Back Issues

Let there be thousands of Cancuns for climate justice!

La Via Campesina calls for mobilisation

2010-11-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/68884

Meanwhile, echoing the Via Campesina call for thousands of Cancun, we call on social movements, popular organisations and all people of the world to amplify the resistence in Cancun and to organise thousands of protests and actions to reject false solutions and to support a people’s agenda for climate justice. We declare ourselves in permanent mobilisation during the UNFCCC conference and especially on December 7, the date of the mass farmers protest in Cancun and International Day of Action "Thousands of Cancuns".

Wherever your are: Join us!

Mobilisations can take many shapes: direct actions, parties, markets, festivals, discussions or exhibitions.... They can take place in any city, village, school or community.

Let us know what you are planning to do (when and where) by sending us a note before November 25.

And send us your posters, announcements, articles, pictures, videos...
They will be posted on the Thousands of Cancun web page.

Write to:
<boa.monjane@viacampesina.org>
<alessandra@marchemondiale.org>
<david.heller@foeeurope.org>

Share your videos by sending them to www.wsf.net and freely use the other videos on line to create our alternative TV channel...

World March of Women
Friends of the Earth International
La Via Campesina
-----
International Operational Secretariat
La Via Campesina
Jl. Mampang Prapatan XIV/5, Jakarta Selatan 12790, Indonesia
Tel: +62-21-7991890
Fax:+62-21-7993426
Web: www.viacampesina.org

Samir Amin UK tour

29 November – 2 December 2010

2010-11-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/68885

Journalist Study Tour to India 2011: FAHAMU Emerging Powers in Africa Programme

Call for applications

2010-11-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/68704

Call for applications

Journalist Study Tour to India 2011: FAHAMU Emerging Powers in Africa Programme

The Fahamu Emerging Powers in Africa Programme is pleased to announce a call for applications for its Journalist Study Tour to India. Four successful applicants will be chosen to participate in a 6 day study tour. African media professionals in print, broadcast, radio and online fora throughout Africa are encouraged to apply for this study tour. African lecturers from journalism schools and media programmes on the continent may also apply.

1. Introduction

There is a growing need for independent inquiry and investigation into the engagement of India in Africa from African media sources- this as media coverage has been largely dominated and influenced by Western media reports. This becomes particularly important as Indian corporate interest, aid, bilateral trade and investment in Africa continues to grow. Furthermore, India will host the forthcoming India Economic Summit in November 2010, while the second India-Africa Forum Summit will take place in Africa in 2011 following the first Summit concluded in April 2008 in India. These events will provide important outcomes related to both India and Africa’s development path, with consequences relevant to both Africans and Indians alike. Within this context the need for greater collaboration and interaction amongst African and Indian media will become ever more pertinent.

The Fahamu Emerging Powers in Programme is therefore pleased to announce a call for applications for its Journalist Study Tour to India. Four successful applicants will be chosen to participate in a study tour to India that aims to:

- Strengthen the capacity of African media commentators on India's engagement with Africa
- Facilitate greater understanding of perceptions of India in Africa, and vice versa
- Expand on knowledge amongst African media of India’s political, economic, societal and media landscape
- Create an opportunity for African media organisations and journalism schools to develop long-term relationships, collaborations and exchanges with representatives from Indian media organisations and institutions
- Provide a platform to facilitate the implementation of capacity building projects and greater media coverage amongst African media on India's activities in Africa
- Include greater media participation in discussions and advocacy in India and in Africa about India's role in Africa
- Include visits to various Indian media organisations, associations, research institutes and journalism schools.

2. Call for Applications

Media professionals in print, broadcast, radio and online fora throughout Africa are encouraged to apply for this study tour. Lecturers from journalism schools and media programmes in Africa may also apply. Applicants must:

-Provide frequent reports to their national, regional, or local print media, radio, television channels or online fora on topics related to India's activities in Africa; or lecture at a journalism school or training programme at a higher education institution in Africa

-Have 8- 10 years experience as a journalist or journalism lecturer

-Be fluent in English

-Have a valid passport and comply with their country's visa criteria for travel to India.

The following costs will be reimbursed:

- Return ticket, economy class to India
- Accommodation in India for the duration of study tour,
- Visa costs,
- Meals and transport for duration of study tour.

The study tour will take place in January 2011.

Applications close on 1 December 2010 and successful applicants will be notified in second week of December 2010.

3. Requirements

All applications are to be submitted electronically and must include:

- A current resume including professional work history

-A 500 word article on a topic that is currently relevant to the India-Africa engagement

-A brief proposal in English outlining a story you wish to cover in Africa related to Africa-India relations and that will be of interest to your target audience

- A letter of recommendation from your organisation head/faculty head . If journalist applicants are not employed directly through a media organisation, please provide a letter of support from the organisation to which you are affiliated, including your relationship to the organisation

- A letter, signed by your (affiliate) organisation or faculty head, motivating how participation in the study tour will benefit your professional work and the work of your organisation. This should include an action plan detailing how your experience in India will be incorporated into further capacity building and knowledge development within your organisation/journalism school in the three months following completion of the study tour

- Provide samples of three or four professional pieces of written work/manuscripts that have been printed or broadcast in the last 12 months; or an outline of courses taught if a lecturer in a journalism school/programme.

-Please ensure that all documents are compressed and/or zipped in compressed files to ensure all applications can be uploaded.

-Applications must be submitted in English

4. Concluding Remarks

A contract will be signed by participants requiring the following obligations to be met following conclusion of the tour:

- Produce a commentary piece for the Fahamu Emerging Powers in Africa Newsletter based on their experience in India incorporating topical issues related to Africa-India relations

- Make regular contributions on civil society issues for publication in the Fahamu Emerging Powers in Africa Newsletter

- Provide a follow up report detailing the implementation and outcomes of a capacity building activity completed through the participants (affiliate) organisation or journalism school within three months of completing the study tour.

Please direct all queries and applications to:

Ms Hayley Herman
Programme Officer
Emerging Powers in Africa Programme
Email: hayley@fahamu.org

Haiti 2010: Exploiting disaster

Part II

Peter Hallward

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68863

cc IFRC‘For the last twenty years, the most powerful political and economic interests in and around Haiti have waged a systematic campaign designed to stifle the popular movement and deprive it of its principal weapons, resources and leaders,' writes Peter Hallward. January’s earthquake ‘triggered reactions that carried and that are still carrying such measures to entirely new levels’.

* Sections I and II of this article were published in Pambazuka News, Issue 504.

III

As untold thousands of bodies were left to rot in the rubble of Port-au-Prince, in February and March international attention turned to plans for the massive reconstruction process. Almost every credible observer agreed about many of the most urgent things that needed to happen.[36] The recovery had to be Haitian-led. The priority had to be measures that would empower ordinary Haitian people to regain some control over their lives, to gain or regain access to an education, an income, a place to live, a future for themselves and their families. The internationally-imposed neoliberal policies that for decades have devastated the agrarian economy and reduced the state sector to an impotent façade had to be dropped and then forcefully reversed. There had to be massive and systematic investment in essential public services, in all parts of the country. Genuine Haitian sovereignty, popular, economic and political, had to be restored.

Instead, the actual reconstruction process has mainly conformed to precisely the same old tendencies that have made Haiti so vulnerable to natural, economic and political disaster in recent decades. The great majority of Haitian people have been entirely excluded from all meaningful participation in the planning or execution of reconstruction work. Apart from a series of forums that began at the Aristide Foundation in Tabarre in March, there has been little or no attempt to bring 'large groups of Haitians together to ask for their opinions, their input, or their stories.'[37] Even so-called 'civil society' organisations and groups (including PAPDA, ENFOFANM, GARR, SOFA, the MPP and so on) nurtured as part of the anti-Lavalas campaign before and immediately after the 2004 coup have been shut out of this new phase of Haiti's 'transition to democracy.'[38] No significant measures have been taken to stimulate the local agrarian economy or to encourage the decentralisation of people, resources and investment. The strategic plan drafted in early 2009 by neoliberal 'development' economist Paul Collier and subsequently adopted by the UN's reconstruction team remains geared above all to the exploitation of Haitian poverty, as the most reliable means of generating new profits for the benefit of elite and multinational corporations. The political framework that will force implementation of this plan remains one in which the autonomy of Haiti's people and government is reduced more or less to zero.

One of the most striking features of the relief effort was the almost automatic decision of the 'international community' to work through their own agencies and NGOs, rather than the Haitian state or grassroots popular organisations. For every dollar of US aid to Haiti in the first weeks after the disaster, only a single penny was received by the Haitian government.[39] Six months on, of the US$1.8 billion for earthquake relief sent to Haiti, Paul Farmer notes, 'less than 2.9% has so far gone to the government.'[40] In February, Haiti's president René Préval and his ministers began to complain more loudly about the way foreign governments and NGOs had taken control of the relief and reconstruction effort. In early March, Préval called on the United States to 'stop sending food aid' to Haiti 'so that our economy can recover and create jobs.'[41] Other Haitian leaders 'including Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are not happy with the way the aid money is being delivered', reported the AP on 5 March: 'the NGOs don’t tell us [...] where the money’s coming from or how they’re spending it.'[42] On 27 March, speaking from the main hospital in Port-au-Prince, Partners in Health medical director Dr Joia Mukherjee confirmed that in practice, international management of relief involved 'the real disempowerment of the government. The entire response has bypassed the government in its entirety and this is very worrisome for people in Haiti.' At a time when hundreds of millions of dollars were starting to funnel through foreign and NGO agencies, the government still had no access to 'funds for general operating costs, like paying people’s salaries. For us, the most clear example is the general hospital, [...] the only public referral hospital in the city – [where] salaries haven’t been paid for 4.5 months. You have doctors and nurses and other staff living in their cars, living on the street, living in tents and they haven’t been paid.'[43]

The subordinate status of the Haitian people and government was made crystal clear in the run-up to the decisive international donors conference held at the UN's New York headquarters on 31 March 2010. The total amount pledged by conference participants came to the substantial sum of US$5.3 billion over eighteen months (with an additional US$4.6 billion anticipated, in theory, for subsequent years). Of this US$5.3 billion, the only direct support pledged to the Haitian government amounted to just US$350 million (i.e. 6.6 per cent of the total), set aside to cover unpaid salaries of state employees. The key decision, however, involved the creation of a mainly foreign body to decide on the allocation of these promised billions, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). The commission is jointly chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, and former US President (and former Haiti occupier) Bill Clinton. (Original plans for a 24-member board – 11 Haitians along with 13 foreigners representing international financial institutions and the larger donor nations – had to be revised, in the face of subsequent protests, to allow for numerically equal Haitian/foreign representation). Once plans are approved by this IHRC, another group of foreign technocrats and World Bank officials will then supervise the subsequent spending.[44]

No doubt some degree of centralised investment coordination is better than the debilitating fragmentation that has hitherto prevailed in the Haitian 'republic of NGOs', NGOs that even before the earthquake provided around three-quarters of local public services. As Bellerive points out, before the IHRC was established, '100% of the money pledged to Haiti was decided by the one giving it', so a move toward 50 per cent is a step forward of sorts.[45] Nevertheless, there is no disguising the fact that Haitians will serve as the junior partners on this commission, in ways that none of the donor countries themselves would ever contemplate. In the weeks after the UN conference, the largest donors held up initial disbursement of the promised billions until a sufficiently cowed Haitian government was prepared to offer formal acknowledgement of its subordination. As Yves Engler explains, 'the international community – led by the US, France and Canada – demanded the Haitian parliament pass an 18-month long state of emergency law that effectively gave up government control over the reconstruction.'[46] When parliamentary terms expired in Haiti in May 2010, the IHRC took over as the de-facto government of the country, and in terms of actual power and influence it will remain in charge well after new legislators are elected in November.

One of the main reasons why the Haitian government is in no position to argue with the terms dictated to it on 31 March is that long-term international insistence on the privatisation of publicly-owned assets have stripped it of direct control over most of the resources and skills required to maintain some control over its economy (let alone cope with a full-scale disaster). Transport, construction, education, energy, health-care, agriculture, banking – virtually every component of every sector has already been sold off to members of Haiti's tightly integrated business community. State owned factories of two essential products, flour and cement, were privatised in 1997, during Préval's first administration. A year into his second administration, Préval announced the privatisation of Haiti's most valuable state-owned asset, the national telephone company (Téléco), and by mid 2007 almost half of the workforce, some 2,800 employees, had already been laid off. Téléco has been one of the few reliable sources of public revenue and employment in neoliberal Haiti, and Téléco workers protested the privatisation process from start to finish.[47] To no avail; four months after the earthquake, in early May 2010, the government finally sold a majority stake to a subsidiary of the Vietnamese army, for a mere US$59 million. (Over these same years, the Irish company Digicel rapidly expanded to take a commanding position in Haiti's substantial and lucrative mobile phone market, and by 2008 it was already generating revenues of more than US$250 million).[48]

Today, Patrick Elie notes, 'Haiti is the most privatized country in the world. Almost everything that could be privatized here has been, and the only reason prisons have not been privatized is because it is not yet profitable for them to do so.'[49] As a result, the Haitian government has lost some essential abilities – the ability to create jobs for large numbers of people, to appropriate needed land and resources, to produce vital construction materials and other goods – precisely at the moment of greatest need. By 2009, 65 per cent of Haiti's budget already came from external sources[50], and such far-reaching dependence breeds far-reaching deference. Although most of Haiti's crippling international debt was slowly forgiven over the course of 2010 (as a result of public pressure the IMF reluctantly cancelled Haiti's outstanding debt of US$268 million on 21 July, while simultaneously insisting that urgently needed credit should take the form of a new US$60m loan, to which the usual macroeconomic strings will apply), needless to say donor countries have stubbornly refused to acknowledge let alone discuss the several far-reaching ways in which they owe money to Haiti, rather than the reverse.[51]

Even in the wake of January 2010, no significant steps have been taken to palliate let alone reverse the neoliberal privatisation process. Even now, the depth and urgency of domestic needs are not enough to overturn the basic 'development' model that has been imposed on Haiti for decades: Orientation of the country's economy in line with the interests of local sweatshop owners and international consumers, privileging export-oriented agriculture, low-wage jobs, and tourism.[52] Punitive trade measures drove small Haitian farmers out of business and led to the massive population explosion in Port-au-Prince in recent decades; when so little aid materialised in the first weeks after the earthquake, more than half a million people retreated to their villages and farms, or what remains of them. With a little support they might well have stayed there. With modest job creation and credit facilities in the countryside, with small amounts of money for seeds and fertiliser, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out in late January, 'Haiti's food production could double or triple in the next few years, sustaining the country and building a new rural economy.'[53] But as usual, Haiti's small farmers received little or nothing. Only a paltry US$23 million of the UN's initial request for emergency funds was intended for the agrarian sector, and by the end of February the UN admitted that even this money still hadn't been received. 'In the countryside', Reed Lindsay observed in early March, 'there is no evidence of any humanitarian aid, much less for agriculture.'[54] As a result, confirms Mark Schuller, 'with no jobs, no aid, no prospects of rural development, nothing to keep people in the provinces, the bulk of this reverse migration was undone, and Port-au-Prince is once again a magnet for those seeking jobs.'[55]

IV

Although the rhetoric has recently evolved to take more notice of local sensibilities, over the last several decades the substance of international development policy has remained remarkably consistent. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, up in the higher, wealthier and mostly undamaged parts of Pétionville everyone already knew that it's the local residents 'who through their government connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses' would once again pocket the lion's share of international aid and reconstruction money.[56] At the same time, their counterparts in the US, represented by powerful think tanks and lobbyists like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or the RAND Corporation, were quick to see that (as RAND's James Dobbins, one of Clinton's former special envoys to Haiti, put it) 'this disaster is an opportunity to accelerate oft-delayed reforms', including 'breaking up or at least reorganizing the government-controlled telephone monopoly. The same goes with the Education Ministry, the electric company, the Health Ministry and the courts.'[57] Of course, Eduardo Almeida of the Inter-American Development Bank admitted in mid-February, there many 'large construction companies who are already contacting us, since the investments are going to be huge; it's going to be attractive for any company.'[58] And of course, as an Associated Press reporter would point out five months after the earthquake, 'most of the companies seeking work in Haiti won't talk about it, in part to avoid seeming like they are capitalizing on catastrophe',[59] in part because public distribution of substantial reconstruction funds will only begin in earnest in late 2010.

