Current Issue

Fahamu seeks consultants

Expression of interest to develop curriculum for social justice courses

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/66299

Background
Fahamu focuses on working with grassroots social movements and organizations that address the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized in society. We do so because we believe that the potential impact of these organizations to create change will enhance participatory democracy and human rights in the Africa.

Based on our long term needs to support social movements and grassroots organizations, we intend to deliver cutting edge human rights education using a diversity of tools and platforms to strengthen these movements and assist them in creating the change that they seek.

This has been necessitated by the fact that grassroots social movements and organizations in Africa face a dearth of access to knowledge, information and learning tailored to their needs.
Within this framework Fahamu has planned to develop courses and training packs that promote competencies in the following themes,informed by a needs assessment with our constituents, trainings alumni and beneficiaries;
• Movement building and grassroots organizing in Africa
• Africa-centred advocacy
• New tactics in human and peoples' rights
• Sexuality and reproductive health rights

Objective of the assignment
Fahamu is looking for consultants to coordinate the curriculum development process for these courses using participatory approaches.

Scope of work
Each course curriculum development consultant will be expected to meet the following specific tasks:
• Plan and conduct a learning needs assessment with Fahamu’s alumni, constituents and partners
• Analyse and share results of the LNA
• Analyse and evaluate existing tools and training materials on the course themes by organisations or institutions
• Draft and share with Fahamu a curriculum development process
• Manage discussion/planning sessions of the curriculum development committees /partners
• Coordinate review of the first and second curriculum drafts and incorporate feedback.
• Facilitate curriculum pre-testing and validation process

Expected outcomes
• Curriculum development guide /summary
• Course curriculum
• Curriculum development process report

Consultancy duration
The assignment is to expected to take 90 days .

Skills required
• Advanced university degree in education,social studies, international law and/or human rights;
• Proven experience in curriculum development; use of adult education methodologies; developing training manuals and engagement in activities of social justice
• Experience working with and in community based organizations and social movement in Africa.
• Experience in conducting qualitative research using various methods
• Excellent oral and written skills in English
• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent facilitation skills
• Be creative and take own initiative
• Able to work to tight deadline

Application Procedures

Interested candidates are expected to send an abstract not exceeding 600 words on how they will manage the curriculum development process and the topics they intend to cover in the specific course.
The abstract should be sent together with a copy of the C.V to winnie@fahamu.org

The deadline of application is 4th August 2010. Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Uganda ratifies the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women

Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR)

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/66284

Uganda becomes the 28th member state of the African Union and the third East African Community Member to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women after Rwanda and Tanzania.

This would not have been possible without the close partnership between the government of Uganda, Ugandan Women’s Civil Society Organisations and the Uganda APRM National Governing Council. We commend all their efforts to ensure ratification of this Protocol and applaud the collaboration between the three line ministries in charge of the ratification: Gender, Justice and Constitutional Affairs and Foreign Affairs.

SOAWR calls on the government of Uganda to continue the partnership with the Ugandan Women’s Rights Coalition to popularize the Protocol and put into place a process and mechanisms that will guarantee that the Protocol is translated into laws, policies and services that will promote and protect the rights of women in Uganda.

We also urge the government to dedicate adequate human and financial resources that are required for the rights provided therein to be realized and enjoyed by women.

Given the leadership that the government and the people of Uganda have demonstrated in upholding women’s rights, including being the first country to appoint a female vice president and adopting the affirmative action policy to boost women’s participation in politics and decision-making at all levels, we are confident that the Protocol will be implemented to become a force for freedom for all women in Uganda.

Finally, we express our gratitude to all SOAWR members across Africa who have supported the Ugandan Women’s Rights Coalition in their advocacy efforts towards the ratification of the Protocol by Uganda.

Contact:

Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe, Akina Mama wa Afrika/SOAWR; Tel. +256772 463 154 / +256-752 463 154

Faiza Jama Mohamed, Equality Now/SOAWR; Tel. +254 722 805 539

Mary Wandia, Oxfam GB / SOAWR, Tel. +256 757 413 917

Norah Matovu-Winyi, FEMNET / SOAWR Tel; +256 772 825 829 / +254 729 571 544

Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights

A course for lawyers and legal advisers

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/66295

Fahamu Refugee Programme & UNHRC invites lawyers and legal advisors to a course aimed at arming them with the information, networks and resources they require to represent those accused of witchcraft. Participants will learn how to best represent those whose claims to asylum are based upon accusations of witchcraft, an emerging area of refugee law in which there is a need for specialised knowledge and training.

4-5 September 2010
Oxford, United Kingdom
Registration fee: £150
If you would like to attend, please submit a completed registration form to Fahamu by 21 August 2010.
Fahamu Refugee Programme & UNHRC invites lawyers and legal advisors to a course aimed at arming them with the information, networks and resources they require to represent those accused of witchcraft. Participants will learn how to best represent those whose claims to asylum are based upon accusations of witchcraft, an emerging area of refugee law in which there is a need for specialised knowledge and training.

4-5 September 2010
Oxford, United Kingdom
Registration fee: £150
If you would like to attend, please submit a completed registration form to Fahamu by 21 August 2010.

July edition of Fahamu Refugee e-Newsletter now available

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/66296

The politics of penises: Myths about transgender people

Audrey Mbugua

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66281

cc Irina SlutskyThe struggle against gender oppression in Kenya endures. Following the recent unlawful arrest and assault of a transgender woman in the country, Audrey Mbugua voices the subordination of those who do not comply with the restrictive gender-based identities adopted by society at large. Mbugua unlaces these societal constructs that tie their subjects to an existence of marginalisation and abuse. Mbugua suggests ignorance and bureaucratised discrimination amongst Kenyan society is to blame.

On 30 July 2010, a transgender woman (who I shall refer to as Storm) was arrested in Thika District in Kenya’s Central Province. She was arraigned in court for intent to commit crime and remanded thereafter in a female remand facility. It was discovered she didn’t possess ‘female genitalia’ the day after. She was thoroughly whipped by a warden for ‘causing the confusion’.

She was transferred to a police station and placed in isolation. While the senior officer was absent, one of the police officers transferred her to a male cell where she suffered sexual assault on top of being ‘baptised’ with a bucket full of urine. Her food was grabbed by some inmates. When she reported the matter to the senior officer, she was beaten up by the officer. Three weeks later a law court released her on a personal bond.

This case presents one of the many incidences of gender oppression transgender people in Kenya face. Gender oppression against transgender people takes the form of violence, sexual assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, victimisation and psychological torture.

The dynamics of these cases of gender oppression are not too hard to understand. First, people look at you and make the assumption that you are a man or a woman. Storm never mentioned that she was a female but the officers assumed she was. This is predicated by the assumption that there are only two sexes/genders: Male and female. Anything else has to be pigeon-holed in these narrow categories. Storm is a transgender woman and the best option would have been to have placed her in a ‘transgender prison facility’.

Secondly, it illuminates the invalid excuse called ignorance. Ignorance is used by many to justify the oppression of transgender people in Kenya. One police officer admitted that if the officers had known about the transgender identity, things would not have gotten out of control. What sort of moral and intellectual cowardice is this? Some of us transgender people don’t know much about pregnancy, but we don’t go around beating up pregnant women because they impersonate fat people. And why do people have to react so violently towards a transgender person? How is violence going to resolve the issue? Transgenderism is not an issue to us but it becomes an issue because people want it to be one.

A year ago, I reported a theft case in our local police post. A suspect was arrested, but not for long. The suspect told the police officers that I wasn’t a woman, but a man. The police released the suspect and raced hotfoot to my house. ‘We are arresting you for female impersonation’ said the leader. ‘And did I ever claim to be a female?’ I enquired. ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ asked the shorter one (Frodo). ‘Am none’ I answered to the boys in blue. ‘You can’t be neither, do you have two organs?’ they pressed. ‘You have no business knowing what I have between my legs and between my ears. Am a transgender, deal with that’ was my response. ‘What is transgender?’ both asked in unison. I explained the transgender concept in a simple way (considering who my audience was). ‘So, if you are a transgender, are you a male transgender or female transgender?’ they continued. ‘Am none of that. I said I am a transgender person. Your labels have no space in the world.’ Well, they went back to their station with their tails neatly tucked between their legs.

Storm revealed that one of the police officers brought his wife and two kids into the police station for a ‘freak show’. The police officer requested Storm to strip in the full view of the family. She refused and the officer rained blows on her as he tore her clothes. His family burst into laughter, aiming degrading remarks at her. Well, I am scared by this incidence because if this disfunctional family does not receive help soon, they will be picking prostitutes from the streets and torturing them before drinking their blood. As I said, ignorance is not the problem; it is the human propensity to harm vulnerable members of the community.

The politics of penises are evident in this sad tale. This is the assumption: A penis is a male organ and anyone having a penis is male/man. I have the greatest sympathy for this flabbiness in reasoning. A penis can also be a transgender penis. A transgender woman who has a penis is a transgender woman not a man/male. If anyone has a problem with that, then they must deal with it. Also, identities are personal and no one has the right to tell a transgender woman that she is a man because of so and so. We are sick and tired of people denying us our right to identity and dignity.

This reminds me of a confrontation I had with part of the gay community related to HIV programming for transgender people. Some experts coined the term ‘Men who have Sex with other Men’ (MSM), which initially was used as a behavioural term rather than as a noun. What these experts were ignorant about was that, whether the term is a behavioural term or a noun, it is disrespectful to refer to transgender women as men who have sex with other men. We are not men but transgender women. But then someone mentioned that most transgender women do have receptive anal sex with men, so the term serves them right. I don’t know where people got this rubbish from but I sincerely hope it will die out sooner than later. There are cisgender women (women born women) who have anal sex with men. Does that make them men who have sex with other men? In a nutshell: Their argument shoots itself in the foot.

This also takes us to the land of ‘misgendering’ transgender women by the gay hungry media and some sexual minorities organisations. A case in point is the just ended Tiwonge and Steven charade in Malawi. Tiwonge maintained she wasn’t male, but I guess a gay hungry media and some gay rights activists couldn’t hear of that. They reasoned: Tiwonge has a penis (and is therefore male), and Steven has a penis (and is therefore a male), so their union was a gay wedding. There is nothing wrong with gay weddings, but it is offensive to label a transgender person gay. You deny her the fundamental right to self-identity; you are simply calling her a man. She is not a man and it is also wrong to assume that a man dating a transgender woman is gay. Yes, explaining this to my 100 year-old grandmother might be a hair splitting exercise but it shouldn’t be quantum physics for the current crop of human rights activists. The valiant Monica Roberts wrote a moving publication about these shenanigans of turning transgender issues into gay issues:

‘We are getting beyond sick and tired of gay organizations misgendering and gayjacking transpeople's identities to fit their agenda … Hot on the heels of the misgendering and mischaracterization of the Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza relationship in Malawi as a 'same-sex' one… now comes the story out of Pakistan that an attempted marriage to a transwoman was broken up by Pakistani police.

'42 year old Malik Muhammad Iqbal and 19 year old transwoman Rani were arrested May 26 in Peshawar. She and the 43 other guests assert they were celebrating her birthday and Iqbal was just a friend… As the story unfolds, like clockwork the Advocate and some gayosphere blogs continue their ongoing patterns of misgendering Rani and other transwomen to pimp the story as a gay marriage issue.’[1]

I am not being polemic or running away from the gay label. I would not be allowed to get away with the following argument: Female genital mutilations are part of African cultures. Any woman who opposes it is running from the ‘traditional woman’ label. Why do people feel they have the right to put a label on us as if we are some kitchenware in a mall? Transgender people need to stop sucking up to mislabelling and proclaim their true identities.

While we support efforts by gay rights organisations to have same-sex marriages and decriminalise same-sex activities between consenting adults, we abhor this ‘gaynising’ trend and spinning of transgender issues into gay issues. It is not wrong to be gay or a lesbian, but it is wrong to refer to a transgender person as gay. It is like referring to a doctor as a carpenter – not because being a carpenter is wrong, but because it is incorrect. Let us respect one another for the sake of sanity.

Another appalling phenomenon in Kenya is the know-it-all attitude people have towards transgender matters. After Storm was released, our lawyer and I were doing the paperwork relating to the case. One police officer started ‘educating’ us on how transgender/transsexuality develops: ‘These people were sexually molested while young so their “male” genitalia no longer works,’ he lectured. What a crackpot! First, no one had asked (or cared) for his expert opinion. If we needed to know what causes transsexuality, we would have sought it from the necessary authorities, not from a police officer who is just trained to shoot. Why is it that people at any level of ignorance feel they have the capacity to lecture about transsexuality? Had Storm been arrested for creating an atomic bomb, would this officer have lectured us on nuclear fission? I don’t think so. Kenyans, please refrain from jumping unto our issues like stolen bicycles.

Some antagonists might resort to using religion to deny us our claim for a third sex. God created two sexes: Male and female. Nothing else and in-between, we should not find flaws in God’s creation. This is not a matter to be handled from a pulpit using some pre-medieval mumblings not worth more than the papers they were written on. Doctors, gender activists and policy makers should not lecture priests on giving ‘Christian children’ alcohol which is christened as the blood of Jesus. We don’t go around reprimanding our priests on the taste of the holy loaf of bread. It doesn’t bother gender activists in any way, the same way the third sex shouldn’t interfere with their holy duties.

The structural roots that sustain gender oppression against transgender people in Kenya are complex but they have solutions. We need the government to recognise the fact that some of us are simply not male or female. We would best fit in a third gender. Gender markers on official documents need to change. It would be best if we didn’t have gender markers at all. What is the purpose of having information in identification documents whose purpose is to give other people an idea of the kind of spanner you have in your pants? If this is untenable, then people who aren’t male or female should be recognised (as the third sex) and the necessary instruments put in place to ensure equality and affirmative action.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

NOTES

[1] Monica Roberts. Transgriot 2010. Chill With The ‘Gayjacking’ of Trans Lives for Your Gay Agenda.
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2010/06/chill-with-gayjacking-of-trans-lives.html

Somalia’s rough road to peace

Abena Ampofoa Asare

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66276

cc OM: PessoaFollowing the al-Shabaab bombing in Kampala, current plans to send more AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) troops into Somalia will simply jeopardise the possibility of a new moderate leadership emerging in the country, writes Abena Ampofoa Asare. Observers in the African Union, UN and international community at large would do well to look at Somaliland to the north, the author stresses. Solutions to Somalia’s civil war will not emerge in Kampala, Washington DC or Addis Ababa, Asare contends, underlining that a key lesson of Somaliland’s experience is that ‘effective government must come from within’.

Just as Spain was seizing victory in the 2010 World Cup, bomb blasts ripped through Kampala, Uganda, injuring soccer fans gathered to watch the final game of the first World Cup hosted in Africa. Over 70 people were killed and numerous more were injured. Soon afterwards, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahedeen, a Somali insurgent group, claimed responsibility for these attacks. Sheikh Ali Mohamud Raghe, an al-Shabaab spokesman, told reporters in Mogadishu on Tuesday that the attacks on Kampala were a ‘message to Uganda and Burundi’ that ‘if they do not take out their AMISOM [African Union Mission in Somalia] troops from Somalia, blasts will continue…’[1]

These attacks should not have been a surprise. After numerous threats, al-Shabaab followed through on its promise to bring the fight home to the countries participating in the African Union’s (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Since 2007, the AMISOM troops supporting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have been al-Shabaab’s primary military obstacle in Mogadishu. It is hardly the first time that international peacekeepers have been drawn into the quagmire of the Somalian conflict; however, on 11 July, the al-Shabaab attacks were a sign of the high and ever-increasing stakes of the protracted violence in Somalia.

The violence in Somalia has once again emerged as a problem with regional and global implications. After the bomb attacks, President Museveni of Uganda swiftly vowed to take revenge on the Somalian terrorists; a Ugandan army spokesman declared the country able and willing to send 2,000 more troops into Somalia. A chest-thumping op-ed in Uganda’s Daily Nation claimed that Sunday’s attacks ‘give Uganda’s role in AMISOM the popular legitimacy it lacked’ and strengthened the country’s resolve to emerge victorious in Somalia.[2] For Uganda, what had been an international peacekeeping mission has now become a question of national security and patriotism. Avenging Uganda’s civilian dead is now part of the AMISOM mission. Neighbouring Kenya quickly warned al-Shabaab against attempting a similar feat in Kenyan territory.[3] President Barack Obama unequivocally condemned al-Shabaab, claiming that the attacks showed the organisation’s disdain for African lives and were proof positive of its links with al-Qaeda as part of a global wave of Islamist terror. Even Jean Ping, the current chairperson of the African Union Commission, described the Uganda bombings as an event that has ‘strengthen[ed] the collective determination of Africa to play its part in the struggle waged by the international community to stamp out the phenomenon of terrorism.’[4]

Clearly, the eyes of the world are once again on the hydra-headed Somalian civil war of Black Hawk Down infamy. This deadly conflict, which has destroyed millions of lives in the Horn of Africa, now threatens to seep deeper into East Africa and perhaps extend past African shores. And this time, the violence in Somalia is supposedly linked to a broader trend of fundamentalist Islamist terrorism. It is more important than ever to parse the intricate religious, historical and political web fuelling this deadly conflict or risk Somalia’s continuing deterioration into a playground for pirates and terrorists. After more than 20 years of civil unrest, the persistent suffering of the Somali people must be brought to an end.

Ultimately, we do not have to look too far to find an alternative path forward for Somalia. Just a few miles to the northwest the self-declared republic of Somaliland has been a beacon of hope, showing the world precisely what is possible in the Horn of Africa. Somaliland takes in thousands of refugees from Somalia every year. While Somalia’s al-Shabaab was plotting the Kampala attacks, a few miles away, Somaliland held a presidential election which by all accounts was free and fair. Although al-Shabaab warned Somaliland not to hold these elections, more than 1 million Somalilanders took to the streets and queued for hours to cast their votes.

Unfortunately, Somaliland remains politically invisible; the secessionist territory’s independence is not recognised by any of the world’s nations. The African Union, the United Nations and the broader international community would do well to look, and look closely, at Somaliland. The different trajectories of these two neighbouring communities offer a unique anatomy of both the causes and solutions of the Somalian civil war.

The collapse of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre’s government in 1991 is as good a place as any to start. Siad Barre became Somalia’s president in 1969 and ruled the country with an iron fist, alternately supported by both the USSR and the USA in some of the Cold War’s most unholy alliances. Barre’s reign was marked by terror; village massacres and political executions were part of his regime’s order. Eventually, Barre’s political inconsistency and his abuses of the Somali people alienated both the USSR and the US governments, despite the millions of dollars of arms which these governments had already pumped into Somalia. Without the support of international allies, Barre became vulnerable to the various local groups arrayed against his regime. His 21-year dictatorship ended in disgrace in 1991. However, the violence in Somalia continued. Without Barre’s iron fist, the clan-based political rivalries which had been artificially repressed for two decades bloomed and a country swimming in foreign arms and local animosity was plunged into a vicious civil war.

A UN peacekeeping mission attempted to intervene in Somalia in 1993, but retreated in 1995 after US troops suffered casualties in Mogadishu. Into this vacuum of effective power entered the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a group of shari’a-based courts with political ties to Eritrea and ideological ties to the stringent Saudi Islamic reform movement. These courts took on the task of governing a country wracked by civil war and offered education, healthcare and security services, within a system of government based on shari’a law. In Mogadishu, the business community, civil society and other local organisations rallied together to defeat the warlords terrorising the capital city. Where international peacekeepers and foreign soldiers had cut and run, the UIC, working with the local population, struggled to extract peace and order from chaos.

Notably, aspects of the UIC order were harsh; thieves had their limbs amputated, murderers were executed and cinemas and soccer were banned. But to a people who had survived more than a decade of civil disorder and violent anarchy, the courts’ leadership was a welcome corrective to warlords focused on looting and destruction. Although the UIC’s conservative and singular interpretation of Islam was a shift from the plurality and tolerance of traditional Somalian religious practice, the UIC’s religious justice became popular in parts of Somalia. The UIC formed a military wing, where past and present leaders of al-Shabaab got their start, and battled the warlords for control of Somalia.

After September 11 and the consolidation of the global war on terror, the United States government’s Manichean division of the world lumped the Somali Islamic courts in with a global Islamist threat. In 2004, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was formed, with the support of the United States, in order to wrest control of Somalia back from both the warlords and the Islamic courts. From the beginning, it was difficult for the TFG, which was formed in Kenya, to garner local support. Eventually the TFG moved to Mogadishu, but both the UIC and local warlords refused to accept the government’s authority. By 2007, a weak Somali transitional government called for international military action to help destroy the Islamic courts. Ethiopian forces – bolstered by the United States’ blessing and with the support of some its arms – entered the fray to destroy an organisation supposedly linked to al-Qaeda. However, this same organisation had won the respect of many Somalis by rescuing parts of the country from chaos and random violence. Although Ethiopia’s military action in Somalia decimated the UIC, it also forever de-legitimised the Transitional Federal Government.

The internationally supported Ethiopian invasion was the worst possible strategy for winning the hearts and minds of Somalis. The political rivalry between Ethiopia and Somalia is the stuff of legends; at least twice in the 20th century, the tense relations between these two countries deteriorated into full-out war. In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has historically been the military heavyweight with imperial aspirations, and even the local folklore reflects the historical enmity of these two populations. The TFG’s decision to use Ethiopian arms to secure the country immediately undermined this leadership’s intent and national identity.[5] Immediately, the UIC members dodging mortar shells and escaping into exile were rendered nationalist heroes fighting for their country’s independence against foreign imperialists. The future of the transitional government was doomed, particularly when massive humanitarian crises accompanied the invasion and reports of war crimes against the Somali people began to surface.

The foremost ethnographer of Somalia, I.M. Lewis, penned a letter in 2007 criticising the European Union’s ‘astonishing, and imperialistic behavior … in completely ignoring Somali public opinion and its overwhelming rejection of [the TFG]’.[6] All of the international support in the world could not give the TFG the one necessary thing it lacked, the support of the Somali people. If anything, the meddling of Ethiopia and the United States doomed the TFG’s prospects as the population’s distrust of the Transitional Federal Government and disgust at violent international intervention grew. As Lewis explained, the Somalian people would never forgive the TFG leadership ‘for the atrocities which had been committed in its name.’[7]

Three years after the invasion, Ethiopian troops have withdrawn, but there are still scores of foreign soldiers (from Uganda and Burundi, among other places) in the country. The transitional government remains unable to hold much ground, despite the installation of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a man with considerable religious credibility, as president. Foreign soldiers are still charged with the tall task of training government troops, defending the government’s territory and winning the hearts and minds of the Somalian people.

Most importantly, the UIC soldiers who were bombed and pursued by American and Ethiopian forces during the invasion have returned to Somalia radicalised, bitter and with the mantle of martyrdom firmly affixed to their shoulders. This is al-Shabaab – a new organisation of Somalian youth led by members of the former UIC’s military wing. Appropriately, the organisation’s name means ‘youth’ in Arabic. Many of the radical young men in al-Shabaab’s ranks may have only experienced stability during the brief period when the Islamic courts ruled parts of Somalia. These men came of age in the shadow of civil conflict and foreign military incursions and are the reconstitution of the most extreme elements of the former UIC.

A recent International Crisis Group (ICG) report on al-Shabaab describes the Ethiopian invasion as the event that turned the loosely organised Islamic courts coalition into a much more centralised and extremist organisation.[8] Of course, the power of al-Shabaab is not unchallenged in Somalia. The ICG report offers a blueprint of ways to de-legitimise the hard-line insurgent organisation. Al-Shabaab is not the sum total of Somalia’s religious community; there are factions within the broader Islamist movement amenable to a political settlement with the transitional government and other organisations which have arrayed in opposition to al-Shabaab’s fundamentalism. Suicide bombs in Mogadishu, harsh social prescriptions and the destruction of Sufi holy places and shrines have rallied popular disapproval of al-Shabaab. More than anything else, the Somali people are weary of the chaos of war; al-Qaeda-style ideas of permanent military jihad do not retain much lustre to a people who have already contended with the ramifications of permanent warfare.

In this context, the Kampala bombings must be seen as what they are, a baiting of the bear. By bringing the Somalian fight to the international community so crudely, al-Shabaab is counting on an aggressive international response. More civilian deaths at the hands of AMISOM soldiers will close off the renewed possibilities for moderate leadership to seize the reins from al-Shabaab and discredit the transitional government. Similarly, the rampant anti-Islamic rhetoric of the US war on terror will alienate the moderate elements of Somalia’s Islamist movements. Once bombs begin falling in earnest and fighting intensifies, the Somalian struggle will once again align with the script that poses national patriots against foreign aggressors, and the al-Shabaab will have already won the ideological struggle for the Somali people’s support.

