intimidation, preventing political parties and candidates from campaigning, undue influence, bribery to mention which could have been used in the formulation of a code of conduct for political parties and candidates. It sees that these reforms were agreed on based on assumptions of the existence of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. In a country such as Zimbabwe where there is selective application of the law and where the citizens do not have confidence on the impartiality of the police, issues to do with politically motivated violence need to be seriously addressed using a code of conduct for political parties.

The independence of ZEC is an aspect these proposals did not address, yet it is fundamental to the running of free and fair elections. ZESN feels that while some of these reforms are significant, they failed to touch on the fundamental and structural problems that need to be addressed to restore the integrity of the ballot in Zimbabwe.

Media and election

The reforms did not address issues to do with media plurality, equitable access to media for political parties during election time which has been a contentious issue to biased and partial reporting.

Electoral architecture: electoral system and wasted votes in Zimbabwe

These reforms did not touch on the electoral architecture such as the electoral system in Zimbabwe which is First Past the Post which has resulted in a numerous wasted votes. ZESN calls for a paradigm shift to more inclusive, accommodative and representative electoral systems.

Security sector’s role in elections

While reforms provide for the removal of the police officer from the polling station and assisting voters, they do not explicitly show that the role of the police and other security forces is to maintain order and security and not the running of elections. Security sector reform is one of the issues that need to be addressed to ensure an electoral environment that promotes democratic elections in Zimbabwe.

Removal of presidential powers

ZESN is concerned that the reforms do not address the issue of presidential powers as these have overridden some provisions in the electoral acts. There is need to address presidential powers as they relate to electoral laws as the president is a candidate in the very elections he makes regulations for.


Special voting: the Diaspora vote

The issue of the Diaspora vote remain as anomaly that was not addressed in these reforms. There are a number of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora that have been disenfranchised an issue that needs to be looked at seriously.

Political parties finance and the regulatory role of ZEC

The reforms did not address the issues of political finance particularly the use of state resources which have the capacity to skew the political landscape in favour of the incumbent. ZESN calls for the separation of state resources from political party processes and ensure that the playing field is level.

The electoral environment

The proposed reforms did not address issues relating to the electoral environment as governed by POSA and AIPPA. In the past, some parties have been barred from campaigning using these provisions. Some provisions in these two pieces of legislation have curbed freedoms of association and speech which are pertinent in the conduct of democratic elections. ZESN calls for the repealing of repressive provisions within AIPPA and POSA to provide democratic space for the citizenry. Other issues such as the pollicisation of food and humanitarian aid, the role of traditional leaders, para-military groups such as youth militias as well as selective application of the law remain outstanding and need to be interrogated as they have a bearing on the electoral environment.

The Zimbabwe Election Commission

Elections are complex and specialised processes that need to be managed by a body mandated legally to administer election related matters. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is a constitutional body, constituted under Section 61 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. This special issue provides an analysis of the newly constituted ZEC that came into being as a result of the Government of National Unity (GNU). The issue provides an analysis of ZEC and its ability to effectively manage elections in this new dispensation. Experience has shown that the operations and functions of the election management body have a bearing on electoral integrity.

There are three models of electoral management bodies. These are the Independent Model, the Government Model and the Mixed Model. An Independent Electoral Management Body is institutionally independent from the executive branch of government and accountable to parliament. The government model is part of and accountable to the executive branch of government while mixed models vary to the extent to which they are independent of the executive branch of government. Mixed models combine aspects of the government and independent models with relative levels of policy and monitoring powers.

Models for Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs)

Independent Model: This model exists in countries where elections are organised and managed by a body which is institutionally independent and autonomous from the executive. The EMB has specialised personnel for the purpose of administering elections. The body holds and exercises full responsibility for implementation of electoral laws and oversee the electoral process. Independent EMBs do not report to the executive branch of government, they are however formally accountable to parliament. They hold competencies to develop regulations independently under the law. The membership of these bodies is sufficiently impartial and does not contain any members of the executive of State. While the independent EMBs budget is approved by parliament and the executive, it has full control over how it is used.

Government Model: The governmental electoral management body model exists where elections are managed by the executive branch through a ministry or local authorities. Implementation is subject to executive branch of government. The EMBS is fully accountable to the executive branch of government. Powers are limited to implementation. It is often led by a cabinet minister and its budget from that of the appropriate government ministry.


The Mixed Model: this model has dual structures and is composed of two bodies. It has a policy, monitoring or supervisory component that is independent of the executive and another structure whose tasks are controlled by the executive arm of government. It is institutionally independent from the executive branch of government. Has autonomy to monitor, supervise and in some cases implement policies. Dependant on the model some EMBs do not report to the executive branch of government while formally accountable to parliament, the judiciary. Often have powers to develop electoral regulations framework independently under the law. At times powers are limited to implementation. Implementation is subject to the directives of the executive arm of government. At times fully accountable to the executive branch of government. Is composed by members who are outside the executive arm while in the EMB office but at times is led by a minister or public servant. Some have a separate allocated budget and sometimes the budget is a component of a ministry.

Zimbabwe adopted a mixed model where the commissioners are subject to executive power through the Minister of Justice. ZEC operations are a function not only of the model but of the electoral framework, social, cultural and political variables. The model used notwithstanding, there are basic principles that govern the ways in which electoral management bodies operate and these include, independence of decision making and action, impartiality, integrity, transparent, efficiency and service orientation. Experiences of other countries have shown that these are easily achieved under an independent model EMB.

While in the past, commissioners to the commission have been appointed by the president of Zimbabwe in consultation with the minister of justice, the selection of the newly appointed commissioners was more consultative and a multi party approach which increases levels of confidence in the election management body. However, there are still a number of factors that weaken the independence of this commission which will be discussed below.

The focus of this issue will be on the independence, impartiality, neutrality and professionalism of ZEC in its discharge of electoral functions and what areas could affect these pillars. Independence implies that ZEC is not influenced by other organs of power such as the executive; impartiality means that they would apply the law evenly without fear or favour and professionalism relates to the skills of the commissioners in performing the tasks expected of them. Given these pillars that are part of electoral governance, ZESN makes an analysis of the ability of the newly constituted commission measure up to these benchmarks.

Making regulations

The commission has the power to make regulations, while this is a positive aspect, these must be approved by the Minister of Justice before they can be implemented. Thus the powers are given and then taken. In addition, any regulations for media access made by the commission during elections must be approved by the Minister in charge of the Electoral Act in this case, the Minister of Justice and Legal affairs. Apparently, there are claw-back clauses, which act as constraints to the ability of the Commission to make regulations and therefore rendering them susceptible to the whims of the executive who is also a contestant.

Financial Autonomy

The effectiveness of ZEC has in the past been hampered by a lack of financial resources. Consequently the conduct of key functions such as voter education and monitoring of the media among other functions have been compromised by lack of funding. Autonomy in financial matters will allow ZEC to determine their priorities and activities and achieve them in time without interference from the executive. Financial autonomy of an electoral management body is an imperative for the independence of the EMBs. ZESN advocates for ZEC to have a consolidated fund of its own independent from the executive and being accountable to parliament.