Some of Haiti's most powerful businessmen, however, have already paired up with multinational logistics and disaster recovery companies in order to take full advantage of the unprecedented influx of development funds. The Vorbe group, for instance, is one of the largest construction and logistics companies in Haiti, run by one of the powerful families that supported the 1991 coup; it has joined with the Alabama-based disaster recovery company DRC, which was awarded more than US$100 million in contracts after Katrina (and which was investigated for fraudulent billing after Hurricane Mitch in Honduras). Haitian magnate Gilbert Bigio, likewise, has become a partner of Florida-based AshBritt Inc. AshBritt's CEO Randal Perkins is a prominent and well-connected political donor in the US, whose lobbyists helped him secure a US$900m contract for helping clean up post-Katrina New Orleans.[60] By early June, AshBritt had already invested US$25 million preparing its Haitian reconstruction operation on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, in anticipation of substantial government contracts later in the year.[61] Other US companies that have profited from disaster in recent years may well calculate that finding a Haitian partner is an unnecessary expense: Leslie Voltaire, currently serving as a mediator between the Haitian government and the IHRC, reportedly told one local businessman that 'only 15% of the [reconstruction] contracts will be going to Haitian contractors.'[62]

In addition to foreign investors, so far it is mainly foreign-funded NGOs that have benefited the most from Haiti's misfortune. 'All of the millions that are coming into Haiti right now are going into the hands of NGOs,'[63] complained Préval in early March, and in the estimation of one veteran social worker (Ruth Derilus), 'of all the money they send here, only 10% actually makes it to the ground. The rest is spent on foreign experts, hotels, car rentals, hotel conferences.'[64] The NGO sector has grown to become a 'state within a state', agrees former Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis: 'We've seen the NGOs performance in Haiti, by experience, and there's been no development!'[65]

As anyone who visits Port-au-Prince will readily confirm, there is a 'massive gulf between people from the UN and the NGOs, and the people they're here to help.'[66] Foreign NGO workers 'continue to humiliate and discriminate [against] poor and respected Haitian citizens', regrets Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre, 'by assuming they are all dangerous, violent, or savage people, and they do not know anything, not even how to put up a tent.'[67] Tim Schwartz is probably the best-placed foreign observer of the NGOs that now control most of what happens in Haiti's 'public' sphere. 'The NGO sector in Haiti is best described', he writes, 'as an uncoordinated mass of organizations de facto unaccountable to any governing or regulatory institution, i.e. no accountants, no auditors, no reviews, and no publication of poor or dishonest performance [...]. My own research on this matter suggests that at least 90% [of NGOs in Haiti] are rife with corruption, functionally inert, or give money intended for the poor to people who do not need it.'[68] Surveying the performance of relief organisations during the first half of 2010, the Disaster Accountability Project was struck by a 'shocking lack of transparency,'[69] and in early July, even CARICOM leaders began to speak openly about the ways in which the ever-growing influence of NGOs threatens 'to undermine the democratic institutions in Haiti.'[70]

Foreign investors and foreign NGOs, needless to say, also tend to need foreign protection to guarantee their security. True to form, once the initial wave of foreign troops began to subside, private, neomilitary security companies like Triple Canopy (which took over the Xe/Blackwater security contract in Iraq in 2009 and Overseas Security & Strategic Information began promoting their services.[71] As an Al Jazeera report on a 9-10 March meeting of security companies in Miami explained, firms like GardaWorld, DynCorp and their ilk naturally 'see new disaster areas as emerging markets.'[72]

Their 'humanitarian' counterparts in the UN and in USAID have done everything possible, within the limits of public decency, to facilitate such emergence. During the March donor conference John Holmes, the UN official in charge of Humanitarian Affairs, confirmed the essential development priority, telling the Associated Press that 'the best sign that recovery was under way in Haiti would be an uptick in private investment.' The president of Haiti's Chamber of Commerce and leading Haitian member of the IHRC (and a prominent supporter of both anti-Aristide coups), Reginald Boulos, reminded donors that a boost of foreign investment would depend on publicly-funded 'improvements in infrastructure' and 'a climate change in the business environment.'[73] According to Boulos, the agenda for change includes a reduction in government interference and corruption; what it most definitely doesn't include is any significant improvement in the pay or conditions of Haitian workers.

The year before the March 2010 conference, Boulos was a prominent opponent of a sustained campaign to increase Haiti's pitiful minimum wage to the equivalent of US$5 a day (at a time when in terms of actual purchasing power, Haitian wages have dropped to less than a fifth of their 1980 value). A series of well-organised strikes over the summer of 2009 helped encourage the Haitian legislature to approve the US$5 rate; less public sorts of pressure encouraged Préval to overrule parliament and cap the increase at just US$3 a day. Soon afterwards, in the autumn of 2009, Préval and the UN's special envoy to Haiti (Bill Clinton) announced plans for a new Free Trade Zone on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, and Clinton has been drumming up new garment sector business ever since.

There are currently around 25,000 garment-sector workers in Haiti, making T-shirts and jeans for labels like Gildan, Hanes, Gap and New Balance. Factory profit margins average about 22 per cent.[74] Canadian garment manufacturer Gildan is one of several companies that expanded production in Haiti after the 2004 coup, reassured by a post-democratic regime that promised a tax holiday and a moratorium on wage increases. In April 2005, CIBC World Markets analyst Ronald Schwarz found that 'Gildan's manufacturing is among the most cost-competitive in the industry [...]. Gildan's labour costs in countries such as Haiti and Honduras are actually cheaper than those in China.'[75] As things stand, companies like Gap (which already indirectly hires around 4,000 Haitian workers) are planning to develop their own 'made-in-Haiti' clothing lines, and Grupo M, a large DR-based contractor whose Haitian operations include work for companies like Levis and Banana Republic, is planning to double the size of its facilities in Ouanaminthe.[76]

The US-driven recovery strategy for Haiti turns on legislation (the Haiti Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, or HOPE) that promises, over a limited period, US tariff exemptions for clothes assembled in Haiti. Clinton and the UN hope that in the coming years a new round of HOPE legislation will help create tens of thousands of new low-paid jobs. As several seasoned observers have pointed out, the same strategy was first used almost 40 years ago, in partnership with 'president for life' Jean-Claude Duvalier.[77] Then as now, the investors promise that the creation of low paid jobs will somehow lead to more and higher paid jobs, and thus lift Haiti out of poverty.

The promise is belied, however, by the fact that these same investors and their apologists have always strenuously opposed even modest increases in the wages of Haitian workers, who are now so intensively exploited that a full-time job is no longer adequate for the barest necessities. Previous rounds of investment have in fact led to further real-term reductions in Haitian wages and incomes, and not the reverse: Today, without the money sent home to their families by slightly better paid Haitian workers (trapped in many of the most heavily exploitative sectors in North America and the Caribbean), the Haitian economy would collapse overnight. As some investors and their advisors are candid enough to admit, Haiti's most significant 'comparative advantage' remains the stark fact that its people are so poor and so desperate that they are prepared to work for no more than a twentieth of the money they might receive for comparable employment in the US.[78] If workers are 'barely able to scrape by', as David Wilson argues, 'their spending can do little to stimulate job creation either in Haiti or in the region as a whole.' Even this pathetically inadequate stimulus, moreover, is unlikely to last longer than the momentary effects of an injection of foreign-funded investment in infrastructure: In the Caribbean region as a whole, the light assembly sector has been shrinking rather than growing, as a result of competition from China and a drop in US demand, with tens of thousands of jobs lost in recent years in neighbouring Dominican Republic alone. The UN/US proposal, in other words, is less a matter of creating new jobs than of temporarily re-locating some old ones – moving them from places where the pay is poor to a place where it's frankly obscene.[79] Given his commitment to this old agenda, notes Richard Morse, UN envoy Bill Clinton isn't bringing change or hope to Haiti. 'Clinton, along with USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations are bringing more of the same to Haiti: More for the few and less for the many.'[80]

In 2002-2003 the Aristide/Neptune government, under exactly the same sort of 'investment' pressure, reluctantly and controversially went along with the creation of a World Bank funded free trade zone on the border of the DR, at Ouanaminthe. In those years, the government was at least able to take the small step of doubling the minimum wage. This time around, as an Al Jazeera report observed in July, post-quake plans for the new zone are proceeding without any discussion of wages at all.[81] The sweatshop owners who were the driving force behind the 2004 coup – Andy Apaid, Charles Baker, and their associates – are now in a more blatantly abusive political position than ever before.

V

For the great majority of Haiti's people, preservation of such a profitable and deferential 'business climate' comes at a truly devastating price: The transformation of poverty into misery, the decimation of local food production, and the loss of any government capacity to cope with changes in global food prices or supplies. In the spring of 2008, global food prices soared and many Haitians began to starve. That April, their anger took on a political shape. Hundreds of thousands protested, and the pressure forced Préval's prime minister, Jacques Edouard Alexis, to resign.[82] But in 2010 as in 2008 and previous years, the main response has been to increase rather than reduce reliance on a major source of the problem itself: International food aid. 'In 2006/07, the entire budget of the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture was a measly $1.5 million', Robert Fatton notes, 'a figure that contrasts sharply with the $69 million spent on the UN World Food Program. Instead of reconstructing its rural sector and promoting domestic food production, Haiti has remained a country of malnourished and hungry people alarmingly dependent on external assistance and charity.'[83] If development organisations were 'serious about improving agricultural output', Tim Schwarz agrees, 'they should stop undermining the local market with foreign produce and instead buy Haitian surpluses, use them in nutritional supplement programs for mothers and children as well as store them for redistribution in lean seasons.'[84] Instead, as Schwarz demonstrates in convincing detail in his 2008 book ‘Travesty in Haiti’, food aid has been deployed systematically and deliberately, from the beginning of its intensive use in the 1980s, to 'destroy the Haitian economy of small farmers.' Ostensibly humanitarian assistance has transformed the country into a captive market for highly subsidised US surplus production in grains and rice. Much of the support that USAID gives to charities like CARE comes 'in the form of food and the requirement is that the food must be sold on the local markets', at prices that undercut the local competition. Schwartz shows that in recent years food aid has increased not just when local harvests are weak, but also in years of local surplus – with predictable consequences for Haitian farmers.[85] In 2010, intensification of this predatory policy amounted to little less than full-scale economic sabotage.

Meanwhile, the majority of people affected by the earthquake are obliged to wait for the humanitarian investor-saboteurs to determine the course of their future exploitation. It's likely they will wait for a long time. The 2010 donor conference was the third such conference for Haiti since 2004; it's been difficult if not impossible to verify the actual conversion of pledges into payments in the wake of the first two conferences, and a year after the 2009 conference 'only 15 percent of the pledges that were made had actually been met.'[86] So far, the 2010 conference fits the same pattern. By mid summer, only five countries (Venezuela, Brazil, Norway, Estonia and Australia) had contributed to the UN's Haiti Reconstruction Fund, and less than 10 per cent of the US$5.3 billion pledged in March had actually been paid.[87] So far, the governments of France and the US have paid almost none of the millions they promised. US citizens, by contrast, responded to Haiti's plight with exceptional generosity, paying US$1.3 billion to relief oriented charities.[88] Unfortunately, these charities then opted to keep much of the money for themselves, or for an undetermined future. In May, CBS investigated five of the largest charities: CARE, the American Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund. The last two on the list refused to answer questions, but their websites indicated that they had spent less than 15 per cent of the US$52m they collected; CARE had spent 16 per cent of the US$34.4 million it collected, and the Red Cross has around a quarter of its US$444 million. Two months later, ABC news confirmed that of the US$1.138 billion donated to the 23 largest charities, 'at least 62.7 percent, $714.3 million, has been allocated for future Haiti relief efforts or is unassigned.'

Lack of accessible funding, predictably, translates into a scarcity of discernible improvements 'on the ground'. All through the spring of 2010, press reports described the incredulity of both local residents and foreign observers as they watched the reconstruction effort proceed with a complacency and incompetence that beggar belief.[89] 'Real recovery and reconstruction efforts have yet to begin', a Danish Church Aid worker observed in late June, and 'international standards defining what people are entitled to after a disaster are in no way being met.'[90] Incredibly, as of late summer 2010, only 2 per cent of the rubble has been cleared from the streets of Port-au-Prince.[91] Incredibly, 98 per cent of the 1.5 million people made homeless continue to live in more than a thousand desperately inadequate camps, alternately baked by the tropical sun and flooded by torrential rains. Most of these people still lack a waterproof tent, let alone a transitional shelter capable of withstanding the hurricane winds that batter Haiti most summers, often with devastating effect.[92] An IJDH survey of internally displaced families conducted in July found that 'aid has trickled to a halt in most camps', leaving 75 per cent of the families surveyed suffering from systematic under-nourishment and 44 per cent dependent on untreated water.[93] Rates of rape and violence against women have rapidly increased, and in most camps residents have no access to any sort of legal process or protection, or even any means of communicating with the foreign troops who continue to patrol their city.[94]

Today, Isabeau Doucet writes, 'tens of thousands of families are subject to a relentless cycle of exodus, dispersal, and brutality at the hands of the Haitian National police and privately hired armed groups, in violation of Haitian and international law.' In some places, 'rather than clearing rubble from the streets, bulldozers are plowing over the tents of undesired "squatters" only to resettle IDPs expelled from elsewhere.'[95] Many thousands of the unwilling residents of these camps have been evicted or threatened with eviction by putative private landowners, forcing them to retreat to still more precarious or out-of-the-way locations.[96] The IHRC and the government has been unwilling to oblige other owners to sell land needed for more adequate resettlement camps, or even to oblige putative owners to prove the legitimacy of their titles with deeds or tax records. This too is no surprise, since as the AP reports, the government 'appointed Gerard-Emile "Aby" Brun, president of Nabatec Development, a consortium owned by some of Haiti's most powerful families, to be in charge of relocating the squatter camps in Port-au-Prince.'[97] According to BAI (Bureau des Avocats Internationaux) lawyer Mario Joseph, almost 'all land in Haiti is controlled by the elite through years of bribery and corruption [...]. In as much as 70% of forced expulsions, the land claims are disputable,'[98] but 'the poor have been excluded from their land for years, and are now excluded from the process determining their rights to lodgings.'[99]

In this as in so many other ways, Kim Ives confirms, the aftermath of January 12 reveals that:

‘…the principal fault-line in Haiti is not geological but one of class. A small handful of rich families own large tracts of land in suburban Port-au-Prince which would be ideal for resettling the displaced thousands [...]. However, these same families control the Haitian government and, more importantly, have great influence in the newly formed 26-member Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti (IHRC) [...]. The IHRC is empowered for the next 18 months under a "State of Emergency Law" to seize land for rebuilding as it sees fit [...], but the elite families on this body in charge of expropriations are not volunteering their own well-situated land to benefit Haiti's homeless. As a result, only one major displaced person camp, Corail-Cesselesse, has been built, about 10 miles north of the capital, on a forbidding strip of sun-baked desert situated between Titayen and Morne Cabrit, two desolate zones where death-squads dumped their victims during the anti-Aristide coups.’[100]

This 'model' camp at Corail-Cesselesse remains the showcase of the reconstruction effort to date, an obligatory stop on the itinerary of every visiting journalist. Corail's tents are laid out in symmetrical rows, and it boasts latrines, showers, and a small clinic. But nothing else: There are no markets, shops, or schools within walking distance, and there is no work. 'There really is nothing to do', a resident told Mark Schuller. 'You can't stay in your tent because of the heat. You can't go outside because of the dust. And you can't leave the camp because there's nothing to do.'[101] Camp Corail is little more than a holding pen, and a flimsy one at that: Most of its tents collapsed during a storm the night of 12 July, injuring six people. By that stage, months after their construction was announced, only one of the hundreds of 'transitional houses' anticipated for the camp had been built.[102] Camp Corail is itself located on land owned by Nabatec, incidentally, which stands to gain handsomely from both the government's compensation scheme and from an anticipated industrial park planned for the new neighbourhood. In this way, Ives concludes, 'the bourgeoisie keeps its best land and sells its worst for a huge, guaranteed profit.'[103]

Most of the homeless, meanwhile, have no choice but to continue camping on the first patch of earth they were able to find – one camp, for instance, is perched on the strip of concrete, two meters wide, that divides the Route de Carrefour. By early June a grand total of 7,500 people had been moved from the most vulnerable campsites to 'planned' resettlement zones, and by the end of July, the UN admitted that only 6,000 of the required 125,000 durable shelters required had been built. At the height of this misery, in July, the UN mission chief Edmond Mulet acknowledged that 'we have lost the sense of urgency.'[104]

VI

As you might expect, there is no such sense of loss among people more directly concerned by the disaster. Perhaps the most striking feature of the whole post-quake period has been the extraordinary hardiness and discipline of the hundreds of thousands people who have lost their relatives, homes and possessions, and who from day one began to organise themselves into new communities. They have pooled their resources, arranged for the distribution of food and water, improvised informal systems of justice. The camps are the product of desperation, but the unprecedented concentration of people also affords unprecedented opportunities for association and assembly: the same factors that have turned Cité Soleil into a centre of popular political power in recent decades have also begun to take effect in Champs de Mars and the other larger camps. 'In the camps', Camille Chalmers observed a few weeks after the quake, 'people are talking a lot about solidarity, fraternity, mutual aid.'[105] In the face of dramatic vulnerability and marginalisation, camp residents have also begun to exert some political pressure. 'Citizens regularly take to the streets', Beverly Bell wrote in July:

‘…to demand housing for the displaced, good education, and support of national agricultural production. They have recently protested violence by the U.N. security mission, non-payment of wages to state workers and teachers, and the introduction of toxic Monsanto seeds, among other complaints. Grassroots organizations still meet regularly to develop their strategies for political change, as they have throughout history. Across the country on any given day, small groups perch on broken chairs under tarps in refugee camps, huddle amidst rubble in the courtyards of earthquake-destroyed schools, or sweat under thatched-roof gazebos […]. They are developing pressure points for housing rights and protection against rape for those in camps. Some plan information campaigns aimed at sweatshop workers, others programs to politicize youth. The agendas are seemingly endless.’[106]

On 22 March, hundreds protested the flying visit of former US presidents Clinton and Bush. On 10 May, several thousand people were dispersed by police tear gas after they converged on the ruins of the national palace, calling for Préval to resign. On 17 May, thousands more people demonstrated against Préval and the 'state of emergency law' passed the previous month, which gave de facto control of Haiti to the foreign-dominated IHRC. UN tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests ended a more militant student demonstration on 24 May[107], and the next day thousands more people converged on the palace ruins.[108] Hundreds rallied in Port-au-Prince to denounce the UN occupation on 1 June, the day of its sixth anniversary; six weeks later, several thousand marched in celebration of Aristide's birthday, calling for his immediate return.[109] Then on 12 August, residents of a dozen or so IDP camps, threatened with imminent eviction, organised the first of a growing and open-ended series of protests against abuse of their human rights, against the expulsions, and against illegitimate land claims.[110]