In its March 2010 report, the ICG’s policy recommendations focus on the need for the transitional government to make inroads with Somali people by collaborating with moderate elements in the Islamist movement. It calls for new attempts at outreach and coalition-building. Unfortunately, the transitional government remains unable or unwilling to do this work. Plagued by corruption and ineffective diplomacy, the transitional government as recently as March 2010 was requesting more international support and funding to hold its ground against al-Shabaab. In fact, international support is the very last thing that would lead to the government’s success. At the centre of al-Shabaab’s critique of the TFG is the claim that it functions as a Western puppet government. If the TFG has not been able to convert considerable international support into effective governing institutions in the past six years, it is naïve to suppose that pumping more resources into the government’s hands would provide a better result. At this point, the federal government must win the support of the Somalian population on its own terms. If it remains unable to do so, alternative local leadership with greater local support and vision will rise up and fill the void.

The United States and the African Union must leave off nation-building in Somalia. Effective solutions to the Somalian civil war will not be cooked up in Kampala, Washington DC or Addis Ababa. One of the key lessons of Somaliland’s experience is that effective government must come from within. In the words of the former Somaliland president Dahir Rayale Kahin, ‘you can’t be donated power… We built this state because we saw the problems here as our problems. Our brothers in the South are still waiting—till now—for others.’[9]

Somaliland’s national cohesion has been bought at a high price. This territory suffered particularly under the Barre regime. Somaliland is knit together by its history and years of brutal violence and resistance. In 1991, following the demise of Barre, the territory declared itself independent. Although Somaliland’s independence is not widely recognised because of African Union protections of the colonial era’s state boundaries, the Somaliland community has struggled to independently build a national community.

Somaliland successfully demobilised the militia that existed during the Barre region and found a way to absorb these young men into a stable society. It has held multiple national elections, created a constitution and has built a modest economy, supplemented by members of the Somaliland diaspora living abroad. Most importantly, Somaliland has secured a treasured peace on its own terms and by its own efforts. In the past 20 years Somaliland’s struggle has been for world recognition. Yet, ironically, it is precisely the country’s isolation from the international community that has allowed it to develop home-grown peace and stability. Without the dubious direction of international experts and unable to rely on international economic assistance, Somaliland has reconstructed itself with self-reliance, accountability and local investment as its touchstones.

It would be naïve to expect Somalia to simply recreate the history of Somaliland, but it may be time for those who care about peace in Somalia to study the lessons of the Somaliland experiment. Adding more AMISOM soldiers is not the recipe for peace in a country which has recently dealt with foreign invasion. Somalia’s most pressing struggle is to develop a leadership that is supported by the local population and which has the country’s peace and stability at heart. This will not be an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organisation, but it will also not be a weak ‘federal’ government that can only stand because of the international community’s support.

Rather than dismissing Somaliland as a threat to national integrity and sovereignty, the African Union would do well to support and study Somaliland as a country which offers a unique blueprint of home-grown development and provides an important image of peace in the Horn of Africa.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

NOTES
[1] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/07/2010711212520826984.html
[2] http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Al%20Shabaab%20bombs%20Kampala%20it%20must%20now%20expect%20a%20tireless%20enemy/-/440808/957988/-/bdhmws/-
[3] http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/Kenyanews/Kenya-tells-Al-Shabab-to-keep-off-9077.html
[4] http://www.afrol.com/articles/36498
[5] Said S. Samatar, ‘The Islamic Courts and Ethiopia’s Intervention in Somalia: Redemption or Adventurism?’ April 25, 2007. http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/9592_250407samatar.pdf
‘Even as we speak, Ethiopia’s flag is flying--- nay, undulating beatifically in the red, green, golden stripes and all—over Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and this at the invitation of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. This is surely an ironic development, in view of the fact, that for ages, Ethiopia stood, in the eyes of the Somalis as the putative foe of the Somalis.’
[6] http://www.somalilandpatriots.com/print-2935-0
[7] Ibid.
[8] ‘Somalia’s Divided Islamists,’ Africa Policy Briefing No. 71, International Crisis Group, May 18, 2010.
[9] Jeffry Gettleman, ‘Somaliland is an overlooked African success story,’ The New York Time, March 6, 2007

Food crisis in the Sahel: Real problem, false solutions

Tidiane Kassé

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66292

cc liquidslvFollowing food crises in 2005 and 2008, Niger is once again reeling under a famine that has reached Chad and northern Mali, with repercussions for other countries in the Sahel region. As appeals for solidarity increase, Tidiane Kassé cautions that by tackling the consequences rather than the causes of the crisis, the region’s people are likely to remain vulnerable to hunger.

When we talk of a ‘food crisis’, what are we referring to? Beyond cold and disembodied statistics, a Malian journalist has visited a few parts of Niger and reports on means of life, indeed, to surviving.[1]

‘We eat once a day rather than three meals,’ tells Abdou Garba, a farmer from Tarna, a small village in the Maradi region (south-central Niger).

‘We and our animals are hungry; the crisis of 2005 is repeating itself,’ murmurs Ali Galadima, Tarna’s village chief. Millet and corn, basic grains, ‘began to grow well, but then the rain came to a brutal stop for two months and the heat burnt everything,’ he recalls. The consequence? The harvests are but a third of what they would have been and the majority of farmers have been unable to harvest anything.

‘During the previous season, I harvested 30 bundles of millet versus only 11 this time, and our reserves are already exhausted,’ laments Mamane Garba, a father of 18 children.

‘In Tarna, between 300 and 500 people have already fled to Maradi,’ according to Ali Galadima. Since her husband left for neighbouring Nigeria a month ago, Nana-Aïchatou has to feed her eight children alone and care for her sick mother. In order to survive, each morning she leaves to chop wood in the bush, and then makes her way on foot along the three kilometres separating her village of Nassarawa and Maradi, where she sells her merchandise. ‘I earn on average 500 FCFA [Franc CFA]. It’s just enough to buy two kilos of millet to make a meal’, the young women explains.

For the 50th anniversary of Niger’s independence, the junta in power had the foresight not to fall into the burlesque. In a country ravaged by famine, there are more important things to do than feast. In contrast with other former French colonies in Africa, where independence parades have been held in a manner devoid of substance and sense (and built on the failings which have reinforced the links of subject to metropole and other examples of power –political, economic, etc), Niamey’s authorities are to limit themselves to a military parade on 3 August. With symbolism put aside, the reality needs to be faced up to: some 8 million Nigeriens – or half the country’s population – are affected by the famine.

The crisis is not limited to within Niger’s borders. The situation is critical across a band of the Sahel, from northern Mali to Chad, where 10 million people find themselves in a state of distress, beyond the critical threshold. In addition to the 8 million affected Nigeriens are some 1.6 million Chadians and 500,000 Malians.

These statistics are only, however, the visible aspect that institutions and international non-governmental organisations display. They suffer from the limits around reading data on Africa, notably on rural areas and a region of the Sahel in which pastoral traditions and a nomadic lifestyle are a prominent feature.

The first alarm bells around this crisis were sounded last March. The threat of the catastrophe was visible in the concern of farmers. The granaries, filled only from the last rainy season, were nonetheless enough for the population’s survival. But the tension weighing on the pastures and livestock foretold the crisis. At the time, the Billital Maroobé network of farmers and pastoralists published a declaration to call upon the leaders of the Inter-États de lutte contre la sécheresse dans le Sahel (Inter-State Committee against Drought in the Sahel), on the eve of the summit being held in Lomé on 30 March 2010.[2]

The misfortune of these people across the Sahel will interest no one. Even where the fire smouldered, the evidence went unacknowledged. The former Nigerien president, Mamadou Tandja, had in effect systematically rejected the diagnosis, speaking of a difficult situation but one under control. Following his overthrow in a coup on 18 February 2010, the new powers in Niamey officially recognised the famine affecting the lives of half of the population.

During these last few weeks, Niger has thrust itself into the spotlight on the strength of a serious crisis. In this country, as in Mali and Chad, peasants are currently living through a lean period. This is the time when the first rains fall (irregularly and modestly in certain regions) and when, waiting for the first harvests, reserves from the previous rainy season are practically exhausted. Up until September, the date of the first harvests, the affected populations will live through a critical time.

In the face of empty granaries, Niger’s people have begun to develop a strategy for survival. ‘In Niger, women cover a desert-like environment in search of anthills in order to dig up and retrieve grains of millet, corn and other crops that the ants have collected,’ tells Charles Bambara, in charge of communications for Oxfam GB in Dakar. In the north of Mali, farmers, keen to allow their livestock to drink, have taken to using the water points actually intended for elephants (in a bid to protect the last pachyderms alive in the country).

In this way people begin to weigh on their environment, to destabilise the ecosystem in order to survive themselves in the face of a nature that has become hostile. This perpetuates a terrible, vicious cycle and leads herders to sell off their livestock that they can no longer support in order to earn enough to supply the market. These peasants, who used to produce for themselves and sell their surplus, therefore simply come to live from others. But when they sell off their livestock in order to supply themselves with food, they end up facing a level of inflation marked by deteriorating terms of exchange. In Chad, where animals have fallen to half-price, inflation has reached a 35 per cent increase on 2009. In the six regions of this country of 10 million inhabitants, 1.5 million people find themselves food-insecure.

With the Sahelien area transcending borders and with interacting markets and the migrations of populations, it is to be expected that the geographic dimensions of this food crisis go beyond the area in which it is currently defined. Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Nigeria will be already affected to a lesser degree. Everywhere there is a risk of a snowball effect resulting from the crisis. Already, in Chad, the level of malnutrition has reached an urgent threshold, with more than 100,000 children at risk. In Niger, some 500,000 children from 6 to 23 months are affected, or 18 per cent of the population of this age group, according to the minister for health.

AN ENDEMIC PROBLEM

The disorder of the world food crisis in 2008 did not become hazy, and this new peak comes to remind us that, in the Sahel, the crisis results from an endemic problem. This is a problem that, as the thrust of recurrent fever testifies, is more a question of structure than conjuncture, that these are the failings of agricultural policies that impose their own tough realities, and that the recommended solutions are not different from those pushed in the 1980s with the establishing of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which sounded the death knell of Africa’s agricultural policies.

The reduced investment imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank had then destroyed the base of an agriculture geared towards food sovereignty. Industrial cultures were promoted which washed the soil (leading to greater soil erosion, the use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser) and disrupted the balance of the systems of production behind subsistence and the generation of complementary revenues on the strength of access to local markets. From this point it was a question of food security, no matter where stocks came from. This was the period in which food aid poured in. Africa was to produce no longer, with African stomachs wagered on agricultural surpluses from Europe, the US and elsewhere. As a result, since 1980 sub-Saharan Africa has been the only region of the world where average per capita food production has continued to decline over the last 40 years.[3]

With respect to the current famine, the food security strategy developed by organisations and institutions is again active. While it is clear that the situation is one of urgency, should we not be sure to pull up the problem at its root? Niger lived through this food crisis in 2005. It hit 3.5 million of the country’s inhabitants. The punctual arrival of aid simply postponed the problem. Today the same crisis has come back and appeals for international solidarity will simply prove a cautery on a wooden leg. And perhaps two years down the line, with rainfall critically low again, Africa will again be playing beggars.

PEASANTS’ SENSE

For the time being, it’s ‘open your heart to Niger’! At the end of June, the president of the Haute autorité à la sécurité alimentaire du Niger (High Authority on Food Security in Niger) launched the ‘2010 Food Crisis in Niger Programme’. It is funded by USAID and carried out by three international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), with US$2.154 million behind it. The European Commission announced that it will provide an additional €24 million for victims of the food crisis in Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and in the north of Nigeria. Further contributions have been announced here and there. But it seems that Niger’s famine has ‘sold’ itself poorly.

In a declaration published on 9 July, co-signed by Oxfam, ACF, Acted, Care International, Save the Children, Secours Catholique, Secours Islamique and others, it was noted that ‘Despite six months of appeals, the funds obtained to respond to the crisis have been slow to arrive and insufficient. For Niger, a further US$107 million (€85 million) is needed in order to reach the amount of US$130 million announced by the United Nations. Oxfam regrets the absence of food security actors in the affected zones, notably the FICR, Intermon Oxfam, ACRA and Africare.’ And note that the response of UN agencies such the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and the WFP (World Food Programme) still cover only 50 per cent of needs.

The strategies currently developed to speed up aid – in a bid to face up to the famine in the Sahel and to make the system of alert more responsive, indeed, to increase financial means and mobile food stocks – again come back to facing the consequences of not looking into the real causes.

African agriculture has suffered a series of difficulties which, over 30 years, have left it vulnerable to the smallest of changes on both the international market and climatically. Agricultural policies applied by states, under donors’ pressure, have in effect turned their back on policies which, formerly, assured technical assistance to producers, backed up by a price-stabilisation mechanism and subsidies for commodities.

The fragility of this sector has been reinforced by an all-out liberalisation and the opening of markets to imported products, something which has practically strangled a scarcely competitive African agriculture. Today African markets are crumbling under the weight of Asian and European labels and so on, save in rare pockets of resistance and alternatives where the ‘local consumer’ is promoted. In this way, in a few decades, agricultural practices, in both urban and rural environments, have changed.

We could go even further towards the worst of it and look at the development of biofuels and the extent to which more and more land is being diverted away from food production. Essentially, we will be growing to power cars rather than fill granaries. And in July this year, Burkina Faso has inaugurated its first industrial unit of production, while the country remains vulnerable in the face of a food crisis.

A year ago, Djibo Bagna – president of the Peasant Association of Niger, agro-breeder of his state and who became president of ROPPA (Réseau des organisations de producteurs et de paysans d’Afrique de l’Ouest) – outlined the terms of a crisis already known by the ‘peasants’ sense’. He said:

‘Previously, we would work for three months and be able to eat throughout the year. A field of 100 hectares would produce 300 bundles of millet. Now, with the same area, it’s hard to get 40 bundles, because the soil is worn away and the rain is less reliable. Two, three months after a harvest, the food is used up. People are forced to look into other ways of making a living. The problem is that today, such income is not enough as all the prices have gone up. Two years ago, a 100kg sack of maize would be around 10,000 CFA. Today, it costs around 22,000 CFA. It’s unbearable!

‘Our areas have come to resemble the food crises which followed the drought of the 1970s. And it hasn’t stopped since. In 2005 and 2007, for example, millet completely dried up. Before, our governments supported agriculture: agronomists worked with farmers, livestock vaccination was free… But since structural adjustment, our governments have gone away from agriculture. Of course, when this sector involves 85 per cent of the population, this has consequences: lower production, a rural exodus, growing slums, with everything that that implies like poverty, idleness and delinquency…

‘Today, in the smallest village, people eat bread, milk and coffee… This wasn’t part of our customs; we used to eat maize-based dough, sorghum and millet. But when you can’t live anymore from your field and you’re reliant on others (neighbours, food aid), you eat what you’re given.

‘In 2005, while Niger lay in fear of famine [editor: From the end of 2004 to the summer of 2005, the country endured a terrible famine caused by drought and a locust invasion], there was food in Burkina Faso, in Ghana, in Benin. Instead of getting food from these neighbouring countries, the politicians opted to import it from Europe and Taiwan. This costs more and is not adapted to our customs.

‘Niger is a country of the Sahel. But the “dallo” (tablecloth) is not very deep. When predictions are poor, the authorities could develop areas so that locals can work on irrigation. But agriculture is not a priority for our politicians.’

The challenge, in the face of these recurrent food crises in Africa, is to make agriculture more human, to think of it according to its original function. The foundation of real food sovereignty lies in the promotion and consolidation of family agriculture, as well as the development of an agro-ecology which offers the best antidote to the wasting-away of fragile ecosystems at the mercy of deregulation. Thirty years after the new agricultural policies imposed as part of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), the failure and the causes of the failure no longer escape anybody. In a commentary published on 30 April, a Burkinabé paper commented:

‘There is a need to ask ourselves how, after 50 years of independence, these countries have yet to achieve self-sufficiency in food. Can we only speak of autonomy when we are hungry and when we’re unable to feed ourselves without external help?

‘In other words, a starving man won’t be a free man, as another would say. Education, health and food remain the three indispensible factors to initiate development. “A hungry stomach has no ears”, as the saying goes. And without self-sufficiency, we can’t talk of development.

‘Let’s hope that international solidarity can come to the aid of Nigeriens. It’s the fault of their leaders that they’re in this position. Cultural methods and bad governance are the precursors to this situation. The improper character to agriculture of our soils won’t be a pretext for carelessness, because countries like India, China and – to an extent – Israel, who got off to a bad start, have been able to achieve self-sufficiency by overcoming the natural obstacles which confronted them thanks to appropriate policies and new cultural approaches. It is right to rethink agricultural policy in sub-Saharan Africa. For the gallant heart, nothing is impossible!’[4]

Gallant hearts there will always be…

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Tidiane Kassé is editor of Pambazuka News in French.
* Translated from the French by Alex Free.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES
[1] Oumar Niane (Agence malienne de presse – AMAP), jeudi 22 avril 2010.
[2] http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/advocacy/63274
[3] “Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020” -- Proceedings of an All-Africa Conference, April 1-3, 2004 -- Kampala, Uganda,” International Food Policy Research Institute, 2004.
[4] Passage extrait d’un entretien diffusé dans «Ligueur» n°16 du 10 juin 2009

Treasure islands: Mapping the geography of corruption

Khadija Sharife

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66286

cc ThierryNeither the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nor the country’s government agree that Mauritius is a tax haven, but Khadija Sharife’s investigations suggest otherwise.

When is a tax haven not a tax haven? When Mauritius' Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so. ‘We are a not a tax haven,’ stated Sithanen, who is also the country's minister of finance. Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) – the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating corporate mispricing and corruption marketed to foreign clients, especially India – accounts for 12.5 per cent of GDP.

Mauritius is already India's largest single source foreign investor at US$39 billion, almost half of total investment flows. The beautiful tourist island of Mauritius also provides 44 per cent of capital ‘invested’ in India, followed by Singapore at 9 per cent. This often occurs through ‘round-tripping’ where Indians, keen to evade and avoid taxes, park their wealth in Mauritius before ‘re-investing’ in India – tax free.

But Sithanen, the architect behind Mauritius' strategy to become Asia's leading ‘financial centre’ of choice, has the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) backing his claim and removing Mauritius' name from the list of ‘uncooperative tax havens’ following ratification of ‘bilateral tax arrangements’ related to ‘suspected tax evasion’ – and ‘data on request only.’

Mauritius hosts 169 multinational subsidiaries as well as ‘big four’ accounting firms, noted for the boutique ‘tax planning’ products peddled by their accountants. Just two years ago, investigations by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that of the 100 largest US companies, over 37 entities were present in Mauritius, with 83 corporations, such as Exxon Mobil (122), Lehman Brothers (141), and Morgan Stanley (568), maintaining subsidiary units in multiple jurisdictions.

According to research by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), Mauritius has an ‘opacity’ score of 96 (where perfect transparency rests at 0 and perfect opacity stands at 100) following assessments of FS using 12 key indicators. This includes banking secrecy though a number of means: By not placing details of trusts on public records, not sufficiently complying with international regulatory requirements nor requiring that company accounts be available on public record, and not maintaining company ownership in official documents. The country has few tax information agreements, allows for company re-domiciliation and protected cell companies, and does not provide adequate access to banking information.

Queries into this cesspool of secrecy are effectively blocked, as even bilateral treaties require separate court orders for disclosure. ‘Whenever a judge asks for information from Mauritius during an investigation, there's no response,’ revealed investigative anti-corruption magistrate Renaud van Ruymbecke of the Paris Pole Financier du Tribunal. ‘I recommend Mauritius and Singapore to those with dirty money to launder.’

Posing as a citizen anxious to shift my own wealth offshore to exempt profits from taxes, I was informed by OCRA Worldwide, an internationally respected corporation peddling offshore shelf companies, that it could be done with as little as an ID, a credit card statement showing my proof of address, and curriculum vitae. Potential investors must sign an application form, provide consent of shareholder and director, and reveal ‘the source of funds, financial forecast and geographic location of business,’ amongst other requirements.

In my initial correspondence, I stated that the ‘business in question yielded significant profit, but the owners, fearful of the political climate, would like to shift their profits to a jurisdiction with high levels of client confidentiality and low tax rates.’ The source of my funds? Massive profits generated from… egg cartons. And just in case my lucrative ‘egg carton’ business might be caught out, the manager kindly responded to my anxious statements saying, ‘There is information-sharing only on money laundering and terrorist matters; otherwise, all information remains confidential.’ I was also told that although the tax rate for companies is officially 15 per cent, this could be reduced to zero by opting for the Global Business Company (Category II). At the bottom of the first page of the application, the document states: ‘Company services for private clients only: privileged information.’

The box-ticking exercise in Section Two of the application form reveals why Eva Joly – the former investigative anti-corruption magistrate who cracked the Elf Affair1 – burst out laughing when describing how ‘nine nominees can administer 1,500 companies.’ The questions in Section 2 are:

Would you like OCRA Worldwide to arrange for the appointment of professional directors to this company?
Would you like OCRA Worldwide to provide nominee shareholders for this company?
Would you like OCRA worldwide to assist in the establishment of a trust or foundation to own this company?
A simple yes or no does the trick.

It's not just India that suffers from the US$1.6 trillion draining maldeveloped nations of revenue due to round-tripping. Many multinationals exploiting African resources – often cheapened through the IMF-imposed policy of ‘tax competition’ – extensively utilise Mauritius. And Mauritius seems bent on establishing itself as Africa's financial ‘gateway’ for foreign investors.

One example of such draining, as quoted in Faim et Développement Magazine, was described by Joly (currently president of the European Parliament's Development Committee) who revealed that ‘Zambian copper producers make use of Mauritius to export its copper. An offshore subsidiary buys Zambian copper at €2,000 per tonne to resell at €6,000. €4,000 of profits are retained by the subsidiary…untaxed. Under this arrangement, the Zambian government doesn't get a single Euro of tax on the profits.’

‘According to our sources, including a Swiss banker, Mauritius is attracting a lot of dirty business migrating out of Europe in response to the EU savings tax directive. European banks are enlarging their offices in Port Louis because they regard the government there as pliable and largely indifferent to the OECD processes,’ stated John Christensen, founder of TJN and former senior official of Jersey, a major secrecy jurisdiction. ‘Mauritius is, therefore, rapidly emerging as a major centre for money laundering and tax evasion and avoidance in the southern hemisphere,’ he added.

But it is unlikely that the OECD would curb this kind of structural injustice which is embedded within the global financial architecture because most ‘developed’ nations on the OECD's member list are systemically powerful onshore ring-fenced ‘treasure islands,’ on the receiving end of US$385 billion in corporate evasion and avoidance from developing countries annually. Such examples include the US (through the state of Delaware); the UK (controlling more than a quarter of tax havens globally through overseas territories operating from the City of London with an FS at 9 per cent/GDP); and Switzerland (washing one-third of illicit flight with an FS at 15 per cent/GDP).

Yet according to the OECD, ‘Since May 2009, no jurisdiction is currently listed as an uncooperative tax haven by the Committee on Fiscal Affairs.’ Cooperation itself is limited to bilateral tax arrangements, dealing specifically with terrorism as well as hard evidence pertaining to tax evasion.

This was echoed by French President Nicholas Sarkozy who stated in September 2009: ‘There are no tax havens anymore.’ He was no doubt keen to shift attention away from Monaco (FS 15 per cent/GDP), the playground refuge for the rich and wealthy, situated on the French Riviera. Monaco's foreign clients are more than triple the number of Monaco's citizens, chiefly from France. Not only does Monaco share banking information only with France, but Monegasque authorities are able to access this information in accordance with France via treaty arrangements, favouring the latter, and thereby preventing authorities and regulators from accessing the legal and financial details of 3,950 offshore companies and 725 trusts under Corporate Service Provider (CSP) management (2002), revealed a TJN study.

When charting illicit flows – defined as money illegally generated, transacted or utilised through methods of tax avoidance and evasion – onshore and offshore ‘treasure islands’ have acted as conduits. According to analysis by Tax Justice Network assessing data produced by Merrill Lynch/CapGemini, Boston Consulting, McKinsey and the Bank for International Settlements, at least US$13 trillion in private wealth has been concealed, siphoned by tax evaders and avoiders to secrecy jurisdictions. If taxed at a moderate 7.5 per cent rate of return, offshore assets – increasing at 9 per cent per annum and constituting a significant portion of OECD ‘donor country’ GDP – would yield US$865 billion dollars annually.