Registration of voters and maintenance of the voters roll

ZEC and the Registrar-General’s office still share some functions such as the registration of voters and compilation of the voters roll which are under the mandate of ZEC but performed by Registrar-General under the ZEC directions. ZESN has noted within this arrangement there are no explicit rules for compliance from the Registrar-General regarding. This makes their relationship precarious as the lack of explicit rules for compliance does not provide the terms of reference for their working relationship. Voter registration should be the sole responsibility of ZEC.

Delimitation of constituencies

Delimitation of constituencies is under the control of ZEC but is dependent on a number of issues such as the proclamation of elections by the president and in the past there has been limited time leading to a process that is hurried and controversial. ZESN advocates for the delimitation of constituencies in a transparent way without manipulating electoral boundaries in partisan ways as has happened in the past.

Voter education

ZEC is virtually in control of the voter education and anyone other organisations other than political parties that would want to provide voter education would have to get ZEC approval. Previous experience has shown that ZEC did not have adequate human and financial resources to carry out this function, which was left to political parties. ZESN recognises the importance of an independent electoral management body in the provision of voter education. In addition, ZESN also notes the need for NGOs and civil society in providing impartial and non partisan voter education.


Political environment and election related violence

While the law states that ZEC has the power to control the electoral environment, electoral violence has occurred in the past. The lack of an independent commission made it impossible for any action to be taken against the political parties responsible for the violence. ZEC has been powerless to control it violence and bring the political parties to account. ZESN is hopeful that the new commission will be impartial and be able to discipline political parties who engage in violent activities.

Control of timing of elections

The timing of election in Zimbabwe is subject to the proclamation by the president of Zimbabwe who is also a contestant in those elections. ZEC lacks control on the timing of elections and is therefore reactive to the presidential proclamation. This situation has in the past meant that preparations for elections begin after the proclamation which does not give adequate time to ZEC. ZESN advocates that election time should be specified in the constitution and a calendar put in place.

Local, Regional and International Observers

The invitation of international and regional observers is currently the mandate of the ministry of foreign affairs and in the past the ministry has “cherry-picked” observers while observers from states and organisations deemed hostile to the state have been denied access. ZESN is of the view that the role of ZEC should include the invitation and accreditation of observers. This function requires the independence of ZEC and lack of interference from the executive.

Summary Conclusions on ZEC

The independence of ZEC is therefore compromised on a number of issues due to executive influence through ministerial approval, where the ideal should be parliamentary and not executive. ZEC has the mandate to monitor media conduct during elections but has been limited by financial resources and perhaps the political will to do so effectively in the past. While commissioners may be “new brooms”, they may face a mammoth task in attempting to alter an institution that has been politicised for so many years.

ZESN notes with concern the appointment of a Chairperson who may not be able to entirely commit himself to the work of the commission and whose presence may be little more than symbolic given commitments out of the country. In addition, the installation of a deputy chair from the former Commission who is likely to be in charge of the Commission’s processes in the absence of the chairperson raises a number of questions regarding the extent of reform.

ZESN is also concerned that there is no legal provision that requires ZEC to operate in a transparent fashion. The constitution need to explicitly define the legal independence of ZEC. Appointment and dismissal of staff must be independent from the influence of political parties. In fulfilling its mandate the capacity of ZEC needs to be enhanced through adequate resourcing and increasing its staff complement. Furthermore the ZEC’s budget must be independent from executive power and should rather be regulated by parliament.

Formal and practical independence form the cornerstones of an effective Electoral Management Body. Formal independence is provided for by the law and practical independence is provided for in their ability to undertake their operational functions without interference. Thus an independent electoral body should be able to appoint and dismiss its own staff according to its needs.

Depoliticisation of electoral governance can only be achieved by the establishment of an independent electoral management bodies. Independence does not mean total disconnection from government but that as a state institution, the body remains accountable to the state and public through parliament. The fact that ZEC’S functions are to a large extent subject to ministerial approval limits the operational independence of ZEC. In addition, an independent electoral body should be able to level the political field and ensure that political actors comply with the law.

ZESN advocates for an electoral management body that is independent and free from executive control, which reports and is accountable to parliament.

Mugabe remains stumbling block in efforts to implement GPA

2010-04-30

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news290410/stumbling290410.htm

South African President Jacob Zuma’s facilitation team jetted into Harare Thursday in aother attempt to diffuse rising tension between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. South Africa was appointed by the SADC to facilitate the removal of obstacles which hinder the full implementation of the Global Political Agreement.

SA mediators due back to help unlock power-sharing logjam

2010-04-30

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=6614

A South African team facilitating power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe’s feuding political parties is expected in Harare Thursday as part of continuing regional efforts to break a deadlock threatening to derail the country’s fragile coalition government.

Tension rises in Mwenezi after schoolboy kills Zanu PF thug

2010-04-30

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news290410/tension290410.htm

Political tension in Masvingo’s Mwenezi district was said to be high, after a 15 year old schoolboy exacted his own revenge last week Sunday by killing the ZANU PF thug who murdered his father in 2008. An MDC official in the area told Newsreel that Nhamo Machacha was stabbed in the stomach by the fifteen year old, after a scuffle broke out at a church service.

Tourism minister in climb down over North Korean team visit

2010-04-30

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news290410/tourism290410.htm

Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi has said North Korea’s World Cup squad will no longer visit and play a friendly match in Bulawayo, following unprecedented pressure from residents who labelled the planned trip ‘insensitive.’ There was massive opposition in the Matabeleland region to the team’s proposed visit to Bulawayo, after it revived memories of the brutal political massacres of the 1980’s.

Africa: DRC labeled 'world's rape capital'

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/d0IwPS

The Democratic Republic of Congo is “the rape capital of the world”, a senior UN official has said. Margot Wallstrom, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, urged the Security Council to punish the perpetrators in DR Congo.

Global: Are fewer mothers dying?

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88834

Almost 200,000 fewer women die each year from pregnancy-related complications than previously thought, because new survey methodology and better maternal mortality data mean more accurate mortality estimates, says a global study by the US-based University of Washington. The most recent UN-funded assessment of worldwide maternal mortality estimated there were 535,900 deaths in 2005, while the new study put the number at 342,900 in 2008, after drawing on birth records, censuses, national surveys and interviews with next of kin and caretakers to determine causes of death.

Kenya: "Merry-go-round" micro-finance keeps slum residents fed

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88795

Josephine Awuor, 34, always looks forward to her turn to receive "merry-go-round" contributions from fellow members of Msingi Bora (Good Foundation), a micro-finance group she belongs to in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum. Meeting weekly, the 23 Msingi Bora members each contribute 50 shillings (60 US cents), which is pooled for members to take loans from. At each meeting, the members also contribute 20 shillings (26 US cents) each - to be given to one member in what they term their "merry-go-round" as they draw lots to determine the order of receiving the money.

Nigeria: Will Senator Yerima’s child bride lead him to jail?

2010-04-30

http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=171870

It began as a rumour and, having gathered legs, is now about to become viral. Earlier this month, Sani Yerima, the fifty-something year-old, former two-term Governor of Zamfara State and serving Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria reportedly took a fourth wife. Ordinarily, it should be no news that another African man from Nigeria has married a fourth wife. The circumstances of this reported marriage are extraordinary. According to the story, Senator Sani Yerima first divorced his fourth wife, who, after nearly two years of marriage and a baby, is still a teenager and well below voting age in Nigeria.