In the election year of 2010, as in the previous elections of 2000 and 1990, the key political difference remains the division between (a) critics calling merely for a more efficient deployment of reconstruction resources and more 'reasonable' forms of cooperation with the occupying troops and aid workers, and (b) activists working to rekindle popular mobilisation for fundamental political change as the only viable means of regaining national sovereignty and establishing social justice. Spokespeople for the NGOs, the UN, the US and other 'friends of Haiti' freely grumble about local inefficiency and corruption, but tend to leave political questions to one side. From this perspective, after all, the fundamental decisions have already been taken, and it only remains to find 'willing partners' prepared to carry them out; the only roles left for the Haitian people themselves are those of dignified beneficiaries on the one hand or of resentful 'obstacles to reform' on the other. The UN's humanitarian chief, for instance, remains concerned first and foremost with 'the potential consequences in terms of both politics and security of large demonstrations in some sensitive places.'[111] Stability, i.e. docility, remains the top priority. As the CEPR noted in early June, a review of 'the last five Joint Operations and Tasking Centre (JOTC) reports reveals that the MINUSTAH [UN stabilisation mission] is still focusing almost solely on security. Combining data from the previous six days, the JOTC reports show that MINUSTAH has undertaken 5,092 security operations, involving 29,537 troops, and 56 maritime patrols. On the other hand, there have been 51 humanitarian assistance missions, involving just 359 troops.'[112]

By contrast, activists organising in and around the BAI and the new coalition PLONBAVIL (National Platform of Base Organizations and State Victims) focus on the mechanisms of exclusion that have pushed the vast majority of Haiti's citizens to the outer margins of politics. 'There is a sort of merging of the Fanmi Lavalas base organizations and former PPN members happening there', Kim Ives observes, 'one which has happened without the consent (and maybe somewhat to the chagrin) of the leaders of both parties. It was really an attraction and elopement of the "bases," and my sense is that the centre of anti-imperialist resistance to the Préval plan and crew was and is really coming out of that crucible. This is where the progressive and revolutionary leadership for this post-quake era is emerging from.'[113] Patrick Elie, likewise, stakes everything on a renewal of the popular movement that opened the door to political change in the late 1980s: 'I put all my money on our ability, at the level of the grassroots movement, to remobilise the Haitian people, to make them believe, once more, that they are the key players in politics.'[114]

Unfortunately, the main institutional legacy of the Lavalas mobilisation – Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas (FL) party – is itself both divided and largely excluded from the political process. After its landslide election victory in 2000, opposition politicians anticipated that FL might remain hegemonic for 'sixty years'.[115] The second anti-Lavalas coup and its aftermath have helped level the political playing field. In 2004 Aristide and many of his ministers were forced into exile; his Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and dozens of other high-level members of FL were imprisoned. In the run-up to the 2006 presidential elections the leading FL candidate, Father Gérard Jean-Juste, was jailed on trumped up charges and prevented from standing. In August 2007, the country's most prominent human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was 'disappeared' (and is presumed dead) shortly after he announced his intention to stand as an FL candidate for the senate. Préval's hand-picked Provisional Electoral Commission (CEP) went on to block FL candidates from participating in senate elections in April 2009, on bogus procedural grounds.[116]

In response, FL campaigners and supporters organised a boycott, and only a tiny fraction of the electorate turned out to vote – 11 per cent, according to Préval's officials, but less than half that according to his opponents and most observers.[117] In public, US and UN officials condemned the CEP decision and called for the inclusion of all political parties. Curiously, however, when the CEP stuck to its guns the US and the rest of its 'international community' quietly abandoned calls for free and inclusive elections, and instead agreed to cover most of the election's costs. Brian Concannon draws attention to the double standard: 'all of the international agencies that had 'criticized the exclusion when it was made, praised the elections when they were held without the participation of FL or over 90% of Haitian voters.'[118] In November 2009, the CEP again barred FL again (along with several other parties) from registering for legislative elections originally planned for February 2010, despite the fact that FL went out of its way to meet the new procedural requirements invented the previous spring; again the CEP won international support and funding. After the earthquake obliged the CEP to push this next round of elections back to November 2010, they renewed (on 21 July) the exclusion of FL yet again, and again in apparent defiance of US and international recommendations.[119]

As a result, the next Haiti parliament and president will be elected, once more, without the participation of the most popular political organisation in the country. So long as the result is an apparent endorsement of the status quo, no doubt these elections too will receive the international stamp of approval in due course.

The FL leadership has made matters worse by indulging in years of sterile post-Aristide in-fighting. By early 2008, animosity between rival factions had grown so intense that they had become more or less separate organisations, and by the spring of 2009 a number of leaders with grassroots support had defected to Préval's camp. Government harassment coupled with the lack of unity deprives the popular movement of any imminent opportunity to use what Samba Boukman could still call, in 2006, its 'greatest weapon' – its ability to win elections.[120] At the time of writing (in September 2010), the presidential election scheduled for November 2010 held out little prospect of significant change. For a brief moment in mid-summer, the singer Wyclef Jean's celebrity candidacy rekindled a brief burst of media interest in Haiti. Some commentators were charmed by his youth and 'energy', while others drew attention to his support for the 2004 coup and for neoliberal policies, his lack of political qualifications, programme or experience, and the financial scandals that have plagued the Yele Haiti charity he fronts.[121] The journalist Ansel Herz summed him up best by describing him as Haiti's Sarah Palin: 'incoherent, incompetent and in it for himself.[122]' Having lived most of his life in the US, Wyclef (along with the formerly Miami-based militant Lavarice Gaudin and a dozen other hopefuls) was declared ineligible to stand in August. The remaining candidates include Préval's former Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis, Jean-Henri Céant (Aristide's former lawyer and a veteran behind-the-scenes FL operator), and Aristide's last Prime Minister, the moderate FL loyalist Yvon Neptune. Neptune probably represents the most powerful degree of institutional continuity with the pre-2004 régime, but many in or with the FL base still condemn him as a de-facto collaborator with the coup. The two anti-Lavalas coups have gone a long way towards eliminating any residual belief that genuine social change in Haiti might still be possible by 'formal' democratic means. 'In all the camps I’ve visited', writes journalist Isabeau Doucet, 'there is no interest in the elections let alone any enthusiasm for any particular candidate.'[123] Like many like-minded observers, the progressive weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté has dismissed the upcoming 2010 election as a 'charade' rigged up by the foreign 'friends of Haiti' in order to legitimate the occupation, and will not back any of the candidates.[124]

In many ways Lavalas is today less an organisation than an idea and a memory, and the lack of adequate organisation and leadership leaves the renewal of popular mobilisation vulnerable to all kinds of opportunistic manipulation. According to some of the mediators that serve as go-betweens between various political interests and the captive residents of the camps, many of the people who participate in demonstrations for or against the government do so for the sake of (pitifully small) financial reward. 'Nobody protests without money in this country', one such mediator told Al-Jazeera in July: 'the rich people keep us in misery, to make us do whatever they want'[125] – which is to say, more often than not, to do nothing at all. The May 2010 protests, the most substantial since the quake, were endorsed by politicians from all sides of the political spectrum, including veteran Lavalas partisans like René Civil and prominent 2004 coup supporters like Hervé Saintilus, Evans Paul, and Himmler Rébu.[126] The most important political question in Haiti today concerns the direction, priorities, and integrity of this incipient protest movement. Along with many of his allies, PLONBAVIL's Yves Pierre-Louis is 'very aware of the dangers posed by allowing former putchists into our alliance and demonstrations', while insisting that 'the unity and consciousness of the progressive forces in this mobilization are strong.'[127]

In the election of 2010, as in the last four presidential elections in Haiti, everything will depend on whether this unity and this consciousness are strong enough to prevail over the vast and diverse array of forces drawn up to oppose them. The earthquake has sharpened and accelerated the basic political choice facing Haiti: Either renewal of the popular mobilisation in pursuit of equality and justice, or long-term confirmation of the island's current status as a neocolonial protectorate.

23 September 2010.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* The first half of this article was published in Pambazuka news, Issue 504.
* Peter Hallward is professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
*
NOTES

[36] See for instance, Mark Schuller, 'Haiti's Resurrection: Promoting Human Rights', Huffington Post, 5 April 2010; Robert Fatton Jr., 'Toward a New Haitian State', The Root, 9 February 2010; Tim Schwartz, 'Program of Development in Interest of Impoverished Haitians', 7 March 2010; Yves Engler, 'The Political Roadblocks to Haiti's Reconstruction', Counterpunch, 16 July 2010; Paul Farmer, 'Testimony to the Congressional Black Caucus: Focus on Haiti', 27 July 2010; Melinda Miles, 'Haiti's Answer for Six Months and Sixty Years', Let Haiti Live, 12 August 2010.
[37] Laura Flynn, '"We Want our Voices to be Heard": Democracy in Haiti's Earthquake Zone', Haiti Action, 3 May 2010.
[38] 'Haitian NGOs Decry Total Exclusion from Donors’ Conferences on Haitian Reconstruction', IJDH, 18 March 2010, .
[39] Martha Mendoza, 'Haiti Gets a Penny of Each U.S. Aid Dollar', AP, 27 January 2010.
[40] Paul Farmer, 'Testimony to the Congressional Black Caucus: Focus on Haiti', 27 July 2010.
[41] Kim Ives, 'Haiti Reconstruction: Factories, not Fields', NACLA 43:3 (May 2010).
[42] Jonathan Katz, 'Criticism Grows on How Money Is Spent in Haiti', AP, 5 March 2010.
[43] 'Partners In Health’s Medical Director and Director of Advocacy and Policy Urge Donor Countries to Support the Haitian Government', Partners In Health, 27 March 2010, www.pih.org, accessed 31 March 2010.
[44] Kim Ives, 'For $10 Billion in Promises, Haiti Surrenders Its Sovereignty', Haïti Liberté, 31 March 2010.
[45] Interviewed by Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[46] Yves Engler, 'The Political Roadblocks to Haiti's Reconstruction', Counterpunch, 16 July 2010.
[47] Jeb Sprague and Wadner Pierre, 'Haiti: Workers Protest Privatization Layoffs', IPS, 24 July 2007.
[48] 'Denis O'Brien's Digicel is Upwardly Mobile in Haiti', Irish Times, 20 June 2008.
[49] Isabeau Doucet, 'The Drama of Haiti's Internally Displaced', part two, Haïti Liberté, 25 August 2010.
[50] Yasmine Shamsie, 'Export Processing Zones: The Purported Glimmer in Haiti's Development Murk,' Review of International Political Economy, October 2009, cited in Regan Boychuk, 'The Vultures Circle Haiti at Every Opportunity, Natural or Man-made', MR Zine, 2 February 2010.
[51] Cf. Bill Quigley, 'Why the US Owes Haiti Billions -- The Briefest History', Huffington Post, 17 January 2010; Naomi Klein, 'Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor Nation', The Nation, 12 February 2010. The earthquake did at least provide an occasion to put restitution of the old French debt (see above, page 000) back on the agenda, in a manner of speaking, when in July an audacious 'Yes Men'-style prank announcing French intentions to repay the money they extorted over the course of the nineteenth century attracted some prominent supporting signatures and considerable attention in the press. See 'M. Sarkozy, rendez à Haiti son argent extorqué', Libération, 16 August 2010; Kim Willsher, 'France Urged to Repay Haiti Billions Paid for its Independence', The Guardian 15 August 2010.
[52] Ashley Smith, 'The "Shock Doctrine" for Haiti', Socialist Worker, 8 February 2010. To anticipate some of the implications of a new 'tourist boom' in Haiti, see Polly Patullo, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1996).
[53] Jeffrey Sachs, 'Haiti's Road to Recovery', The Guardian, 31 January 2010.
[54] Reed Lindsay, 'Haiti's Excluded', The Nation, 11 March 2010.
[55] Mark Schuller, 'Rained Out? Opportunities in Haiti Washing Away', Huffington Post, 21 July 2010.
[56] William Booth, 'Haiti's Elite Spared from Much of the Devastation', Washington Post, 18 January 2010.
[57] James Dobbins, 'Skip the Graft', The New York Times, 17 January 2010; cf. Isabel MacDonald, 'Same Old Interests Have Plan for "New Haiti"', The Indypendent, 29 January 2010.
[58] Quoted in Avi Lewis, 'Haiti: The Politics of Rebuilding', Fault Lines, Al Jazeera English, 12 February 2010.
[59] Ben Fox, 'Foreign Firms in Haiti Ready for Construction Boom', AP, 7 June 2010.
[60] Martha Brannigan and Jacqueline Charles, 'U.S. Firms Want Part in Haiti Cleanup', Miami Herald, 8 February 2010; cf. Jacqueline Charles, 'Groups Jockey for Role in Haiti Revival', Miami Herald, 9 March 2010.
[61] Ben Fox, 'Foreign Firms in Haiti Ready for Construction Boom', AP, 7 June 2010.
[62] Kim Ives, 'Only 15% for Haitians: Interim Commission Prepares to Dole Out Reconstruction Contracts', Haïti Liberté, 16 June 2010.
[63] Cited in Jacqueline Charles, 'Groups Jockey for Role in Haiti Revival', Miami Herald, 9 March 2010.
[64] Cited in Reed Lindsay, 'Haiti's Excluded', The Nation, March 11, 2010.
[65] Interviewed in Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[66] Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', 12 July 2010.
[67] Wadner Pierre, 'Haiti Post-Earthquake: Discrimination and Prejudice', The Dominion weblogs, 24 June 2010.
[68] Tim Schwartz, 'How to Save the NGO Sector from Itself', 10 March 2010.
[69] Report On Transparency of Relief Organizations Responding to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Disaster Accountability Project , 12 July 2010.
[70] Peter Richards, 'Flooded with NGOs, Haiti Looks to Fall Presidential Polls', IPS, 7 July 2010.
[71] Cf. Anthony Fenton, 'Haiti: Private Contractors "Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot"', IPS, 19 February 2010; Bill Quigley, 'Mercenaries Circling Haiti', Haïti Liberté, 3 March 2010; Martha Brannigan, 'Haiti Rebuilding Summit Under Way in Miami', Miami Herald, 10 March 2010.
[72] Rob Reynolds, 'Al Jazeera reports on the Haiti 'Summit' for Private contractors', Al-Jazeera, 10 March 2010.
[73] Jonathan Katz, 'Private Investment Key to Haiti's future', AP, 1 April 2010.
[74] Jonathan Katz, 'Post-quake Haiti's Economic Revival: Is Low-Paying Garment Industry the Answer?', AP, 21 February 2010; Ashley Smith, 'The "Shock Doctrine" for Haiti', Socialist Worker, 8 February 2010.
[75] Carolyn Leitch, 'Analysts Upsize Gildan Targets,' Globe and Mail, 12 April 2005, cited in Regan Boychuk, 'The Vultures Circle Haiti at Every Opportunity, Natural or Man-made', MR Zine, 2 February 2010.
[76] Sean Gregory, 'Entrepreneur Manufactures a Haitian Recovery', Time, 3 May 2010; Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[77] See for instance Kim Ives, 'Who Will Lead Haiti Reconstruction?', Haïti Liberté, 24 March 2010.
[78] 'Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labor market,' Paul Collier writes, 'Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark. Haitian labor is not only cheap, it is of good quality. Indeed, because the garments industry used to be much larger than it is currently, there is a substantial pool of experienced labor' available for use (Collier, 'Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security: A Report for the Secretary-General of the United Nations', January 2009, http://www.focal.ca/pdf/haiticollier.pdf)
[79] David Wilson, 'Rebuilding Haiti" -- the Sweatshop Hoax', MR Zine, 4 March 2010.
[80] Richard Morse, 'Haiti: Stuck in a Trap', Huffington Post, 28 March 2010. As Morse points out, 'Importing cheap rice and sugar were concepts sold to Haitians by Haitian Economist Leslie Delatour during the mid to late 1980's. It was called Chicago economics: free markets. The concept destroyed rural production and incentives in Haiti and sent an additional 2 million people to go live in Port au Prince [... Today,] lobbying is still taken care of by a Delatour, Leslie's younger brother Lionel. Right now the younger Mr. Delatour is looking to attract more people out of the countryside and into the city with his HOPE2 garment bill, which is the crux of Haiti's economic future if Mevs, Soros, Boulos, Ban Ki Moon and Bill Clinton get their way. Mr. Delatour is also busy trying to funnel reconstruction monies to brother Patrick Delatour, Minister of Tourism and reconstruction "expert", and sister-in-law Elizabeth Delatour Préval who has helped turn the Haitian government, led by husband President Rene Préval, into a lobby machine for Haiti's elite families' (ibid.).
[81] Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[82] Nazaire St. Fort and Jeb Sprague, 'Anti-Hunger Protests Rock Haiti', NACLA, 25 April 2008; cf. Nazaire St. Fort and Jeb Sprague, 'Once-Vibrant Farming Sector in Dire Straits', IPS, 4 March 2008.
[83] Robert Fatton Jr., 'Toward a New Haitian State', The Root, 9 February 2010; Caroline Preston and Nicole Wallace, '6 Months After Earthquake, Haiti Struggles to Rebuild', The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 8 July 2010.
[84] Tim Schwartz, 'Program of Development in Interest of Impoverished Haitians', 7 March 2010. By the spring of 2010, even Bill Clinton could see that his own neo-liberal assault on Haitian farmers, in the 1990s, had been counter-productive. ‘It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,’ Clinton admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 10 March (Katz, 'With Cheap Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Itself', AP, 20 March 2010).
[85] Tim Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti (Charleston: Booksurge, 2008), 108, 94.
[86] 'Partners In Health’s Medical Director and Director of Advocacy and Policy Urge Donor Countries to Support the Haitian Government', Partners In Health, 27 March 2010, www.pih.org, accessed 31 March 2010; cf. Annis, 'Canada's Failed Aid', Haïti Liberté, 4 August 2010.
[87] Isabel Macdonald, 'Where's Haiti's Bailout?', Huffington Post, 12 July 2010.
[88] Caroline Preston and Nicole Wallace, '6 Months After Earthquake, Haiti Struggles to Rebuild', The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 8 July 2010.
[89] See for instance Kathie Klarreich, 'Haiti Relief: Anger, Confusion as Authorities Relocate Homeless', Christian Science Monitor, 20 April 2010; CBS Evening News, 'Relief Efforts "Certainly Not Good Enough"', 22 April 2010.
[90] E. Thomas Johnson, 'Haitians Still Wait for Recovery', LA Times, 25 June 2010.
[91] Tamara Lush, 'Just 2 Percent of Quake Debris in Haiti Cleared', AP, 11 September 2010.
[92] Mark Weisbrot, 'Washington and International Donors Have Failed Haiti, Sacramento Bee (CA), 13 August 2010; cf. Katie Kane, 'A Country "Forgotten"’, The Missoulian, 6 June 2010; Mark Schuller, 'Haiti's Resurrection: Promoting Human Rights', Huffington Post, 5 April 2010.
[93] IJDH, '"We've Been Forgotten": Conditions in Haiti's Displacement Camps Eight Months After the Earthquake,' 23 September 2010, pp. 1-2, http://ijdh.org/archives/14633
[94] See in particular BAI, 'Our Bodies are Still Trembling: Haitian Women’s Fight Against Rape', IJDH, 27 July 2010.
[95] Isabeau Doucet, 'The Drama of Haiti's Internally Displaced', part one, Haïti Liberté, 11 August 2010. Needless to say, when the IHRC finally met on 17 August to rattle off an initial round of reconstruction targets and plans, 'there was no mention of the humanitarian disaster and human rights violations suffered daily by 1.7 million internally displaced, many of whom have not yet received emergency supplies after seven months' (Doucet, 'IHRC Promises Millions for "Sustainable Development"', Haïti Liberté, 18 August 2010).
[96] Ansel Herz, 'Haut-Turgeau, Haiti: The Camp That Vanished and the Priest Who Forced Them Out', IPS, 9 March 2010; Herz, 'Displaced Fear Expulsion from Makeshift Camps', IPS, 8 April 2010. Cf. 'Forced IDP Relocations', TransAfrica Forum, 12 April 2010; IAT, 'Vanishing Camps at Gunpoint', 14 July 2010. 'Though there are some programs to relocate people back to their homes', Sasha Kramer points out, 'the majority of displaced people were renters with uncertain property rights and 50% of the buildings in Port au Prince are now uninhabitable. Most of the camps are located on private property and pressure to relocate has been intense and at times violent. With nowhere else to go, many families are forced to endure terrible conditions and human rights violations only to sleep under a leaky tarp' (Sasha Kramer, 'Haiti 6 Months Later; Frozen in Time', Our Soil, 12 July 2010).
[97] Jonathan Katz, 'Fights Over Land Stall Haiti Quake Recovery', AP, 11 July 2010.
[98] Cited in Doucet, 'The Drama of Haiti's Internally Displaced', part one, Haïti Liberté, 11 August 2010.
[99] Miles, 'Haiti Earthquake Survivors To Peacefully Demonstrate to Call Attention to the Horrific Conditions in Camps', Let Haiti Live, 12 August 2010.
[100] Kim Ives, 'Six Months Later: Land Ownership at the Crux of Haiti's Stalled Reconstruction', Haïti Liberté, 14 July 2010; cf. 'Sean Penn on Haiti Six Months After the Earthquake', Democracy Now!, 13 July 2010.
[101] Schuller, 'Rained Out? Opportunities in Haiti Washing Away', Huffington Post, 21 July 2010.
[102] Miles, 'Rain and Weeping at Camp Corail', Let Haiti Live, 30 July 2010; Edward Cody, 'Despite "all that money," More Than 1 Million Haitians Remain Displaced by January Earthquake,' Washington Post, 22 August 2010.
[103] Kim Ives, 'Six Months Later: Land Ownership at the Crux of Haiti's Stalled Reconstruction', Haïti Liberté, 14 July 2010.
[104] Cited in Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[105] Interviewed in Avi Lewis, Haiti: The Politics of Rebuilding, Fault Lines, Al Jazeera English, 12 February 2010.
[106] Beverly Bell, '"We've Lost the Battle, but We Haven't Lost the War:" Haiti Six Months After the Earthquake', The Wip, 12 July 2010.
[107] Ansel Herz, 'U.N. Clash with Frustrated Students Spills into Camps', IPS, 25 May 2010.
[108] Yves Pierre-Louis, 'Broad Mobilization Against Préval Continues', Haïti Liberté, 19 May 2010.
[109] Randall White, 'Thousands in Haiti March on Aristide's Birthday', Haiti Action, 16 July 2010.
[110] Doucet, 'The Drama of Haiti's Internally Displaced', part two, Haïti Liberté, 25 August 2010.
[111] Reed Lindsay, 'Haiti's Excluded', The Nation, March 11, 2010; cf. Ansel Herz, 'Looking More and More Like a War Zone', IPS, 30 March 2010.
[112] 'MINUSTAH Continues to Prioritize Security Over Relief', CEPR, 2 June 2010.
[113] Kim Ives, letter to the author, 25 May 2010.
[114] Quoted in Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[115] Damming the Flood, 75.
[116] The final FL list of candidates was endorsed by the party leader (Aristide) by fax, but at the last minute the CEP invented a new requirement, knowing FL would be unable to meet it: Aristide, still exiled in South Africa and denied entry to Haiti, would have to sign the list in person. In the 2006 elections, by contrast, several former FL senators claimed to represent FL without the endorsement of either Aristide or the membership, and the CEP made no objection (Jeb Sprague, 'Fanmi Lavalas Banned, Voter Apprehension Widespread', IPS, 17 April 2009; cf. IJDH, 'International Community Should Pressure the Haitian Government for Prompt and Fair Elections', 30 June 2010; Ira Kurzban, 'Unfair and Undemocratic', Miami Herald, 8 September 2010).
[117] Wadner Pierre, 'Empty Streets, Empty Boxes: Haitians Reject Manipulated Election', HaitiAnalysis, 30 June 2009.
[118] IJDH, 'International Community Should Pressure the Haitian Government for Prompt and Fair Elections', 30 June 2010.
[119] 'Haiti's Leader Rejects U.S. Election Proposals', Reuters, 30 June 2010; Wadner Pierre, 'Haiti Gears Up for Polls – Again, Sans Lavalas', IPS, 30 July 2010.
[120] Damming the Flood, 32.
[121] Cf. Kevin Edmonds, 'The Assault on Haitian Democracy,' NACLA, 23 August 2010.
[122] Ansel Herz, 'Stay in the States: Incompetent, Egotistical Wyclef Jean Offers Only False Hope for Haiti', New York Daily News, 7 August 2010. 'The very fact that he is taken seriously' in the foreign press when he has no qualifications of the job, adds Robert Fatton, is another indication of the fact that the US tends to 'look at the typical Haitian population as a bankrupt kind of species' (cited in Tamara Lush, 'Haiti Ruling Ends Wyclef Jean's Run for President', AP, 21 August 2010).
[123] Isabeau Doucet, letter to the author, 16 September 2010.
[124] 'Notre Position sur la conjoncture politique', Haïti Liberté, 11 August 2010; English translation at http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/haiti-libert%C3%A9-editorial-political-situation-upcoming-election 'The CEP and Préval have excluded the most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, and are trying to corrupt its members', argues Yves Pierre-Louis, 'but 'the masses remain attached to Jean Bertrand Aristide as their national representative [...]. The priorities of [their] mobilization are to demand the resignation of René Préval and the CEP, to form a transitional political power capable of organizing inclusive elections [...], and to get rid of the international community’s imposed occupation forces' (Yves Pierre-Louis, interview with Isabeau Doucet, Port-au-Prince, 17 Sept 2010).
[125] Carlos Jean-Charles, interviewed in Sebastian Walker, 'Haiti: Six Months On', Faultlines, Al-Jazeera English, 12 July 2010.
[126] Kim Ives, 'With Strange Bedfellows: Mobilization Against Préval Gains Momentum', Haïti Liberté, 12 May 2010.
[127] Quoted in Kim Ives, 'With Strange Bedfellows', Haïti Liberté, 12 May 2010; cf. Yves Pierre-Louis, 'Broad Mobilization Against Préval Continues', Haïti Liberté, 19 May 2010.