But mandatory information exchange, previously scrapped from the IMF's Articles of Agreement, is marginalised as impractical. Ironically, the OECD's ‘on request’ bilateral tax arrangements have been publicly discredited by entities peddling supply-side corruption. ‘This exchange can only take place if the individual can be identified, the bank account can be identified and sufficient evidence to prove evasion is provided to the Swiss courts. There is no automatic exchange of information and 'fishing trips' are specifically excluded,’ revealed Switzerland's Louvre Group, with branches in London, Geneva, Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Hong Kong. The statement, available on their website for potential customers to peruse, renders the law a mockery.

The narrow geography of ‘corruption’ has been limited to behavioural ‘demand-side’ activities i.e.: Corruption on the part of state officials for public gain. This definition was launched by corruption watchdog Transparency International, and ratified by resource-seeking and financial multinationals, and developed governments – systemic providers of supply-side corruption such as the Louvre Group.

And because Africa's often ineffective tax and revenue administrations have been structured to serve as recipient vessels of Large Taxpaying Units (LTU), multinationals – Africa's primary ‘renters’ conducting 60 per cent of global trade, within rather than between corporations – are easily able to exploit vacuums. This includes using self-regulated ‘arms length transfer’ pricing principles, designed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as a mechanism motivating for market price. But there is no external body to hold them to account because corporate Country-by-Country reporting (CbC), which is a tool that helps reveal economic activities in resource-rich regions, is not mandatory.

Examples of transfer (mis)pricing that occurs within corporations between subsidiaries to decrease costs or increase profits, includes rocket launchers exported for US$52 each and plastic buckets imported for a nominal value of US$972 each. ‘Self-regulation by the IASB, funded in large part by the 'big four' accounting firms, are in the interests of its funders, not society,’ said accountant Richard Murphy, founder of CbC and head of Tax Research LLP.

In 2006, the IASB rejected CbC, a version of which already functions smoothly in the US, monitoring corporate activities such as taxes and other revenues remitted to the state, imported materials, labour, and the basis for determining profits, pricing goods and allowable costs, amongst other details. ‘A member stated, “This looks like it deals with transfer pricing, and we don't want to go there”’, revealed Murphy. High-level research by the TJN reveals that 99 per cent of the 97 largest quoted companies in France, the Netherlands and the UK use secrecy jurisdictions while a further 80 per cent of 476 companies surveyed in another study declared transfer pricing crucial to corporate strategy. Paradoxically, ‘first world’ secrecy jurisdictions feature at the top of TI's ‘clean lists,’ while African nations in particular, almost uniformly occupy the bottom ranks.

The paradox of ‘donor countries’ actively incentivising the flow of illicit flight was interrogated in depth by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity's director Raymond Baker who stated in testimony before the US House of Representatives (2009): ‘For every dollar Western governments have been handing out across the top of the table, crooked Western banks, businesses and middlemen of various descriptions have been taking back up to $10 dollars of illicit proceeds under the table.’

Illicit flows from the continent are a very serious drain on African economies. During the recently held World Economic Forum in Tanzania, the Tanzania Daily News (7 May 2010) reported: ‘The African continent, which many international investors describe as too risky to invest in, loses between US$200 billion and US$400 billion annually in capital flight by firms which make super profits through evading or cheating the taxman.’ Such siphoning occurs through corporate mispricing (60 per cent), political corruption (five per cent), and criminal in-fighting (30-35 per cent). As James Boyce and Leonce Ndikumana (African Development Bank), note: ‘Adding to the irony of sub-Saharan Africa's position as net creditor is the fact that a substantial fraction of the money that flowed out of the country as capital flight appears to have come to the subcontinent via external borrowing.’

According to the UN Commission of Experts on the Financial and Monetary System, the G20's policies via the OECD to curb ‘harmful tax practices’ was geared toward ‘discriminatory targeting of small international financial centres in developing countries while a blind eye is turned to lax rules in developed economies.’ They went on further to state that the chief sources of evasion are situated ‘in developed countries' on-shore banking systems,’ including the City of London and the US's Delaware.

In the case of Delaware, foreign clients ‘investing’ onshore in this area are deemed tax-exempt, save for annual ‘franchise’ taxes, as corporate income tax applies only to those unfortunate enough to conduct economic activity in Delaware. With an opacity score of 92 per cent and over 1,104,700 lawyers active in the state, Delaware peddles legal and financial secrecy vehicles such as banking secrecy policies and lack of disclosure related to trusts, beneficial owners of companies and company accounts as well as allowing company redomiciliation and protected cell companies.

Meanwhile, though the onshore City of London has an opacity score of 42 per cent (blocking company redomiciliation, protected cell companies and banking secrecy), according to an official from the Serious Fraud Office (as revealed to TJN Director John Christensen), these ‘tax havens are little more than booking centres. I've seen transactions where all the decisions are made in London, but booked in havens.’ These include one quarter of all secrecy jurisdictions globally, including Guernsey (opacity score 79 per cent; FS 55 per cent/GDP), Jersey (opacity score 87 per cent; FS 60 per cent/GDP), and the British Virgin Islands (opacity score 92 per cent; FS 45 per cent/GDP).

Examples of remote-controlled use administered from different jurisdictions are prevalent throughout onshore and offshore entities. One such institution is the Louvre Group, marketing Guernsey Protected Cell Companies (PCC), a cellular corporate structure that allows assets to be held within individual cells. The assets of any one particular cell are only available to the shareholders and creditors of that cell while creditors of another cell have no recourse against them. The ‘core’ company (established and managed by a Guernsey financial services provider such as Louvre) is able to create cells, thereby isolating wealthy individuals from risks, disclosure and taxation.

The use of ‘tax minimisation’ strategies via tax planners retained and trained by the ‘big four’ auditing and accounting firms – PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche Tohmatsu, KPMG and Ernst & Young – extends all the way back to the heyday of the British Empire, via the Duke of Westminster ruling decided at the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in 1936. The ruling, still the cornerstone of the Britain's unofficial ‘supply-side corruption’ empire, stipulates that ‘the ‘taxpayer has the right to order affairs as he (sic) sees fit to minimise his tax payable.’

With combined revenue of more than US$100 billion, these hyper-mobile economies exploit the weak political capital of ‘offshore’ treasure island economies, renting out secrecy spaces as befits foreign clients.

The ‘big four,’ of course, are present and active in Mauritius, Guernsey, Jersey and most other secrecy jurisdictions. Through vehicles such as KPMG's Tax Innovation Centre, the ‘tax avoidance’ industry has undermined Africa's fiscal independence, by draining the continent of revenue – 80-90 per cent of which remains permanently offshore. South Africa, which has the largest number of millionaires on the African continent, loses an estimated 9.2 per cent of GDP when adjusted for illicit flight.

Like Ghana, Botswana, Seychelles, Liberia and Djibouti, Mauritius – marketing itself through the slogan, ‘How Best Can We Serve You’ – serves as a crucial conduit for tax avoidance, rendering Africa subject to captured states lending to expanding informal sectors, aid dependence and enclave maldeveloped economies structured around unearned resource revenues.

Speaking in the UK parliament in November 2009, South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan noted that: ‘We have allowed the word avoidance to gain too much respectability. It is just a smarter form of evasion.’ Damn right.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Khadija Sharife is a journalist, visiting scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society (CCS) and contributor to the Tax Justice Network.
* This article was first published in The Thinker (Volume 16/2010) under a different title.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] The ‘Elf Affair’ was Europe's biggest corruption scandal since the Second World War. It was rooted in Gabon and to a lesser extent, the Democratic Republic of Congo's oil industries, where laundering profits through secretive offshore financing was made available to select segments of the French elite as well as Gabonese and Congolese officials.

Serving our life sentence in the shacks

Abahlali baseMjondolo

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66287

cc rabbleAs people all over South Africa ask why the government continues to ignore the demands of shack dwellers, not just for the right to the city but for their basic human needs to be met, Abahlali baseMjondolo reply: ‘Everybody knows that we are the people who do not count in this society…the truth that must be faced up to is that we have been sentenced to permanent exclusion from this society.’ But, write Abahlali, ‘we have recognised our own humanity and the power of our struggle to force the full recognition of our humanity. Therefore we remain determined to continue to refuse to know our place.’

People all over South Africa have been asking the leaders of Abahlali baseMjondolo as to why the government continues to ignore the demands of the shack dwellers. They have been asking why, after all the marches, statements, reports and meetings, the Kennedy Road settlement continues to get burnt down through the endless shack fires. They have been referring in particular to the recent Kennedy Road shack fire on Sunday 4 July 2010, that took four lives, leaving more than three thousand people displaced and homeless.

Without much more words to explain this continuous tragedy, we have replied that in fact the shack dwellers of South Africa are serving a life sentence. Everybody knows that we are the people who do not count in this society. But the truth that must be faced up to is that we have been sentenced to permanent exclusion from this society.

Over the years it has been made clear that the cities are not for us, that the good schools are not for us and that even the most basic human needs like toilets, electricity, safety from fire and safety from crime are not to be met for us. When we ask for these things, we are presented as being unreasonable, too demanding and even as a threat to society. If we were considered as people that did count, as an equal part of society, then it would be obvious that the real threat to our society is that we have to live in mud and fire – without toilets, without electricity, without enough taps and without dignity.

Waiting for ‘delivery’ will not liberate us from our life sentence. Sometimes 'delivery' does not come. When ‘delivery’ does come, it often makes things worse, by forcing us into government shacks that are worse than the shacks that we have built ourselves and which are in human dumping grounds far outside of the cities. 'Delivery’ can be a way of formalising our exclusion from society.

But we have not only been sentenced to permanent physical exclusion from society and its cities, schools, electricity, refuse removal and sewerage systems. Our life sentence has also removed us from the discussions that take place in society. Everyone knows about the repression that we have faced from the state and now, also, from the ruling party. Everyone knows about the years of arrests and beatings that we suffered at the hands of the police and then the attack on our movement in the Kennedy Road settlement.

We have always said that in the eyes of the state and the ruling party our real crime was that we organised and mobilised the poor outside of their control. We have thought for ourselves, discussed all the important issues for ourselves and taken decisions for ourselves on all the important issues that affect us. We have demanded that the state includes us in society and gives us what we need to have for a dignified and safe life. We have also done what we can to make our communities better places for human beings. We have run crèches, organised clean up campaigns, connected people to water and to electricity, tried to make our communities safe and worked very hard to unite people across all divisions. We have faced many challenges but we have always worked to ensure that in all of this work we treat one another with respect and dignity.

The self-organisation of the poor by the poor and for the poor has meant that all of those who were meant to do the thinking, the discussing and to take decisions on our behalf – for us but without us – no longer have a job. Our decision to build our own future may therefore not be an easy one to accept for those who can no longer continue to take decisions and to speak for us but without us. Some of the people who have refused to accept our demand that those who say that they are for the poor should struggle with and not on behalf of the poor are in the state. Some are in the party. Some are in that part of the left, often in the universities and NGOs, that sees itself as a more progressive elite than those in the party and the state and which aims to take their place in the name of our suffering and struggles.

We call this left a regressive left. For us any leftism outside of the state that, just like the ruling party, wants followers and not comrades and which is determined to ruin any politics that it cannot rule is deeply regressive. We have always and will always resist its attempts to buy our loyalty just as we have always and will always resist all attempts by the state and the ruling party to buy our loyalty. We will also resist all attempts to intimidate us into giving up our autonomy. We will always defend our comrades when they are attacked. Our movement will always be owned by its members. We negotiate on many issues. Where we have to make compromises to go forward we sometimes do so. But on this issue there will never be any negotiation.

We have done a lot for ourselves and by ourselves. But for a long time what we could not succeed in doing for ourselves was to secure good land and decent housing in our cities. We stopped the evictions and we were no longer going backwards but it was a real struggle to go forwards. But we kept pushing and made some small advances here and there. This really offended the authorities in the party. This became very clear and evident when the provincial government of KwaZulu-Natal passed the notorious Slums Act, meaning that the shack dwellers would never again have any place in our cities. Our successful challenge to the Slums Act in the Highest Court in the land was a great setback for the government’s plan to formalise our life sentence by eradicating our settlements and putting us in the human dumping grounds. The deal that we negotiated with the eThekwini Municipality to upgrade two settlements and to provide basic services to fourteen settlements was another setback to the eradication agenda of the politicians. The recent announcement by the eThekwini Municipality that they will accede to our demand to provide services – including, for the first time since 2001, electricity – to settlements across the city is another victory of our struggle and another major setback to the eradication agenda. We are slowly but surely defeating the eradication agenda.

As South Africa was hosting the World Cup Abahlali warned that it will not benefit the poorest of the poor in our land. We warned that it would make the poor, poorer and more vulnerable. Leading up to the World Cup there were more evictions and pending court cases in different parts of the country. Poor street traders had their belongings confiscated as they had no permits to sell in restricted zones and the taxi industry suffered the impoundment of their taxis. Stopping the rush to celebrate the World Cup by raising all these questions and condemning these attacks on the poor as immoral and illegitimate has been a slap on the authorities’ faces. Although the fact is that all these huge soccer stadiums, hotels and other projects were built by the poorest of the poor they remained outside their benefit. The South African government has overspent its budget in building a ‘world class country’ and could not match and balance such expenditure with social needs such housing and the provision of the most basic services. The amount that has been spent for the World Cup could have built at least one million homes for the poor. Although we acknowledge the efforts that have been put into this event we still feel that such effort could have been used to bring basic services and infrastructure to the poor. If that had been the case then the shack dwellers would not have been affected by these ongoing fires every time.

The truth about the attack on our movement has always been firm and not changing at any stage. We cannot make public comment on matters that are sub judice but our demand for an independent commission of inquiry that will bring the whole story into the light remains unchanged. The Kennedy 5, part of those who are already serving their life sentence in and out of the jails, have now been released from Westville prison. They had already been serving ten months of their punishment without any evidence of guilt being brought to the court and without the court saying anything about their illegal detention. The South African Constitution says there shall be no detention without trial and that a person cannot be detained for more than 24 hours without a proper bail hearing. The fact that, up until the release of the Kennedy 5, this trial was being conducted as a political trial outside of the rule of law even though it was taking place in a court of law tells us something very important about the position of the poor in post apartheid South Africa. Those who have handed a life sentence down to us always want to exclude us from fair and equal access to the courts and the rule of law. When they fail to achieve this through the commodification of the legal system they are willing to actively undermine the system from above.

The movement insists that the people shall govern; this is what the famous Freedom Charter says. Abahlali holds onto that. The strength and the autonomy of the movement compels us all to strive for a just world, a world that is free, a world that is fair and a world that looks after all its creations. We remain convinced that the land and the wealth of this world must be shared fairly and equally. We remain convinced that every person in this world has the same right to contribute to all discussions and decision making about their own future. For us all to succeed we have to be humble but firm in what we believe is right. We have to resist all our jailers, be they in the state, the party or the regressive left, and to take our place as equals in all the discussions.

We also know that the South African government still wants to look good in the eyes of the international communities and that they fear disgrace and shame. They want to show the world Soccer City but hide eTwatwa, Blikkiesdorp, Westville Prison, the red ants and the shack fires all around the country. We wish to thank all the international activists and organisations who have raised their concern against the repression that we have faced, including those that have organised protests against the South African diplomats in their respective countries.

We hope South Africa will become one of the world’s caring countries. We hope that one day our society will be an inspiration rather than a shock to you. As Abahlali we have committed ourselves to achieving this goal. But right now we are serving a life sentence and fighting all those who are trying to keep us imprisoned in our poverty, all those who demand that we know our place – our place in the cities and our place in the discussions. We have recognised our own humanity and the power of our struggle to force the full recognition of our humanity. Therefore we remain determined to continue to refuse to know our place.

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* Compiled by Zodwa Nsibande and S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA.
* Abahlali baseMjondolo, together with with Landless People's Movement (Gauteng), the Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal) and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, is part of the Poor People's Alliance, a national network of democratic membership based poor people's movements.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Abahlali baseMjondolo: Full and independent enquiry vital

Rubin Phillip

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66278

cc InkaniBacked by strong support both domestically and from abroad, the South African shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo continues to push for a full and independent enquiry into the violence suffered by the Kennedy Road settlement in September 2009, writes Bishop Rubin Phillip.

Over the past months we have continued to receive strong support for our intention to convene an independent commission of enquiry into the awful violence that was visited on the shack settlement of Kennedy Road in September 2009. Only such an enquiry will really help us all to sift truth from lies and establish a full picture of the events and their ongoing aftermath, as well as the full context and implications of what has happened. From community organisations and senior church leadership in this country, to community-based organisations in London and justice groups in congregations in Scotland, to senior international figures in the churches and the human rights scene, we have been moved and encouraged by their commitment to and active interest in finding the truth. These developments, together with the extraordinary support and wise counsel of many we are working with on the matter, keep us resolute and confident, confident not only that the commission process will happen but that when it does, it will deliver an outcome of unquestionable integrity. The necessary groundwork to facilitate the commission's work is under way.

Those of us who have followed the events closely and with a genuine concern for truth and justice know of course that there is a related court process unfolding. We have repeatedly and publicly expressed our deep alarm at the narrow and selective focus of that case and the blatant party political overtones, as well as the flagrant breaches of fair process in its conduct thus far. Nonetheless we have been careful not to infringe either the legal rights of the accused in the matter nor the necessary protections that apply to a matter that is sub judice. For the same reason, it is clear that no commission can begin hearing and evaluating evidence until that case finally comes to a conclusion.

Regrettably in this interregnum some, whose objective is to undermine and attack the shackdwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, show no respect for these niceties and have indeed abused them to advance their own destructive agenda. Heinrich Bohmke's attack on our good friend and world-renowned historian Jeff Guy in an article carried by the Sunday Tribune (18 July 2010) is one recent example. That newspaper article draws on a longer piece that Bohmke has written – and had widely circulated – where I too come under sustained and dishonest attack. We have had meetings with counsel as well as the leadership of Abahlali baseMjondolo about the matter. We have considered the attacks from Bohmke and rejected them. It would be incorrect to engage in contesting the specifics. Firstly, key elements of the matter are sub judice. Secondly, Bohmke's intention has nothing to do with genuinely seeking truth and justice and we find no common ground with him in these tasks. Finally, the findings of a full and independent enquiry will provide us all with a sound basis of knowledge and truth.

We would like to conclude by reminding everyone that it was Abahlali baseMjondolo that first called for the full and independent commission of enquiry into these attacks. They said such an enquiry should: ‘in the interests of justice and truth, carefully and fairly investigate the actions of everyone, including the local and provincial ANC [African National Congress], the police, the intelligence services, the prosecutors, the courts and our movement, its various sub-committees and our supporters’.

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

Leave new oil in the soil in Africa

Oilwatch Africa

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66289

cc fsgmThroughout the continent, ‘oil has correlated with imperial subjugation, local authoritarianism and flagrant human rights abuses’, writes Oilwatch Africa. Citing examples of the devastating consequences a growing global hunger for energy has had for communities and ecosytems in oil-bearing regions, the advocacy group calls for the world to start weaning itself from its ‘addiction to oil’ by ‘investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.’

Throughout Africa, oil has correlated with imperial subjugation, local authoritarianism and flagrant human rights abuses. It is now no longer in doubt that there are absolutely no guarantees that extractive activities are safe. One accident could jeopardise an entire ecosystem. It has been common knowledge in many oil-bearing communities in Africa that the discovery of oil in a local community is akin to a declaration of full-fledged war on such a community.

In the last few years, high energy demand has led to an upsurge in exploration and drilling of new oil wells both onshore and offshore in places where it would have been highly unprofitable to prospect for oil a few years ago. Nothing is sacred in this breathless search for new oil; pristine forests, sacred groves, ecologically fragile environments and even internationally recognised conservation sites are not spared the oily embrace. For many African communities their already desperate situation is compounded by the depleting oil reserves in easily accessible areas in the global north, the unending conflicts in the Middle East, the ongoing re-nationalisation of oil assets in South and Meso America, the reawakening of Russia, the huge appetite of China and the Asian Tigers and India for oil.

The desire to capture more oil reserves is driving exploration and development of oil and gas fields in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, the Comoros, Seychelles and the coast of Durban in South Africa.

The discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities often overwhelms the ruling elites in many countries in Africa and in their rush to begin production and access the windfall oil revenue, scant regard is paid to the social and environmental costs of oil extraction. Over the last half a century of oil exploration and development in Africa, aside from the elites, the vast majority of people have been left worse off by the negative impact of oil.

The Nigerian marine and coastal environment is very rich in biodiversity. The Niger Delta is the third largest wetland in the world and it contains 7,000 kilometres of Africa’s 9,000 kilometres of mangrove swamps. The Niger Delta is considered one of the ten most important wetlands in the world. Scientists in Nigeria posit that 60 per cent of the fish and seafoods caught in West Africa and around the Gulf of Guinea have their breeding areas in the mangroves of the Delta.[1]

The Niger Delta has been systematically and repeatedly destroyed, by years of oilspills, discharge of untreated toxic waste water into the sea, gas flaring and the reckless disposal of radioactive materials in the environment. This veritable breeding ground for the fishes and other sea foods that populate some of Africa’s oceans supports over 30 million people in the Niger Delta who depend on the environment for their livelihood, and millions more in West Africa. In a 2007 report compiled by the Nigerian Conservation foundation, WWF UK, representatives of government agencies in Nigeria, researchers and civil society groups such as Environmental Rights Action Nigeria, it was disclosed that as at 2006, over 1.5 million tons of crude oil had spilled into the Niger Delta environment. This is equivalent in volume to one Exxon Valdez spill a year for 50 years. Furthermore statistics from the department of petroleum resources in Nigeria shows that within a 30-year span (1970-2000) there had been over 7,000 recorded oil spills in the Niger Delta.[2]

The National oil spill detection and response agency (NOSDRA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have identified over 2,000 spill sites that need to be remediated. Some of these spills happened over 40 years ago. The Ebubu spill that occurred in 1970, has not been cleaned up and Shell, the company implicated in the disaster, is vigorously appealing a judgement of a federal high court which ordered it to pay US$40 million compensation as at 2001.[3]

As oil reserves dry up and access to new oil becomes difficult owing to the combination of factors already listed above, oil companies are moving to pristine, ecologically fragile and potential conflict areas to explore for oil. In the Gulf of Mexico, BP struck oil at a depth of seven kilometres from the surface of the water. It was hailed as yet another technological feat that will continue to keep oil flowing, until a little over a month ago when the oil platform exploded killing 11 people. This spill is attracting international attention and already the US president, under fire for not appearing tough enough on regulations, has announced the commencement of criminal and civil investigations and has promised to bring everyone involved in the making of this disaster to justice. This is despite the fact that over 20,000 people and 1,300 vessels have been mobilised to join the mitigation and cleanup effort.[4]

Exploration is at present ongoing in such ecologically fragile places like the Rift Valley and Lake Albert in Uganda, which along with Lake Victoria, is the source of the Nile. A spill around Lake Albert would affect all the countries that share the Nile up to Egypt. The dramatically increased revenues that Uganda is expected to rake in from these oil wells would not be sufficient to address a spill on the Nile caused by either equipment failure or rebel attacks given the tensions in the great lakes regions.

Greg Campbell, a freelance reporter, was in Nigeria in 2001; the following quotes from his article in ‘These Times’ magazine were his own description of the oil spill cleanup process he witnessed in Nigeria:

‘Shell the biggest operator in Nigeria…claims to adhere to the highest standards of practice in cleaning oil spills, but even a cursory visit to the Delta shows that those standards are far lower than in other countries… On the side of the highway leading to the town of Biseni, two separate 2 year old oil spills turn the jungle black… Chief Diekivie Ikiogha, the head of Bayelsa state Bureau of pollution and Environment says …we have a lot of spills; at this spot alone, we have had three spills. Even though Ikiogha is the government bureaucrat in charge of penalising Shell for the spill and signing off on the cleanup, he is also the contractor hired by Shell to do the cleanup… His cleanup operation consists of four shirtless men scooping oil from the surface of the polluted river with Frisbees… he claims that most of the oil had earlier been removed with absorbent foam and blankets.’[5]

The creative impulse of people in many oil rich countries in Africa has been replaced by a rent-seeking mentality; government and governance has become a zero sum game with power blocks and cliques employing foul and vile means to capture power and even viler means to retain their hold on power. Tens of thousands of lives continue to be lost to wars that have their origin steeped in the struggle to retain control over revenue from extractive activities. Corruption has been elevated to an art form and this has percolated down to ordinary people, with many exhibiting a gatekeeper mentality impeding the progress of very simple processes and procedures or making them nigh impossible to achieve until they have been bribed.