Egypt: 'Hizbullah cell' convictions marred by torture allegations

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/cbWJjK

Amnesty International has called for a retrial by a regular court of 26 men jailed by an Egyptian emergency court for their alleged links to the Lebanese group, Hizbullah amid allegations of torture. The special court on Wednesday sentenced the menGovernment urged to conduct a – who included Lebanese, Palestinians, Egyptians and one Sudanese – to jail terms ranging from six months to life.

Ghana: Police crackdown on migrant Fulani herdsmen

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88957

Security officials in Ghana are cracking down on migrant Fulani herdsmen, accusing them of rape, vandalism, destruction of farms and armed robbery, but conflict resolution specialists say the herdsmen are being manipulated and the government must abide by regional right-of-passage laws.

Global: Country Risk Portal

2010-04-30

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=51750&type=Document

The Human Rights and Business Country Risk Portal (based at the Danish Institute for Human Rights) will create the first freely available website where companies can access country-specific information on human rights risks alongside tools and advice for managing those risks.

Niger: Food shortages force hungry to hit the road

2010-04-30

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/VDUX-84YTEK?OpenDocument

For hundreds of people seeking refuge in Niger's capital from ever-growing food shortages in the country's interior, this sprawling cluster of straw huts is the first stop. Seydou Sidi, 76, a village chief has seen his neighbourhood in Quaratadji, located some 15 km (9 miles) outside the capital Niamey, swell by more than 200 people in the last three months.

Rwanda: Allow Human Rights Watch to work

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/aUFKGD

The Rwandan government's decision to deny a work visa to Human Rights Watch's representative in Kigali demonstrates a pattern of increasing restrictions on free expression in Rwanda ahead of August's presidential elections, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch will appeal the decision and continue working on human rights issues in Rwanda.

Rwanda: Community service “inadequate punishment”, say survivors

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88974

Sixteen years after the Rwandan genocide, thousands of perpetrators who confessed their roles before the traditional Gacaca Courts have been released and sentenced to community service, but survivors say this is an inadequate punishment. "The punishment should be [close] to the pain those inmates inflicted," Theodore Simburudali, the chairman of the genocide survivor organization, Ibuka, said.

Sudan: ICC rejects appeal against dismissal of charges against Darfur rebel leader

2010-04-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34486

The pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected an appeal by prosecutors to overturn an earlier decision declining to confirm charges against a rebel leader accused of directing the September 2007 attack that killed a dozen African Union peacekeepers in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region. In February, the chamber said there was insufficient evidence to establish that Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, who commands a splinter group of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), could be held criminally responsible for the crimes he has been charged with.

Zimbabwe: Court rules in blood diamonds case

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88968

Global Witness, a leading light in establishing the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), a global system to prevent "blood diamonds" being sold into the market, is facing a "dilemma" now that the Zimbabwe High Court has allowed the sale of stones from the Marange diamond fields. There have been reports from Marange that "the military ... carried out widespread atrocities in the diamond fields, including murder, rape and forced labour", Global Witness said in a statement.

Zimbabwe: Giving farm workers a voice

2010-04-30

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/43408

Gertrude Hambira doesn’t look like someone who gets arrested regularly. Nor do the other women and men in suits who work with her at the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), formed in the mid-1980s to protect farm laborers. But arrest, harassment and even torture have been regular occupational hazards for Gertrude—the General Secretary of GAPWUZ—and her staff for many years. Unfortunately, things have not gotten much better since the 2008 elections when President Mugabe refused to cede power to the democratically elected Morgan Tsvangirai, a former union leader himself.

Africa: Africa’s displaced people: out of the shadows

2010-04-30

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol24no1/displaced-people.html

It was a departure they never had time to prepare for. Seeking to escape death — sometimes amidst fighting between the Senegalese army and rebels in the southern region of Casamance — thousands fled their homes and abandoned livestock and property. Over the past two decades many have resettled in successive waves in Ziguinchor, a major city in Casamance.

Burundi: Returnees find a new place to call home

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88930

Just 2km from the Tanzanian border, the “integrated” rural village of Nyakazi in Kibago commune, Makamba Province, houses 198 families, 80 percent of whom are landless returnees. The village is one of several set up in the southern region of Burundi to help in the reintegration of thousands of 1972 civil war returnees.

Global: Major breakthrough in the fight against biopiracy

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/c7sq6u

The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), the Berne Declaration (BD) and the Church Development Service (EED) welcome the announcement by Schwabe today that it will not pursue five pelargonium related patents granted to it by the European Patent Office EPO). Mariam Mayet, African Center for Biosafety (ACB): “Nevertheless, we regret that such action comes only after such patents have been challenged by us”.

South Africa: AbM condemns the continuation attack of settlements

2010-04-29

http://bit.ly/9U39YD

Abahlali baseMjondolo condemns the continuation attack of our settlements by the City of Cape Town, Law Enforcement, Anti Land Invasion and it’s private agency. On April 22, a house of a member of Abahlali baseMjondolo at UT section at Site B was demolished by the City’s Law Enforcement without any reason.

South Africa: Blue Ants attack UT Section, Site B, Khayelitsha

Abahlali baseMjondolo

2010-04-30

http://www.abahlali.org/node/6640

Abahlali baseMjondolo condemns the continuation attack of our settlements by the City of Cape Town, Law Enforcement, Anti Land Invasion and it’s private agency. On April 22, a house of a member of Abahlali baseMjondolo at UT section at Site B was demolished by the City’s Law Enforcement without any reason.

South Africa: Un-Freedom Day

Rural Network

2010-04-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/64074

The event is called “Un-Freedom Day”. We call it “Un-freedom Day” because we feel like we are still oppressed by poverty, underdevelopment and injustices directed to us as marginalized communities living in the rural and farming areas. We say that apartheid used racism to exclude the majority of the South Africans, especially indigenous South Africans from accessing economic resources and from participating in the politics of the country. Today we witness class, gender, race and geographical location to exclude the majority of South Africans from participating fully in our democracy. Those of us who live in the rural areas do not have access to our own ancestors’ land, proper education, water and health facilities.
STATEMENT BY THE RURAL NETWORK: UN-FREEDOM, APRIL 27, 2010