Ethiopia: Profiles in journalistic courage

Alemayehu G. Mariam

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68796

cc BBC World ServiceWhile the Ethiopian regime uses its power to keep citizens in darkness, a cadre of young journalists are displaying a courageous commitment to the truth. Alemayehu G. Mariam pays tribute.

I often write about the trials and tribulations of Ethiopia's independent journalists, sometimes in tones of lamentation[1], other times in wistful philosophical reflection[2]. I have always defended the constitutional and human rights of Ethiopian citizens ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of their choice.’[3] Unfortunately, I have had few opportunities to publicly celebrate and express my pride in the extraordinary deeds of Ethiopia's emerging young and courageous journalists.

Courage, it seems, is fast becoming the common middle name for many young Ethiopian journalists. They are certainly racking up some of the most prestigious international journalism awards for courage. It is a special privilege for me to write a few words in honor of Ethiopian journalist Dawit Kebede and his young colleagues at Awramba Times (AT) and congratulate them for being the recipients of the Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) ‘2010 International Press Freedom Award’.

This annual award is given to journalists who have shown extraordinary courage in defending press freedom in the face of attacks, threats or imprisonment. On 23 November, Dawit, barely 30 years old, will accept the CPJ award in New York City on behalf of Team Awramba Times and all independent Ethiopian journalists who are still suffering and struggling in Ethiopia and others who have been forced into exile.

I am also privileged to congratulate another courageous young journalist, Sisay Agena, a former political prisoner and erstwhile publisher of Ethiop and Abay newspapers, for receiving the prestigious ‘Freedom to Write Award’ from the PEN Center USA. He will be honoured in absentia on 17 November in Los Angeles. Last year this award was given to Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese writer and human rights advocate and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The PEN award honours exceptional international literary figures who have been persecuted or imprisoned for exercising and defending the right to freedom of expression.

In October 2007, another young journalist, Serkalem Fasil, received the prestigious ‘Courage in Journalism Award’ given by the International Womens' Media Foundation to women journalists that have shown extraordinary bravery in the face of danger. Serkalem and her husband Eskinder Nega, (both former political prisoners and publishers of Menelik, Asqual and Satenaw newspapers) today serve as the personifications of journalistic courage and integrity in Ethiopia. This past March, the Supreme Kangaroo Court of Ethiopia ordered Serkalem, Eskinder, Sisay and two other journalists, Zekarias Tesfaye and Fasil Yenealem, to pay the largest fines assessed against journalists in Ethiopian history. These journalists have been denied licences to publish their newspapers for the past three years.

Dawit Kebede, a former political prisoner, and his young team at Awramba Times are part of a new breed of courageous young journalists in Ethiopia who continue to risk their lives and livelihoods every day to speak truth to power by exercising their constitutional and human rights to free expression.

The members of Team Awramba Times, like the other independent journalists, do not hide behind clever pen names or concealed identities to do their work. They are always out there in the line of fire facing intimidation, threats on their lives, harassment, interrogations and imprisonment. I take this opportunity to single out and honour, congratulate and thank each and every member of Team Awramba Times: Fitsum Mamo, editor-in-chief and one of the founders of AT (and not long ago a victim of trumped up charges of defamation); Woubshet Taye (forced to resign on the eve of election in May 2010 following official threats); Gizaw Legesse, deputy editor-in-chief; Wosenseged Gebrekidan (a former political prisoner with Dawit Kebede and the others); Abel Alemayehu, senior editor; Elais Gebru and Surafel Girma, senior reporters; Tigist Wondimu (arts and entertainment editor), Abebe Tola and Solomon Moges, columnists; Nebyou Mesfin, graphics editor; Teshale Seifu, Sisay Getnet, Teshale Wodaj, marketing and advertising and Mekdes Fisaha, computer technologist.

Dawit is the managing editor of Awramba Times. If one were to ask him to describe himself, he would simply say he is journalist. He will say he is not ‘in the opposition’. He is not a politician. He is not partisan to any political party or ideology; but like his AT colleagues, he is uncompromisingly partial to the truth. He will not hesitate to report or write the truth regardless of who is in power. He will solemnly promise to continue to do his job as a professional journalist by exercising his constitutional and human rights for as long as he can given the intensity of press repression in Ethiopia.

THE STATE OF PRESS FREEDOM IN ETHIOPIA TODAY

When I wrote ‘The Art of War on Ethiopia's Independent Press’[4] last December, I argued that the regime of Meles Zenawi is conducting a search and destroy mission to completely wipe out the free press in the country. The history of the independent press in Ethiopia over the past five years is a chronicle of brutal crackdowns, arbitrary imprisonments and harassment of local and international journalists, shuttering of newspapers and jamming of international radio transmissions. In May 2009, the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association (EFPJA) reported: ‘Over 101 journalists are forced into exile, 11 are still facing serious plight in Kenya, Uganda, Yemen, Japan and India... Journalists Serkalem Fasil, Eskindir Nega and Sisay Agena are still denied press licences. Editors of weeklies: Awramba Times, Harambe, Enku and Addis Neger are suffering under frequent harassments and the new punitive press law, which has become the tool of silencing any criticisms against the ruling party.’

Zenawi, like all depraved dictators preceding him, fears and loathes the independent press more than anything else. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France expressed his deepest fears of the press when he said: ‘Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.’ In Ethiopia, that could be translated as ‘one journalist is to be feared more than a thousand soldiers’. ('ke shee toregna, ande gazetegna'). The informative powers of an independent press are so awesome that dictators and tyrants in history have lived in constant fear of having their crimes discovered by the press and reported to the people. As Napoleon explained: ‘A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns and a tutor of nations.’ It was the fact of ‘tutoring nations’ - teaching, informing, enlightening and empowering the people with knowledge - that drove Napoleon ‘bat crazy’. He hated the press passionately because they exposed his vast network of spies that had penetrated every nook and cranny of French society and his failed military adventures. They relentlessly condemned his indiscriminate massacres of unarmed French citizens protesting in the streets and his killing, jailing and persecution of his political opponents.

Zenawi is no different. He wants to crush the few struggling independent newspapers in the country for the exact same reasons Napoleon wanted to crush the press. For Zenawi, the independent press is the mirror of truth that shows and tells it like it is. Whenever Zenawi looks into the press mirror, he asks the same old proverbial question: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall/ Who in the land is the cruelest and wickedest of all?’ The independent press is always there to answer that question for him truthfully. Zenawi fears and abhors criticism because he can't handle the truth. His problem is that in the new breed of Ethiopian journalists he is facing his worst nightmare: the truth in the hands, hearts and minds of the youth. These young journalists have captured the hopes and aspirations of the millions of the young people in the country (which represent nearly 70 per cent of the population). The youth armed with the truth and united can never be defeated.

Zenawi has used the ‘law’ to crush these young journalists in much the same way as other dictatorships have crushed the free press in history. When the Nazis decreed the ‘National Press Law’ in October 1933, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels crowed that the ‘law is the most modern journalistic statute in the world! I predict that its principles will be adopted by the other nations of the world within the next seven years. It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion!’ Another decree known as the ‘Law Guaranteeing a Peace of Right’ was proclaimed immediately after the press law imposing the death penalty on anyone who imports, publishes or distributes in Germany ‘treasonable articles’ and five years for importing, publishing or distributing ‘atrocity stories’ about the Nazis or ‘endangering public security and order’.

Back in April 2008, in a Newsweek interview, Zenawi triumphantly declared that his new press law ‘will be on par with the best in the world’. His ‘law’ provided: ‘Whosoever writes, edits, prints, publishes, publicises, disseminates, shows, makes to be heard any promotional statements encouraging…terrorist acts is punishable with rigorous imprisonment from 10 to 20 years.’ Dr. Goebbels' press laws are still alive and well 75 years after he introduced them in Germany. This is proof that history never repeats itself; it just finds a new theatre to play itself out.



KNOWLEDGE WILL FOREVER GOVERN IGNORANCE

Zenawi lives to control everything around him. He has been pretty successful in monopolising political power by wiping out the opposition. He controls the economy by controlling aid handouts and cornering the lucrative international panhandling business. He controls the daily lives of the people with fear and intimidation. But there are two things he has been unable to control: ideas and the minds of the people. It is not for lack of effort. Zenawi has tried to control the flow of ideas by shuttering newspapers, jamming radio stations, filtering websites, jailing and harassing journalists and intimidating the people from expressing themselves. But he has not been able to control the flow of ideas or the minds of the people. No one can do that.