Many of these issues led to the mass mobilisation of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta in the early 1990s, calling for a cessation of oil activities on their land because it had made life intolerable. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the arrow head of that movement building process in Ogoni, was judicially murdered by the Nigerian state to silence an idea whose time had come. 20 years on, Ogoni people are as determined as they were in the 90s to keep their land free from the greedy and destructive clutches of oil business. The idea of leaving oil in the ground within the Yasuni forest was taken up in far away Ecuador by no less than the government of the country itself and is receiving widespread acceptance.

Oilwatch has been at the forefront of spreading this campaign ‘to leave new oil in the soil’. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico apart from reiterating the fact that with oil there are no guarantees, also speaks to the fact that we must with deliberate speed begin the difficult process of weaning ourselves from our addiction to oil. The world’s ecosystem is one and we have merely scratched the surface in understanding the intricate interconnectedness of nature at different levels. It is therefore short sighted to continue the reckless expansion of drilling around the world because in the long run the revenue we may earn today from oil extraction would not be sufficient to adequately return our environment to what it was before extraction when incidents like these occur.

The cleanup operation in the Gulf of Mexico according to BP has so far cost them US$1 billion and this may increase to US$5 billion ultimately. Analysts are expecting litigation cost to BP of US$20-50 billion.[6] But tragically there is no guarantee that even after expending this sum and more that the damage to the Gulf’s ecosystem can be reversed.

Insisting on first setting out clear alternative energy templates before extricating ourselves from oil dependency would be a tragic waste of time. Although the need for certainty about the financial, legal, scientific and political architecture required to drive the process of librating ourselves from this oily embrace is critical, it is pertinent to remember that the world has evolved to this point as a matter of necessity. This is a challenge that ought to set our creative and innovative juices flowing. The human race has surmounted greater obstacles than this and would continue to break new grounds in the future.

We must begin by acknowledging that the sensible use of our ecosystem has the capacity in the long-term to provide much more benefits and revenue than oil can ever provide. We must individually and consciously take up the responsibility of drastically reducing our use of oil and its by-products. We must also set up international tribunals that would try entities and individuals for their role in destroying the ecosystem. But more importantly we must begin to have the consciousness and think along the lines of building capacities within our communities to ensure as much as possible that the role of oil our energy matrix becomes inconsequential by investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects. Our salvation in the final analysis lies in igniting powerful political movements through community-to-community interaction, CSO to CSO interaction, linkages with faith based groups, networking with CBOs and other civil society groups in the global South and global north to take actions that would bring about the change we desire.

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* This article first appeared on Oilwatch Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] ‘Niger Delta named the most polluted ecosystem’ (accessed June 1, 2010)
www.ncfnigeria.org/inthenews/news_feeds.php?article=21
[2] Ibid
[3] ‘The killing fields: oil ravages the Niger Delta’ (accessed June 1, 2010)
www.inthesetimes.com/issues/25/15/campbell2515.html [4] ‘Attempts to Stop the Oil leak’ www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Attempts_to_stop_the_oil_leak
[5] ‘The killing fields: oil ravages the Niger Delta’ Op. Cit
[6] ‘BP shares recoup early losses despite U.S probe news’ (accessed June 3, 2010) www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10212487.stm

Bishop Tutu: Using moral methods for moral ends

Sokari Ekine

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66297

cc Lewisham HeritageBishop Desmond Tutu, a book about four African women taken to Belgium to become commercial sex workers, a chance encounter with a ‘white Yoruba aunty’ on a train in London and Kenya’s revolt against tacky ‘traditional’ dance displays for tourists are among the topics talked about in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Sokari Ekine.

Tinyiko Sam Maluleke writes about the continent’s 2nd favourite elder, Bishop Desmond Tutu (Mandela being the first): Defender of human rights, storyteller, teacher, preacher, orator, debater – with a legendary sense of humour:

‘…inspired by his faith Tutu has always emphasized the need for the liberation struggle to be waged on moral principles, using moral methods for equally moral ends. For this reason he navigated the seemingly contradictory positions of supporting the liberation movements while condemning the use of violence in pursuit of liberation. Believing politics to be too important to be left to politicians, he has nevertheless eschewed becoming a politician himself.’

African Loft publishes an interview with Nigerian writer, Chika Unigwe. I had the pleasure in meeting Chikwa last year in London when she discussed and read from her most recent book, ‘Black Sister Street’. I only got as far as the first few pages as I gave my copy away to a friend, but it is on the top of my ‘to read’ list:

‘“Black Sisters’ Street” tells the story of four African women: Sisi, Efe, Ama and Joyce, who were taken to Belgium to work as commercial sex workers It talks about the transformation of these women in very realistic terms and paints an honest portrayal of these women who are considered as almost invisible in society.’

Canary Bird by Nigerian political activist, Kayode Ogunsami, is an excellent blog and I just wish he would update it more often. Here he writes about ‘A day with my white Yoruba aunty’ who he met on the train to Heathrow. The conversation started with the dreaded and tiresome ‘where are you originally from?’ Sigh!

‘I am originally from Yoruba Land in Africa until the British merged my ancestors with our African neighbours and made me Nigerian.’ To his surprise the white lady responded, ‘Oh you are Yoruba?’

‘My new “friend”, almost screaming, facing me, she stretched her hands forward, offering a hand shake. “I am Yoruba too, you are my brother. My name is Wendy, Wendy Omotayo.” That was when she switched from English to Yoruba - not my kind of Yoruba, but what we refer to as the “Ijinle” Yoruba.’

The Moor Next Door posts a piece on ‘Post-coup politics’ in Africa:

‘Economic and social stability and smooth, generally legitimate and legal transfers of power are seen as deeply linked. The legality and the legitimacy of a regime are considered more important in powerful capitals than in the past. Coups, being illegal and disruptive, do not promote political stability or investor or donor confidence. The rule of law suffers from illegal transfers of power, which has implications for economic life because coups can cause elite paranoia and reallocations of state and private resources.’

Thinking about ‘post-coup’ politics, how about ‘post-dance-for-foreigners’ politics?

Mental Acrobatics comments on what is becoming increasingly tiresome habit of ‘a bunch of scantily clad dancers doing a [Zulu] dance’. Mental is writing about the recent World Cup in South Africa but this tradition (I suspect it began in colonial times) is replicated across the continent. Fortunately a backlash is happening in Kenya which I hope will spread like wildfire across the continent:

‘In Kenya there is a growing cultural revolt against having “jumping Maasai in red shukas” as the only advertised symbol of Kenya culture. There has to be more to show than this, we cry. In a similar way how can these dancers been selected as the most prominent ambassadors of South Africa culture? You never get a second chance to make a first impression the saying goes. Are these dancers the first impression South Africa wants to give about its culture?’

Is it possible to develop technology applications in Africa which respond to the needs of Civil Society? Yes.

Mashale writes about ‘Apps 4 Africa’, a contest that challenges software developers to respond to specific needs described by people in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda:

‘Sponsored by Appfrica Labs of Kampala, the Innovation Hub (iHub) of Nairobi, the Social Development Network (SODNET) of Nairobi, and the U.S. State Department, the contest was launched July 1 at iHub, an innovation hub and community workspace for local technologists. The contest runs through August 31.’

Black Looks publishes a radio interview she did with African Perspectives out of Canada in which she discusses the dangers of a ‘single story’ of ‘African’ (how do we get away from conflating the whole continent?) sexualities, and gay imperialism and LGBTI rights in Africa.

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

Do Ethiopians really need human rights?

Steel vices, clenched fists and closing walls (Part II)

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66294

cc turkairoAlthough US government has pledged to defend human rights, it hasn’t followed up on this promise in Ethiopia, argues Alemayehu G. Mariam. Despite the detention and torture of hundreds of political prisoners by the Ethiopian government, the United States continues to provide aid to the country, allowing the country’s current dictatorship to maintain its power and deprive citizens of their human rights, Mariam writes. Arguments that 'forceful action' could create ‘instability’ in the country are no justification for the US’s failure to defend the human rights of ordinary Ethiopians, Mariam adds.

IF THE SILENCED MAJORITY COULD TALK…

If the silenced majority inside of what has become Prison Nation Ethiopia (PNE) could talk, what would they tell President Obama and Secretary Clinton about US human rights policy? Would they pat them on the back and say, ‘Good job! Thank you for helping us live in dignity with our rights protected’? Or would they angrily wag an accusatory finger and charge, ‘You speak with forked tongue. You wax eloquent on your lofty principles to us in the morning while you consort with thugs and murderers in the afternoon.’

What would the thousands of political prisoners rotting within the closed walls of dictator Meles Zenawi's prisons say of America's big human rights talk? ‘Practice what you preach, Mr. President!’ What would Birtukan Midekssa, Ethiopia's No. 1 political prisoner, first woman political party leader in Ethiopian history and the undisputed heroine of 80 million Ethiopians say to President Obama were she allowed to speak to him? ‘Mr. President, why do you turn a deaf ear when I have been silenced in solitary confinement?’ What would the innocent victims gripped in the jaws of Zenawi's steel vices say to Secretary Clinton in their faint whimpers from the torture chambers? I do not know. What I know for sure is that the silenced majority of Ethiopians does speak loud in bootless cries while gasping for air under the jackboots of a barbaric dictatorship. President Obama, can you hear their deafening silence?

THE BELLY V. THE BALLOT

The defenders of the dictatorship in Ethiopia argue that the masses of ordinary Ethiopians are interested in the politics of the belly and not the politics of the ballot. They do not care about human rights or democracy because they are concerned about finding their daily bread. The masses of poor, illiterate, hungry and sick Ethiopians in their view are too dumb and too damn needy to appreciate ‘political democracy.’ ‘Economic democracy before political democracy,’ they proclaim with certainty. They condemn free speech, free press, free elections, and indeed freedom itself as alien Western ideologies that are meaningless to the masses of poor and hungry Ethiopians. Ethiopia's dictators are quick to stand on their hind legs and condemn the West for violating their sovereignty because the West insists on human rights observances in Ethiopia. Of course, these rights are not some bizarre imported ideas but core element of the organic law of Ethiopia which incorporates by reference all of the major international human rights conventions. All African dictators have been justifying their dictatorships for well over one-half century by claiming that there is democracy before democracy in Africa.[2]

I raise the belly v. ballot argument to contextualise American human rights policy in Ethiopia. The evidence suggests that the attitudes and perceptions of American (and other Western) policy makers may be latently contaminated by the view that human rights are not of concern or are not important to the tired, poor and huddled Ethiopian masses. I have heard it said artfully in moments of candour by those who have access to US decision-makers, by some decision-makers themselves and even by certain of my learned friends that the majority of ordinary Ethiopians neither know of nor understand their human rights. Even if they are aware of their rights, they do not have a clue as to how to defend them. As a result, I am told, the interests of the ordinary Ethiopian citizens do not figure in the least in US human rights policy calculations. Some have even pointed out to me (much to my disappointment, embarrassment and chagrin) that the lack of informed and vigorous human rights debate and sustained and organised human rights advocacy among Ethiopian elites within and without Ethiopia is clear and convincing evidence that human rights are not important to Ethiopians. I am advised to accept the fact that US human rights rhetoric is primarily intended for international media consumption and to give moral support to the few human rights-minded Ethiopian elites while avoiding the scathing criticisms of the international human rights community for US inaction and hypocrisy. ‘That is realpolitik for you,’ said one of my erudite colleagues jokingly. ‘The US would rather blather about human rights violations to the African masses in the morning only to sit down for a seven-course meal with Africa's murderers and butchers in the afternoon.’

INTRODUCING THE UNSUNG HEROES OF ETHIOPIAN HUMAN RIGHTS TO US POLICY MAKERS

I strongly disagree with those who sideline ordinary Ethiopians as too poor and hungry to be concerned about their human rights or good governance. I could not disagree more with the cynics who claim that ordinary Ethiopians do not know or care about their human rights as long as their bellies are full. In fact the contrary can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. When the 2005 elections were stolen by Zenawi in broad daylight and opposition leaders were hunted down, arrested and jailed, it was not the elites, the privileged and the degreed that came out to defend democracy and human rights. The people who stood up for democracy, freedom and human rights when it really counted were the poor, the urban labourers, the students, the unemployed, the slum dwellers, the retired and plain ordinary folks. The true unsung heroes of Ethiopian human rights are Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Debela Guta, age 15; Habtamu Tola, age 16; Binyam Degefa, age 18; Behailu Tesfaye, age 20; Kasim Ali Rashid, age 21; Teodros Giday Hailu, age 23; Adissu Belachew, age 25; Milion Kebede Robi, age 32; Desta Umma Birru, age 37; Tiruwork G. Tsadik, age 41; Admasu Abebe, age 45. Elfnesh Tekle, age 45; Abebeth Huletu, age 50; Etenesh Yimam, age 50; Regassa Feyessa, age 55. Teshome Addis Kidane, age 65; Victim No. 21762, age 75 and Victim No.21760, male, age unknown and hundreds more. These were the real defenders of human rights in Ethiopia. Their story is memorialised for history in the testimony of Yared Hailemariam,[3] an extraordinary human rights defender and investigator for the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO). Hailemariam spoke before the European Parliament Committees on Development and Foreign Affairs, and Subcommittee on Human Rights in May 2006. The report of the official Inquiry Commission investigated the violence in the post-2005 election period.

If American policy makers are giving lip service to human rights in Ethiopia to please the few elites or immunise themselves against criticism from the international human rights community, their concern is truly misplaced. Human rights in Ethiopia is not about the elites yapping about human rights, nor is it about fine intellectual discussions, philosophical debates, speeches, annual reports or legal analyses of the nature and importance of human rights. It is much, much simpler than that: It is about helping to bring to justice the killers and those who authorised the killings of Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Debela Guta, age 15; Habtamu Tola, age 16 and all the rest. It is not about a metaphorical ‘closing walls’; it is about getting the thousands of innocent political prisoners languishing behind the prison walls released. It is not about an imaginary clenched fist but the real iron fist of a dictatorship that crushes citizens mercilessly every day. It is not about metaphorical steel vices, but about those who cling to power like blood-sucking leeches on a milk cow.

American policy makers should not be dismissive of ordinary Ethiopians. They should not misinterpret their silence for consent to be brutalised by dictatorship. Ordinary Ethiopians may not know much about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the numerous protocols, resolutions and declarations on human rights. They may not even know of Article 13 of their Constitution, which incorporates all of the major international human rights conventions as part of their rights. But there should be no doubt that all of them know that as human beings, no person has the moral or legal right to take their lives just because he wants to, jail them and throw away the key because he feels like it or rule them for decades against their will by training a gun to their heads. That is all the human rights knowledge they need to know to deserve the respect and support of the American government.

STABILITY V. HUMAN RIGHTS

It has been argued and anonymously reported in the media that ‘Western diplomats’ in Addis Ababa believe that forceful US action on human rights could create ‘instability’ in the country. To talk about stability in a dictatorship is like talking about the stability of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl just before it suddenly exploded. But the whole US ‘stability’ subterfuge to do nothing, absolutely nothing, about gross human rights violations in Ethiopia is eerily reminiscent of a shameful period in American history. The principal argument against the abolition of slavery in the US, the ultimate denial of human rights, was ‘stability.’ Defenders of slavery strenuously argued that if slavery ended, the American South would simply disintegrate and collapse because the slave labour-based economy would be unable to sustain itself. They predicted that there would be widespread unemployment and chaos leading to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. To ensure the ‘stability’ of the South, even the United States Supreme Court joined in with its most infamous decision and held that the US Constitution protected slave-holders' rights to their property. But history proved that keeping the institution of slavery became the very undoing of the American union when the civil war was fought. America came apart at the seams because slavery that denied fundamental human rights to African slaves was retained, not because it was abolished. American policy makers should see the historical parallels. The undoing and unravelling of Ethiopia will be the result of sustained and gross violations of human rights by the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi, not because of respect for and observance of human rights. Perhaps we can crystallise the issue for American policymakers in the language of the American Declaration of Independence: It is necessary for Ethiopia to go through a civil war to ensure that every Ethiopian has the ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it...’?

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CHALLENGE TO ETHIOPIA AND AFRICA

President Obama now faces a great challenge in Africa, and particularly in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. His African human rights rhetoric is being tested by the cunning dictators on the continent who are scheming to counter his every move. They are prepared to test his mettle to find out how far they can push him before he pushes back. So far, Zenawi has succeeded in cowering the US into inaction and paralysis.

President Obama will soon have to make some tough decisions in his choices in the Horn of Africa. He can choose to let progress on human rights and democracy die on the vine by handing over American tax dollars to sustain bloodthirsty regimes to oppress their citizens, or use the same tax dollars to pressure for change. President Obama is said to be ‘a pragmatist’ concerned about ‘problem-solving.’ He has got a hell of a problem in Ethiopia and must make some tough choices. His major choice will not be between ‘stability’ and human rights, nor will it be a choice between the forces of radicalism and terrorism and democracy in the Horn as the dictators want him to believe. The one and only choice he has is how to help Ethiopia become permanently stable by ensuring the protection of the human rights of its citizens. There will be neither peace nor stability in Ethiopia until the human rights of every citizen are protected.

Zenawi complains that the US and the West in general interfere in Ethiopian affairs too much by insisting on human rights observances and demanding democratisation. But by Zenawi's measure, the US has been ‘interfering’ in Ethiopia for nearly two decades, handing out to him tens of billions of dollars in aid. But for US aid and loans by multilateral institutions under US control, his dictatorship could not last even a single day. If the US is serious about progress on human rights, it will have to kink the aid hose line just a bit. It is guaranteed that someone will be shrieking at the receiving end, ‘Uncle! Please Uncle Sam!’

Giving lip service to human rights in Ethiopia without action is tantamount to demoralisation of the brave and dedicated Ethiopians who struggle everyday against dictatorship and tyranny, trivialisation and crippling of efforts to build a strong human rights movement and disempowerment and discouragement of ordinary Ethiopians aspiring to a democratic future. It has been said that, ‘Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.’ The most critical need in Ethiopia today is neither food nor water (though they are very much needed), but HOPE. The US has a moral obligation to keep hope alive in Ethiopia by conditioning its aid on significant human rights improvements. Stated simply, the US must practice what it preaches!

FREE BIRTUKAN MIDEKSSA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA.

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* Authors note: This is the second instalment in a series of commentaries I intend to offer on US foreign policy (or lack thereof as some would argue) in Ethiopia. In this piece, I argue that the price of US lip service to human rights in Ethiopia without action is demoralisation of the brave and dedicated Ethiopians who struggle everyday against dictatorship and tyranny, trivialisation and crippling of efforts to build a strong human rights movement and disempowerment and discouragement of ordinary Ethiopians aspiring to a democratic future.
* See also the list of names of massacred victims released by the official Inquiry Commission investigating the post-2005 election.
* This story originally appeared in [url= The]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/steel-vises-clenched-fist_b_658808.html]The Huffington Post[/url]
* Alemayehu G. Mariam is 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/61799
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/the-democracy-before-demo_b_434992.html
[3] http://ethiomedia.com/carepress/yared_testimony.pdf ([Warning: The graphic content in Yared Hailemariam's testimony cited this link may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Sexuality in Africa

Sokari Ekine and Muna Ali

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66274

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* This radio programme is available from CHRY.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Summit arrivals; Kagame prepares for election

Gado

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66279

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

Pan-African Women’s Day

Reflections on State Commitments to Women’s Issues

Brenda Kombo

SOAWR

2010-07-31

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/66374

During a debate on 'Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development' held during the 15th Ordinary Session of the Summit of the African Union (AU) recently concluded in Kampala, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President Armando Emilio Guebuza of Mozambique challenged the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Mrs. Thora Obaid’s claim that women’s issues are not a priority for African leaders. Our commemoration of Pan-African Women’s Day today provides an important occasion to reflect on the status of women in Africa and of governmental commitments to its amelioration. Are women a priority?

About 70 days from now, on October 10, the African Union, in collaboration with the Government of Kenya and civil society organizations, will launch the AU African Women’s Decade 2010-2020 here in Nairobi. This decade begins 25 years after the United Nation’s Third World Conference of Women (Nairobi), six years after African Heads of State adopted the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, and on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol). The decade is meant to provide citizens and states with the opportunity to reflect on progress made in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment and for states to take action ensuring their commitments to African women are realized during the next ten years. As we celebrate the Pan-African Women’s Day, 31 July 2010, African women expect no less than genuine action!

Critical to gender equality is women’s realization of the rights enshrined in the Maputo Protocol, an instrument which guarantees women’s social, political, and reproductive rights. During the AU Summit, Uganda became the 28th country to ratify the Protocol and the third East African Community Member to ratify, after Rwanda and Tanzania. While we congratulate Uganda and the other countries that have ratified, Kenya must serve as an example as it prepares to host the continental launch of the AU African Women’s Decade. At the same time, African states must go beyond discussion and ratification and fully deliver on their commitments to gender equality. That is what the African Women’s Decade is all about!

* Brenda Kombo is Senior Program Officer at Equality Now Nairobi Office and is in charge of coordinating the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition campaign on the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. SOAWR has 36 member organizations from across the continent.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Basil Davidson: A revolutionary spirit

Horace Campbell

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/66285

Basil Davidson joined the ancestors on 9 July 2010 at the age of 95. I want to add my voice to those who salute his passion for peace, justice and a world free of racism.

I met Basil Davidson in 1989 when he was a visiting Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston. He had been invited to be a visiting scholar by John Hunwick, then the director of the Program of African Studies. I was at the same time a visiting scholar at the Program of African Studies. I had completed my article on the ‘Military Defeat of the South Africans in Angola’. I was aware from my research work on Angola that Davidson was particularly close to the history of the struggles of the Angolan peoples, and had read of his work on the liberated areas when Angola was still occupied. He had spent years working closely with the principal liberation force, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and had written a sympathetic book, ‘In The Eye of the Storm: Angola's People’, after spending months in the liberated zones of Eastern Angola. This book carried the image of the Angolan woman armed with a weapon and carrying a child on her back. It was an image that was to send a concrete message about the centrality of women in the liberation struggles of Africa.

At that time the fascists who were in control of Portugal colonised Angola with the assistance of the United States and apartheid South Africa. The counter-insurgency operatives of the Portuguese secret police were bent on the destruction of the MPLA as a force for liberation in Africa. Basil Davidson made sterling contributions to the liberation of Africa; he worked closely with Amilcar Cabral and wrote an important book, ‘The liberation of Guiné: Aspects of an African Revolution’.

Davidson had been working as a serious historian of African history and revolution for three decades before I met him. In his life he had written more than 30 books on Africa and had presented a wonderful eight-part television series, ‘Africa: A Voyage of Discovery’. I had used this series in teaching and it was a joy to be actually grounding with Basil Davidson as he recalled his detailed knowledge of the countryside of Angola. We spent hours discussing the implications of the changed military and political situation for Southern Africa.

At that time the corporate media was still trumpeting the misinformation that the negotiations for the independence of Namibia emanated from the diplomatic and political work of Chester Crocker and the United States. White supremacist ideas were so ingrained in the western reporting on Africa that it was unthinkable that the unfolding process at that moment came from the decisive defeat of the South African Defense Forces (SADF). Younger readers may not be aware that at that time South Africa had a nuclear capability and had become so desperate that the president of South Africa, P.W. Botha, flew to the scene of the battle deep inside Angola to arbitrate a dispute among the general staff of the SADF over whether South Africa should use nuclear weapons in this battle. The force of the global anti-apartheid movement at that historical moment tipped the balance for the forces fighting for freedom.

Basil Davidson spent his life fighting for freedom and was associated with all the major struggles for freedom in Africa and in Europe. The world now knows from the obituary by Victoria Brittain that from 1969 to 1985 he was a vice-president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain. He produced an important series about his African journey for the New Statesman, and then wrote a book about the crimes of apartheid.

Basil Davidson encouraged me to go to Angola in order to get the book out about Cuito Cuanavale. I had to go to sit at the confluence of the two rivers, Cuito and the Cuanavale, to draw from the people of Angola, the rivers and the environment. As a seasoned freedom fighter who had worked with those in the African freedom struggles, Davidson was very aware of the fractal worldview that Africa had – to be understood in its totality, one could not separate humans from animals, water and the wider environment.