The event is called “Un-Freedom Day”. We call it “Un-freedom Day” because we feel like we are still oppressed by poverty, underdevelopment and injustices directed to us as marginalized communities living in the rural and farming areas. We say that apartheid used racism to exclude the majority of the South Africans, especially indigenous South Africans from accessing economic resources and from participating in the politics of the country. Today we witness class, gender, race and geographical location to exclude the majority of South Africans from participating fully in our democracy. Those of us who live in the rural areas do not have access to our own ancestors’ land, proper education, water and health facilities.
We reckon that we suffer because we do not count. We do not count because we are poor, rural and most of us are under-educated. It is easier for the government to neglect us when we are being murdered by the white farmers but roll swiftly the wheels of justice when the white farmers suffer similar brutality. This is clearly evidenced when one compares the murder case of a white supremacist group leader Eugene Terreblanche, David Rattray (historian who was murdered a few years ago) with the murder of Solomon Mbuyisa (who was murdered by white farmers and police officers) and murder of Mr. Nko Dlamini (of Eston) and grandmother Irene Masikane, to name but a few. When local farmers abuse indigenous black women living on farming areas, such as Mrs. Florence Zondi (83 year old grandmother) and Fikile Masikane, and manipulate the police and justice system the government turn a blind eye. Why? Simply because we do not count. So how can we celebrate Freedom Day? That is why we hold a commemoration called “Un-Freedom Day” on April 27, 2010.
While race was used as one of the criteria to decide who lives where, attend what schools are attended and who and how can be developed economically and socially but LAND was always at the epicentre of the liberation struggle. The apartheid government evicted people from their land, under forced removals, in order to squeeze them in to a tiny 17% of national land which was inerrable and remote. These forced removals resulted in the destruction of people’s fabric of their social system, structures, culture and loss of identity. The indigenous people were systematically turned into cheap labour for mining companies and to work on farms as farm labourers or slaves (we say slaves because they worked without being paid). Unfortunately, these forced removals are perpetrated even today, all over South Africa. For example, the story of Macambini traditional community where the KZN government tried to evict 8500 families in order to allow an Arab estate development company to come and take over their land. When the Macambini traditional community resisted they were met with rubber bullets, tear gas and arrests.
1994 marked a historical moment in the history of South Africa as we (South Africans) held our first democratic elections that were supposed to mark the beginning of freedom. Unfortunately, 15 years down the line the majority of South Africans are still oppressed and systematically marginalized. Some of us are even worse off than we were during the apartheid period. Continuation of evictions that lead to internal displacement, demolishing of people’s houses, denial of access to justice and harassment of landless communities by the landed all show how this dream of ‘freedom for all’ remains a far fetched one. It is because of this lack of freedom that we the marginalized communities coming from rural/farming areas around kwaZulu-Natal province and the urban areas will be hosting this annual event which we call “UN-FREEDOM DAY” to remind ourselves that we are still oppressed and alienated in our own homeland. Aluta Continua!!!/The struggle continues!!!
Rural Network

Egypt: Labor movement delivers more than bread and butter

2010-04-30

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/37645

A few days ago, 9000 workers at the Naga Hammadi aluminum factory in Upper Egypt staged a protest, demanding that the Egyptian government raise the minimum wage to LE1200, and calling for a withdrawal of confidence from their official trade union committee.

Eritrea: Western mining companies and slave labor

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/aZLN1Y

The gold rush in Eritrea has attracted many Western companies, among them Canada’s Nevsun Resources Ltd. and Sunridge Gold; Britain’s Andiamo Exploration and London Africa; and Australia’s South Boulder, Sub Sahara Resources, Chalice Gold Mines Ltd. and Gippsland Ltd. And this doesn’t tell all that there is to the involvement of Western companies, for there are many subcontracted companies rushing to get in too, such as AMEC of Canada doing engineering study and Capital Drilling and Geo Drilling of Australia and Boart Longey of Canada doing drilling.

Kenya: Telkom workers issue strike notice

2010-04-30

http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=63594

The workers are pushing for the reinstatement of 25 members of the union sacked last week and a change of management over what they termed as physical harassment by senior managers. The employees are vowing to bring operations at Telkom-Kenya to a halt come Monday May 17 if their demands are not met.

South Africa: Massive strike looming

2010-04-30

http://business.iafrica.com/news/2386981.htm

South Africa's transport system was expected to be brought to a standstill from 10 May as 50 000 Transnet workers planned to strike over a wage dispute. "This will be the biggest strike in the history of South Africa," said Chris de Vos, general secretary of the United Transport and Allied Trade Union (Utatu) at a press conference in Johannesburg on Friday.

Emerging Actors in Africa news round-up

2010-04-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/64083

GENERAL

Oil groups turn focus back to traditional fields
Twenty years ago, Western oil majors saw their future in Africa, Latin America and the Former Soviet Union (FSA), which political change and new technologies were opening to them. However, a wave of resource nationalism, spurred by a surge in oil prices from $40/barrel in 2004 to over $147/barrel in 2008, undermined this strategy, and the oil majors are now more focused on opportunities closer to home Read more

IMF and Africa agree on public investment borrowing modalities
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and African countries have identified "binding constraints" on public investment's ability to boost growth and have resolved that any borrowing for public investment should be consistent with debt sustainability considerations. Read more


Rethinking the Idea of the South: A new class division and rivalry is in the making
They go by different names: IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa), BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China). These formations all amount to more or less the same thing: the new “emerging economies” seeking to redefine relations between themselves and the rest of the world. Read more



CHINA and AFRICA


China shifts its Africa investment strategy
China’s push into Africa in recent years has not been easy. Prior to the 2008 recession, China’s cash-rich state-owned enterprises, sovereign wealth fund and other financial institutions invested with gusto. In its pursuit of energy deals, supplies of commodities and large construction projects, China has gone where many developed nations fear to go. Read more


After a coup, Niger resumes business as usual with China
“Our diplomatic relations with China were not affected by the coup d’état,” said Mahaman Laouali Dan Dah, a spokesman for the military junta now running the country Read more


$520m loan for electricity in 2,200 communities from Chinese Exim Bank to Ghana
The government has secured a $520 million loan facility to expedite the extension of electricity to 2,200 communities across the country. The Exim Bank of the US granted the nation a $350 million loan, while the government contracted $170 million from the China Exim Bank. Read more

China donates $40 million opera house to Algeria
China will pay $40 million to build an opera house for major trading partner Algeria, a gift likely to serve as a powerful symbol of Beijing's growing economic influence in Africa. Read more

World Bank unit to finance Chinese Africa venture
The World Bank’s private sector arm has signed its first deal to finance Chinese investment in Africa, a move it hopes will help to discourage violations of human rights and environmental standards.
Read more


Zimbabwean vice president Mujuru meets with Chinese Workers
Joyce Mujuru had a cordial meeting with workers of the Jiangsu International Company of China which had completed the project of renovating the Zimbabwean National Stadium, and hosted a banquet in their honor. Read more


China carries out poverty alleviation cooperation with Sudanese NGOs
According to the event presenters, the purpose of hosting the "Workshop on Capacity Building for Sudanese NGOs for Poverty Alleviation" is to share with Sudanese NGOs China's experience in poverty alleviation and social development, to improve their capability in these fields, and to deepen exchanges and cooperation between Chinese NGOs and their Sudanese counterparts. Read more


China and Africa in urgent need of joint research
Although China-Africa relations and economic cooperation between the two parts of the world have been developing in a healthy and stable way, some fuss-makers in the West tend to point their fingers and make irresponsible remarks from time to time. The fact is, the people who watch China-Africa relationship closely and academics studying China and Africa in the West seem to outnumber their counterparts in China and Africa, the former's number of published works surpassing that in China and Africa combined and the influence covering almost the entire world. Read more

'Be truthful about chinese investment', Milupi challenges State
Mr. Milupi said government should not go about celebrating Chinese investment in Zambia when the real objective of such investment is not known.
He said Zambia has continued to lose huge amounts of money all in the name of the Asian investments. Read more


Chinese Embassy to Gabon held a reception on the Shanghai World Expo
The reception was attended by nearly 100 guests including Gabonese Foreign Minister Paul Toungui, Gabonese officials for the Expo, local mainstream media, representatives of Chinese companies in Gabon, and Chinese citizens living in the country. Read more