A good leader inspires with sound ideas and lofty ideals. She encourages the people to freely shop in the marketplace of ideas. To play such a role, a leader needs to have vision, insight, foresight, hindsight, the ability to ‘look at things the way they are, and ask why’ and the courage to ‘dream of things that never were, and ask why not’. A man blinded by hatred can have no vision. He can only think and ask, ‘How can I make things so crooked and so warped that they can never, ever be straightened out again.’ A man with no vision lives in darkness and ignorance. As the father the American Constitution James Madison advised: ‘Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.’ It is the free press, ‘the tutor of nations’, that will help the people gain the knowledge they need to govern ignorance.

KUDOS TO ALL INDEPENDENT ETHIOPIAN JOURNALISTS



Ethiopia's young independent journalists are fighting the armies of darkness against overwhelming odds. The Dawits, Serkalems, Sisays, Eskinders and all the rest man the frontlines with nothing more in their hands than pens, pencils and keyboards. They fight with the written word to inform and educate citizens and help them find ways to effectively participate in their own governance. I admire these young journalists for doing something that has never been done in the history of press freedom in Ethiopia. They have taught us by personal example what it takes to defend freedom of expression. They are inventing for us a new culture of free expression, societal openness, official accountability and transparency in Ethiopia. They are developing a style of journalism based on truth-searching, truth-telling and exposition of lies costumed as truth. They keep the candle of liberty flickering in the darkness of oppression.

I believe all independent journalists in Ethiopia are bonded together by a common cause of press freedom. They suffer the slings and arrows of a vindictive dictatorship together; they fight together, they rise and fall together and in the end they win or lose together. The CPJ, PEN USA and IWMF awards honour all of them. As we celebrate these young journalists, we should remember what it is all about: press freedom in Ethiopia is not about protecting the rights of newspapers, editors, journalists, reporters or foreign correspondents and radio broadcasters. It is quintessentially about the right of every Ethiopian citizen ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and without interference.’ Zenawi believes that by keeping Ethiopians in darkness his regime and hangers-on will thrive on forever. He needs to borrow a cup of wisdom. Only three things thrive and propagate rapidly in darkness: mushrooms, hate and anger.

Mushrooms proliferate in dark caves; hatred and anger mushroom and smoulder in the hearts and minds of men and women who are oppressed and subjugated. Let Zenawi ask himself these questions: what happens to hate and anger deferred, to paraphrase a poetic line of Langston Hughes? Do they just sag like a heavy load, or do they explode?

Let Ethiopians ‘seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.’

RELEASE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Alemayehu G. Mariam is a professor of political science at CSU San Bernardino. Follow Alemayehu G. Mariam on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pal4thedefense
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES:

[1] http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61056

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-information-with_b_551428.html

[3] http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/63303

[4] See 1
 

Gagging the press is dangerous for a government’s health

Cameron Duodu

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68879

cc DRB62‘The road to controlling the press, however attractive to rulers it may be, must be trodden with extreme wariness. For it is luxuriantly strewn with signposts that read: “Expect unintended consequences!”’, writes Cameron Duodu.

The difficulty the South African government is going through, in trying to evolve a viable relationship with the media is very familiar to me. The government thinks the media are being hyper-critical of its actions. This is because members of the government, including President Jacob Zuma himself, are often depicted as corrupt or inefficient.

Court cases involving government members and their associates are reported in an unfavourable light, it is claimed. And often, secret information which embarrasses the government is leaked to the media. Some members of the government therefore do not see why they should put up with it any longer.

So the government is considering passing legislation which will, in short, curtail the ability of the media to mess the government up. This, of course, has alarmed the media and journalists have mounted a spirited campaign to arouse public opinion to thwart the government’s designs.

It is not a new dilemma at all. In Britain, for instance, what became known as ‘the fourth estate of the realm’ was created after years of suffering by writers, pamphleteers and journalists, some of whom were jailed for sedition or criminal libel. They continued to fight, however, until freedom of the press was achieved as a principal component of what the political thinker, Tom Paine, called ‘The Rights of Man’.

William Jefferson, one of the presidents of the ‘new’ American Republic that was constituted under the principles of liberty that had evolved in Britain but which the British had often flouted, even went as far as to say that given a choice between a nation without a newspaper and one without a government, he would ‘not hesitate’ to choose the newspaper! And he was right, for whereas a good newspaper can ensure that no one is ever cheated in a nation, a government made up of fallible men in a nation without a good newspaper could steal the pants off every single one of its citizens. For the citizens would know little or nothing of their government’s doings – good or bad.

To me, the current South African debate over the media brings a weird feeling of déjà vu, for it was mirrored, almost exactly, by one which occurred in my country, Ghana, a few months after it achieved its independence in March 1957.

At that time, the biggest and slickest newspaper in the country was foreign-owned. It was the Daily Graphic, which was set up in 1950 by the Daily Mirror Group, based in London. Because of its origins, it was suspected of collaboration with the colonial administration by the leaders of our anti-colonial struggle, grouped around Dr Kwame Nkrumah in the Convention People’s Party (CPP). So they began to hound it.

Nkrumah had his own papers – the Accra Evenings News and the Cape Coast Daily Mail. These sold like hot cakes, though they were produced on flatbed machines and looked amateurish. But the writing was tight and incisive and always had the same target: What in hell’s name were khaki-wearing white men in pith-helmets doing in our country? Under the masthead were three fiery words: ‘Self-government Now!’

An issue of the Cape Coast Daily Mail so incensed the colonial authorities in 1950 that they passed a sedition bill, and within two days, had used it to sentence Kwame Nkrumah to three years imprisonment. Can you imagine that? Three years for writing what was on his mind! And by the ‘Mother of Democracy’ at that!

Imprisonment only made Nkrumah more popular while it unmasked the British: Ghanaians had bought the British propaganda line that they were leading Ghana by the hand towards self-government, but now they saw their spokesman jailed for speaking the truth. And that realisation marked the beginning of the end of British rule in Ghana. Strikes, looting of foreign-owned shops, and subtle non-cooperation intensified, and in desperation, the British enacted a new constitution for Ghana and held a general election under it, in which universal adult suffrage was used for the first time.

Nkrumah was allowed to contest the election, and from his jail cell, he obtained the highest number of votes cast for anyone in the whole country. His CPP won a majority of the seats: Able lieutenants like Komla Gbedemah romanticised Nkrumah’s leadership by spreading rumours that he was sending them messages written on toilet paper, and smuggled out of prison! The CPP’s majority was so impressive that the British were forced to do a humiliating flip-flop and release Nkrumah from prison immediately. Not only that – they made him ‘leader of government business’ in the new legislature. They didn’t want to call him ‘prime minister’ as yet, but everyone knew that the strange, grandiose title meant he was ‘number one’ in the new government.

Later that same year, 1957, Kwame Nkrumah emerged on the world stage, to be photographed sitting at the same table as Eric Louw, foreign minister of racist South Africa, at the first-ever Commonwealth heads of government conference attended by a black man. The conference was held in London, and also sitting at the table was Roy Welensky of the other racist country in southern Africa, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Louw and Welensky were representatives of racist regimes which not only preached that Africans were not fit to rule themselves but also that they were not qualified to be allowed to vote. Thus the photographs that emanated from that Commonwealth conference, and were transmitted round the world, gave the lie to all the racist propaganda that South Africa and Welensky’s sham federation had been preaching.

But alas, at home, Nkrumah had begun to dismantle the democracy of which he had become a symbol in the eyes of the world. When he proposed to put his effigy on new coins being minted for Ghana, a popular columnist of the Daily Graphic, Bankole Timothy, pilloried him in an article entitled, ‘What next, Kwame?’ Nkrumah would have written something worse in the colonial days. But he was not amused and deported Timothy forthwith to his home country, Sierra Leone.

Meanwhile, Nkrumah had set up his own ‘Guinea Press’ to publish newspapers that were ostensibly to push his own agenda. But instead of doing that, these papers began to intimidate writers, both local and foreign, who criticised the Nkrumah regime. Then, towards the end of 1958, the atmosphere of free give-and-take between government and opposition nose-dived steeply. The Nkrumah government used its majority in parliament to pass a Preventive Detention Act (PDA) which empowered the government to detain, without trial for five years, ‘any person whose activities were not conducive to the public good’.

The provisions of the new law were so wide that all manner of people could be caught by it, especially those fingered by informants. There were reports that taxi drivers who criticised the government while carrying passengers they did not know had been jailed under the law. The ranks of the official opposition MPs, whose contribution to debates had elucidated many issues, began to dwindle, as the most eloquent of them were carted off to Nsawam Prison, 22 miles from Accra.

Thus, that single PDA legislation became responsible for the total destruction of democracy in Ghana. Some journalists were also arrested and jailed and those that were left learnt to practise self-censorship. In 1960, a CPP man was installed in the radio newsroom where I worked, to censor news items before we could broadcast them. It was soul-destroying, for we all regarded ourselves as patriots who sympathised with Nkrumah’s campaign to free the rest of Africa from colonial and racist rule. Eventually, I left to edit the Ghana edition of Drum magazine. There, I was forced to tread a very careful, almost apolitical path, for the paper had been banned once before by the government. It was the most frustrating time of my life, for I could see where my country was going wrong and yet I dared not point it out with the intellectual vigour required.

Indeed, the descent into totalitarian rule by Nkrumah was self-defeating, for it meant that he could not fully confront the apartheid rulers of South Africa with the moral superiority needed for the task. For South Africans could be detained for ninety days without trial, and everyone criticised that as wrong. But Ghanaians, on the other hand, could go in for a whole five years without trial. Which was worse? How could Ghana strut around the United Nations championing the cause of freedom fighters in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde when it had skewered itself on the twisting antlers of such a massive contradiction on its home soil? The racists took comfort from the ‘hypocrisy’ of the would-be liberator of blacks installed in the north and used him to justify their own oppression of the blacks. They pointed to Ghana and said, ‘Stability in a country sometimes requires strong measures – why, look at Ghana!’

Something had to give. In August 1962, a bomb was thrown at Dr Kwame Nkrumah at Kulungugu, in Northern Ghana, which nearly killed him. The police investigation ‘implicated’ three of the topmost men in Nkrumah’s own party in the crime, including the powerful former information minister, Tawia Adamafio, who was also a former general secretary of the CPP. Also implicated was Ako Adjei, former minister of foreign affairs and the man who invited Nkrumah back to Ghana from London, to come and take part in the political struggle in Ghana. The third man was E C Quaye, administrative secretary of the CPP.

It is very likely that the party men were stitched up by political rivals, for they were all Gas (people who hailed from the capital, Accra). They were charged with treason, but the highest court in the land could not find any evidence upon which to convict them. So they were acquitted. But Nkrumah hit the roof, got parliament to empower him to nullify the judgement, and then ordered a retrial – after getting rid of the judges who had acquitted the accused persons. They were, of course, convicted by the new court and sentenced to death. But the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.

There were, by now, no journalists left who were brave enough to protest against this outrage against the natural justice that was owed to these once-powerful men. They had sat down and taken part in the demolition of the institutions that made Ghanaians free. And now, they were at the mercy of one man, with no media left, able to give their side of an issue that had sent them to death row itself.

From then on, such was the dearth of political discourse that any propaganda crafted against Nkrumah was eagerly believed. So, his own position also began to crumble, and when a group of soldiers and policemen decided to conspire against him and overthrow his regime, they were able to recruit others to join their cause. Thus, on 24 February 1966, while Nkrumah was in Peking, en route to Hanoi, where he was going to try and mediate in the Vietnam war, he was overthrown in a military coup. He died in exile in 1972.

Now, the question is: What if? My considered opinion is that if Ghana’s political situation had been frozen at say, mid-1958, when the opposition had not yet been driven underground, and everyone could have his say, and when the media could fearlessly bring out what was going wrong with the ship of state, we would have had a much cleaner and more efficient government, which would have been much more difficult to malign, and which would thus have been more difficult to overthrow.

Instead, Ghana descended from the initial totalitarian rule into cycles of military and civilian rule, during which it was fully demonstrated that once the precedent of wrecking freedom of the press had been established by the Nkrumah regime, succeeding governments that had attacked that regime for abusing press freedom would, themselves, also attack that freedom without batting an eyelid.

One example occurred in 1967, only a year after Nkrumah had been overthrown. Three top editors of the publicly-owned media were dismissed by the military National Liberation Council (NLC) government for criticising an agreement the government had signed with an American company, which virtually handed a Ghanaian pharmaceutical company to the Americans as a gift. When the government was criticised for sacking the editors, the head of state, General Joseph Ankrah, retorted that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’!

And in 1970, the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Kofi Busia, dismissed this writer from the editorship of the Daily Graphic, for criticising its policy of advocating ‘dialogue’ with the racist regime of South Africa. My argument was that the so-called ‘dialogue’, inasmuch as it excluded the black South Africans, was a ruse to dilute the solidarity that Black Africa was showing, at the UN and elsewhere, against apartheid. The ‘Muldergate’ scandal had not yet been exposed, but I could discern that money was being thrown at African leaders who would play ball, through the president of the Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.

I said this in an editorial and described such money as ‘blood money’ extracted from the sweat of our Black Brothers in South Africa. Prime Minister Busia was stung by that and he gave me my marching orders. But even Ghanaians who had not been born at that time have heard of my stand and I have no doubt that quite a few of my fellow journalists have stiffened their backbones as a result of that example.

By the late 1980s, press freedom in Ghana had become a distant memory, as journalists were hounded left and right. One regime, for instance (led by Flight-Lieutenant J J Rawlings) had its agents ‘shit-bomb’ the offices of an opposition newspaper – an unheard-of abomination that is difficult merely to report and which introduced a new term into the Ghanaian political lexicography that cannot be cleansed with an euphemism.

Under the same Rawlings regime, two journalists lost their lives after they had been imprisoned. They were Tommy Thompson and John Kugblenu, publisher and editor, respectively, of the weekly Free Press newspaper. They died shortly after being released from prison, their health having been fatally impaired by the conditions they had endured whilst in prison. As a result, many journalists were driven into exile. Two journalists went to prison after being charged with an antiquated law from the colonial era – criminal libel, for offending Mrs J J Rawlings. That case showed how other institutions of the state can be corrupted when press freedom is vitiated: the journalists were merely fined in the end, but in the mean time, the magistrate who tried them, eager to please the regime, had placed them in custody for several weeks, pending their sentencing. He thus used the discretionary power of refusing bail, to ensure that the regime’s desire to punish the journalists was fully realised.

So, the road to controlling the press, however attractive to rulers it may be, must be trodden with extreme wariness. For it is luxuriantly strewn with signposts that read: ‘Expect unintended consequences!’

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* Cameron Duodu is a journalist, writer and commentator.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Insanity and robotisation: Militarisation and US society

Horace Campbell

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68824

cc ghbrettOn the strength of the ‘psychological warfare and mind control’ inflicted on its citizens, US society’s increasing militarisation should be treated with acute concern, writes Horace Campbell.

A rally to restore sanity was held in the Washington Mall on 30 October 2010. Called by two comedians, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the rally drew over 200,000 persons (CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021284-503544.html). Another 4 million persons watched this rally on cable television. The escalation of intolerance and use of violent language by the conservative forces gave this rally tremendous importance in the politics of the USA.

The singers and performers who appeared in this three-hour rally were persons known to be opposed to Islamophobia and militarism. Although built in jest as a ‘Rally to restore sanity and/or fear’, we take the theme of this rally very seriously, especially for a society that is involved in wars, militarisation and the robotisation of its youths. It is important to adequately highlight the insanity inherent in the militarisation of the US society and the psychological warfare and mind control of the US citizens, oriented toward hate, killing and perpetual warfare. Unfortunately, in the ‘Rally to restore sanity’ Colbert and Stewart did not make clear and strong statements on the US wars of occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan or the trillion-dollar budget devoted to the militarisation of the planet. It is now up to the peace and justice movements to deepen the delegitimisation of US militarism and torture. The conservative forces have been so emboldened that there is a rehabilitation of George W. Bush, who can now boast on national TV that he authorised torture. Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have rightfully called for a criminal investigation into his admission of authorising torture. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the ACLU reminded the US Department of Justice that ‘a nation committed to the rule of law cannot simply ignore evidence that its most senior leaders authorized torture’. This call for investigation should not be taken lightly because this sort of criminal investigation into international lawlessness would be one other way of beginning to restore sanity in the US. Indeed, such sanity can only come from a break with the traditions of celebrating killings as progress and brutality as true courage.

GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE CONSERVATIVE CORPORATE MEDIA

It was during the period of George W. Bush that the mainstream US media became more deeply interwoven with the US psychological warfare against its citizens. Simultaneously, new sources of insurgent news platforms developed from below. It was no less a body than the Columbia Journalism Review that elaborated on the ‘mind games’ that have been played against US citizens immediately after 11 September 2001. It was Donald Rumsfeld who argued that ‘the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq but in places like New York, London, Cairo, and elsewhere. More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.’

Those who study public relations and information management are comparing the propaganda capabilities of the US to the propaganda machine of Nazi Germany. We leave it to these students to decide if the information warfare and mind control in the US has not far outstripped the capabilities of Goebbels and the Third Reich Ministry of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. In the USA, the propaganda techniques to psychologically prepare the society for perpetual warfare remain in the hands of a conservative corporate media, which is dominated by the same elements who profit from the military–information–industrial complex. For these forces, it is essentially profitable to mobilise and motivate US citizens for war.