I did travel to Cuito Cuanavale in 1992 and did go to the two rivers. I had been optimistic in 1988 that with the military defeat of the Boers in Angola, peace would break out in that society. That was not to be. Jonas Savimbi spread so much destruction across that society that Davidson must have been aware of these destructive tendencies, and hence his designation of Angolans to be in the eye of the storm.

ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO

Our discussions about the anti-racist struggles in Africa inevitably led to a discussion on racism in the United States and the role of academic institutions in the reproduction of social Darwinism and racial hierarchy.

In these discussions I drew attention to the politics of space in Chicago and we agreed to go on a tour of the racial polarisation and apartheid conditions of Chicago. I drove Basil Davidson from the cocooned community of Evanston through the Lakeshore past the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago to the South side of Chicago, and to see how one section of the far South had been hollowed out by de-Industrialisation.

We crisscrossed through to the South Side and across the skyway to Gary, Indiana. Doubling back through to old discarded factories around the Calumet River, we saw the environmental destruction and waste before our eyes. After driving through this South side of Chicago, we stopped in at the home of my in-laws at the West Side of Chicago at Wallerr Ave.

On our way back to Evanston, Davidson remarked on the apartheid conditions of Chicago and thanked me for inviting him home to spend time away from the rarified atmosphere of the segregated Evanston community of intellectuals. Davidson remarked that he had been travelling to the United States since 1952 and had not been brought face to face with the kind of conditions that he saw on the South Side of Chicago.

When I communicated with elder Eusi Kwayana about the passing of Basil, he informed me that when Basil Davidson visited Guyana in 1965, he had sought him out in the village of Buxton to find out the conditions of the political struggles for social justice in Guyana. This was the person who was opposed to oppression everywhere.

It was this Basil Davidson I remembered as I read in the news of his passing in early July. Davidson was committed to Pan-Africanism and revolution. He had understood the importance of memory and worked hard to challenge the dominant narrative of the British mainstream academics on the history of Africa. He was not formally trained, which was probably a good thing because he was not writing to gain favour in an academic environment by seeking to rise on the ladder of British academia. This was perhaps the reason he wrote to educate and not for promotion in the academy. His books were excellent historical tracts that are widely used in all parts of the Pan-African world. Davidson’s work is probably better known than the big names of those who came from the Oxbridge enterprise of colonial cover up.

He was close to the forces of decolonisation and was known in the fifties and sixties by those associated with Kwame Nkrumah, C.L.R. James and George Padmore. This came out very clearly in his foreword to one of the most important books on Pan-Africanism by Vincent B. Thompson, ‘Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan Africanism’. Over the years I became a close friend and associate of V.B. Thompson and he shared with me the early collaboration with Basil Davidson. Davidson raised certain pertinent questions in his foreword to the book and in the epilogue. Vincent B. Thompson returned to these questions with a challenge to African intellectuals to work for the transformation of Africa. After writing on the contribution of Basil Davidson to the struggles for independence in Ghana and the betrayal of that project by Anglophile intellectuals and politicians, Vincent B. Thompson was using Basil Davidson’s commitment to the struggles in Africa as an example that young intellectuals should follow. V. B. Thompson decried the so-called ‘objectivity’ in bourgeois scholarship that covered up colonial crimes of forced labour and genocide.

FORCED LABOUR: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND ITS FUTURE

Basil Davidson was associated with the strong anti-slavery and anti-racist tradition in Europe, going back to humanists such as E.D. Morel who had exposed the crimes of King Leopold II in the Congo. Davidson’s work on forced labour in Angola followed the traditions of Henry Nevinson who had travelled to Angola in 1904 and 1905 to expose the criminal and slave-like conditions in that Portuguese colony.

While millions now know of the heroism of E. D. Morel because of the work of Adam Hochschild, very few know that the conditions described in ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ emanated from practices that were borrowed from Angola. Nevison had published a compilation of his observations in a small book in 1906, ‘A Modern Slavery’. Despite the fact that slavery was supposed to have been abolished in the 19th century, the conditions that Nevison observed in Portuguese West Africa was that the system of ‘contract labour’ was no different from slavery and that Africans were exposed to lifelong servitude.

After the First World War, the colonial powers were shamed into creating the International Labor Organization (ILO) to defend the rights of workers. Throughout the period of the capitalist depression 1929-1933 the ILO campaigned aggressively against forced labour and inhuman conditions. Yet, fifty years after Nevison exposed the ‘contract labor’ conditions in Angola, in 1954 Basil Davidson witnessed the very same conditions in that country. He wrote about these conditions for popular magazines to reach the European working classes, and published his findings in a small book, ‘The African Awakening’.

It was this kind of brutal exploitation that had inspired the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) to add the ‘Party of Labor’ to its name MPLA (PT) when it was fighting for independence. Today, the leaders of the MPLA conduct business as though they have forgotten that history of forced labour. To ingratiate themselves with the Western exploiters, the hegemonic section of the MPLA has dropped the PT from its name. After the decisive victory over the Savimbi forces, the MPLA have now bought into the 21st century version of exploitation that is called neoliberalism. Most of the workers and peasants in Angola wonder if the struggles and the hundreds of thousands killed were for the kind of enrichment of a few which is now so evident in Luanda. From Angola to Guinea, the traditions of freedom have been shattered by social forces whose vision of liberation has resulted in self-enrichment. Some have gone so far as to turn Guinea and Cape Verde into international transit points for narcotic trafficking.

Basil Davidson lived long enough to see the limitations of nationalism. Nearly twenty years ago, he began to warn of the dangers of the nationalists and how they wielded power. The reversals of the gains of liberation in Africa have been so painful that Davidson has seen some of his closest friends incarcerated in Eritrea. The same pain would have been there in the case of the reversals in Zimbabwe. In the video series, ‘Africa: A Voyage of Discovery’, Basil Davidson had been as scathing of Cecil Rhodes as he was of fulsome praise of the leadership of the Zimbabwe liberation struggle under Zanu PF. There is one very long scene in the 5th episode on ‘The Bible and the Gun’ where Davidson accompanied Nathan Shamuyarira to his old school. I know this scene well because I use this video in teaching about the relationship between militarism and religion in the subjugation of Africans. Basil Davidson lived to see that the same conditions of mining and exploitation of workers in diamond mines had come to Zimbabwe and that the conditions of the working miners in the Marange diamond mines were no significantly different from the conditions of those who worked in the diamond mines in Kimberly in the 19th century.

MAKING A BREAK

We remember Basil Davidson because his scholarship was dedicated to making a break with the old colonial relations. Davidson was not awed by major powers and he remained an independent intellectual and a decent human being. Younger Africans need to pick up his books and follow his exposure of forced labour and exploitation so that we can continue the long battle to create free humans in emancipated societies.

The one line that I always remember form his video series is when he called the Nile a vast library. Are we reading from this library today?

Basil Davidson symbolised a paradigm shift from the biased, white supremacist Western intellectual tradition of his time. He stood for an intellectual tradition of truth-telling, challenging the racist Western anthropologist-imperialist alliance that dominates the academy in Western societies. Davidson was a foremost ambassador of Ubuntu, who transcended the colour of his skin and linked his humanity with that of the dehumanised and oppressed African whose rich history/civilisation had been denied by the dominant Western intellectual enterprise. History and Africa will always remember Davidson, not just for being a Pan-Africanist and prolific revolutionary scholar, but also for being a humanist.

Basil Risbridger Davidson, a revolutionary spirit, born 9 November 1914, joined the ancestors on 9 July 2010.

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* Horace Campbell is a teacher and writer. His latest book is 'Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA', published by Pluto Press.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Basil Davidson: Populariser of African history

Ama Biney

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/66277

I heard of Basil Davidson’s passing at the honourable age of 95 from a former student who forwarded an obituary to me. For years Davidson’s prolific work has been on reading lists I distributed to all students (regardless of ethnic background) on my African history courses. It was when I pinned on the classroom wall an article about him with a huge photograph that students expressed their surprise that Davidson was not an African. This gave rise to stimulating debates as to whether only Africans could write objective African history, and what was objectivity anyway, whose history is being recorded, and of course is history a male domain?

Davidson was exemplary of a progressive tradition in African history back in the 1970s and thereafter. He was also an exemplar that not all Europeans are infected with a Eurocentric, prejudiced paradigm in their analysis of the African past. His brilliant works are accessible to students and non-students alike on account of his lucid writing style. He was a master wordsmith in depicting the African past and the historical contradictions deriving from Africa’s engagement with Europe through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonial conquest. But more importantly, at a time when Africa was depicted as lacking a glorious golden age, Davidson gave us precious glimpses of Africa’s rich pre-colonial era, long before Europe entered her own.

As an undergraduate student in the early 1980s, Davidson tended to be overlooked by our tutors on the distributed reading list for the likes of Roland Oliver and John Fage’s A Short History of Africa (1962), who were wedded to the Eurocentric interpretation of African history at the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS) at Birmingham University. This was not surprising as Fage had been the director of the CWAS from 1963 to 1982, and therefore his intellectual and professional influence on the centre prevailed. However, it was clear that Davidson’s ideological position stood outside the mainstream – even then in the liberal–conservative climate of the CWAS.

Davidson’s eight-part ‘Africa’ documentary, broadcast in 1984, upset the South African government to such an extent that he was banned in the country. The documentary remains a far more serious engagement with African historical accomplishments when compared to the very pedestrian series later produced by Henry Louis Gates. When I show Davidson’s ‘Caravans of Gold’ on the ancient Swahili city-states along the east coast of Africa, students are surprised and inspired to learn two things presented by Davidson: firstly, that wealthy Swahili city merchants lived in homes of sophisticated architecture with modern conveniences and internal sanitation whilst citizens of Elizabethan England were emptying chamber pots out of their windows; and secondly, that the long-distance Oceanic trade between the Swahili merchants extended not only to the Middle East but to China. Evidence of this trade demonstrates that the current Chinese economic interest and engagement in Africa is not recent, for a Chinese painting of an African giraffe dates back to 1414 when one of the cities of the Swahili sent the giraffe as a gift to the Chinese emperor, long before Europeans appeared on the African continent.

Both as a radical journalist and a perceptive radical historian, Davidson engaged with revolutionary leaders such as Amilcar Cabral and Samora Machel, and told the ‘stories’ of Africans without patronising intellectualising humbug. He engaged with such leaders and African people as genuine equals, for too often some Europeans continue to believe and act as if Africans should have ears and no mouth.

I think among Davidson’s greatest works is his book ‘The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State’, published in 1993. However, I must admit, being a woman, that the patriarchal title causes unease. Although one can excuse Davidson for being a product of his time, the entire discourse on the state in Africa from the 1960s to the 1990s was dominated by European and African males in a masculinist abstract language that profoundly failed to examine how that construct and reality of the state impacted on African women’s lives and experiences. One of the African woman’s burdens has been a male-dominated construct of the ‘nation-state’, that is, the oppressions confronting African women via the instruments of the ‘state’ are multiple.

‘The Black Man’s Burden’, despite its worrisome title, continues to be hugely relevant in that it provides a historical lens through which to understand many of Africa’s current problems and developments that are profoundly rooted in the colonial past. One of the legacies of that damaging colonial past lies in the nature of the male European concept of the nation-state that many African countries were bequeathed by the departing colonial masters, and how the African nationalists reconfigured that state to continue to repress their citizens – both men and women – in the creation of ‘the politics of clientelism’. In addition to this, the African petit bourgeois elite inherited the colonial borders which held back and continue to arrest the continent’s development. Moreover, as Davidson argues, ‘on top of this, the nationalists inherited a disconcerting situation in which what was said was rather seldom what was meant.’

Davidson made African history thoroughly accessible. This was by no means a sterile endeavour in ivory towers; it was a history of ordinary people, for he was on the side of the poor, the downtrodden, who sought to alter their subaltern state and ‘dared to invent the future’, as Thomas Sankara urged. Furthermore, as Sankara once wrote, ‘You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.’ Davidson was at one time considered ‘mad’ when in the 1960s and 1970s he began challenging the prevailing orthodoxy that Africa’s history was not simply one ‘of a deplorable past’. To the white minority government of South Africa, Davidson was a ‘mad’ white man who audaciously argued that Africans were the competent builders of Great Zimbabwe in his ‘Caravans of Gold’ programme. He contributed incalculably to changing that prevailing orthodoxy within the field of African history by presenting an African history in which Africans were conscious agents of economic, political, cultural and social change rather than passive objects in the predominant stereotypical European eyes. He dedicated himself to a people-oriented history of Africa, one that examined the social, political and economic forces that forged change and progress in Africa.

Equally significant is the fact that Davidson considered in the concluding chapter to ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ that among the keys to Africa’s redemption is the imperative of ‘devolving executive power to a multiplicity of locally representative bodies’. The other key lies in what he considered as the necessary and the gradual dismantling of the nation-statist concept of the state as Africa moves towards continental unity within a regionalist framework.

Davidson has left a colossal intellectual legacy entwined with committed activism for future generations. I salute him for this contribution.

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

Gambia’s ‘Freedom Day’ is a travesty

Civil society organisations’ joint statement

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/66275

cc United Nations PhotoReleased in response to Gambia’s ‘Freedom Day’ on Thursday 22 July, this joint statement from civil society organisations aims to draw attention to Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s ‘appalling human rights record’. The statement underlines that: 'Freedom remains an illusion for most Gambians, who live in fear of arbitrary arrest, torture, incommunicado detention, unfair trials, rape, disappearance and extrajudicial executions.'

As Gambia celebrates its national holiday today, called ‘Freedom Day’ by President Yahya Jammeh, hundreds of activists representing over 87 non-governmental organisations participated in protests and other activities in 14 countries. On this ‘day of action’, activists in 14 different countries worldwide will draw attention to the appalling human rights record of President Yahya Jammeh’s government in Gambia. Naming Gambia’s national holiday ‘Freedom Day’ is a shameful travesty: President Yahya Jammeh’s government has cracked down on political freedom and commits widespread human rights violations with total impunity. Freedom remains an illusion for most Gambians, who live in fear of arbitrary arrest, torture, incommunicado detention, unfair trials, rape, disappearance and extrajudicial executions.

UNFAIR TRIALS AND PRISON CONDITIONS

Hundreds were incarcerated and held incommunicado in appalling conditions after waves of arrests in November of 2009 and in March 2010. Only eight have been tried in a so-called ‘treason trial’ where they are accused of fomenting a coup. The eight men were accused of procuring arms, equipment and mercenaries to stage a coup against President Yahya Jammeh’s government. Judge Emmanuel Amadi found them guilty of treason and sentenced them all to death last week. The trial violated a host of international fair trial standards. Detainees had little or no access to their lawyers or even their families. Sources indicate that the accused have been tortured, while others were pressured to provide false testimony at the trial, under threat of imprisonment and torture. The government persecuted those who refused to give false testimony, allegedly going as far as to make death threats. Conditions in Gambian prisons – especially in Mile 2 Central Prison and other secret detention centres – military barracks, secret quarters in police stations, police stations in remote areas and warehouses are appalling. They amount to a violation of the right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.

ARBITRARY DETENTIONS

Gambia’s human rights situation deteriorated after 1994, when Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh came to power and banned all political parties or political activities. Since March 2006, when President Jammeh claimed to have uncovered an attempted coup plot, the situation has gotten steadily worse. Members of the president’s own personal protection guard – who are under his direct control – carry out the most egregious abuses, as do certain units in the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) often referred to as ‘green boys’, ‘ninjas’ or ‘drug boys’. However, the army and police also commit serious human rights violations. The security services routinely detain people without charge (during which time they are often tortured or ill-treated), or unlawfully imprison them after unfair trials. Several individuals are known to have disappeared, died in custody or died shortly after release – and unconfirmed allegations of additional deaths have been impossible to corroborate due to the government’s refusal to provide any information on their cases.

JOURNALISTS AT SERIOUS RISK

Freedom of expression is severely limited: journalists are arbitrarily arrested if suspected of leaking critical information or writing stories unfavourable to the authorities. Newspapers have been closed down or had their websites hacked into. Journalists and members of the opposition are harassed, threatened and unlawfully killed. Two cases involving Gambian journalists have been brought to the attention of the ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) Community Court of Justice since 2006. One case concerns Daily Observer journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh, a victim of enforced disappearance for four years despite the court’s ruling that he be released and damages be paid to his family. In another case, former editor of The Independent newspaper Musa Saidykhan alleges he was tortured by the NIA in 2006. Moreover, the 2004 murder of Deydra Hydara, former editor of The Point newspaper, who was allegedly killed by government operatives, has never been solved. Since 1994, at least 27 journalists have left Gambia in fear for their lives. President Yahya Jammeh has also expelled the Unicef envoy, threatened to kill human rights defenders, warned that he will cut off the heads of all gays in Gambia and announced that he will start executing those sentenced to death in order to counter rising crime.

WITCH HUNTS

In March 2009, a state-sponsored witch hunt led to approximately 1,000 people being snatched from their villages and taken to secret detention centres by ‘witch hunters’. Amnesty International reported that after being kidnapped, they were forced to drink hallucinogenic concoctions in secret detention centres and tortured to confess to witchcraft. The liquid they were forced to drink appeared to lead to kidney problems and to at least six deaths from kidney failure. A well-known opposition leader, Halifa Sallah, criticised the government’s ‘witchcraft’ accusations in the main opposition newspaper in Gambia. He was detained, charged with treason and held in Mile 2 Central Prison. After significant outside pressure, all charges were dropped and he was released.

MIGRANTS AT RISK

Migrants and visitors are also subject to unlawful arrests, torture and ill-treatment by security forces. In July 2005 a group of 50 foreigners, including 44 Ghanaians, was reportedly killed by members of Gambia’s security forces. A report carried out jointly by ECOWAS and the UN determined that rogue security forces were responsible. So far, the Gambian government has not taken any steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.

THE DEATH PENALTY

The death penalty is the ultimate violation of human rights. It violates the right to life and the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Gambia has explicitly accepted obligations in regard to these rights in the international and regional human rights treaties which it has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

ACTION

The undersigned civil society groups join together and call on Gambia to:

* Stop human rights violations and comply with obligations under the African Charter with regard to the right to liberty, freedom from torture, right to fair trial, freedom of expression and of association
* Take immediate measures to improve the human rights situation in the Gambia
* End incommunicado detention and enforced disappearances, and ensure that security personnel who engage in these practices are brought to justice in fair trials
* Investigate all allegations of torture and extrajudicial executions
* Grant access to all prisoners
* End the harassment and intimidation of independent media institutions
* Stop politically motivated trials of people peacefully exercising their freedom of expression, association and assembly
* Establish an independent and international commission of inquiry to investigate the whereabouts and fate of victims of enforced disappearance and ensure that those responsible for these human rights violations are brought to justice in fair trials
* Establish an independent and international commission of inquiry to investigate the poisoning and killing of people suspected of being witches, and ensure that those responsible for these human rights violations are brought to justice in fair trials
* Establish an adequately resourced independent human rights commission
* Publicly acknowledge the importance and valuable work undertaken by human rights defenders
* Ensure the rule of law and comply with court decisions, including determinations made by the ECOWAS court
* To immediately establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty as provided by UN General Assembly resolution 62/149, adopted on 18 December 2007 and resolution 63/168 adopted on 18 December 2008
* To commute without delay all death sentences to terms of imprisonment
* To ensure rigorous compliance in all death penalty cases with international standards for fair trial.

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

Gambia day of action co-signing organisations

No. Organisation country

1 Amnesty International Benin Benin
2 Amnesty International Burkina Faso Burkina Faso
3 Amnesty International Cote d'Ivoire Cote d'Ivoire
4 Amnesty International Ghana Ghana
5 Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Ghana
6 Human Rights Advocacy Centre Ghana
7 Media Foundation for Human Rights Ghana
8 Regional Watch for Human Rights Liberia
9 Liberia Council of Churches Liberia
10 Mano River Union Peace Forum Liberia
11 Liberia Prisoners Assistance Program Liberia
12 Mussunama, Inc. Liberia
13 West Africa Network for Peacebuilding Liberia
14 Liberia Vernacular Inc. Liberia
15 Liberia Muslim Women Association Liberia
16 Zorzor Women for Development Liberia
17 Movement for Policy and Reconciliation Liberia
18 Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC) Nigeria
19 Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) Nigeria
20 Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) Nigeria
21 Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP)-Lagos Nigeria
22 Zero Corruption Coalition (ZCC) Nigeria
23 Transparency in Nigeria (TIN) North Central Zone Nigeria
24 Centre for Development of Civil Society (CDCS) Nigeria
25 National Procurement Watch Platform (NPWP) Nigeria
26 Budget Transparency Network Nigeria
27 Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) Nigeria
28 The Alliance for Credible Election (ACE-Nigeria) Nigeria
29 Centre for Social Justice Nigeria
30 Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) Nigeria
31 Community Action for Popular Participation (CAPP) Nigeria
32 Federation of Muslim Women Nigeria
33 Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) Nigeria
34 CLEEN FOUNDATION Nigeria
35 West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) Nigeria
36 Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO) Nigeria
37 Advocacy in Nigeria Nigeria
38 International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Nigeria
39 Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA) Nigeria
40 Trade Network Initiatives Nigeria
41 Women in Nigeria Nigeria
42 Amnesty International Mali Mali
43 Association pour le progresl et la defense des femmes (APDF) Mali
44 Conseil National de la Societe Civile Mali
45 COMITE DE COORDINATION DES ASSOCIATIONS ET ONG (CCAONG) Mali
46 Confédération des Syndicats des Travailleurs du MALI (CSTM) Mali
47 ASSOCIATION DES FEMMES JURISTES DU MALI (AJM) Mali
48 AVOCATS SANS FRONTIERE -Mali (ASF) Mali
49 ASSOCIATION DES CONSOMMATEURS DU MALI (ASCOMA) Mali
50 ASOPROFEN Mali
51 ASSOCIATION SYNERGIE DEVELOPPEMENT (ASID) Mali
52 TEMEDT Mali
53 ASSOCIQTION POUR LA PROMOTION DE LA FEMME ET DE L'ENFANT DE NIAMACORO (APROFEM) Mali
54 ASSOCIATION DEMOCRATE GOUVERNANTE Mali
55 Réseau des journalistes pour la protection des Droits humains (RJPRODH) Mali
56 SYNDICAT Autonome DE LA magistrature (SAM) Mali
57 Réseau d'Action sur les Armes Légeres en Afrique de l'Ouest du Mali (RASALO Mali) Mali
58 Association pour le Dévéloppement Socio-économique et technologique des Jeunes (ADEJ Mali) Mali
59 Coordinations des Associations des Maliens expulsés de Côte d'Ivoire (CAMARCI) Mali
60 AMICALE DES ANCIENS MILITANTS ET SYMPATHISANTS DE L'UNION NATIONALE DES ELEVES ET ETUDIANTS DU MALI (AMS-UNEEM) Mali
61 COORDINATIONS DES ASSOCIATIONS et ONG FEMININES DU MALI (CAFO) Mali
62 Amnesty International Senegal Senegal
63 FAMEDEV Senegal
64 RADDHO Senegal
65 Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia Senegal
66 Réseau des Journalistes Parlementaires du Sénégal (REPPAS) Senegal
67 Syndicat des Professionnels de l'Information et de la Communication du Sénégal (SYNPICS) Senegal
68 Amnesty International Sierra Leone Sierra Leone
69 National Forum Human Rights Sierra Leone
70 Coalition for Justice and Accountability Sierra Leone
71 Center for Democracy and Human Rights Sierra Leone
72 Women's Action for Human Dignity Sierra Leone
73 United for the Protection of Human Rights Sierra Leone
74 Women Against Violence and Exploitation Sierra Leone
75 NGOYELA Agricultural Development Association Sierra Leone
76 Coordination of Active Peace Sierra Leone
77 National Youth Advocacy Network (NAYNET) Sierra Leone
78 Humanist Wateh Salon Sierra Leone
79 Resource Centre for Adult Literacy Sierra Leone
80 Amnesty International Togo Togo
81 Gambia Coalition of Human Rights United Kingdom
82 Exile Journalists Network United Kingdom
83 Amnesty International Netherlands The Netherlands
84 World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) International
85 Gambia Press Union International
86 West African Journalists Association (WAJA) International
87 Article 19 International

Political awareness in Nigeria: We do not beg your pardon

Oluwole Onemola

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/66282

cc talatucarmenNigeria must unite in its pursuit of democratic freedom, writes Oluwole Onemola. Onemola urges Nigerians to shed a history of timidity in the face of government repression. This vast country can indeed unite to hold those with power to account, writes Onemola, if only drive and diversity can catalyse reactions of change amongst the populace, ‘the dormant daggers of the southern hemisphere’.