Chinese ambassador to Zambia attends traditional local ceremony
At the invitation of Litunga, paramount chief of the Western Province of Zambia, Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Li Qiangmin, commercial counselor Wang You, together with their wives, drove over 1000 kilometers to attend the famous Kuomboka Ceremony. Read more



INDIA and AFRICA


Jay Shree Tea to buy three estates in Africa
Jay Shree Tea & Industries Ltd, a Kolkata-based tea manufacturer, is acquiring three tea estates in Africa. These acquisitions follow Jay Shree’s Rs 112.5-crore domestic buy last month. The financial details of these transactions were not disclosed. Jay Shree is acquiring 100% shareholding of Kijura Tea Co Ltd in Uganda, and another 60% stake each in two other estates, Mata Tea Co Ltd and Gisakura Tea Co Ltd in Rwanda, it said in a statement. Read more

South Africa's ties with India crucial in global marketplace
“India is now actively welcoming business opportunities in South Africa. There has been a tremendous support from both Indian as well as South African government in terms of financing, investment and promotion of councils like Export Promotion Council and Apex Chambers and formation of IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) Council,” says Srinivash Singh, MD, McNally Bharat Engineering. Read more


Tata Africa to start assembly plant in Nigeria
Tata Africa''s Regional director for West Africa, Sudeep Ray says this plan comes with a condition that the unit sales of the model hits one thousand per year in the country where second hand vehicles compete fiercely with brand new products. "Definitely for Nigeria we''re planning an assembly plant. We started operation one and half years ago and the last one year has been a learning period to understand which models will be doing well here and accordingly we will be looking at an assembly operation going forward in the next two to three years," he told the media, here. Read more


Time to give strategic cast to India-Africa ties
With a growing global interest in India’s engagement with Africa and China’s surge in the region, experts and officials Wednesday pitched for imparting a strategic vision to the burgeoning economic and diplomatic ties between New Delhi and the resource-rich African continent. Read more

China-Africa deals threaten Indian diamonds
ndian diamond cutters fear Chinese efforts to secure a supply of the rough gems from Africa are threatening their hold on the diamond cutting industry. In a bid to develop a competitive cutting and polishing industry, China has set up direct deals with African governments, providing medicine and resources to build infrastructure in exchange for rough diamonds.Read more


Other Emerging Actors


Broad investments in Nigeria
Following the cre-ation of enabling environment for businesses in Rivers State, foreign investors are now exploring investment opportunities, Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Prince Ogbonna Nwuke, has said. Read more

Vodacom’s DRC investment turns sour
Africa’s mobile telecommunications sector has been one of the continent’s star performers over the past decade and many foreign players are reaping the rewards for being early investors. South Africa-based Vodacom’s experience in the Democratic Republic of Congo, however, recently took a turn for the worse due to a fall-out between the company and its local partner. Read more

Algeria Opposes MTN-Orascom Deal
Algeria's government is opposing a deal under which South Africa's MTN Group Ltd. would acquire the prized Algerian unit of Egypt's Orascom Telecom, the Telecommunications Ministry said Wednesday Read more

Uganda plans new development paths with Iran
Iran is one of Uganda's newest development partners. It is interested in building an oil refinery for the processing of Ugandan oil and investing in the value chain of this young sector
Read more


Sierra Leone is progressing towards becoming an investment hub in Africa
Sierra Leone is now one of the top five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to investor protection and the ease of starting a business. The government is also unveiling a new investment incentives schedule that creates a level playing field for investors, while improving fiscal responsibility. Read more

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS


* Compiled by Anna Lena Wachter, intern based with the Emerging Powers in Africa programme.

Global: IBSA Academic Forum

2010-04-30

http://www.ipc-undp.org/ipc/PageIBSA.do?id=205

IBSA is a trilateral, developmental initiative between India, Brazil and South Africa to promote South-South cooperation and exchange.

Kenya: Government pioneers an electronic voter registration system

2010-04-30

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

In preparations for the next elections Kenya has made changes to their voting systems, changing it from a paper based model to an electronic version. As of the 12th of April 2010 to the 21st may 2010, Kenya’s Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) will register voters electronically for the first time ever in 18 selected constituencies. The pilot will cover the 18 constituencies of Kamkunji, Langata, Mvita, Malindi, Dujis, Wajira East, Isiolo South, Imenti Central, Mbooni, Nyeri Town, Kikuyu, Eldoret North, Nakuru Town, Ainamoi, Ikolomani, Webuye, Kisumu Town West and Bonchari.

Nigeria: Nigerians welcome sacking of election team boss

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dB23rY

Nigerians have praised acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to remove the much criticised election chief Maurice Iwu. Opposition Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora told the BBC that his removal was “the beginning of electoral reform”.

Somalia: UN envoy calls on parliament to resolve internal disputes

2010-04-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34490

The top United Nations envoy to Somalia today appealed to members of the nation’s Parliament to put aside their infighting and to instead focus on meeting the population’s needs and bolstering security. “I am following, with great unease, the unhelpful debate about parliamentary issues now taking place in Mogadishu,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, said in a press release.

Sudan: Southern opposition leader contests poll result

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8647249.stm

The leader of Southern Sudan's second largest party has told the BBC there was "massive rigging" in Sudan's recent landmark elections. Lam Akol, head of SPLM-Democratic Change, and the leaders of eight other southern parties have decided to challenge the result in the courts.

Tanzania: Tighter noose on corrupt elections

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/aK0ZaX

Slowly by slowly and amidst controversy the loop against corruption in Tanzania’s elections is becoming tighter as the new Elections Expenses Act 2009 becomes operational. The Act which was controversially tabled in December 2009 and approved in February 2010 seeks to control the use of funds and curb illegal practices in the nomination process, election campaigns and elections processes.

Zambia: Opposition leader under house arrest

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/bjh48Q

Zambian police have placed influential opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema under house arrest in Mufumbwe constituency, which has been engulfed in political upheaval in the run-up to today’s parliamentary by-elections. Mr Hichilema’s UPND members allegedly assaulted a man, they claimed had impersonated a policeman, leading to their opposition leader’s arrest.

Malawi: Norway threatens to cut fertilizer funding

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/ai8hVJ

The Norwegian embassy in Malawi has warned it will stop supporting government's fertilizer subsidy programme. The initiative rolled out in 2005. The embassy says only should government account for the period 2007/2008, will it continue to support the programme the years 2010 through 2011 per agreement.

Uganda: MPs want ministers charged

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8653491.stm

Uganda's Vice-President Gilbert Bukenya and several other ministers should be prosecuted for embezzling government money, a leaked MPs' report says. The allegations against them centre on contracts awarded for the Commonwealth summit held in Uganda in 2007. The 174-page draft report was given to Uganda's two main newspapers ahead of the president's meeting with parliament's public accounts committee.

Africa: 1,000 participants for 20th World Economic Forum on Africa

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/bEtIpF

World Economic Forum on Africa - The World Economic Forum (WEF) announced that nearly 1,000 participants from 85 countries will take part in the 20th World Economic Forum on Africa in Tanzania's commercial capital city of Dar es Salaam 5-7 May 2010. President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete will host the meeting, which this year explores the theme "Rethinking Africa's Growth Strategy.

Africa: Only 10 African countries met 6% agricultural growth rate in 2008

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dtOcwg

Participants at the recent 6th Partnership Platform Meeting of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in Johannesburg, South Africa, have agreed that Africa needs speedy and effective measures to eradicate poverty and hunger.