There are now revelations that the Justice Department of the USA has been hiding for the past four years the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency) efforts to protect known Nazi war criminals in the United States. The New York Times carried an extensive account of the role that prominent members of Germany's Nazi party played in the early, formative years of the CIA, following the Second World War. It alleges that the CIA created a ‘safe haven’ for Nazis believed to be of use to the US's Cold War efforts (see details in the New York Times article, ‘Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?_r=1)

It is urgent that the forces for peace push the Justice Department of the USA to publish this report on how the collaboration with Nazis shaped the intelligence and security apparatus. Peace activists in the USA must raise their voices to expose the past mind control and the full extent of the collaboration of the intelligence services with Nazis past and present.

It is now even most alarming that the mind control has gone beyond the popular media into the virtual world of video games to robotise and militarise the psyche of young persons, preparing them for perpetual warfare.

ROBOTISATION AND MILITARISATION OF THE YOUTHS

Whether in fiction or in forward planning for military engagement in the 21st century, writers such as P.W. Singer (‘Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century’) are involved in the discussion of the period when robots would do most manual work and when robots would be deployed for war to maintain the military superiority of the US. What writers such as these also need to connect is the robotisation of the youths to turn them into mindless consumers and warriors. On this front, the conservative media conglomerates are reinforced by the video-game industry. Youths are raised to the violence of games such as Grand Theft Auto. The Pentagon itself is using video games as a recruiting tool. We are now informed of a new video game in which the youths are supposed to practice the killing of Fidel Castro. This video game, entitled ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’, went on sale in North America and Europe on Tuesday 9 November 2010.

Building on the macho themes of the elite forces of the US armed forces this video game set in Cuba, the Soviet Union and Vietnam, is a hyper-realistic violent Cold War role-playing game in which the player joins the Bay of Pigs invasion and then completes the task of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 of Cuba with the mission to assassinate a young Fidel Castro.

‘The game's first mission is to assassinate Fidel Castro before the 1962 missile crisis, the moment when the Cold War came closest to tipping into a full-blown nuclear conflict. Later missions take gamers inside the former Soviet Union and southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.’

According to the website Cubadebate, ‘This new video game is doubly perverse. On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader … and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents.

‘What the United States government did not manage to do in 50 years, now it attempts to accomplish by virtual means.’

Perhaps these unrepentant beings would soon make video games in which kids are trained to facilitate the CIA’s collaboration with and recruitment of Nazi officials for safe haven in the USA.

Peace activists in all parts of the world must denounce these video games and call for a boycott of these violent games. There are dangers in raising a future generation of persons who are meant to see nothing wrong with killing in the virtual world in preparation for killing with drones and bombs in the real world. The training ground for the perpetual war of the US military is not just in the military bases, but in the virtual world of video games that are supposed to entertain the youths. In the words of Nick Turse, ‘through video games, the military and its partners in the academia and the entertainment industry are creating an arm of media culture geared toward preparing young Americans for armed conflict.’ It is in this context that the video games that meant to help young persons practice the killing of Fidel Castro is not accidental but part of the forward planning to turn American youths against those youths who admire Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Can a society which carries out torture, murder, killing with drones, assassinating perceived enemies and raising its young ones to do the same be a healthy society?

MILITARISM AND INSANITY

The concept of the hero and the triumphant American has been so ingrained in the popular culture that the society cannot cope with the decline of American power. Economic decline is threatening to reproduce new forms of insecurity in the US. The US society is delicately poised at the precipice of a new form of insanity inspired by the military–entertainment complex. Last weekend, I participated in a commemoration of the life of Bill Sutherland at the Schomburg Institute in Harlem. Bill Sutherland passed away at the age of 91. What was striking of Bill Sutherland was his refusal to fight in the Second World War. He was a pacifist who supported the self-determination projects of peoples all throughout the 20th century. At the same time there was another ceremony to celebrate the life of Marilyn Buck, a freedom fighter who saved the life of Assata Shakur and who fought against racism, homophobia and the militaristic state. It is the history of peace and justice forces such as Marilyn Buck and Bill Sutherland in the USA that has prevented the society from complete insanity.

Frantz Fanon, the psychiatrist from Martinique, gave us some of the best insights into the relationship between wars, colonial occupation and mental disorders. In his book, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, he wrote a chapter on how states at war carry out the brainwashing of their population. Added to this brainwashing is the general attempt to manipulate the minds of the people and make them insensitive to hating and killing other human beings. The evidence of brainwashing and psychological warfare against the citizens of the USA is now well-documented. This documentation needs to be engaged by the peace forces in order to link mental health to physical health.

Inside the US there are many young people who return from Afghanistan and Iraq with deep psychological scars such as post-traumatic stress, suicidal tendencies and other forms of mental illnesses. Many communities suffer the after effects of the psychiatric problems of many of their youths. And the challenge for the US is whether the mental disorder is only to be found in these youths or in the society as a whole. Again, I ask: Can a society that carries out torture and murder and kill with drones be a healthy society? It is here that we have to go back to Fanon who said that ‘total liberation is that which concerns all sections of the personality’. In this sense, we would want to agree with Fanon that physical health, spiritual health and mental health are all related. The absence of robust healthcare for the citizens of the US is only one manifestation of the wounds that have to be carried by a society facing psychological warfare and brainwashing. Health in this context requires a radical transformation of society. And a prerequisite for health is peace. What the US society should be teaching young people is Ubuntu – how to be at peace with other humans and with the planet earth. Young persons in the US need Ubuntu and video games for peace, not militarisation, robotisation and the rehearsal of how to kill perceived enemies. The sanity of mind of our children is required for a peaceful world.

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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.

Tanzania’s first female speaker: Celebrating gender equality?

Salma Maoulidi

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68866

cc Julien HarneisHas Tanzania’s parliament elected Anna Makinda as its first female speaker because she’s the best person for the job, or because it thinks she’s less likely to demand accountability than her predecessor, asks Salma Maoulidi.

Tanzania has been trying to come to terms with its dismal election performance in respect to the quantity of women elected to decision-making positions, particularly to elected bodies like parliament, either through direct elections at the constituency level or via appointments to special seats. Currently, to ensure a minimum representation of women in key structures, women are guaranteed 30 per cent representation from the village level to the national level. There are efforts to raise this number to 40 per cent, in order to attain 50 per cent parity as specified in the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Declaration on Gender and Development.

All indications are that the female representation in parliament will not be as high as in the last parliament, where Tanzania barely made the 30 per cent mark. Perhaps to make some amends for this situation, the ruling party backed the first female speaker in the Tanzania parliament. Madame Anna Makinda is not new to the position as such, considering that she was deputy speaker during the last parliament from 2005-2010. Madame Makinda also has a long history of political engagement and leadership serving in various ministries, as regional commissioner and more recently as a parliamentarian.

While many do not doubt her suitability for the position, a few concerns have been raised about the motivation behind her nomination and eventual selection. Ultimately, this will decide whether her election is a service to women and their quest for leadership or a disservice to the struggle for gender equality. Indeed ongoing feuds within the ruling party have denied the incumbent speaker, Mr Samuel Sitta, from successfully defending his seat. It should be noted that this is the first time in Tanzania’s history that an incumbent is dethroned before retiring voluntarily. To add insult to injury, Mr Sitta was defeated by a woman who previously served as his deputy. While this is a victory of sorts for Tanzania’s maturing democracy, its motivations are more sinister.

Many suspect that Mr Sitta’s style of exposing grand corruption and emphasising the primary role of parliament as a body tasked with demanding accountability from governmental entities and public figures and not just rubber stamping executive wishes [are the reasons for his defeat]. Under Mr Sitta, parliament underwent a revolution of sorts, where all was subject to public scrutiny. In many ways, public officials were brought to their knees for excesses committed while in office, the impetus for greater public accountability not coming just from the opposition but also from back benchers of the ruling party. Probably the public humiliation some powerful political figures faced under his leadership did not make him many political friends. On various occasions while he was still in office Mr Sitta was threatened to be put in his place for causing havoc in the political carriers of powerful political figures in the ruling party, breaking tradition with the ‘mwenzetu’ syndrome (he is one of ours) which plagued the political and governance culture.

Where does this leave the women? Was electing a female speaker a safer bet? Would electing a woman at this powerful position ensure sustaining a patriarchal political culture where towing the party line is paramount or is it meant to thwart the possibility of electing another principled leader who turns the legislative pillar to renegade chieftaincy? Already Madame Speaker has not made it a secret that she plans to govern the parliamentary floor by the book. It is not clear what this means, but speculation is rife that any opposition – either from the real opposition or within the ruling party – would be subdued to bring order and harmony back to parliament.

Putting aside all conjecture, the fact remains that Tanzania has a female speaker. This woman did not come to where she is by chance; she has merited her rise and achievements through hard work and dedication to what ever task or challenge meted out to her. In many ways she epitomises the rise of other equally pioneering women leaders who rose up the ranks, not just because they were loyal party stalwarts but also because they served when it mattered, took risks and accepted whatever challenges came their way.

United Nations (UN) secretary general of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Gertrude Mongella is also a woman with deep political roots in the ruling party and country. She was also the first president of the Pan-African Parliament serving for two terms. In 1985, Mongella became vice-chairperson to the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the UN Decade for Women, which may have singled her out for the Beijing appointment. Madame Mongella’s leadership began at the university where she challenged a rule that barred pregnant women from attending classes. She is also believed to have challenged an underground political wall literature at the university, Mzee Punch, for its sexist bent and rules by breaking those rules. Madame Mongella was not elected by her constituency to parliament in the 2010 elections.

Another notable female figure graces this year’s parliament. This is Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, the recently retired executive director of UN Habitat. Until Asha Rose Migiro’s entry into the UN, she was one of the highest placed women in the UN. Many activists in Tanzania know Anna Tibaijuka for being at the forefront of organising women at the eve of multi party democracy, a move that earned her the scorn of the ruling party and the deregistration of her organisation Baraza la Wanawake Tanzania (BAWATA), intended to bring together women from all political persuasions together around their common interests. She would challenge her deregistration in the courts and after a protracted legal process that saw her move to new personal and professional heights, she won her case.

With a background in agriculture, Anna Tibaijuka was an ardent campaigner for women’s land rights. She was involved in advocacy initiatives towards a more popular land policy that recognised the rights of the disposed. It is perhaps for this reason she was chosen to head the UN Habitat. In may respects she is a pioneer as have been other women of note before her and those who will come after her. I will explore in some detail some of these female pioneers in future articles.

What needs to be emphasised at this juncture is the inevitable challenge women in leadership – especially those who attain positions of power – face. The question that is on everyone’s lips is what are the prospects for womankind when one of their own is at the helm? Judging from experiences elsewhere, women in power have not always been pro-women, pro-poor or pro human development. In Tanzania the activism of prominent women leaders is noticeably mellower as they join the leadership ranks. Some think that their eagerness to fit in may make them complicit in safeguarding the status quo disappointing those calling for transformative feminist leadership.

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© Salma Maoulidi 2010
* Salma Maoulidi is a social justice and gender activist in Tanzania.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Tanzania’s fourth multiparty elections: Change or the same?

Richard Whitehead

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68852

cc US NavyAs Tanzania concludes its fourth multiparty elections, Richard Whitehead considers the victory of the CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) – the long-time incumbent party – and the changes in the country’s political composition revealed by the elections.

Tanzania’s fourth multiparty elections – held on 30 October – were, in some ways, not significantly different from the first three, held in 1995, 2000 and 2005. As before, the ruling party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), routed the opposition parties and emerged as the dominant force in the country’s legislative and executive branches. Similar to the campaign themes found in earlier elections, the CCM’s 2010 campaign theme centred on its status as the ‘defender of the nation’ against the ‘disorder’ and ‘chaos’ that would prevail in the aftermath of a sweeping opposition victory, while the opposition parties for their part attacked the CCM’s poor record on fighting corruption and advancing development. And, like those verdicts bestowed upon previous elections, the 2010 elections were evaluated by international and domestic observers as somewhere between ‘free and fair’ and ‘free, but not fair’, only to be topped off with metaphors like ‘tranquil’ and ‘peaceful’. All in all, it appears that once again the long-time incumbent party in Tanzania has managed to reproduce its dominant – some might say hegemonic – position, while escaping the sort of international condemnation levelled against some of the continent’s other long-time incumbents.

Yet this election was also radically different from those held in 2000 and 2005, to the extent that, in this election show-down, the leading opposition party – the Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) – made some sizable election gains. While the CCM’s presidential candidate, Jakaya Kikwete, was re-elected in 2010 by an impressive 38.4 per cent margin over the next runner-up, President Kikwete was first elected in 2005 by a margin of 68.6 per cent over the runner-up. His predecessor, Benjamin Mkapa, was re-elected in 2000 by a 55.9 per cent margin. As Jenerali Ulimwengu notes in his recent article in The East African, given the fact that the opposition parties won more than 50 constituencies and the fact that the leading opposition candidate, Dr Wilbrod Slaa, has managed to ‘reinvigorate’ an otherwise waning opposition party and change the political landscapes throughout many of the country’s urban areas, this election, when compared to the previous two, has illuminated the possible limits of the CCM’s capacity to comfortably and continuously dominate elections.

To be sure, some additional developments borne out during this election can be read as signposts for the welcomed emergence of a more competitive polity. However, these developments, along with the prospects of a more competitive polity generally, should not necessarily be taken as an indication that Tanzania might be en route to a deeper democracy with the potential for broader citizen empowerment.

The first development – one potentially challenging to the CCM’s prospects in the 2015 election – is the growing significance of the youth vote. Indeed, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, people between the ages of 20 to 40 make up about 31 per cent of the Tanzanian population. Within the voting age population, young people up to the age of 40 account for approximately 68 per cent, versus the 18 per cent old enough to remember the euphoria of independence in 1961, brought about by the CCM’s antecedent parties, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). As recently pointed out by Fumbuka Ng’wanakilala, a high youth turnout could easily be responsible for CHADEMA’s improved election fortunes. The battle over the youth vote will certainly define the campaign themes of the 2015 election, where the CCM will face the added disadvantage of having to deal with an internal power struggle over Kikwete’s replacement.

Secondly, and related to this, is the increased use of the internet generally, and social media particularly. The Jamii Forums, Facebook and Twitter have grown into some of the more vibrant hotspots for exchanging views and information about the elections. And this widening social media sphere has proven to be a world far more sympathetic to the opposition, especially CHADEMA. As clearly reflected in a Mwananchi online pre-election poll – where respondents favoured Dr Slaa by a 60 per cent margin over President Jakaya Kikwete – participation in the internet, and by extension online activism, is overwhelmingly dominated by opposition supporters. This is probably a reflection of the fact that young people are generally more tech savvy and also more likely to back an opposition party. Moreover, folks with professional backgrounds living in urban areas are both more likely to have internet access and more likely to back an opposition party.

Finally, and tentatively, this election might also illustrate a loosening of those mutually beneficial exchanges that sustain the CCM’s rule and enrich the fortunes of a budding commercial class. Indeed, as I pointed out in some of my earlier research, the CCM’s ability to secure such wide victory margins in the face of multiparty elections is found in the party’s ability to pair its ‘guardian of national unity’ status with a rising commercial class that trades political support in exchange for favourable treatment by the state. Simultaneously, the massive levels of corruption that accompany these exchanges serve as opposition focal points that are gifted with salience when high-level scandals – e.g., the Richmond and Central Bank scandals – provide powerful evidence of opposition claims. Moreover, as the CCM’s ability to win elections becomes less certain, commercial elites will undoubtedly try to hedge their bets by diversifying their political networks. This might explain the July 2010 decision by Mustafa Jaffar Sabodo, a prominent business tycoon, to donate some Tsh 100 million to CHADEMA’s coffers while still proclaiming his loyalty to the CCM.

These three developments might strengthen the capacity for opposition parties to pair winning messages with the financial, network and human capital for spreading those messages. While the growing strength of the opposition may provide the incentives for the CCM to take issues like ‘good governance’ and ‘accountability’ more seriously, there are, however, a few reasons as to why recent election developments should not necessarily be celebrated as evidence of a coming democracy. First is the fact that voter turnout (as a percentage of registered voters) in this election was an appalling 42.8 per cent, compared to 76.7 per cent in 1995, 84.4 per cent in 2000 and 72.4 per cent in 2005. While reasons behind this abrupt decline are unclear, one Jamii Forum post speculates that low voter turnout might be caused by problems ranging from poor voting infrastructure to the fact that people simply have not seen any changes in their lives since the start of multiparty politics. Declining voter turnout might be seen as a step away from rather than toward democracy, especially if this decline is a reflection of dissatisfaction or feelings of alienation.

Secondly, despite the promises of liberal democracy generally, and multiparty elections specifically, parties throughout Africa often emerge as vehicles utterly incapable of translating broader societal needs into actual public policy. Whereas campaign messages look so sincere during the heated campaign battles, in the times between elections, parties and politicians generally fail to cultivate durable connections with those that lack the financial backing to offer something in return. This of course, is not just a problem in Africa. But, the shear level of poverty throughout the continent, coupled with the disproportionate influence that powerful international actors have on domestic policy affairs, makes this disconnect between new or long-time incumbent parties on one hand, and the continent’s largely poor majorities on the other hand, more pronounced and more challenging for deepening democracy’s reach.