Like the slave-era abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, we ‘will not equivocate’, neither shall we excuse. Like Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and all those who stood beside him for the profits of freedom during the American Civil Rights Movement, we have come to cash a cheque, and we will not accept ‘insufficient funds’ as an answer to why the basic benefits of living have not been disbursed to the common Nigerian. We will not ‘beg any pardons’, and do not forgive us if we will not ‘pardon your begging’. Excuses will remain what they are, but unanswered questions will not pass unnoticed. Nigeria needs answers, and neither the dullness of gradualism nor the politeness of civility will make us expect otherwise.

The prior timidity with which we have conducted ourselves against our government and our inability to unite, not even for ourselves but for our younger ones: our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, makes us simply resemble the proverbial ‘chicken’. The keenness, with which we allow the same people to suppress us, and make us think we are unworthy of common utilities like electricity and water, startlingly appals.

We are not the children of a scared people. We are not the descendants of runners who continually looked abroad and to the West for the answers to their hopes of better dreams. We, Nigerians, are the children of a powerful people, the dormant daggers of the southern hemisphere and the trepid terror of the north, because our rise will signify a change in global politics. We, Nigerians, hold in us the prowess and potential of the fictional Okonkwo, who defeated Amalinze the Cat unfazed by the possibility of a fall. We exude in us the brilliance of our south and south-western regions, the innovation of our east and the humble power of our north.

Our dissimilarities should make us strong because as we are ever changing, we are also ever evolving. Our common unpredictability should make us great. Our collective dreams should be able to guide us, as our individual goals should be able to drive us. Our sharpness, our wit, our God-given grace and values and those insignificant little things we overlook by taking them for granted are what makes us who we are: Nigerian, nothing else, and what else more?

What do we need to realise that in us the great African empires of old exist? What will it take to make us stand up like the Murtala Mohammeds, the Azikwes, and the Awolowos? Where does it say we have to settle for a constantly unrepentant and non-productive government in our constitution, flawed as it may be?

We deserve more and we deserve better! It is time to say to those unprincipled politicians, from whose pores corruption pours, that this relationship, this traverse arrangement, this unrelenting investment and this dormancy will no longer be accepted. Like a failed first date, or a marriage run on infidelity, the time has come to ask for a divorce from policy as usual. The clock is ripe; the moment has arrived when we are tasked by the future, for our children, to select new leaders who hold stakes in the normal everyday successes and failures of the Nigeria to come, who will tirelessly strive to achieve, even when achieving is tiresome, but – most importantly – leaders that serve by leading, and lead by serving.

Nigerians, let us not allow this era of advancement in the politics of the world to leave us behind. Let us take our seat aboard the blissful train that is integrity, so that one day we too can be a reckoned force in the world that conducts and operates it to its end station.

Fear is not an option. Failure is unacceptable. Dedication is our key because it drives us. Freedom is our watchword because with it we are entitled to criticise, and as Wole Soyinka once said, ‘The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.’ And, as this is what we lack in Nigeria, we need to learn to speak out against those in power. We give our government their power in exchange for provisions enumerated in the articles of our constitution – provisions which they have not delivered upon. Without us, without the millions of us who wake up every day to provide what little we can for our families, Nigeria would be a festered sore.

Let us tell Abuja and all its cronies and crooks that, from today, rigging of elections will not stand. Let us let the people’s democratic oppressors know, along with all others who wish to contain us, that the intense disease that is awareness has awoken us. Let us make it clear as the waters of Calabar, to those who come, see and steal our natural resources for a fraction of their worth, that as from today, Nigeria and Nigerians will not beg their pardons. We will not excuse ourselves anymore in shyness, or cower in cowardice. Their time is up; our time is now. Nigeria, change is coming, and when it does, let us only pray for the souls of those who stand in its way!

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

No woman should die giving life, no man should watch women die

Report on the AU Summit

Irũngũ Houghton

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/66283

cc hdptcarThe recent AU Summit in Kampala has brought to light the shocking lack of readily available health services for women in Africa, endangering women’s well-being and resulting in tragically high numbers of women dying in childbirth, writes Irũngũ Houghton. Houghton brings the devastating statistics into focus, and scrutinises both government and society in the facilitation of a failure in the battle for gender equality and the right to reliable health care for all on the continent.

When the African Union’s (AU) East African caravan set out for Kampala from Nairobi on 3 July, little did they imagine they would capture the attention of thousands of men and women across East Africa and elsewhere in Africa. As they travelled the thousands of kilometres through Arusha, Mwanza, Kigali, Kabale, Masaka, Mbarara and Kampala, the testimonies they heard in towns, villages, dispensaries and hospitals added a sense of urgency to the horrific statistics.

One in sixteen women and girls die giving birth in Africa. 14 per cent of those who do, die from unsafe abortions and 60 per cent of these women are under the age of 25. Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the six countries that are responsible for 50 per cent of all deaths globally.

Behind the statistics is the horror of Hanna Nasibwa who died on 13 July a few hours after the AU caravan arrived at her hospital in Mbarara. Her uterus ruptured during pregnancy and it took her too long to get to the hospital. Too late; she died. She could have lived if she had been seen sooner.

The 15th Ordinary Session of the Summit of the AU has brought these shocking statistics and experiences into sharp relief. Over 50 heads of state came. All but one are men. 53 foreign ministers attended, mostly men. With them, were a number of health ministers. They and their delegations spent a week focusing on maternal health, the main theme of the summit.

Yet, despite the academic statistics, media coverage and statements by our leaders, there is something missing: anger. Anger is missing. How is it that Africa can lose mothers, daughters, sisters and citizens in this way? Why is there no sense of resolve and anger? Our leaders are rightfully angry when acting against terrorists and serial killers. Yet, why can’t we see the same decisiveness when it comes to the issues of maternal health? If Africa can deploy peace-keeping troops to trouble spots (and I think we should), why can’t we deploy brigades of doctors, midwives and other health workers to Africa’s high maternal death hot spots? Indeed, why isn’t there a rapid stand-by force for health services in Africa? More people in Africa die from 5 preventable diseases than war these days.

In 2010, Africa marks the tenth anniversary of the Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the third anniversary of the Maputo Plan of Action for Universal Access to Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Africa . While some African governments are spending more on health than they did in the 1990s, it is still insufficient. Most governments are far from meeting the 15 per cent AU health budgeting target. Most spend a tenth of the recommended amount by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for each of their citizens. Yet, there is a feeling that this could be an ideal moment to reverse all of this.

Hundreds of champions, health specialists and feminists attended this summit. On the tables before the heads of state were important and well articulated documents for adoption. In the countries from which they come, there are millions of women and girls who are denied the right to health services, to have control over their fertility and protection from violence and sexual abuse.

Yet, all this will go nowhere if we don’t develop a sense of concern and anger among us men as well. Many years ago, ‘real men don’t abuse women’ was a popular slogan. While still relevant, perhaps we should adapt it for this moment. It is not just that real men shouldn’t abuse women; real men should use all the power they have to eliminate these horrific statistics. Real men should join women in demanding available, safe and adequate health services.

Why is this particularly an issue for men to think about? Firstly, the women and girls that die every day are not separate from us. They are our sisters, mothers, daughters, wives and fellow citizens. Secondly, we men still dominate the corridors and offices of power across this continent. Until things change, we must honour the responsibility these offices demand of us all. Lastly, and most simply, we must think and act because the scale of pain and suffering is simply unacceptable.

We must urge our governments to publicly announce the decisions taken this year. We must declare our intention to assess our government’s progress ahead of the next July summit. Next July, when the caravan called the AU Summit comes to Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, we should hold up scorecards against the recommendations made in this summit on maternal health. Perhaps we should demand that our heads of state drive through 2–3 countries and visit hospitals, clinics and villages to get to the summit.

Unless we do this, we are complicit in a double failure. The first failure is the failure to provide an effective health system that prevents illness and neglect. The second failure is the failure to safely rescue women and girls from life-threatening illnesses and unwanted pregnancies. Combined, these two failures are primary causes for women dying while giving birth. There is a third cause: too many of us are standing and watching women dying in silence. It’s now time for this to change as well.

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* Irũngũ Houghton is director of Oxfam Pan Africa and can be contacted at irunguh@oxfam.org.uk.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

As campaigns end, there's a smell of a ‘Yes’ vote in the air

Muthoni Wanyeki

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/66293

We have just over one week to go! Just over one week to know whether or not the means of capturing and using power will change.

My sense is that it will. The opinion polls, however disputed and varied they are, have been unanimous on this. Despite an initial dip in support for the Proposed Constitution of Kenya, support has been rising in the past month to well over the 50 per cent plus one mark required for it to pass.

If it passes, we will owe a debt of gratitude to all of those who have struggled for this – our second liberation – for the past two decades. We will finally say hongera!

Only a couple of weeks ago, based on conversations with the Committee of Experts as well as with those involved in civic education on the proposed constitution of Kenya (PCK), it was clear that critical constituencies needed to be reached with accurate information on the contents of the PCK.

These included geographical constituencies, notably in the Rift Valley, where politicians aligned to the ‘No’ camp were already campaigning on the basis of obvious distortions and outright lies, and in the Central and Eastern regions, where conservative Christian churches seemed to be doing the work of the so-called ‘watermelons’, politicians who were lukewarm publicly about the PCK but who were believed to be in the ‘No’ camp.

These also included constituencies of interest, notably women, who stand to gain from the PCK but who are inordinately represented in and presumably influenced by conservative Christian churches.

This week it is clear that civic education efforts specifically targeting those constituencies is paying off. This success is helped in no small way by two factors: First, by the standing down of the mainstream Christian churches from their initial almost vociferous ‘No’ position. And secondly by the swing by politicians from the central region in clear favour of a ‘Yes’ vote.

We could speculate ad nauseum as to the reasons behind those two factors, but I think we should note the obvious decision of some mainstream Christian leaders to stand up for the ‘Yes’ vote, as well as of some Christian congregations to take matters into their own hands and educate themselves on the contents of the PCK. In doing so they are now able able to vote with their consciences, regardless of what their leadership says.

The feedback coming in from civic educators and monitors of the process is also positive. Eastern Kenya (including the Central and the southern part of Eastern provinces) is beginning to shift into the ‘Yes’ camp, primarily being concerned about devolution and land.

Northern Kenya seems solidly in the ‘Yes’ camp due to the manner in which the PCK addresses citizenship, inequality and discrimination as well as underdevelopment through devolution, all of which are critical for that region. The Rift Valley is a mixed bag, the underlying concern being land. Western Kenya, including both Nyanza and Western provinces, is also shifting towards a ‘Yes’ vote, though persistent concerns here have to do with the provincial administration’s fate in a new constitutional dispensation and women’s human rights – choice, succession and political representation.

This vote must be according to people’s own conscience and we all can do what we want to sway that conscience. But at the end of the day people must be able to deposit their ballot entirely as they wish, without intimidation or the threat of violence.

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

Voices of African Women Campaign

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/66273

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Voices of African Women Campaign

Invites you to the UK launch of the African Women's Decade 2010–2020 and the celebration of African Women's Day on the 31st July 2010, 2–5pm.

This event is hosted by the Centre for Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Room G2. Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG, UK
http://www.soas.ac.uk/visitors/location/maps/

http://www.royalafricansociety.org/index.php?option=com_eventlist&Itemid=342&func=details&did=959

Although this event is free, it is essential to book! Thank you.
To reserve your place, please email: office@ukwilpf.org.uk or telephone: 020 7250 1968.

Alternatively please write to: UK WILPF, 52/54 Featherstone Street, London, EC1Y 8RT

Please RSVP for this event

Office Administrator
UK WILPF
52-54 Featherstone Street
London EC1Y 8RT
+44 (0)20 7250 1968

URL: http://www.ukwilpf.org.uk
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukwilpf
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UKWILPF
Blog: http://ukwilpf.blogspot.com

Fights for freedom: Africa, Britain and the Second World War

Review of David Killingray’s ‘Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War’

Alex Free

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/66288

In an impressive synthesis of primary and secondary sources on Africans’ contributions to the British Second World War effort, David Killingray’s ‘Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War’ presents an excellent overview of the experiences of African soldiers called upon to fight in defence of their colonial master. A detailed and illuminating narrative weighing in at nearly 300 pages across 10 chapters, ‘Fighting for Britain’ explores the impact of service in the British armed forces for African men and their families and communities at large. Complemented by a wealth of war-related articles and chapters (as befitting an eminent historian in this field), the book draws on a range of testimonies from African soldiers and covers everything from changing attitudes to status and education to the experiences of men embarking on overseas travel for the first time, capturing the voices of the diverse figures encouraged into military service.

As a history-from-below, ‘Fighting for Britain’ is largely led by these voices in pulling together a narrative of African involvement in the war, tackling motivations for signing up, discussions of military training, exposure to unfamiliar technology, treatment by superior officers and ultimately demobilisation. Providing a vivid window on African soldiers’ war-time experiences of everything from combat, education and sport to boredom and alcohol, the book is eminently readable, and includes an interesting selection of annotated photographs and maps to enhance the intermeshing of stories and accounts within.

Over the period 1939–45, around one million men from Africa (‘and a very small number of women’) served the various colonial powers in the war, with the majority of troops recruited by Britain serving in dangerous non-combatant roles (p. 144). When it comes to writing about African colonial soldiers, Killingray notes that historians’ concerns since the late 1970s have generally been around the socio-economic consequences of military involvement, a concern which he suggests has directed attention away from considering soldiers’ actual experience of battle. Commenting on the paucity of battleground reflections from soldiers who spoke to BBC Africa in 1989, he somewhat cryptically wonders whether such a dearth may be ‘in part shaped by the prevailing agenda of African historians and researchers’ (p. 144). At any rate, this book seeks to meet the need for a scholarly title pulling together African soldiers’ experiences into a cohesive narrative. Indeed, given the alarming contemporary resurgence of political movements rooted in xenophobia, prejudice and profound distrust of the 'other' within places such as the Netherlands, the UK and the US (arguably led by far-right groups but by no means restricted to them), books such as 'Fighting for Britain' which overtly document and narrate the 'contribution' of oppressed people in preserving a country’s way of life help to ensure that those outside of a Western purview are not simply written out of history.

In presenting the human and social face of the war, ‘Fighting for Britain’ is strong on documenting men’s anxieties around being away from home for extended periods (pp. 99–100), the strain on personal and community relationships and the demands for education which emerged as a result of military involvement (p. 194). Unsurprisingly, certain would-be soldiers wholeheartedly resented the notion of fighting to defend systems which underpinned their own inferiority (p. 68). In South Africa, for example, involvement in the war sharpened awareness of racially discriminatory employment laws, while swift growth in the country’s manufacturing industry ‘helped to erode many of the white job reservation agreements and gave black and Coloured people new opportunities to access skilled work’ (p. 195).

As we experience a period in which many African countries mark a half-century of independence from European colonialism, it is befitting to look back on the evolution of a consciousness of resistance around fighting under the aegis of exploitation, as well as the war’s role in accelerating anti-colonial ideas. In the late 1950s, the Zimbabwean nationalist leader Ndabaningi Sithole talked of the strong erosion of the myth of white supremacy many felt as a result of seeing white soldiers in battle – ‘[b]ullets had the same effect on black and white’ – while legendary Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène echoed such experiences with respect to serving under the French (‘When a white soldier asked me to write a letter for him, it was a revelation – I thought all Europeans knew how to write’) (p. 211).

While it is naturally difficult to generalise about a political consciousness in flux across an entire continent, Killingray is perhaps somewhat inconclusive on the question of the war’s links to changing attitudes, socio-economic demands and eventual assertions of political liberation. Part of this inconsistency results from the need to come to a ‘conclusion’ at the end of each chapter, whereby we are told ‘a bit of extra knowledge of the world does not mean attitudes were changed to any great extent’ (p. 115), but then hear of a small but notable number of examples of ‘mutiny’ around racially defined discrepancies in pay (p. 125) and challenges to colonial rule and the Native Authorities in East Africa (p.182), as well as pressures on local elders and chiefs.

The author’s conclusions that most men in the post-war period were simply concerned with personal affairs are well argued, but even if the majority of people didn’t experience rapid attitudinal changes, there were changes nonetheless. When it comes to debates around the role of ex-servicemen in emergent nationalist movements, Killingray ultimately settles for drawing upon Richard Rathbone’s conclusions that in Ghana the servicemen’s post-war political activity was simply in proportion to that of other interest groups (p. 207).

But just as creating a false mythology around ‘ex-servicemen as political martyrs’ is certainly to be avoided in a serious scholarly work, too narrow a focus on one group should not cloud a bigger picture of how ‘fighting for Britain’ would become ‘fighting against’ as new socio-political ideas crystallised in the wake of war-time participation. The book is about experiences, but part of those experiences were also the day-to-day material demands of the war effort on Britain’s colonies and the consequent accelerated extraction of raw materials on the back of exploited African labour. These too were ‘fights’ for Britain that were central to African people’s involvement in the war and which merit much more consideration, just as the same could be said about the need for greater discussion of women’s experience of the war. There is also the question of the legacy of the war itself and its relation to emergent independence movements: A battered Britain saw its empire and position in the world in decline at a time of ‘winds of change’ and growing national consciousness within African countries, ultimately resulting in decolonisation. The author may well legitimately respond that the focus on men’s actual military experience of the war has been consciously counter to historians’ previous concern for ‘social and economic history’, but at any rate it seems greater discussion of this history – in combination with the existing material in his book – would make an otherwise excellent book even stronger.

In sum, ‘Fighting for Britain’ is a highly readable, very well-informed account of African people’s involvement in the British Second World War effort. It is replete with first-hand examples and voices from African men and draws upon a formidable range of materials and sources. The book comes across as a little bit analytically inconsistent at times, but this is arguably no different to any effort to answer necessarily generalised questions around such a huge, diverse continent as Africa. While the book is manifestly about African soldiers, its analytical reach would be enhanced by more extensive discussion of the social and material demands of war-time involvement – in short, a broader interpretation of what ‘fighting’ entailed. Nonetheless, this is not to detract from what is a sophisticated and coherent narrative and encouraging antidote to historiography’s historical predilection for histories-from-above.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* David Killingray (2010) ‘Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War’, James Currey, Woodbridge, Suffolk, ISBN: 978-1-84701-015-5.
* Alex Free is assistant editor, Pambazuka News.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Woldemariam is 'first rank'

Steven Holms

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/66290

Good comprehensive article

Nunu Kidane

2010-07-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/66291

Red was our favorite color

Amira Ali

2010-07-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/66280

I have started to keep your letters close to my bedside, even closer than they were before. They are now stuffed in the pillow case, safe enough to ensure that the words will not escape my dream. Lucid dreams of you and I, the closest I have gotten to kissing and holding you. This one time, I had this dream of awaiting your arrival, there I was at the airport dressed in a bright red dress – red was our favorite colour, "you do remember, don't you?” It signified the intensity and vibrancy of our love and the details and irony of our world. This moment of awaiting had me ecstatic with joy, an excitement that had every part of my being trembling, it felt so real that my senses were awoken to the smiling sensations of my bodily parts. My emotions took total control of my being and I lost count of the number of times I paced the long and pasty, tunnel looking corridor; at times sitting down to get right up, to sit again and repeat each session with each nervousness. The anticipation of how you would welcome me and how I would approach you got me rehearsing our moment of reunion; would I first kiss you, or do I hug you and then kiss you, or would I just stand in front of you and look you in the eye, search for the soul connection that once unionized us, the truth that we once had seen in each other, and even if for a moment to reclaim our lost identity, to know our nature and place on this earth. If only for a moment, if we would quickly love each other before this very unprecedented crisis of our world, if we could free ourselves from what we have been denied and enrapture in our splendid hearts; in this very little time that we have if we can quickly love each other before the triple destruction of our world that threatens to annihilate us.

Each thought provoked the anticipation of the mind even more, making the blood rush vigorously and the heart expanding to a point of feeling that had no return. Then in the midst of all the rushed sensation I look through the glass, the glassed wall that separates the loved from its lover, the mother from her daughter, the son and father; and on the other side right in front of me, there you were, I could see you clearly, you were close to me but separated by this glassed wall. I want to rush to you, meet you like a child runs to her mother in ecstasy, but my legs fail me; my heart races to you but the crippling of my feet hinders me to get to you. Determined to touch, to feel you, I use all my internal might to move, I get closer to find that the reality of our union has been obstructed by this glass barrier, it has imprisoned us from our hunger for the splendor and glory of our world, destructing the eye of our hearts. I kick and bellow to find that I cannot build enough strength to recover. Everything I do seemed to be trapped internally and as if to relieve me from my pain, lulled to an illusory sense of relief, someone taps you on the shoulder motioning you to leave, a cue that your time was up. We are once again denied the affection and compassion that would open us to the beauty and mystery of our world. As we lower our gaze to this sad state of our world, the systematic and appalling brutality of many decades, your image starts to fade. It starts with your eyes distancing to follow the contours of your body diminishing; and as parts of your body leave the scene, the last thing to stay and leave was your heartbeat, it was heard aloud, it was one with mine for sometime. But as I struggled to be freed from the pain, to let go of the world that obstructed us, to cure this horrific psychic agony, the only thing that united us faded to a point of no return. A silence within me that left me suffering and isolated in the heart from you. I was left with my loud, wild heartbeat and my eyes wide open. It was that morning that our baby died from malaria.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* afro'disiatic © 2010
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

MDC harassment continues as ZPF start ‘electioneering’

2010-07-30

http://www.swradioafrica.com/News290710/harassment290710.htm

The harassment of MDC members is continuing across the country amid widespread fears that ZANU PF has started an early election campaign. MDC deputy organising secretary, Senator Morgen Komichi, was arrested on Wednesday at Lupane police station in Matabeleland North province, on charges of communicating so-called ‘falsehoods’. Komichi had gone to Lupane after being told to report to the police station last week, where he was apparently wanted for questioning about comments he made at a party rally in Hwange earlier this year.

Principals drop disputed issues

2010-07-30

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jul30a_2010.html#Z9

Political principals of the inclusive government have cleared many of the outstanding issues - except three which include the swearing-in of Roy Bennett and the controversial appointments of Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono and Attorney-General Johannes Tomana - in an unexpected move towards the resolution of the current inter-party negotiations deadlock. Informed sources said after their meeting on June 8, President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara wrote to South African President Jacob Zuma, the Sadc facilitator on inter-party negotiations, outlining areas of agreement and disagreement.

Row erupts over diplomats

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/cumG6c

A political storm is brewing over the appointment of ambassadors after it emerged that President Robert Mugabe has decided to shift the country's foreign diplomats without consulting the prime minister as required by the law. Insiders at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that Mugabe had recalled Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN in New York, Boniface Chid-yausiku, without consulting Morgan Tsvangirai.

Storm over crisis splits Sadc

2010-07-30

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jul30a_2010.html#Z10

A politial storm is gathering over the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) on whether Zimbabwe should be on the agenda of the regional bloc's forthcoming summit in Windhoek, Namibia, next month.Diplomatic sources said this week the potential row pits President Robert Mugabe's Sadc allies against those who support Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe usually resists having Zimbabwe on the agenda of such meetings, while Tsvangirai wants it to be discussed. A similar battle erupted last year just before the Sadc summit in Kinshasa on September 7-8.

Africa: African First Ladies’ Organization agrees to take on Maternal, Child Health

2010-07-30

https://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/6407

Ugandan First Lady, Janet Kataha Museveni, today presided over an important session of the meeting of African First Ladies, devoted to the theme of the debate that Heads of State had just concluded on “Promoting Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa". The move was seen as a strategic success and welcome to governments and organizations promoting maternal and child health in Africa, because African First Ladies have traditionally focused their work on HIV and AIDS their umbrella organization: Organisation for African First Ladies Against AIDS (OAFLA).

Africa: Gender and Media (GEM) Summit and Awards 2010

Deadline extended

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/a9Z8np

Gender Links, MISA and GEMSA are extending the deadline for submission of the Gender and Media awards 2010 to 3 SEPTEMBER 2010 following the overwhelming response from some countries and a slower response from others. The deadline has been extended in the interest of fairness and to ensure there is equitable regional representation in all categories. Due to time constraints the awards will no longer be held at national level but at the Fourth Gender and Media Summit and Awards in Johannesburg from the 13-15 October 2010. The awards include a cash prize and attendance at the summit.