Global: All eyes on EU trade talks

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/cWp7v3

Negotiations towards an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and various southern African countries resume in Brussels this week, although compromises are unlikely, players say. The discussions will be observed with keen interest to see what approach the EU’s new trade commissioner Karel de Gucht will adopt.

Global: Civil society calls on World Bank to reform its energy lending

2010-04-30

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51203

Against the backdrop of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's spring meetings this weekend, numerous groups have chimed in on the need for and direction of a new World Bank energy strategy. The bank's review of this strategy, according to which it makes decisions on loans to energy projects in developing countries, is ongoing and is due to be finalised early next year. For now, though, it remains under fire.

Zimbabwe: ZCTU wants Chiadzwa diamonds nationalised

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dtdw5U

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions says the controversial diamond mine in Chiadzwa, Manicaland Province, must be nationalised. ZCTU chairman Lovemore Matombo said no single individual or company should be allowed to exploit the diamonds now at the centre of a row between a British company which claims title and the state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Company (ZMDC).

Africa: HIV prevention studies 'often of poor quality, show limited effect'

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/9nmBMU

The quality of research examining HIV prevention programmes targeted at young people in Africa is poor, according to the authors of a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the online edition of AIDS. Moreover, evidence that such prevention programmes had an effect was limited and confined to sub-group

Africa: The reinforcing nature of HIV and poverty

2010-04-30

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=51734&type=Document

In a number of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, widespread HIV infection has already translated into full-blown AIDS epidemics. The effects of this disaster on lives and livelihoods are dramatic, yet the economic consequences are difficult to measure using conventional approaches. Although past and current consequences of the epidemic, and responses to these, can be empirically studied, our knowledge of the overall socio-economic impact of HIVAIDS remains deficient. This study focuses on Malawi, as a representative case. It addresses both the short and long term impact of HIV/AIDS by bringing together and analysing findings from qualitative and quantitative studies on the spread and impact of the epidemic.

Ethiopia: Racing to contain MDR-TB

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88952

At St Peter TB Specialized Hospital, high in the mountains of Entoto, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, a masked Johannes* is suffering from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and has spent the last month at the hospital. While the doctors are glad he is receiving treatment, they are also worried - Johannes is a bus conductor in heavily populated Addis Ababa, so there is no telling how many people he could have infected before seeking treatment.

Global: IAEA says 10 million people face cancer threats

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dthfYD

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that more than 10 million people in developing countries are at risk of new cases of cancer by 2020. The UN nuclear watchdog, in a report released at the UN headquarters in New York, also raised concern over the growing cancer epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Global: Mortality data reveals HIV treatment progress

2010-04-30

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88982

A new study of adult mortality tells the tale of HIV over decades and across borders and how treatment may have helped to rewrite the ending. Published in The Lancet’s 30 April early online edition, the study compares adult mortality between 1970 and 2010 in 187 countries.

Global: MSF calls on global fund to stand firm

2010-04-30

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032763

Médecins Sans Frontières has expressed concern over calls to place limits on how much funding will be available for future rounds of proposals and/or to postpone the next request for proposals for Round 10. In a letter send to board delegations this week MSF calls on them to reject these calls.

South Africa: Less sex, more violence for teens

2010-04-30

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88913

Schoolchildren in South Africa are having less sex, and those that are, are doing it more safely, the second National Youth Risk Behaviour Survey by the Medical Research Council (MRC) has found. Over 10,000 students in their last three years of high school participated in the survey, which showed "significant reductions" in risky sexual behaviour.

South Africa: Massive UN-backed HIV prevention drive launched

2010-04-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34484

South Africa – home to the one-sixth of the world’s population living with HIV – today unveiled an ambitious campaign to prevent and treat the virus, a move hailed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The drive seeks to test 15 million people for HIV by next year, a six-fold jump in just two years, as well as reach 1.5 million people with antiretroviral treatment by June 2011, up from 1 million last year. Nearly 6 million people – or 18 per cent of all adults – in South Africa live with HIV, the largest population of people in the world.

South Africa: Researchers warn against use of DDT

2010-04-30

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032765

South Africa should start looking for alternative solutions to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes, a study has found. Using DDT to curb the spread of malaria has been proven by researchers to pose a huge risk to human beings with those consuming chicken, fish and vegetables produced in DDT-sprayed areas at risk of developing illnesses such as cancer.

Southern Africa: Zambia's TB-ridden prisons

2010-04-30

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/04/27/zambias-tb-ridden-prisons

In many African countries, prison conditions are awful, and have been for years. The prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners often get little food. HIV and TB are widespread, and healthcare is inadequate. Large numbers of pre-trial detainees, often held for long periods awaiting trial, mix with the general prison population, and frequently have inadequate legal counsel.

Zimbabwe: Worrying rise in STIs among young people

2010-04-30

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88810

A new report by Zimbabwe's National AIDS Council (NAC), showing a dramatic rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among people aged 15 to 24 in the capital, Harare, has health experts worried that the country's success in reducing HIV could be unravelling. STIs heighten vulnerability to HIV infection, and this age group is one of the hardest hit. According to the NAC report, more than 24,000 people were treated for STIs in 2009, compared to 8,500 cases recorded in 2008; over 60 percent of the cases were women.

Tanzania: Lecturer's strike paralyses public universities

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/bLJTlk

Skeletal academic activity enveloped Tanzania's public universities Thursday as lecturers joined a strike to press for better retirement benefits from the government. While the government remained silent about the strike, a meeting of seven public higher learning institutions held here has agreed to go ahead with the strike.

Malawi: Mutharika threatens gay movement

2010-04-30

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=malawi&id=2570

The homosexual movement in Malawi was dealt a heavy blow at the weekend when President Bingu wa Mutharika condemned the act, describing it as foreign and un-African. President Mutharika made the scathing remarks during the consecration of a Roman Catholic Bishop at Limbe Cathedral in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city.

South Africa: Transgender community website used to “rehearse” new identities

2010-04-30

http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=a&x=96449

Two out of three gay South African respondents to an online survey said that going online had helped them accept their sexual orientation and many admitted to coming out online before they did so offline. But the voices of transgender people rarely appear in studies and surveys.

Uganda: Cultural leaders urge legislators to pass gay bill

2010-04-30

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=uganda&id=2573

Cultural leaders in the country have, for the first time, spoken out on the contentious Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, urging the MPs to pass it in order to safeguard the country’s values and traditions. Under their umbrella body, ‘Forum for Kings and Cultural Leaders in Uganda,’ the custodians of culture expressed anger with the way western countries have put the government on pressure to throw out the Bill.

Global: Belgian bid to ban 'racist' Tintin in the Congo

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8648031.stm

A Congolese man is trying to get a controversial Tintin book banned in the cartoon star's home country of Belgium. The ginger sleuth's "little (black) helper" in Tintin in the Congo is seen as "stupid and without qualities", Bienvenu Mbutu is quoted as saying. "It makes people think that blacks have not evolved," said Mr Mbutu, who lives in Belgium.