In reality, this disconnection plays out during election campaigns as well, where competition requires parties to play the game according to the tune of those that hold the keys to the fortunes for financing an election war-chest. Co-joining electoral competition with enormous wealth asymmetries and widespread poverty incentivises behaviour that pays mere lip service to the plights faced by poor people, while taking the interests of economic elites more seriously. As elections in many of Tanzania’s neighbouring cases demonstrate, multiparty competition amid conditions of massive wealth inequalities and poverty is not enough to ensure that the promises of democracy are fulfilled for the majority of the citizens. While ruling parties like the Movement for Multiparty Democracy in Zambia (MMD) and the Party of National Unity (PNU) in Kenya face rather stiff competition, the ability of electoral competition to truly translate into broader citizen empowerment is questionable. This point has been echoed in a recent article in The East African, which essentially depicts the political environment in Tanzania as one where elites compete for the spoils of victory, while the vast majority of Tanzanians are completely sidelined in the political process.

The disconnect between broader citizen empowerment on one hand, and the terms of conflict in multiparty politics on the other, is also manifest in the widely celebrated digital social networking venues. Without a doubt, social media forums can serve as a democratising force by facilitating the exchange of ideas and information between ordinary people and by allowing social movements to gain broader sympathies in their struggles in the face of human rights abuses. However, it must also be remembered that participation in social media throughout much of Africa represents a small and significantly affluent segment of the population. In Tanzania, data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) show that only 520,000 Tanzanians, or 1.3 per cent of the population, managed to use the internet at least one time during 2008. While ITU data shows that 31 per cent have mobile phone subscriptions, only a small margin of these are likely to be those devices capable of connecting to these internet-based fora. These trends are not likely to change rapidly anytime in the near future.

None of this should be taken as suggesting that greater electoral competition in Tanzania will produce no real net benefits. Indeed, the watchful eyes of a robust election competitor might provide the necessary pressures that entice the country’s leaders to take issues like corruption more seriously. Social media offer venues that, in the absence of extreme poverty and asymmetries in wealth and education, might act as a force for broader participation and empowerment. Likewise, competition between political actors might facilitate the inclusion of society’s poorer members. However, where poverty is pervasive and resources confined to a select few, one might also wonder about whose terms this inclusion might reflect. Given the high levels of extreme poverty and resource asymmetries in Tanzania, paired with the tendency for resources to determine the amplitude of political voice, recent election developments should not by themselves be taken as synonymous with the movement toward a democracy that meaningfully relates to the everyday lives of ordinary Tanzanians.

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* Dr Richard Whitehead holds a PhD in comparative politics and has extensively researched political parties and elections in East Africa. He currently works as a private research and publishing consultant.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The revolution will not be funded

The role of donors in the movement for social justice in Africa

Hakima Abbas

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68797

cc anolobbAccess to flexible funds, solidarity, nurturing and safe environments, and a willingness to engage for the long term are some of the key needs of movements for change, writes Hakima Abbas.

The recently concluded mid-term elections in the United States, which quite appropriately came on the heels of their Halloween celebrations, scary as they were, starkly highlighted the buckling of western power among the contradictions of liberal democracy and super-capitalism. The reduction of western aid, induced by the ‘global’ financial crisis, will challenge the perceived dependency between the global North and South. And, with the rise of the economic and political clout of so-called ‘emerging’ powers in the South, the globe is expected to see significant, if not permanent, shifts in societal order.

Within these intriguing and uncertain times, those of us struggling to realise just and equitable alternatives and a new order that can dismantle the dynamics of power and privilege, are confronted with a seemingly insurmountable task: resisting land and water grabbing from foreign ‘investors’; confronting our own (within our society and movements) fundamentalisms that divide the economically oppressed and socially marginalised and insist on freedom for some but not all; protecting our natural resources, biodiversity and the rights of mother earth; dismantling systemic power that seeks to maintain and serve a self-interested, neo-colonial elite, etc.

These multiple forms of insidious imperialism and democratic veiling of repression have created a semblance of normalcy and reduced revolutionary fervour to resignation to reform at best. Widespread understanding of the inter-connection of struggle, the centrality of power in oppression, the necessity to fight all forms of oppression, the ownership of one’s own contradictions and a desire to transform these, indeed, simply the imagination to develop a vision of full liberation is wanton throughout our movements.

Nevertheless the recent rise in acts of civil resistance across Africa is indicative of an ongoing powerful force and movement building process. Social movements are driven by a shared vision and propelled through collective action. Movements are not one entity, but are made up of several forces: formal organisations, autonomous formations, intellectual spaces and thought, individuals…Movements are important because they create the potential for sustained change, not only institutionalising reform but consolidating transformation (people-ising change)[1].

A social movement is ‘an organised set of constituents pursuing a common political agenda of change through collective action’.

The characteristics are:

1. A visible constituency base or membership
2. Members collectivised in formal or informal formations
3. Some continuity over time (i.e., a spontaneous uprising or campaign may not be a movement in itself, though it may lead to one)
4. Engagement in collective actions and activities in pursuit of the movement’s political goals
5. Use of a variety of actions and strategies, and
6. Engagement of clear internal or external targets in the change process.
(Adapted by framework and definition created by AWID.)

Meaningful change in Africa has occurred with the active participation of movements in their entirety, with autonomous formations, political parties, organisations etc, working towards a common agenda. Yet, organisations have taken a central stage on the platform for change. The NGO-isation of our movements, accompanied by the pre-requisite ‘professionalisation’ of activism open to the middle-classes with access to formal education and able to operate in Western paradigms of advocacy, has numbed our imagination for transformation. NGOs, somewhat ironically, are registered and legitimised through the State that the movement often seeks to challenge. The requirements and regulations of this legitimacy demand particular structural norms and the desire for ‘sustainability’ demands a relationship with donors (often international) through which further structural norms are institutionalised. In particular, the ever-expanding NGO industrial complex separates and depoliticises service and advocacy while failing to question its own role in weakening African institutions, power and self-determination.

Often international NGOs have been consumed in service delivery that has meant the effective privatisation (and outsourcing) of African essential services, while local and national NGOs are structurally tied to projects and services without the ability to address need. ‘This has also gradually shifted power away from the constituency that movements organised and into the hands of organisations and organisational leadership that is increasingly less connected and accountable to the constituencies they claim to serve.’[2]

Similarly, accountability to donors and the funding sector has shifted the power of constituency to the power of capital; reducing the spirit of volunteerism and autonomy. Yet, the autonomous formations of our movements similarly seem to have lost their mass based character in many countries, relying heavily on individual activists, seemingly unwilling to engage and address our own oppressive contradictions, reactionary and populist forces at the expense of principled positions, and unable to create sustained change, be it institutional or perceptive.

Within our movements we must go beyond the donor driven paradigm of thinking about objectives, projects and programs to thinking about principles of unity and collective action. We must stop believing that a single solution, a silver bullet, will fix all but rather be willing to try and test new approaches and take on the difficult, seemingly intractable issues. A movement needs a political frame or ideology. Though we must study our history and build lessons, it is high time we challenge ourselves to develop new political thought that is grounded in African progressive practice and responds to our needs, putting at the centre the economically, socially and politically oppressed peoples of Africa: farmers, women, workers, informal workers, queers, people living with disabilities, etc.

A movement also needs networks, identity, a conducive political and socio-economic context as well as resources (financial and non-material) to create change. Funders, at all levels, tend to ignore our organic institutions, the village assemblies, the citizen networks etc., which lead in supporting whole communities though not necessarily within a social justice frame. Funding and access to capital has fragmented movements, with individual funders tending to fund specific organisations rather than a movement as a whole. Similarly, organisations focusing on one area tend not to make links across movements for social justice, thus we remain in silos of struggle, unable and, many times unwilling, to make the connections across diversities and in recognition of intersectionality. Due to our over-reliance on organisational structures, and in turn on international or transnational funding, our social justice work has become vulnerable to funding shifts, the fickleness of funding priorities and the empty promises of the aid architecture.

We must begin, as movements for social justice, to see the funding sector as a sight of struggle in itself, expose its links with state and multi-national corporate interests and learn to unify around our common agenda in order to reject agendas and short term fixes that reinforce our dependency and privatise our essential services. The way we engage individual donors is political, the extent to which our movements set the agenda of the funding sector is a yardstick for the power we have taken back.

‘Even in Warembo Ni Yes[3] we had several challenges that we didn't anticipate that we didn't have before we had raised the resources and then once we had raised the money then we started to deal with power in a different way, we started to deal with transparency, accountability and trust issues in an entirely different way because naturally with money comes a lot of fear, a lot of distrust, because people have been exploited, and you are working with people who are coming from different economic backgrounds as well so have very different relationships to money and what that money means. And so, I think that we do need to be careful. I think what worked about Warembo Ni Yes is that the donors who supported us were willing to take a risk and there are not many donors who are willing to take that kind of risk.’[4]

In turn, funders must begin to reflect, if they wish to support the growth of such movements, on what funders need to change in their practice to be able to lend support effectively. In practice, the needs of social movements rarely require large amounts of funds. What is needed is trust, solidarity and flexible access to resources. Therefore, if funders want to support movements, there is a need to change the paradigm of funding, to provide flexible funds, to provide solidarity, nurturing and safe environments, and a willingness to engage for the long-term.

A significant number of African grant-makers are currently surfacing. These grant-makers to varying degree are seeing themselves as part of the movement. However, in their current state, they have done little to go beyond dominant western models and paradigms that reinforce dynamics of power between funder and ‘grantee’ nor have they particularly risen above their role as middle-(wo)men of western funders.

Yet, some have been more successful in supporting activities that many international donors or foundations would not fund, in enabling experimentation, as well as in supporting political mobilisation and rapid solidarity action. African grant-makers could in fact go further by enabling movements to re-inject politics into our activism by supporting explicitly political actions and themselves explore different models and possibilities to create more autonomous funding.

Indeed in order for resources to be disbursed through African grant-makers in a manner that would support our progressive movements for change, our grant-makers themselves would need to be self-determined by: holding stocks and investments that would generate interest for grant-making while creating a large reserve for sustained social justice support; tapping into the philanthropic potential of Africa’s Diaspora and bourgeoisie, in particular targeting young Africans that are potentially divorced from the interests of the political elite having generated their wealth through sectors like the information, communication and technology (ICT) sector; establishing participatory processes that go beyond tokenistic parading of ‘community’ but that sincerely convene economically oppressed and socially marginalised communities to enable them to articulate priorities and determine how resources are spent; facilitating the raising of money by the people for the people by, for instance, providing a revolving loan fund for start-up activist-led resource mobilising activities; sustaining activism through programs that don’t remove people from their movements or priorities, but enable activists to access resources throughout their lives; attempting to shift the dynamics of power between donor and ‘grantee’ as well as within their own institutions and sector.

It is certain that the revolution will not be funded. Transformative progressive change will not be confined or restricted to logframes, results-based programming or project proposals. Our movements will, however, use resources: relying on non-material resources of peoples’ time and energy, contributions and skills, knowledge and experience, thinking and action, while also relying on material resources offered by the community, members and constituency and provided by allies and supporters and even funded by international or African grant-makers.

But, for these resources to be put to the process of social justice change, we will need to begin to ‘understand that our capacity to bring about major social changes is influenced by our capacity for connecting our strategies, for sharing our dreams, for forging alliances and thus going beyond the survival of our organisations [or formation, or even individual leadership (added by author)] by thinking and acting collectively.’[5]

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* Hakima Abbas is Fahamu’s executive director.
* This article is based on a presentation given by the author to the African Grantmakers Network. The presentation was created based on the input of Fahamu staff to whom this article is also credited.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES:

[1]Modern Latin American Revolutions, Eric Selbin
[2] Association for Women in Development
[3] Warembo Ni Yes was a collective of young feminists coming together to create a campaign in support of Kenya’s proposed new constitution based on the gains for women. Kenya’s new constitution was held to referendum in August 2010 and adopted by large majority.
[4] Zawadi Nyong’o quoted in ‘Young Women Making Waves: Warembo Ni Yes in Conversation’ from the forthcoming The Power is Ours publication by Pambazuka Press
[5] Lydia Alpízar Durán, Association for Women in Development

Will Zimbabwe again regress?

Patrick Bond

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68869

cc TwoWings‘What may seem to some a progressive and brave government is upon closer examination a tyranny’, which despite ‘rhetoric about land redistribution, is ultimately very hostile to its own society’s poor and working people, women, youth, elderly and ill,’ writes Patrick Bond.

If leaders of a little African country stand up with confidence to imperialist aggression, especially from the US and Britain, that would ordinarily strike any fair observer as extremely compelling, especially when the nightmare of racist colonialism is still be to exorcised and when whites hold a disproportionate share of economic power, and when state rulers appear serious about changing those factors.

But that country needs a second glance. What may seem to some a progressive and brave government is upon closer examination a tyranny whose leader repeatedly acts against grassroots and shopfloor social solidarity, and notwithstanding rhetoric about land redistribution, is ultimately very hostile to its own society’s poor and working people, women, youth, elderly and ill.

‘Progress in Zimbabwe’ was the title of a four-day Bulawayo conference last week, gathering mainly academics but also leading civil society strategists. It was organised by University of Johannesburg political economist David Moore and by Showers Mawowa of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) School of Development Studies and Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD).

Said Moore, ‘For many analysts, the end of progress is signified in the political projects of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF – not to mention the Government of National Unity’. It’s been two years since South Africa’s outgoing president Thabo Mbeki negotiated dysfunctional power-sharing between Mugabe’s junta and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Just before the deal took effect in early 2009, the local currency collapsed entirely, and is no longer used. On the upside, that move ended hyperinflation and empty shop shelves. The tiny elite is happier, as is the World Bank (not yet lending, but carefully looking over the state’s shoulder). Yet without any ability to earn hard currency, what’s a peasant or the unemployed (90 per cent of the workforce) to do?

A related problem: Monetary policy is now set in Washington and Pretoria, since the US dollar and South African rand are now Zimbabwe’s core currencies. The Reserve Bank cannot stimulate the sickly economy, because its governor, Gideon Gono, gave Zimbabwe ‘monetary gonorrhea’, a corrupting disease transmitted from his overworked printing press to the economy as a whole.

A US$2 billion bill for Gono’s leftover local debt is being negotiated, and another $5+ billion in foreign debt remains unpayable. Progressives writing the National People’s Convention Charter in February 2008 demanded a debt audit before any World Bank and IMF loans are serviced, and as happened similarly in Ecuador in December 2008, ‘the right of the people of Zimbabwe to refuse repayment of any odious debt accrued by a dictatorial government.’

Politically, progress against Mugabe’s dictatorship is terribly fragile, as the army is now being deployed in many hotly-contested peri-urban and rural areas. Since paramilitary violence forced Tsvangirai to pull out of the mid-2008 run-off presidential election (after winning the first round – but, claimed Mugabe’s vote-counters, with less than 50 per cent), a constitutional rewrite outreach process has provided space for 4,000 meetings in recent weeks.

Many were marred by intimidation. Worse, a mid-2011 election announced by Mugabe promises a return to bad habits: Outright violence, including murder, ending in poll thievery. The most likely scenario, according to leading commentator John Makumbe: ‘The MDC will win and Zanu PF will again refuse to concede power’. So back they will go into the cul-de-sac of renewed power-sharing talks.

Hence the conference was devoted mainly to recording regress not progress, given Zimbabwe’s deep plunge. History needed reviewing, for after all, the most banal measure of progress, that of the economics profession, is per person Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the point it began declining may surprise.

Per capita GDP didn’t begin its slide in February 2000 when President Robert Mugabe lost his first election (a constitutional referendum) and unleashed the war veterans on white farmers. Nor was it on November 1997’s Black Friday, when the Zimbabwe dollar lost 74 per cent of its value in four hours, a world record. Nor was it when the Washington-sponsored structural adjustment program began in 1991, nor when Independence in 1980 meant the small economy’s rearticulation with hostile global capitalism after 15 years of sanctions.

If one thinks of progress in this conventional way, as GDP per person, then Zimbabwe began shrinking in 1974, as indeed was the case in most of Africa, as the world slowdown hit the poorest continent hardest, at a time most African leaders had succumbed to neocolonialism. In Zimbabwe, overproduction of luxury goods, machinery and steel for a limited market left the economy with huge excess capacity at a time of shrinking confidence in Ian Smith’s racist Rhodesian Front regime. After liberation was won in 1980, the economy then recovered some of the lost ground in a growth spurt from 1984 to 1990.

Income in 1990 was much better distributed then than under Smith’s white rule – or than under Mugabe’s kleptocracy after it became avaricious in the mid-1990s. A small black middle class had emerged mainly through the expansion of Zimbabwe’s civil service, though the World Bank successfully insisted that it shrink by 25 per cent during the 1990s.

Sorting out the politico-ideological confusion in historical context requires, according to Sheffield-based Zimbabwean Ian Phimister, a ‘distinct paradigm of radical historiography’. But Muchaparara Musemwa lamented that their discipline still lacks cohesion and purpose. Phimister recommended the new book ‘Becoming Zimbabwe’– featuring work by Alois Mlambo, Brian Raftopoulos and younger historians – which treats contemporary degeneration in historical context.

By all accounts, a central challenge in an era of Mugabe’s state-sponsored ‘Patriotic History’ – a mirror image of Rhodesia’s racist settler history – is recovery of the liberation tradition from damage done even before Independence in 1980, a task aided by the coming publication of Wilf Mhanda’s autobiography. Mhanda’s leadership of the Zimbabwe People’s Army offered an alternative liberatory trajectory, one Mugabe violently suppressed two years before signing the Lancaster House compromise deal that maintained the repressive state and white-biased property relations entirely intact.

Mugabe’s overarching need, it seems, is control of the telling of history – as a way to remind his subjects there was once a time when Zanu PF was indeed a popular force, like fish swimming in the sea of the people. Regurgitation of that memory is what motivates the ‘Talk Left, Walk Right’ project of crony nationalist capitalism, which Mugabe and so many other post-colonial despots adopted, as Frantz Fanon predicted in his 1961 book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’.