Africa: Leaders agree on ways forward on maternal and child health

2010-07-30

https://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/6396

The high-level debate which opened in Kampala, Uganda, yesterday on “Promoting Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa, ended this evening with an agreement by Africa’s leaders on an action plan to kick-start the effective implementation of existing resolutions and decisions on maternal, infant and child health in the continent.

Guinea: Women amongst also-rans in presidential elections

2010-07-30

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=52325

Celou Dalein Diallo gained a significant advantage over Alpha Condé, his main rival for the Guinean presidency, when a third candidate said he would back Diallo in a second round of voting in August. But what has become of women candidates for high political office in this West African country? Saran Daraba Kaba, the first and only woman candidate for president, finished a distant 22nd of the 24 candidates who took part in the first round of voting on Jun 27, garnering only 0.11 percent of the vote.

Mozambique: Encouraging young mothers to stay in school

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9XJunL

It's time for a quiet tea break at Macomia Seconday School in northern Mozambique but the schoolyard is abuzz with the cries of babies - enough so that one might mistake it for a kindergarten. The babies are being carted around by a group of older boys and girls, the type you might typically meet at a secondary school. Sometimes they bring the youngsters to their mothers for breastfeeding.

South Africa: Celebrating Herstory

Call for submissions

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/66301

Women’s Day is a day when we commemorate a day on which 56 000 ordinary South African women set out on an extraordinary mission. They rose up and challenged the then Apartheid government on the issue of pass laws. Yes, their collective story was heard but what about the stories of those ordinary South African women who were willing to sacrifice their own freedom for the freedom of our country. As part of our Women’s day celebrations, the Southern African Media and Gender Institute intends to publish a newsletter entitled ‘Celebrating Herstory.”
CELEBRATING HERSTORY

Whoever came up with the term ‘history’ committed a gross gender injustice. Everyday we use language that reinforced the patriarchal system and thus reinforcing male dominance. Does this mean that ‘his story’ is the only story that we should know? Does it mean that ‘her story is not good enough to become part of public consciousness? Some might say that we are trying to unravel something that doesn’t need scrutiny but I would beg to disagree. It is for the very fact that women’s stories are the stories that are omitted from memory. If we have to compare how many men’s stories are documented in relation to women’s stories, it is obvious who the ignored gender is. The omission of women from public memory is a direct consequence of living in a patriarchal society that delegates women to the private sphere of the home while men are present in the public. By not questioning this status quo, and attempting to make her stories heard, we are ignoring the sacrifices and the gains made by thousands of women in our country.

We are approaching Women’s Day, a day when we commemorate a day on which 56 000 ordinary South African women set out on an extraordinary mission. They rose up and challenged the then Apartheid government on the issue of pass laws. Yes, their collective story was heard but what about the stories of those ordinary South African women who were willing to sacrifice their own freedom for the freedom of our country. Moving to today, where are the stories of ordinary South African women who are doing extraordinary things? We all know those women. Women who have risen above their circumstances, who set out to change the world or simply set out to make her own or her families’ life better. I ask this question, why do we not celebrate their greatness? Are their stories not worth documenting?

We seek to address this omission by creating this space where we give you the opportunity to make her stories heard. We want you to tell the stories of those extraordinary women that you know. Those women that you admire and who you think makes the world a better place. You can celebrate these wonderful women in three ways: 1. Life herstories- you detail the life history of someone you know or even yourself. We need to give this the importance that it deserves. 2. Articles on issues that affect women’s lives. 3. Creatively: Celebrate women through drawings, photos, poetry, and any means that inspires you to express the wonder that is women.

Please send any queries and submissions to Bianca Hager at womensmediawatch@samgi.org.za by the 30 July 2010.

DRC: ICC suspends Lubanga release

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/aNMolY

Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese rebel leader, will remain in jail in The Hague after the appeals panel of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it feared he might not reappear if another trial is ordered. Judges at the ICC ordered Lubanga's trial halted on July 8, saying that Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, had not complied with an order to turn over certain information to his defence.

South Africa: Vulnerable children behind the lens

2010-07-30

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/southafrica_54113.html

Slightly built Nokwanda, 12, buried her head in her hands every time someone asked her a question. Her participation in a recent UNICEF-supported photography workshop here looked like it would be limited. Yet when asked to pick a favourite photograph, Nokwanda was transformed. She knew immediately which to choose, pointing to a photo of police officers at the Lyndhurst Primary School, which she attends.

Sudan: Oil companies alleged to be complicit in war crimes

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/a6yTG5

A coalition of 50 non-governmental organizations claims a consortium of international oil companies may have been complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan during the country’s two-decade long civil war. The oil companies accused include the Malaysian energy company Petronas, the Austrian energy group OMV and Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum, which had the majority of the shares and control of the oil areas.

Global: Greece urge to stop criminalizing migrants

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/amu6HY

The Greek authorities should immediately review their policy of locking up irregular migrants and asylum-seekers, including many unaccompanied children , Amnesty International has said in a new report. Greece: Irregular migrants and asylum-seekers routinely detained in substandard conditions, documents their treatment, many of whom are held in poor conditions in borderguard stations and immigration detention centres with no or limited access to legal, social and medical aid.

July edition of Fahamu Refugee e-Newsletter now available

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/66309

Fahamu’s Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the July edition of the Fahamu Refugee e-Newsletter, a monthly publication that aims to provide a forum for providers of refugee legal aid. With a focus on the global South, it aims to serve the needs of legal aid providers as well as raise awareness of refugee concerns among the wider readership of Pambazuka News.

The e-Newsletter follows recent developments in the interpretation of refugee law; case law precedents from other constituencies; reports and helpful resources for refugee legal aid NGOs; and stories of struggle and success in refugee legal aid work. It welcomes contributions from legal aid providers, refugees, and others interested or involved in refugee legal aid.

Kenya: Urban refugees to be sent to camps

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/66328

The population of urban refugees is at risk in Nairobi following the issuance of a public notice by the Government of Kenya requesting them to proceed to the already overcrowded camps of Dadaab. These camps are characterized by harsh living conditions, minimal economic activity, and insecurity, and are situated in remote semi-arid to arid regions with little surface water where the environment is barely able to sustain the local population
The population of urban refugees is at risk in Nairobi following the issuance of a public notice by the Government of Kenya requesting them to proceed to the already overcrowded camps of Dadaab.

These camps are characterized by harsh living conditions, minimal economic activity, and insecurity, and are situated in remote semi-arid to arid regions with little surface water where the environment is barely able to sustain the local population. Therefore, host communities are adamant to prevent any activity by refugees that might negatively affect their fragile environment and economic interests, such as livestock rearing and agriculture. The government encampment policy confines refugees to designated areas thereby rendering possibilities for local integration virtually impossible. The limited access refugees have to local and national economic activities, combined with a very poor resource base in and around the camps, constitute serious constraints for refugees to attain any level of self-sufficiency, let alone local integration. Refugees are therefore almost completely reliant on relief assistance.

During the 1990s, bandit attacks, rape, physical assault, and robbery presented very serious problems in the camps of Dadaab. UNHCR and the Kenyan authorities have taken steps to improve the security situation in the region, including advocating for an increased police, military, and judicial presence in the camps. Although improvements have been made, sexual and gender based violence, physical assault, and other criminal activities continue in the camps.

The refugee population in Dadaab currently stands at roughly 260,000 persons, and UNHCR continues to register new arrivals primarily from neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia on a daily basis; more than 62,000 refugees and asylum seekers were registered in 2009 alone. As a general principle, the entire refugee population in Dadaab is in need of international protection. Those who have been in the camps since the early 1990s have suffered disproportionately; many among this population are survivors of severe violence, and many have been physically maimed, raped, or forced to watch the execution of family members by forces that systematically targeted civilians on account of their ethnicity.

Somalia: UN urges Saudi Arabia to stop expelling Somalis

2010-07-30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10816830

The UN refugee agency has urged Saudi Arabia to stop deporting Somalis, saying 2,000 people have recently been sent to Mogadishu. The UNHCR says those forced back to the Somali capital are at risk. There is almost daily fighting there between Islamist militants and government troops backed by African Union peacekeepers.

Sudan: Refugees find fame in Japan

2010-07-30

http://www.unhcr.org/4c4d9e906.html

Sudanese refugee Josephine Poni Daniel can be as shy as any other 16-year-old when discussing unfamiliar subjects. But ask about her first love, music, and her face brightens and she becomes vivacious and outspoken. "Music is fun; when I write lyrics or sing the music I feel good and forget my troubles," says Josephine, lead singer for The Golden Blue Girls, one of three winners of a music contest that's raising money and awareness of refugees' education needs in far-off Japan.

South Africa: Government 'can't afford public servants' demands'

2010-07-30

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE66T0B520100730

South Africa cannot afford pay demands from thousands of public service workers and hopes a deal can be reached next week before a strike widens to nearly a million workers, a minister said on Friday. Thousands of workers from the Public Servants Association union walked off the job on Thursday, causing little impact so far to Africa's biggest economy. But that could change if the country's biggest labour group makes good on its threat to join the strike next week, which could cripple commerce.

Emerging Actors in Africa news round-up

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/66319

General
World Bank says foreign investors are crowding out African producers
A leaked World Bank report into investors from rich nations buying up African farmland has intensified campaigners' fears that the growing trend is marginalising local producers.
After a spate of investments in African land by sovereign wealth funds looking for gains on rising commodity prices and by countries such as China worried about their own food security, the World Bank launched research into the area. Its report is due to be published next month, but a draft copy leaked to the Financial Times painted a picture of largely speculative investment badly lacking agricultural expertise, and a rush towards countries with lax laws. It mentioned only a handful of successes.
Read More

Uganda: Government calls off oil deal
Uganda will seek the full amount in taxes from the transfer of assets from Heritage oil after all, according to reliable sources who talked to Sunday Monitor. This comes after reports that President Yoweri Museveni personally insisted that the taxes due to the government from the deal - the largest in Uganda's history - be paid in full.
Reliable sources, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, have told this newspaper that the President made his position known at a mid-week meeting he held with the head of the Uganda Revenue Authority, Ms Allen Kagina. The Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Chris Kasaami, attended the meeting which reportedly took place at the President's country home in Rwakitura.
Read More

Africa Times: Singapore leads ASEAN investment into Africa
Africa is on the road to economic recovery because of a growing and dynamic labour force in the cities, an improving technology base and a diversifying agricultural sector according to the World Bank.
Vice president Obiageli Ezekwesili told the inaugural Africa Singapore Business Forum held in Singapore on July 14 that “Africa is turning the corner… it is on the path of an economic rebound.”
Read More




China in Africa
ANC study group to learn what makes China tick
Senior ANC members flew to China yesterday for a two-week study tour that will include hearing a lecture on the role of state-owned enterprises.
The African Union last week called on African countries to look to China for development because the snail's-pace flow of funds from Western nations and the World Bank.
The tour group is led by ANC national chairman Baleka Mbete and includes Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane, Communications Minister Sphiwe Nyanda, Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba.
Read More

Vavi looks to China for ideas on controlling rand
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi this week called for research into how other emerging markets were keeping their currencies competitive and stable. This came after rand strength helped shave off 61 000 South African jobs in the second quarter.
Vavi singled out China as a case study, but advocated a broad-ranging investigation of other developing markets.
Read More

Zambia's Lewanika could be TAZARA's messiah
Founder member of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika, has used his dogged, expressive style to ingrain himself on Zambia's political and social conscience. Now he is head of TAZARA and promising more.
Read More

AU says must replace Western partners with China
The African Union said on Saturday Africa must turn ever more to China for its development because conditions and checks often stalled the flow of funds from Western nations and the World Bank.
Maxwell Mkwezalamba, the AU's economic chief, said Africa must end its reliance on Western money.
"For Africa's development and integration we have depended on the Western world -- we cannot continue to proceed like this," Mkwezalamba told reporters.
Read More

China and Rio Tinto complete Guinea mining deal
Mining giant Rio Tinto has completed a deal with Chinese firm Chalco to enter a joint venture in West Africa.
The agreement follows a memorandum of understanding between Rio and Chalco's parent company Chinalco in March.
The venture will develop Rio's Simandou iron ore project in Guinea.
Read More

Nigeria's refinery project to create 7,000 jobs: official
An estimated 7,000 jobs will be created in Nigeria's southern Bayelsa State when a refinery is built there in a joint project with China, state oil officials said on Thursday.
State-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said in a statement that the Bayelsa refinery is one of three to be built across the country with a total installed capacity of 750,000 barrels per day.
The three 'Greenfield Refineries' will be located in Bayelsa, the commercial capital Lagos and central Kogi state, the statement said.
Read More

China looks to build nuclear plant in SA as it seeks growth in Africa
The Chinese government may build a nuclear plant in SA as part of its investment in Africa's energy sector.
In a lecture, organised by the SA National Energy Association, Standard Bank's Thomas Orr said one of China's five major power-generation groups could invest in a nuclear plant in this country.
Read More

China Building Africa's Economic Infrastructure: SEZs and Railroads
Chinese policymakers see in Africa possible solutions to some of China's most pressing problems, for instance, Beijing's need to secure access to energy resources and other vital minerals to sustain the country's rapid economic growth. Yet Chinese interests in Africa extend beyond energy resources and minerals and clearly include markets, infrastructure development and agriculture. China's operations in Africa are becoming more diversified and multi-dimensional, and the Chinese government as well as private entrepreneurs has seemingly realized the need to look at large regions of Africa in an integrated fashion to maximize the benefits of its growing investments. This new approach has resulted in an ambitious plan, which was announced at the 2006 Forum on China and Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting, to establish five special economic zones (SEZs) in Africa to attract Chinese investment and integrate China's comprehensive economic activities throughout the continent. In spite of the recent global economic downturn, this program appears to be gaining momentum.
Read More

The Chinese Navy’s Emerging Support Network in the Indian Ocean
The ongoing debate in China over whether or not to formalize logistical support agreements for Chinese naval forces in the Indian Ocean is a natural outgrowth of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) expanding presence in the region. As China continues to maintain a task group of warships off the Horn of Africa to conduct counter-piracy patrols, it is cultivating the commercial and diplomatic ties necessary to sustain its forces along these strategic sea-lanes.
Read More

Uganda head lambasts Commonwealth and Commends China
Uganda’s president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has said the western world has squandered cultural links with Africa and mismanaged it by making lectures thereby losing out unnecessarily.
The Ugandan President said this while meeting British Minister for Africa Henry Bellingham at State House in Entebbe. Minister Bellingham who is heading a UK delegation to the 15th Africa Union Summit in Kampala delivered a special message from United Kingdoms’ Prime Minister David Cameron to President Yoweri Museveni.
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China turns on demand power
American journalist Matt Taibbi employed a grotesque analogy last summer to describe the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money".
In the energy industry, a similar phenomenon has arisen to invite respect, admiration and fear - China's appetite for oil. No survey of the oil sector's present and future can now afford to omit the China factor and its multiple ramifications.
This major new reality in geo-economics has just been underscored by a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that reveals that China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest energy consumer.
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Call to recruit women in campaign against HIV/AIDS
Women should be recruited as an active force in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a campaign that has previously addressed them almost exclusively as carriers of the virus, according to study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released on Monday.
Funded by UNAIDS, researchers interviewed more than 1,000 HIV-positive women in 13 provinces either in person or by questionnaire to study its impact on female sufferers, said Bu Wei, a professor at the academy who led the study.
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Zheng He: Symbol of China's 'peaceful rise'
Standing seven feet tall, China's maritime giant Admiral Zheng He led the world's mightiest fleet, with 300 ships and as many as 30,000 troops under his command.
Portrait of Chinese admiral Zheng He Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch, died in 1433 aged 62 and is buried in the Chinese city of Nanjing
Next month, archaeologists will begin work off the coast of Kenya to identify a wreck believed to have belonged to the man some historians believe inspired the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor.
Chinese archaeologists, who arrived in the African country this week, are hoping that the shipwreck could provide evidence of the first contact between China and east Africa.
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China invests heavily in Brazil, elsewhere in pursuit of political heft
Just past a port where workers are building a two-mile-long pier to accommodate huge vessels known as Chinamaxes that will transport iron ore for China’s ravenous steel industry, past berths for tankers to lug oil to Beijing, a city of factories is sprouting on an island almost twice the size of Manhattan. Many of the structures will be built with Chinese investment: a steel mill, a shipyard, an automobile plant, a factory to manufacture oil and gas equipment.
The port project recalls the China of the past decade: a worldwide effort to extract resources for use in the country’s vast manufacturing sector. But the factory city represents something new: an aggressive push to invest in industries overseas to bolster the country’s image and political influence.
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India seeks Congo help to rescue abducted pilot
The Indian Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in contact with the central African nation's government to secure the release of an Indian pilot taken hostage by rebels.
Syed Mazher, who was serving as a co-pilot with a private airline, was taken hostage by Rwandan rebels after they attacked an airplane at a airstrip in Kitambe, about 25 km north of Walikale in the North Kivu province in Congo.
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Unfair to say China's aid leads to Africa's corruption, huge debts: Zambian FM
Zambian Foreign Minister Kabinga Pande has slashed a recent media accusation that China's aid to Africa leads to the continent's government corruption and huge debts, saying it is ungrounded.
"It's unfair to say that China's aid to Africa leads to corruption and huge debut," he told Xinhua in an exclusive interview at the sideline of the ongoing 15th African Union summit in Uganda's capital of Kampala.
"China's loans are soft loans. There is no serious or difficult conditions attached to that and there is no string attached to the loans from China," he said.
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India in Africa
India participates in 15th African Union Summit
New Delhi, July 26 (ANI): An Indian delegation led by Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (West) Vivek Katju participated in the Executive Council Session of the 15th Summit of the African Union held in Kampala, Uganda.
The participation was in keeping with India's consistent engagement with the African Union multilaterally and it's Member States bilaterally.
During the Summit, Vivek Katju and the delegation called on Jean Ping, Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union. arious aspects of the continuing engagement with Africa and the follow-up of the decisions of the India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) of April 2008 were discussed.
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India discusses UN reforms at AU meet
enior Indian diplomats have held discussions on the reform of the UN Security Council during meetings with African countries at the ongoing African Union Summit in Uganda.
A delegation led by Vivek Katju, Secretary (West) in the external affairs ministry, participated in the executive council session held July 22-23. The 15th AU summit is being held July 25-27.
“The issue of UN reform and the common African position was a subject of discussion at the Summit and was also discussed with the foreign ministers, particularly the Committee of 10 of the African Union,” said a press release of the external affairs ministry issued from Kampala Monday.
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India, EU in new bid to clinch free-trade deal
India and the European Union are to hold a fresh series of free-trade talks next month in Brussels in a bid to clinch a deal by the end of the year, an official said.
Chief negotiators for India and its largest trading partner will meet at the European Union headquarters in Brussels in August as part of a push to conclude negotiations on the India-EU free-trade pact by December.
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Indian telecom giant shortlists firms for $1 bn Africa IT outsourcing deal
Bharti Airtel has shortlisted three multinational firms and two home-grown IT majors for its billion dollar plus IT outsourcing contract in Africa, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told ET.
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Reliance, Essar in race to buy BP's Africa assets
Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries and Essar Oil are among about half a dozen firms in race to buy crisis-hit British energy giant BP's fuel marketing assets in east African countries.
BP is selling retail outlets, terminals and aviation fuel stations in Botswana, Tanzania, Namibia, Malawi and possibly also in Zambia, to cover costs related to the worst oil spill in US history, industry sources said.
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Latin America should embrace India trade –IADB
Latin America sends only 0.9 percent of its exports to India, a commodity-hungry country that should be a major growth engine for the region, the Inter-American Development Bank said in a report on Tuesday.
The IADB bemoaned the lack of direct shipping services between Latin America and the South Asian nation of 1.1 billion people and said punitive import taxes were stifling the potential for closer ties at a pivotal time for the global economy.
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Cameron hoping to forge new special relationship with visit to India
When David Cameron stands on the grounds of India's best-known IT company this week and makes his pitch for building a "new special relationship" between Britain and India, he will no doubt have in mind the thoughts of a previous visitor to the Infosys campus.
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In other Emerging Powers News
NGOs slam EU-Brazil plans to develop biofuels in Africa
EU and Brazilian leaders are set to announce a new "triangular co-operation" initiative, under which they will aim to work together in some of the world's poorest countries, but NGOs say the duo's scheme is self-centred and will simply make conditions worse.
At a bilateral summit in Brasilia on Wednesday (14 July), European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are to agree to co-operate on a range of different projects in Portuguese speaking parts of Africa, Haiti and East Timor in the coming years.
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Brazilian firm seeks to grow in Africa with SA's Zest
WEG, a Brazilian multinational electrical manufacturing enterprise, is planning to use its controlling stake in SA’s Zest Group as a launch pad to compete in the electrical equipment market in Africa.
The group, one of Brazil’s top 30 companies, last month concluded a 50% equity deal with Zest, its electric-motor sales partner of more than three decades.
The deal paves the way for WEG to buy out the remaining 50% of shares from the company and is part of WEG’s strategy to use SA to expand on the continent.
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Angola/ "Apex-Brazil" to open a business center in Luanda
A business center, aimed to strenghten investment intentions and support brazilian companies operating in Angola, will be open this year in Luanda by the brazilian agency for promotion of exports and investments "Apex - Brazil", the agency managing and planning director announced today.
Ricardo Schafaefaer said the business center will be a supporting point for angolan and brazilian companies wanting to establish and invest in each of both countries, bringing as benefits for angolan investors the access to the brazilian source of business, trade and investments skills, advisory and consultancy about Brazil.
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Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications
How China is changing Sierra Leone
Andrew Harding, BBC’s Africa Correspondent, discusses the perceptions of Chinese activities in Sierra Leone, and China’s impact in Africa.
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Angola: China or Portugal? Part I - The Unlikely Contender
This is the first of a series of two postings contributed by our South Africa-based consultant, Kirill Riabtsev. In keeping with the Africa focus of our last few postings on this blog, these two postings look at Angola and how the business interests of China and erstwhile colonial power Portugal are competing in this resource-rich African country.
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Podcasts, Reviews and Interviews
When China met Africa: BBC4 Documentary
A television programme focusing on Chinese business investment in Zambia.
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China in Africa: Who is Michael Sata?
Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata has emerged as a central character in the story of China’s engagement with Africa. He has become a staple of the mainstream media’s coverage of the issue, portrayed as a vocal critic of the Chinese, particularly in Zambia. By any measure he plays the role well. Where most African politicians dare not air their concerns or frustrations about the Chinese, Sata is seemingly fearless in his criticisms, giving journalists one provocative quote after another. Eric Olander takes a closer look.
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BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Sanusha Naidu is research director of Fahamu’s Emerging powers in Africa programme.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa: On Eritrea

2010-07-30

http://www.currentanalyst.com/index.php/conflictsregional/135-on-eritrea

In 2000 President Isayas suffered his worst military defeat and humiliation but he turned the event to his personal political advantage. This is central to the continued feud between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Isolation from the rest of the world, particularly the West and hostility towards Ethiopia are fundamental pillars that prop up the current regime- the reason that this system of government came into being and what sustains it every day.

CAR: Poll delay until January

2010-07-30

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE66T0M520100730

Central African Republic has delayed presidential and legislative elections until January 23 from October 24 due to insecurity caused by rebels, according to a presidential decree read over state radio on Friday. The new date comes after three previous election dates in the impoverished country were scrapped over problems with funding and rebel disarmament, leaving President Francois Bozize in power beyond his mandate, which ended in June.

Global: Challenging dictators

2010-07-30

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/07/27/challenging-dictators

At the International Criminal Court (ICC) review conference last month in Kampala, negotiations to add the crime of aggression to the court’s docket topped the agenda. The crime of initiating offensive warfare had been prosecuted after World War II. But when the Rome Conference established the ICC in 1998 as the first permanent court to try crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, it deferred a decision on aggression to another day.

Kenya: Divided by the colours of a new constitution

2010-07-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=90011

Less than three years after a closely fought presidential election plunged Kenya into widespread violence and displaced thousands, the country is bracing itself for another crucial and equally divisive ballot, this time on a new constitution. "There is sufficient justification for people to be afraid, mainly because of hate messages and leaflets asking some communities to leave certain areas," said Ozonnia Ojielo, senior peace and development adviser at the UN Development Programme in Kenya. "There are also political actors using innuendoes."

Kenya: Kibaki reiterates support for draft constitution

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/aUb4bY

Kibaki reiterates support for draft constitution ahead of referendum Kenya - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has reiterated his support for reforms in Kenya ahead of an 4 August referendum on a draft new constitution, which is expected to become law soon after the vote.