East Africa: Rwanda inaugurates first wind power station

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/bqtoEK

Rwanda has inaugurated its first-ever wind power station as part of efforts to exploit renewable energies. The wind station sits on the Mount Jali, from where it will feed a big FM transmitter of the Rwandan Office of Information (ORINFOR), also installed on the hill overlooking Rwanda's capital city of Kiga

Global: Nnimmo Bassey speaks at climate conference inauguration in Bolivia

2010-04-29

http://bit.ly/bZVnXn

On April 21, Nnimmo Bassey of Nigeria's Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth International, spoke at the inauguration ceremony of the World People’s Climate Conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He was featured on Democracy Now discussing the Cochabamba-Copenhagen divide outside what he dubbed “The Most Important Event in the Struggle Against Climate Change."

Morocco: Charter a first for Arab world

2010-04-29

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-22-01.html

In celebration of Earth Day's 40th anniversary, the Kingdom of Morocco announced an unprecedented National Charter for Environment and Sustainable Development, the first commitment of its kind in Africa and the first in the Arab World.

Global: EU backs global code for farmland purchases – draft

2010-04-30

http://farmlandgrab.org/12507

European Union governments want to develop a global code of conduct for foreign investments in agricultural land in developing countries, according to a draft paper on food security seen by Reuters. Food security concerns, driven by a sharp rise in global food prices in 2008, have prompted major importers such as China and the Gulf states to invest heavily in African farmland to secure supplies.

North Africa: Morocco to lease 30,000 hectares of farms per year

2010-04-30

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE63T00X20100430

Morocco plans to lease 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of farmland per year to improve yields, satisfy growing national demand and boost export sales, its agriculture minister said on Thursday. But Aziz Akhennouch told Reuters the north African kingdom had no plans to join a continent-wide trend of selling farmland outright to foreign companies and governments that want to secure their future food supplies.

South Africa: Government seeks new ways to speed up land reforms

2010-04-30

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE63S0HM20100429

South Africa's "willing-buyer willing-seller" land reform programme is not working and the government will introduce new ways to give more land to the black majority, President Jacob Zuma has said. After the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa's government set a target of handing over 30 percent of commercial farmland to black people by 2014 as part of a plan to correct racial imbalances in land distribution caused by apartheid.

Nigeria: FAJ calls for end to impunity after spate of murders

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dpAaGO

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has denounced the prevailing climate of insecurity in Nigeria which led to the murders of three newspapers journalists during sectarian violence which has gripped Africa’s most heavily populated nation.

Somalia: Somali journalist faces fear and neglect

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/9kNgCu

The Somali Journalist Rights Agency (SOJRA) concerns the desperate pleading for help from the prominent and well respected Somali journalist who is currently in exile in Athens, the capital of Greece. A journalist Mohamud Mohamed Hallane, who is well known in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and in lower Shabelle region contacted SOJRA on Thursday April 29th, 2010 and requested for help while he faced an unkind condition during his dash for freedom.

Tunisia: Dissident reporter Ben Brik leaves prison

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8647563.stm

A dissident Tunisian journalist has been released from prison after serving a six-month sentence for assault. Taoufik Ben Brik, a prominent critic of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has always claimed his conviction was politically motivated.

Zambia: FAJ backs media drive for self-regulatory mechanisms

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/aHqMux

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organization of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), strongly protests the Zambian government’s on-going attempts to impose a statutory regulatory council on the media in the country, a move strongly opposed by the Zambian independent media community.

West Africa: Sierra Leone starts free care for mothers and children

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8645968.stm

Sierra Leone has launched a free healthcare plan for pregnant women, breast-feeding mothers and children under five years old. The country has some of the world's highest maternal and child death rates. Doctors blame this partly on health service fees and the cost of medication, and hope the healthcare plan will help save lives.

Chad: 'Hundred killed' in clashes

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8653357.stm

Chad's government says the army has killed 105 insurgents and beaten back a new attack near the Sudan border, but the rebels have denied the claims. FPNR leader Adoum Yacoub said both sides had lost lives but did not give any details.

Kenya: Landslide kills 10, more feared missing

2010-04-30

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE63T186.htm

A landslide in western Kenya after relentless heavy rains has killed 10 people and more may be buried in the mud, the Kenya Red Cross (KRC) said on Friday. KRC said the latest deaths took the number of people killed by floods and landslides in Kenya so far this year to 100. El Nino weather patterns across east Africa are blamed for the wild storms that have hit east Africa's biggest economy. A massive landslide in neighbouring Uganda killed scores of people in a remote village in March.

Niger: UN warning over total crop failure

2010-04-30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8648215.stm

Niger is threatened with total crop failure in some areas and the situation is worse than the 2005 crisis, the UN humanitarian chief has told the BBC. But John Holmes said the new government is co-operating in aid efforts.

Somalia: Clashes leave many dead

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dmoS6L

At least 14 civilians have been killed during a battle between government soldiers and al-Qaeda-linked fighters, witnesses say. Tuesday's clashes followed a separate suicide car bomb attack in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, by al-Shabab fighters on the base of African Union peacekeepers.

West Africa: Beyond the crisis in Niger

2010-04-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88958

Most NGOs and UN agencies in Niger agree that in 2010 humanitarian actors are better geared to respond to the food security crisis than they were in 2005, but some say there is a risk of repeating mistakes in information-sharing, planning appropriate responses, and raising funds more quickly. "There are similarities to 2005 that donors and the aid community must heed in order to avert a disaster in 2010," warned CARE, an NGO focusing on poverty eradication, in a communiqué on 26 April.

Africa: Study finds African broadband market near tipping point

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/a1V0tx

After years of slow growth and outright despair at whether broadband would ever take off on the African continent, research suggests that the market is inching ever closer to a tipping point, according to US-based Reportlinker.com professio nal search engine. 'As submarine cables find their way along Africa's coastlines, the continent is slowly but inevitably emerging from what we have long referred to as the Dark Ages of African bandwidth, an era of bandwidth bondage of sorts, characterized by excessively high prices, near-zero broadband penetration rates and self-defeating regulatory models,' the firm said Tuesday.

Africa: Young Africans put technology to new uses

2010-04-30

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol24no1/ushahidi.html

At 11 p.m. on 2 January 2008, back from Nairobi, Kenya, an exhausted Ory Okolloh — a Johannesburg-based Kenyan lawyer in her thirties — posted the following message on her blog: “For the reconciliation process to occur at the local level the truth of what happened will first have to come out.

East Africa: EAC adopts one laptop per child initiative

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/dzGbed

The East African Community (EAC) Thursday partnered with the One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a US-based non-profit organisation whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education. According to the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the EAC and OLPC, the two organisations agreed to work together to leverage the advantages of the laptops in transforming primary school education and to promote strategies for better access to laptops and connectivity -- especially for the region's underprivileged children.

Global: CPJ challenges authorities in 10 nations to stop killing journalists

2010-04-30

http://bit.ly/d0UsOs

To mark the World Press Freedom Day, 3 May, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has identified 10 symbolic cases worldwide in which journalists have been killed with impunity. For instance, the CPJ says, in the Philippines, political clan members slaughter more than 30 news media workers and dump their bodies in mass graves.

Sudan: No easy ways ahead

AfricaFocus Bulletin Apr 25, 2010 (100425)

2010-04-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/enewsl/64165

"A vote for secession [in the 2011 referendum] is a foregone conclusion - given overwhelming Southern popular sentiment - but the time remaining to ensure that the process is orderly, legitimate, and consensual is desperately short. The potential flashpoints for a new war are many. Any new armed conflict runs the risk of becoming rapidly regionalized and difficult to contain, let alone resolve." - Alex de Waal. This comment comes in the first chapter of a timely assessment by the Heinrich Boell Foundation of the options for Sudan after the elections and the forthcoming referendum on Southern Africa.

Africa: CODESRIA-SEPHIS Extended workshop on social history

2010-04-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/64089

CODESRIA/SEPHIS collaborative programme is pleased to announce the 7th edition of its Extended Workshop on New Theories and Methods in Social History which is scheduled for the 2nd – 12th of November 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. The theme of the workshop is: “Historicizing Gender & Sexuality in the Global South”. The Workshop will be organised around the comparative experiences of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
CODESRIA-SEPHIS EXTENDED WORKSHOP ON SOCIAL HISTORY

Historicizing Gender and Sexuality in the Global South

Call for applications

CODESRIA/SEPHIS collaborative programme is pleased to announce the 7th edition of its Extended Workshop on New Theories and Methods in Social History which is scheduled for the 2nd – 12th of November 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. The theme of the workshop is: “Historicizing Gender & Sexuality in the Global South”. The Workshop will be organised around the comparative experiences of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. It will bring together about 10 young historians and historically-inclined social scientists for ten days of joint reflection, knowledge building and training.
The participants will follow a programme designed to permit them to share experiences, improve the theoretical and methodological quality of their work, and deepen their comparative insights.

Theme and Content of the Workshop
In recent times, gender and sexualities have become key elements in the construction of the image of the Global South. Their importance lies in that they involve complex interplays of historical genealogies the origins of which can be traced to the socio-cultural, political and economic foundations of social life in the Global South. Unfortunately, while there already is a growing body of work on these issues, such lack historical depth and dimension crucial for production of knowledge that reflects the reality of the Global South. As a consequence, there is at present often less analysis of the complex histories, practices and public understandings of gender and sexualities in the Global South.

The 2010 Extended Workshop offers an opportunity for scholars from the Global South to engage in research and debate on gender and sexualities in the Global South that will result in greater understanding of the complex interplay of histories and cultures underpinning and sustaining gender, sexuality and society. The objective of the workshop is to stimulate a historically-grounded, comparative analysis of gender and sexuality issues with a view to promoting reflections on the origin, direction and changes in the concepts especially in the light of globalisation.
Among the sub-themes around which reflection will be organised are:
Conceptualizations of Gender and Sexuality in Global South; Histories of Sexuality and Gender in the Global South; Law, Gender and Sexuality; Sexuality, Globalisation and Development Theory; Gender, Sexuality and Ideology in the Global South; Gender, Sexuality and Daily Practices; Religion, Gender and Sexuality in the Global South; Language and Sexuality in Global South; Gender, Sexuality and Class; Masculinity, Sexuality and Gender.

Theoretical and empirically-grounded studies on each of these sub-themes will be encouraged in order to promote debate on recent methodological and theoretical developments in Social History as they bear on gender and sexualities. To this end, participants will be encouraged to carry out their reflections in a comparative perspective. Participants will also be offered practical support in sharpening their skills on how to write an article, plan a research project, and submit a research proposal for funding.
The discussions will be linked to the research interests of the participants and the progress of their work.

Accommodation and Excursions
The workshop will be held in Dakar, Senegal. CODESRIA will provide a stimulating and pleasant environment within which participants can work. The Council will also take care of the air travel, accommodation, and local transport expenses of the participants. Furthermore, a subsistence allowance to cover living expenses will be provided. Resource persons will also receive an honorarium. Local excursions will be organised for all participants in order to make their stay more enjoyable.

Eligibility
The Workshop is open to PhD students registered in Southern universities, i.e., Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Pls note that the working language of the workshop is English. All applicants are strictly required to be proficient in that language.

Application Procedures
Laureates: Applications should include the following:
1) a Curriculum Vitae (maximum of two pages),
2) a letter certifying that the candidate is enrolled in a PhD programme at a university in the South,
3) a research proposal outlining the candidate’s current research project, including the methodology that is being employed or considered (at most four pages),
4) a sample of the applicant’s work (a draft paper, a draft research proposal or a draft thesis chapter),
5) a letter from the thesis supervisor indicating why this workshop will be of importance to the applicant,
6) a statement that the candidate has not attended a SEPHIS funded workshop before.

Convener/Resource Persons: Applicants for the position of Course Convener and Resource Persons should submit: 1) an application letter; 2) a curriculum vitae; and 3) a two-page course outline of three lectures specifically focusing on the issues to be covered in the sub-themes.

Applications must be written in English. The deadline for the submission of applications is 30th June 2010. An international scientific committee will examine the dossiers of all candidates by 20th of July 2010. Successful applicants will be notified immediately after the completion of the selection process.

Incomplete and unnecessarily lengthy applications will not be taken into consideration.
All faxed and e-mailed applications must also be accompanied by a hard copy original version sent by post if they are to be considered.

Additional information about the Extended Workshop can be obtained via:
- the CODESRIA web site: http://www.codesria.org
- the SEPHIS web site: http://www.sephis.org

Applications and requests for more information should be sent to:
CODESRIA/SEPHIS Extended Workshop on Social History
CODESRIA
Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, angle Canal IV
B.P. 3304, Dakar, Senegal
Fax: (221) 33 824 12 89
Tel: (221) 33 825 98 22/23
E-Mail: extended.workshop@codesria.sn

South Africa: National Conference on Structural Poverty in South Africa

2010-04-30

http://www.plaas.org.za/newsevents/povcon2010/home

The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the University of the Western Cape, Isandla Institute and Studies on Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) with support from the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD) of the Office of the Presidency, and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) form a partnership to host a three-day national conference on structural poverty to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa on 20 - 22 September 2010.

Campaigner - Special Focus On Sudan

Amnesty International

2010-04-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/64076

Campaigner - Special Focus On Sudan
£31,104 Per Annum + Benefits - London Wc1
Closing date: 23rd May 2010

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of volunteers and professionals standing up for human rights. Independent of any government, ideology, economic interest or religion, we have more than two million supporters in over 150 countries. Our purpose is to research, campaign and take action to effect change and protect individuals wherever rights, justice, fairness, freedom and truth are denied. This position is within The International Secretariat – Amnesty International’s global centre for research, campaigning, legal, lobbying and membership work.

You will be required to conduct and co-ordinate campaigning activities, assessing where we will have an impact and how we can make a difference. You will have proven campaigning skills and knowledge of East Africa and in particular Sudan.

A proven campaigner who’s committed to human rights, you will combine a creative, yet pragmatic approach with excellent communication skills, particularly written and presentational. A team-oriented person with first-hand experience of the region with awareness and understanding of its cultures, you will also have impartial political judgement, excellent communication skills, strong strategic thought and an open and result-oriented approach to your work.
We offer an attractive worldwide relocation package plus other benefits.

For further information about this and our other current vacancies, and to apply online, please visit www.amnesty.org/jobs and quote reference AFR/EAFT/C01. CVs will not be accepted.

The closing date for applications is 23rd May 2010.

LIBERATE FROM INJUSTICE
JOIN THE FIGHT
FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
www.amnesty.org/k out for human rights: www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action

Fahamu