Rwanda: Poll 'will not be one-horse race'

2010-07-30

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE66T0D420100730

Rwanda's upcoming presidential poll will be free, fair and more competitive than 2003 when incumbent Paul Kagame won over 90 percent of the vote, its electoral commission said on Friday. Donors say the introduction of a revised electoral code should ensure a peaceful and technically sound ballot, following the European Union's recommendations after the 2008 legislative elections where they found procedural irregularities in over half the polling stations.

South Sudan: Bashir's party raises doubts on referendum

2010-07-30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10806490

President Omar al-Bashir's party has said the referendum on whether south Sudan should secede cannot take place until the internal border is decided. A vote on a possible new country without a clear border would be a recipe for a new war, the NCP says. But the former rebels in charge of the south insist the referendum must be held on time.

West Africa: Nigeria targets 70m voters in fresh registration

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/b1BdPD

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it is targeting 70 million voters in its planned fresh voter registration exercise, after the government acceded to the commission's de mand for 72 billion naira (about US$500 million) to compile a new electoral register ahead of 2011 polls.

Benin: Four ex-ministers may be tried for corruption

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/98krgW

Four former Beninese Ministers may be tried at the country's High Court of Justice for corruption charges, according to a request for indictment from President Boni Yayi to the National Assembly. The Ministers include two former allies of President Yayi and two who served und er the government of his predecessor, Mathieu Kerekou.

Africa: Leaders permit NEPAD to monitor aid pledges

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9gWKdi

African leaders kicked off debate on role of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) in ensuring the economic success of the continent. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the NEPAD must begin to play the role of an African watchdog, with a responsibility of monitoring the release of billions of dollars pledged for the continent's economic, social and environmental de v elopment over the years.

Africa: Skills needed to draw on climate cash

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/aYEB4S

Africa's unified stance at the Copenhagen climate summit last December showed that the continent has woken up to potential 'climate cash' from international mitigation and adaptation programmes and confirmed African leaders' political commitment to tackling climate change. But the skills and infrastructure needed to use climate cash for making sense of local climate change impacts and also for designing and managing sustainable development projects are still thin on the ground in many African countries.

Chad: Nutrient-rich algae can boost women’s incomes and tackle malnutrition

2010-07-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35466

A local variety of the nutrient-rich, blue-green algae known as spirulina could boost incomes for women in Chad who harvest the product as well as help fight nutrition, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported. The agency is running a $1.4 million project in which women are gathering and processing the product, known locally as dihé, from the shallow pools of water on the edges of Lake Chad where it forms at certain times of the year.

Southern Africa: EU backs off on EPA

2010-07-30

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=52313

European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht has appeased leading European civil society organisations about the negotiations for a Southern African economic partnership agreement (EPA), promising "not to put undue pressure" on countries. According to Marc Maes, trade policy officer at 11.11.11, the move signals an "EPA-fatigue" in Europe. 11.11.11, the Flemish North-South Movement working against poverty, protested about the European Commission’s treatment of Namibia.

Southern Africa: Malawi stands firm on conditions for signing EPA

2010-07-30

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=52306

The Malawian government has again stood firm in the face of calls by the European Union (EU) to sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) -- even after top-level EU officials visited the southern Africa to convince it to put pen to paper. The EU delegation, led by the European Commission’s (EC) director for development and EPAs Peter Thompson and EU Ambassador to Malawi Alexander Baum, engaged Malawi’s top trade officials at a two-day meeting on Jul 26 and 27 in the country’s commercial capital, Blantyre.

Africa: Cash in hand keeps HIV at bay - World Bank

2010-07-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89939

Giving young women small, regular cash payments can reduce their dependence on sexual relationships with older men, which also lowers their HIV risk, according to a new study by the World Bank. Malawi's southeastern Zomba district, where the survey took place, has high rates of poverty and HIV - up to 22 percent, compared to a national prevalence of about 12 percent - but the study found that 18 months of cash transfers, with or without conditions attached, decreased the participants' risk of HIV infection by 60 percent.

Africa: Horn of Africa once again polio-free, say UNICEF and partners

2010-07-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35480

The Horn of Africa is once again free of polio, with Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda having reported no wild poliovirus cases for more than a year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners have announced. “Today marks a step towards the achievement of a major objective of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s new strategy – stopping polio in Africa,” the agency stated in a news release.

Africa: Loss to follow-up: health system, not patients, to blame

2010-07-30

http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1499093/

Continuing high rates of low to follow-up in antiretroviral treatment programmes among people already on treatment and those waiting to start treatment are a symptom of health system failures, not the fault of patients, the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference heard last week. In a session at the International AIDS Conference that focused on retention in care of ART patients, studies from Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique were presented that dealt with reducing loss to follow up and treatment default.

Africa: Mapping health budgets and child deaths

2010-07-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89992

As many African countries battle to bring down staggering rates of maternal and child mortality, maternal and child health made for a fitting theme at the African Union (AU) Summit this week in Kampala, Uganda. At the summit, African leaders came under fire for failing to live up to the 2001 Abuja Declaration, in which they agreed to commit at least 15 percent of their national budgets to health. To date, only about five countries have done so.

Gambia: Swine Flu vaccination campaign targets 10% of Gambians

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/by4N5y

The country representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in The Gambia, Dr. Thomas Sukwa, said the vaccination campaign for the Swine Flu, A(H1N1), though not yet reported in the country, targets only 10 per cent of the nation's population.The week-long, nation-wide vaccination campaign, spearheaded by the Ministry of Heath and Social Welfare, in collaboration with the WHO office in Banjul, started Wednesday.

Ghana: Guinea worm reduces by 99%

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/cedZtu

Ghana has achieved 99.99 per cent reduction of the Guinea Worm disease since its inception two decades ago. From a high of 4,136 cases recorded during the peak of its outbreak in 2006, only eight cases have been reported in Ghana since the beginning of January 2010, the last case was recorded in May.

Global: Defeating malaria 'vital to achieving global development targets'

2010-07-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35439

The fight against malaria is integral to boosting women’s and children’s health and achieving the other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told Africa leaders, urging them to build on the progress made so far to defeat the disease. “If you continue to see malaria control as an integral part of reaching the MDGs… of building strong health systems… of improving your people’s well-being… then the success we have seen to date will continue, and grow,” Ms. Migiro said yesterday in remarks to the meeting in Kampala, Uganda, of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA).

Global: Rethinking health assumptions

2010-07-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89835

New research is challenging conventional medical wisdom, forcing health workers and governments in cash-strapped countries to confront new risks and rethink old ones. IRIN looks at what has been accepted as medical truths - until now.

Rwanda: Free mosquito nets save lives

2010-07-30

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/rwanda_54112.html

Seraphine Kabasinga, mother of four, has always been scared of malaria. She lives in an endemic zone, just an hour east of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. “I would use tree branches like cypress as mosquito repellents on windows and close our doors before sunset to protect my family from mosquito bites,” she said. “Today, young mothers are luckier than I was, because if you are pregnant and you go to a health centre for regular checkups, the government gives you a free net.”

South Africa: Mass testing campaign 'unjustified if people fail to receive treatment'

2010-07-30

http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1496528/

South Africa’s campaign to test 15 million people for HIV in one year risks being implemented in a way that undermines people’s human rights, the activist Mark Heywood told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference in Vienna last Thursday. Incidents of coercive testing have been recorded but the lack of effective monitoring procedures means that it’s impossible to know whether those incidents are widespread or not.

Uganda: Study shows centrality of human rights to MSM HIV prevention

2010-07-30

http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1495580/

In Kampala, Uganda, men who have sex with men who have suffered homophobic violence or abuse are five times more likely to be HIV-positive than other men, Joseph Barker told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference on Tuesday. Just under 40% of men had ever been physically abused, four out of ten had been blackmailed at some point, and a quarter had been forced to have sex.

Zimbabwe: Health ministry promises to abolish clinic fees for expectant mothers

2010-07-30

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jul30a_2010.html#Z7

The Zimbabwean Ministry of Health has announced that it plans to do away with hospital and clinic fees for pregnant women in a bid to reduce maternal deaths, particularly in rural communities, and has also resolved to establish maternity waiting homes, again emphasizing improved maternal health care in the countryside. The ministry will look to international donors to help fund such new policies and amenities for expectant mothers.

DRC: Where schools have flapping plastic walls

2010-07-30

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89885

It is a sunny day at the Mashango primary school in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC’s) North Kivu Province. That is good news for teacher Dusaba Mbomoya who is holding a geography exam under a roof filled with holes in a classroom where flapping pieces of plastic do duty as walls. Even the blackboard has holes large enough for students to peer through. When it rains we allow the pupils to go back to their houses,” said Mbomoya. Those who want to wait out the rain at school sometimes shelter in newly-constructed latrines put in by an international organization.

Tunisia: Unemployment haunts college graduates

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/aEj2CE

Tunisian college graduates are prepared for the demands of their discipline, but face great challenges in finding a job in their own field. "Most of the institute graduates are still unemployed or have started working in fields not related to their discipline," said Hayet Et Beji, a graduate of Tunisia's institute for heritage preservation. "What made the higher education ministry abandon the discipline is that it has no feasible way of integrating its graduates into the job market."

Africa: Uganda rejects AU gay rights group

2010-07-30

http://www.mask.org.za/uganda-rejects-au-gay-group/

Uganda has opposed the pending recognition of a South African gay rights group, Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), as an official observer at all African Union conferences, and to contribute to the NGO’s forum. “The African Charter and the Constitutive Act setting up the AU tell us to protect African values among our key objectives. These (gay rights) are alien to our culture and values. We shall continue to resist and fight them because common sense dictates against them. They are outlawed in Uganda and most African countries,” the foreign service officer, ambassador Rosette Nyirinkindi, asserted.

South Africa: Activists speak out against diplomat's homophobic utterances

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/cVkJU6

Various Civil Society Organisations have called on the South African government to withdraw a homophobic statement made by SA representative at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva 16 June 2010 ,calling it “insensitive” to the persecution of Lesbian Gays, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people and contrary to South Africa’s constitution which is opposes discrimination.

Zimbabwe: Charges against GALZ employee dropped

2010-07-30

http://www.mask.org.za/galz-employee-elated-as-charges-are-droped/

GALZ have welcomed the acquittal of one of their employee Ignatius Mhambi, on the charge of allegedly being in possession of “pornographic material” this just days, after Zimbabwe’s first Lady Grace Mugabe coined homosexuality as “taboo and satanic”. Chesterfield Samba, Director of GALZ said “the Judge on her finding said Magistrate Mupindu who presided over the matter said that there was no prima facie evidence to prove the essential element of the case which, are possession of the pornographic material in question.”

South Africa: Ex-students fined over 'racist video'

2010-07-30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10815571

Four white South Africans have been fined $2,700 (£1,700) each for making a video humiliating five black university workers and posting it online. The former students at the University of Free State pleaded guilty to crimen injuria.

Cote d'Ivoire: Trafigura fined €1 million for toxic waste

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/azhorb

Frans Bauduin, presiding judge, said in the Amsterdam district court that the Swiss-based company was guilty of breaking European waste export laws. It was also found guilty of concealing what the charge sheet referred to as the "harmful nature" of the waste on board the Probo Koala ship that arrived at the port of Amsterdam in July 2006, but was redirected to the Ivory Coast.

Global: Carbon Market ‘growth’ mainly fraudulent, World Bank report shows

2010-07-30

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44896

The global carbon market, which trades “pollution rights” to encourage industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions, grew in 2009. Far from signaling a success, this reflects a huge increase in fraud, the dumping of surplus emissions permits by industry, and a rise in financial speculation.

Tanzania: Conservation project helps save forest

2010-07-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35449

Thousands of hectares of fragile mountainous forest in north-eastern Tanzania have been preserved through a recently completed seven-year biodiversity project managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Eastern Arc Mountains project, financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), was concluded last month after an independent evaluation reported that at least 10,000 hectares of forest had been saved from destruction, and that the rate of forest loss had been reduced by 10 per cent.

Global: World Bank warns on ‘farmland grab’ trend

2010-07-30

http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/zimbabwe/5729.html

Investors in farmland are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, according to the draft of a report by the World Bank. “Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.

Global: Help stop Terminator’s return!

La Via Campesina call to action

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/atTno3

Four years after the moratorium on Terminator technology was reaffirmed by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), proposals to develop and commercialize ‘genetic-use restriction technologies’ (GURTs) are back on the agenda for policymakers and the biotechnology industry. Terminator is a threat to food sovereignty and agrobiodiversity: ending the moratorium on Terminator will increase control of seed by transnational corporations (TNCs) and restrictions on farmers’ rights to save and plant harvested seed. Additionally, pollen from genetically-modified (GM) crops with Terminator will contaminate non-GM and organic crops, and native plant species.

Nigeria: Suspected political party supporters assault journalists during election

2010-07-30

http://www.ifex.org/nigeria/2010/07/27/otabor_assaulted/

On 24 July 2010 at about 12:15 p.m., thugs suspected of being loyal to the Action Congress (AC) political party assaulted three journalists in Edo state during the re-run election for a constituency in the state House of Assembly. The thugs, numbering over 30, were reportedly led by a leader of the AC, the ruling party in Edo state.

Somalia: Speak out for Somali journalists

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9GGoin

Somalia is one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a journalist. More than 30 reporters have been killed by armed groups since 1992 - including nine in 2009. The most recent journalist killing occurred on 4 May 2010, when three gunmen shot dead broadcast journalist Sheik Nur Mohamed Abkey as he was returning home from the state-run Radio Mogadishu. Members of the armed opposition group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the killing.

Swaziland: Prince threatens journos reporting 'bad things about the country'

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/bk94JZ

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned death threats and outrageous claims made last week by a member of Swaziland's royal family against local journalists over their critical coverage of the country's leadership. During a 21 July public forum called the Smart Partnership National Dialogue in the central commercial city of Manzini, Prince Mahlaba, brother of Swaziland's absolute ruler King Mswati III, was quoted by local media as saying: 'I want to warn the media to bury things that have the potential of undermining the country rather than publish all and everything even when such reports are harmful to the country's international image. Journalists who continue to write bad things about the country will die.'

Zimbabwe: Media commission grants more licenses

2010-07-30

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=6790

The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) has granted licences to four new media houses, its chairperson Godfrey Majonga said. The registration comes two months after the new media watchdog issued licences to three daily newspapers -- The NewsDay, The Daily News and The Daily Gazette.

Africa: Leaders agree on action plan to boost Somali force

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/cX36QV

African leaders have agreed on concrete steps to tackle the insecurity in Somalia after a three-day debate, dominated by the twin bombings in Kampala, the venue of their 15th meeting on pressing African affairs, an African Union (AU) spokesman said. "The troops are ready," AU Commission's spokesman Noureddin Mezni told PANA after several African leaders ended a mini-summit to plan action against the insecurity in Somalia.

Somalia: Violence and conflict worsen humanitarian situation

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/db0h0b

Renewed fighting in Mogadishu and other areas of Somalia since May 2009 has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians and also exacerbated the already desperate humanitarian situation of existing internally displaced people (IDPs), in particular the children and women among them. About 200,000 people have been displaced since January 2010, in addition to the estimated 1.5 million who remained displaced at the end of 2009. In Somaliland, thousands of families were displaced as a result of fighting between ‘government’ forces and a new rebel group.

Sudan: Blue helmets come under fire in western Darfur, UN reports

2010-07-30

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35471

Peacekeepers on patrol in the west of the war-ravaged Sudanese region of Darfur were ambushed today by unidentified gunmen, with seven blue helmets sustaining injuries, the United Nations reported.
According to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the troops returned fire on their attackers, who fled the scene. The joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, immediately sent reinforcement troops to the scene of the clashes.

Sudan: Past and Future of UNAMID

DRDC

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9PVkCa

The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the African Union/United Nation Hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID). This new DRDC and HAND Briefing Paper entitled "Past and Future of UNAMID: Tragic Failure or Glorious Success?" attempts to provide critical analysis of the role of UNAMID in Darfur and to advocate for measures to enhance its work.

Kenya: A mobile payment trifecta

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9aKwZU

Kenya is quickly gaining a competitive advantage in the mobile payments space. Led by mobile operator giant Safaricom with their Mpesa product, the market locally sees huge value in mobile money transactions. Add to that a regulatory system that is relaxed enough for innovation to be encouraged, and you have a great space for interesting things to happen.

South Africa: New model to get broadband to under-served communities

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/9rX7fP

Broadband for All aims to provide broadband connectivity to South Africa’s under-served areas through a community-centric model rather than a telco-driven model. The model leverages wireless-mesh technologies to link priority government sites and high bandwidth users such as schools, municipalities and government offices, who in turn provide a link to smaller customers such as businesses, NGOs and individuals.

People's food, people's sovereignty

CLP Newsletter, Edition 6

2010-07-30

http://bit.ly/aSLsAq

Edition 6 of the Chruch Land People newsleteer share some aspects of these different places and the struggles of the people there. There are many things in common across the different experiences and places. But it is also very important to understand the actual situation of each place. In each case, it is necessary to respect the thinking, strategies and leadership of the people over their own lives and struggles. When those who suffer take back their own peoples’ power and take their own struggles forward, then there is the possibility to really transform the situation for the better and to really ensure that others and outsiders (like the government or NGOs) work in a positive way with the people to achieve that transformation.

Kenya: Second Storymoja Writing for Children workshop

Saturday July 31st - Saturday Sept 11th

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/66314

Second Storymoja Writing for Children Workshop will start on 31st July, 2010. We will meet for 3 hours on Saturdays, 10am-1pm, and for 2 hours on Mondays from 6pm – 8pm. Although the skill acquired will apply to all fiction-writing, the workshop will concentrate on developing series-books for the 10-14 year age range.
Our Second Storymoja Writing for Children Workshop will start on 31st July, 2010. We will meet for 3 hours on Saturdays, 10am-1pm, and for 2 hours on Mondays from 6pm – 8pm. Although the skill acquired will apply to all fiction-writing, the workshop will concentrate on developing series-books for the 10-14 year age range.

The objectives of the workshop:
· To help interested writers learn critical craft skills to improve their fiction writing
· To encourage writers with the potential of developing engaging stories for children to aim for publication
· To publish at least six books written by participants as an outcome of the workshop

The workshop leader is Muthoni Garland.

The cost of attending the workshop is Ksh 12,000. We will offer partial to full scholarships to those unable to pay the full amount but show great promise. Please submit a sample of your work for consideration to Densu@storymojaafrica.co.ke

If we accept the work you develop during the workshop for publication, Storymoja will work with you to edit your work to international quality, offer standard author royalties and aggressively market your book.

Apply now!

Tanzania: Sustainable Microenterprise and Development Program (SMDP)

October 11–October 23, 2010, Zanzibar

2010-07-30

http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/smdp/Tanzania-main.html

The Carsey Institute is very pleased to announce the SMDP-Tanzania, which will be held in Stonetown, Zanzibar, at the Zanzibar Ocean View Resort. The Institute will use the island environment as our classroom, where students will see sustainable development in action. This is an intensive and highly relevant training program for senior management professionals from microfinance institutions, environmental NGOS, enterprise development organizations, government ministries, private donor organizations, religious and faith-based development organizations, and academic institutions.

A study of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria

CODESRIA

2010-07-30

http://www.codesria.org/spip.php?article771&lang=fr

This report on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria is part of a broader project on Modelling Success : Governance and Institution Building in West Africa, being implemented by the Consortium for Development Partnerships (CDP), a community of institutions dedicated to collaborative policy-oriented research and capacity-building in North America, Europe and West Africa. The first phase of the project was jointly coordinated by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Programme of African Studies (PAS), Northwestern University, USA (2004-2008).

Global: Lasting Impacts - August issue

Appropriate Technology

IDRC

2010-07-30

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-157039-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

The August issue of IDRC's Lasting Impacts is entitled "Appropriate Technology". One of the topics discussed in this issue is the development of simple “mini” dehulling machines for use by small local enterprises. The technology was designed in the 1970s by the Prairie Research Laboratory of Canada’s National Research Council, and since modified and adapted by researchers in several African countries.

Africa Coordinator - FIAN

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/66308

Position: Africa Coordinator
Salary: 32.000 and 51.000 Euro
Based: Heidelberg, Germany
Duration: Full-time, with 6 month probation
Closing date: 23th August 2010



FIAN – FoodFirst Information & Action Network International campaigns globally for the realisation of the right to food. FIAN works with members and partners in over 50 countries and enjoys consultative status with the UN ECOSOC.

FIAN’s International Secretariat is looking for an Africa Coordinator, based in Heidelberg, Germany

This is a full-time position with a 6 month probation period.

Primary Tasks:
- Research and preparation of interventions on violations of the human right to adequate food in Africa (;
- Networking with FIAN affiliates, peasant farmers and women organizations, NGOs, networks as well as other counterparts at regional and national levels in Africa;
- Carry out and support advocacy work at local, national, regional and UN level on policy and legal issues relevant to the right to adequate food in Africa;
- Planning and holding of training workshops with various actors in Africa;
- Supervising and accompanying the organizational development plans and strategies of FIAN International in the region.

We expect:
- Work experience with Africa in a relevant field (human rights, issues related to food security and land, food sovereignty, nutrition or agricultural and rural development), with experience working with local CSOs and/or social movements);
- Good advocacy skills;
- Strong writing skills to produce various reports for different audiences;
- Experience of Project Management, with relevant administration and monitoring skills;
- Experience of, or interest in, organisational development processes and gender issues;
- Genuine interest in and enjoyment of working with volunteers and activists;
- Intercultural competence;
- Flexibility, ability to work well under pressure and willingness to travel abroad frequently (including visits to affected communities);
- Excellency in written and spoken French and English. Knowledge of Portuguese is welcome.

We offer:
- Work in an internationally renowned Human Rights-Organisation

- Being part of a highly motivated and intercultural team

- Gross-Annual Salary between 32.000 and 51.000 Euro (depends on age and familiar situation, including health insurance and pension scheme.

To apply, please send your CV together with a cover letter and copies of academic transcripts, academic/work references, preferably in ONE PDF, to africa@fian.org by 23th August 2010.
Only email applications are accepted. We encourage especially persons of African origin to apply for this position.

Fahamu seeks consultants

Expression of interest to develop curriculum for social justice courses

2010-07-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/66298

ackground
Fahamu focuses on working with grassroots social movements and organizations that address the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized in society. We do so because we believe that the potential impact of these organizations to create change will enhance participatory democracy and human rights in the Africa.

Based on our long term needs to support social movements and grassroots organizations, we intend to deliver cutting edge human rights education using a diversity of tools and platforms to strengthen these movements and assist them in creating the change that they seek.

This has been necessitated by the fact that grassroots social movements and organizations in Africa face a dearth of access to knowledge, information and learning tailored to their needs.
Within this framework Fahamu has planned to develop courses and training packs that promote competencies in the following themes,informed by a needs assessment with our constituents, trainings alumni and beneficiaries;
• Movement building and grassroots organizing in Africa
• Africa-centred advocacy
• New tactics in human and peoples' rights
• Sexuality and reproductive health rights

Objective of the assignment
Fahamu is looking for consultants to coordinate the curriculum development process for these courses using participatory approaches.

Scope of work
Each course curriculum development consultant will be expected to meet the following specific tasks:
• Plan and conduct a learning needs assessment with Fahamu’s alumni, constituents and partners
• Analyse and share results of the LNA
• Analyse and evaluate existing tools and training materials on the course themes by organisations or institutions
• Draft and share with Fahamu a curriculum development process
• Manage discussion/planning sessions of the curriculum development committees /partners
• Coordinate review of the first and second curriculum drafts and incorporate feedback.
• Facilitate curriculum pre-testing and validation process

Expected outcomes
• Curriculum development guide /summary
• Course curriculum
• Curriculum development process report

Consultancy duration
The assignment is to expected to take 90 days .

Skills required
• Advanced university degree in education,social studies, international law and/or human rights;
• Proven experience in curriculum development; use of adult education methodologies; developing training manuals and engagement in activities of social justice
• Experience working with and in community based organizations and social movement in Africa.
• Experience in conducting qualitative research using various methods
• Excellent oral and written skills in English
• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent facilitation skills
• Be creative and take own initiative
• Able to work to tight deadline

Application Procedures

Interested candidates are expected to send an abstract not exceeding 600 words on how they will manage the curriculum development process and the topics they intend to cover in the specific course.
The abstract should be sent together with a copy of the C.V to winnie@fahamu.org

The deadline of application is 4th August 2010. Only shortlisted candidates will be notified .

Fahamu