Today the main legacy of this struggle is ‘securocrat’ control of the state. Remarked Bulawayo MDC administrator Joshua Mpofu, ‘Talking about political parties is like chewing gravel. Military culture never died, and a lot of public institutions are headed by brigadiers and generals.’

Another memory is of a time when indigenous Zimbabweans controlled their land. According to Blessing Karumbidza, whose recent UKZN doctorate describes post-Independence land experiences, there will be ‘a truly restructured and dynamic farming sector IF and only if the support mechanisms and institutional regimes necessary for land and agricultural rationalization are put in place.’

That’s not happening, insists University of Zimbabwe (UZ) geographer Esther Chigumira: ‘Bifurcated land ownership continues, not by race but by class, favouring elites who are politically connected.’ Those nationalists, recalled former war veteran and now UZ sociologist Wilbert Sadomba, emerged from internecine liberation movement feuds, and ‘hijacked that revolution, in connivance with international capital. We war vets are opposed to both Zanu PF elites and MDC elites. We see neither being able to take the country forward.’

Added leading liberation-era intellectual Ibbo Mandaza, ‘There was a Zanu PF that we were part of, the liberation movement, and then there was Mugabe’s Zanu PF, which is very different. Mugabe is essentially rightwing, notwithstanding the anti-imperialist rhetoric.’ As for his own role, Mandaza confessed, ‘We helped in many respects dress up an essentially rightwing regime in leftist clothing.’

Raftopoulos agreed: ‘This discourse threw off many African scholars, most importantly in the Mamdani debate’ – referring to the great Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani’s 2008 London Review of Books defense of Mugabe. The two most prominent scholars who are supportive of land redistribution, Mamdani and Sam Moyo, were invited but could not attend. In their place, Ben Cousins from the University of the Western Cape promoted the post-2000 land reform’s ‘changing structures of ownership and new agrarian structure,’ concluding, ‘The positives probably outweigh the negatives.’

In the main A1 land programme, he said, ‘About a third of the new farmers are succeeding, a third getting by, and a third getting out.’ The negatives in Cousins’ list include ‘the collapse of Large Scale Commercial Farms which contributed to wide-scale economic decline; the motor force of land reform was the Zanu PF power grab; the decline of the rule of law; violence.’ Added Zimbabwean human rights advocate Elinor Sisulu, ‘food security, environment, HIV-AIDS, and the gender and class dimensions.’

No matter how Zimbabwe needed to end white domination of good farms before 2000, an overall judgment on the land invasions (which sporadically continue because 10 per cent of 4,000 white farmers hung on by hook or by crook), will wait long-term evidence. The spate of new research by those associated with Moyo and Cousins does show a few selective sites of success, especially in Masvingo Province near the ancient Great Zimbabwe empire’s capital, but critics argue this is not a typical region.

But opposition policies came in for equally harsh critique. ‘In the 1990s the motivation for the MDC was the struggle for social and economic justice – and that’s the crucial unique character of the MDC’s origins,’ said Hopewell Gumbo of the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development. ‘But the trend to neoliberalism within the MDC means we will not see progress. We need to look for new alliances and new formations. ‘

But the terrain is uneven, for Harare-based urban civic organiser Mike Davies pointed out the profusion of petit-bourgeois suit-and-tie professionals amongst the capital’s NGO cadre: ‘They acquire a self-preserving aspect perhaps more concerned with continuation than function. They became more remote from their members, even elitist, losing their accountability, more concerned with meeting donor aspirations and requirements than serving the needs of their members.’

According to Davies, ‘opportunistic elements make every effort to preserve their positions, often at some cost to their member organisations and undermining their stated goals. In my opinion, we failed to identify and contain these elements as well as the vehicles that carry them. As a result, the super-NGOs captured the voices of civics and domesticated them for the consumption of an increasingly externalised audience of international donors and Zimbabweans in the diaspora.’

How, then, can progress emerge against both a sell-out to the Washington Consensus (by either or both of the leading parties) and Mugabe’s fake populist language and violence-prone delivery, short of awaiting his death – but then inevitably a new Zanu PF power struggle (between the Mujuru and Mnangagwa factions) that could be even more disruptive?

An answer came from the leading trade unionist present, Kumbirai Kudenga: ‘In terms of mass action, we need people without fear. If you’re not used to going to the ground, it’s hard. Mass action is for people who are used to the ground.’

She even provided a new vehicle: ‘We have a Democratic United Front for the workers, especially for mass action. What we need is support. Can you take down our email: zimlabour@gmail.com That is if you are serious, we are there to act.’

For the rest of us, according to Raftopoulos, a renewed ‘international labour solidarity discourse is one of the best antidotes to Mugabe’s rhetoric’, especially the ‘exemplary solidarity’ shown in April 2008 when in Durban, transport workers refused to unload three million bullets destined for Mugabe’s army from the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang.

Even if the conference was way too top-heavy with talking heads and NGOers, all agreed that a new surge of such solidarity will be needed next year, when regress again trumps progress in Zimbabwe.

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* Patrick Bond is on sabbatical from the UKZN Centre for Civil Society, based at UCal-Berkeley Department of Geography. His books include ’Uneven Zimbabwe’ and ’Zimbabwe’s Plunge’.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

What the Wal-Mart fight really means

Terry Bell

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68798

cc Brave New FilmsIt has 8,692 retail outlets in 15 countries and an annual turnover that exceeds South Africa’s gross domestic product by nearly $110 billion. But unions in South Africa are opposed to Wal-Mart’s expansion into southern Africa. And they’re not alone, writes Terry Bell.

Wal-Mart Stores is a corporate bully and a voracious predator whose presence in any community is beneficial only to the shareholders of the corporation and injurious to the public good. That sums up the trade union view of the world’s biggest retailer.

The SA Commercial Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu), this week provided evidence for this view in a submission presented to the Competition Commission. The submission has the support of a growing global coalition against Wal-Mart and its delivery to the commission amounted to the first serious shot in a battle that promises to be long, hard and bitter.

It is also an international battle against the 48-year-old Arkansas-based corporation that now boasts 8,692 retail outlets in 15 countries. Africa is the only continent that does not yet have a Wal-Mart presence. And the proposed purchase by Wal-Mart of at least a controlling interest in Massmart is not merely a South African issue: while Massmart - Makro, Dion, Game, Builders Warehouse etc - has 263 stores in South Africa, it also has another 25 stores elsewhere in the sub-Saharan region, ranging from Botswana to Ghana, Mauritius and Zambia.

The Wal-Mart strategy - as it has been throughout its spread outside the United States - is to use its massive financial power to buy out existing operations, in fact swallowing what would have been some of its competition had it started from scratch. The unions tend to see this as a parasitic exercise where the money spent on buying a going concern is soon recouped in profits that continue to be repatriated.

This is a criticism that was leveled at the much-lauded R30-billion purchase of Absa by Barclays Bank in 2005. But, in the case of retailing, the financial power and the now global reach of Wal-Mart, enables the corporation to put pricing pressures throughout the supply chain, from farms to factories in any of the ‘55 different banners’ it admits to operating under.

As the unions see it, this ‘bullying’ of suppliers and producers results in fewer jobs, lower wages and worse working conditions. It also means that other retailers are forced to try to match the prices of Wal-Mart operations, so adding to the ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of wages and conditions. However, under the slogan: ‘Save money. Live better’ Wal-Mart and its supporters claim that Wal Mart’s ability to provide the lowest prices is to the benefit of the consumer. It may be, but then only initially, say the unions. They point out that the overall effect of the march of Wal-Mart Stores, trading in a variety of guises from Walmart and Sam’s Clubs in the US to Asda in Britain, has been anything but beneficial.

A study by a team from two universities in Chicago, published in January this year, revealed that when a Wal-Mart store opened it tended to force many other competing stores in the area out of business, with the loss of full-time jobs in those stores being roughly equal to the jobs created by the Wal-Mart operation.

According to the unions, many of the Wal-Mart jobs are also casual and, in the US, Wal-Mart still does not permit its workers to join unions. The company also advises managers on ways to combat the influence of unions, but accepts them when, as in Europe and elsewhere, it effectively inherited a unionised workforce when it bought out existing retailers.

These points were raised in discussions among delegates from the 900 services union affiliates of the UNI Global Union when they met in Nagasaki, Japan, this week. UNI Global brings together 20 million organised workers in 150 countries. It was at the congress that Sharan Burrows, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) issued the warning: ‘Corporate bullies beware.’ She did so when she announced that, in January next year, ITUC would single out a ‘corporate bully’ to be targeted for ‘special attention’ by the international labour movement.

On one level, this is evidence of the growing realisation within the labour movement that unions have been losing ground in what has become an increasingly borderless world; that organised workers have remained largely hamstrung by national boundaries while capital has flowed more freely than ever before. In the current climate, Wal-Mart is a clear front-runner to be targeted, with the object of winning a ‘global framework agreement’ from a global corporation that employs nearly two million workers.

Core to such an agreement would be the right of workers to organise and to form unions. It is the first step by the labour movement towards what is seen as the long- term goal of equal pay and conditions on a global scale. ‘We already have such an agreement with Shoprite and it provides an enabling environment for workers in other countries where Shoprite operates,’ says Saccawu deputy general secretary, Mduduzi Mbongwe. A similar agreement is now being sought from Pick ‘n Pay as it extends its footprint, which Shoprite has already done, north of the border.

However, the idea of such a ‘level playing field’ undermines the profit-driven competitive dynamic of the present economic system, a system Wal-Mart has exploited to the full. UNI Global points out that Wal-Mart has built its competitive advantage on ‘low wages, poor benefits, and a squeeze on producers’.

But there is nothing new or unique in this. The difference is that Wal-Mart, as a product of the free market system, has grown to the extent that its annual turnover now exceeds South Africa’s gross domestic product by nearly $110 billion. It is, therefore, an example of how to succeed in the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism. So while many in the unions may not realise it, the battle they have taken on against Wal-Mart and for global equality requires the transformation of the system itself.

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* Terry Bell is a writer, editor and broadcaster specialising in political, economic and labour analysis.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Held to ransom: The future of history

Jonathan Beale

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68829

cc Scott LeibrandFollowing his recent kidnapping in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Jonathan Beale recounts his troubling experience.

When I tell people about my recent ordeal of being kidnapped by a gang in Dar es Salaam, their reaction is often one of shock, concern and deep disappointment. Concern and disappointment are more than warranted. Perhaps though, on reflection, the outcome of my acceptance of a lift by a man I didn’t know from Cain should not come as a shock.

Before I knew it I had made my fatal mistake; I was being driven out of the city by four of fortune’s ugliest crooks. Inevitably, after 10 or so minutes driving, I was told of my fate.

‘We are bad people, Jon. Very bad.’

My immediate feelings were ones of fear, confinement and frustration as I settled in to my new environment: a four-door saloon car, surrounded by four smoke-puffing gangsters not afraid to see to each other’s threats.

What happened next is standard procedure. I gave them all I had on me, and I knew the game had begun. I became gripped by a strange sense of focus: think only about what you need to, and you’ll leave this car unharmed. I didn’t know what was going to happen or how long I was going to be held for. Clearly the measly £100 or so I had on me wasn’t satisfactory, being merely split between the four with greedy fingers and sideward glances of temporary approval.

Beyond the initial £100, and £300 pounds drained from my account, these guys wanted more.

‘You get us the money, and we don’t harm you. Nothing. If you mess around; you gonna be in deep.’

This is when they demanded the big cash:

‘We want £6,000!’

I knew how they would respond to false hopes, so I was calmly honest with them. I told them that, quite genuinely, I will not be able to transfer £6,000 pounds to them. It was out of the question. To my relief, this is when one of my assailants showed some humility, in response to his greedy friend’s suggestion:

‘Hatutaki ujinga kama huu!’ (‘We don’t want cunningness like that.’)

After 45 minutes or so, I was able to gauge the group dynamics. The large man on my left was the least greedy; the man on my right, good old ‘John’ who had first roped me in, was a greedy and extremely talented and cunning liar, but still not the most dominant; and the driver was, I believe, the second most dominant and dangerous. He stayed pretty silent the whole time and refrained from lying to me at the beginning of the ordeal, perhaps out of some residual dignity. That brings me to the stocky man sitting in the front left. He did most of the talking and was remarkably cool-headed. He was also cold and brutal, and quite willing to cause me harm, as he later made crystal-clear.

‘Now we are going to see the Boss. This is VERY serious!’

My adrenalin was pumping through every vein in my body, struggling with the overriding meniscus of calm that I guess we can call spirit. This is how I felt as the car rolled to a halt. The window came down. The Boss approached the car and hissed his harsh cutting threats at me. We continued driving and circled the suburbia, followed by two other cars.

Once I had been forced to call my family and ask for a £3,000 ransom, the most dangerous of these characters, in the front-left seat, turned to me in a moment of intense dialogue. Eyes locked on mine, he explained to me his history:

‘You know, we are half-bad, half-good. We are not completely bad, and we are not completely good my friend. Me myself, I was orphaned in the Rwandan genocide.’ He paused for effect and I looked deep into the eyes of a tormented and distorted man. ‘My parents were from Burundi. They were killed when I was a child in Rwanda. Later I started drug smuggling. Eventually I moved to Malindi. You know Malindi?’

‘Yes, Malindi in Kenya,’ I replied, grateful for a momentary change of focus. ‘Oh yes, Malindi, nice place.’

‘I smuggled drugs in Malindi working with the Italians there. I then went to Iran to smuggle drugs. I went to prison in Iran for seven years. But we escaped. Me and some others, we escaped from prison there and came here.’

I guessed that brought us to the present. I knew this was leading us to a well-engineered crescendo.

‘So, I do not care what I do to you. I will not stop at anything to get what I want from you.’

This was most terrifying. I replied as I did to all threats: ‘I understand.’

Quite honestly, I did. He genuinely did not care if or how much he hurt me. He wanted the money and he wanted it within a timeframe. Here was a man living his history. Atrocities and the general intoxication of moral conduct are part of the cycle of negative energy, sometimes on an extensive scale, like the impact of the 1994 Rwandan genocide on millions of people. This was the most dangerous threat I had experienced so far, delivered in undiluted and cold transparency. Whether someone is a bad person or not, I do believe that all actions are the product of a historical trend, however long that history goes back and however much energy it has harnessed along the different paths of life. This man was a product of turmoil and horror beyond most people’s nightmares. It is not often that one hears such honesty spoken, which is the terrifying thing.

The shockwave of humanity’s atrocities, gathering strength through the decades of history, is far-reaching and sustained – indeed it was the making of this man. The Rwandan genocide and the events that surrounded and followed it will always be a great loss to and shame on humanity. Over 800,000 people died in the country within 100 days in 1994, left by the international community at the mercy of a surge of ethnic hatred – a rift in national unity with more complex roots than is often assumed. Recently the associated events of and after 1994 in the region have been brought back into focus by the UNs’ accusation of genocide against the Rwandan army during Rwanda’s two invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1996 and 1998, launched primarily at Hutu ‘genocide perpetrators’. These accusations appeared in a leaked UN report detailing past atrocities committed in the DRC. The report featured the testimonies of hundreds of survivors of mass killings of Hutu refugees in the DRC, supposedly at the hands of Paul Kagame’s armed forces.

Not surprisingly Kagame’s government reacted to these leaked accusations with potency, threatening to withdraw Rwandan troops from UN peacekeeping missions. This would have severely hindered the UN’s work to prevent similar atrocities from occurring or finding a foothold in other regions, such as Darfur in west Sudan. Such a decision could only be perceived as sabotaging the already weak defences against insecurity and gross violations of human rights in Africa. The response of the UN to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was of course abysmal, as was that of the entire international community, sometimes cloaked in the all-too-familiar veil of national interest. But what price do we put on life, or an individual’s life for that matter? Or preventing the rape of mothers and daughters? It seems a shame that Kagame reacted with such threats that jeopardise the very humanity and peace that his regime has praised itself with protecting.

If there’s one message we can take from Kagame’s reaction, it is this: The 1994 genocide and its placement in history has not settled and faded from the foreground of global politics, but is a raw wound that still cuts as deep as ever with the potential to fracture societies at their core. The people who were affected by the 1994 Rwandan genocide were real people, with real histories and real futures to navigate. As with other horrors of human history, such as the transatlantic Slave Trade or the Nazi Holocaust, the figures for those who died or who were tortured cannot quite convey the reality of tragedy. Tragedy is not a number. To this day academics trawl through the figures to debate how many were shipped across the Atlantic from Africa, feeding the development of the West at Africa’s expense – another present-history. But in truth, the human mind doesn’t count in numbers unless we talk of objects; it culminates in pain, suffering and the effect on individuals, families and communities, far beyond what can be transcribed in a numerical figure.

‘And I fought in Somalia. Look, this is from a bullet.’

There was of course something to add from ‘John’, as he pointed to a large scar on his scalp. I was not inclined to enquire further about his apparent experiences in Somalia. I didn’t let my mind wander into that, counterproductive, territory. What’s more, I didn’t see the cold honesty in ‘John’s’ eyes as I did in the eyes of the Burundian orphan. ‘John’s’ gaze was far easier to look beyond.

I had been in the car for more than an hour by now, and felt it was time to appear calm, collected and give my captors reassurance that I would provide the £3,000 via the transfer that my distraught family was currently working on. I talked to the orphan about the exploitation of Africa by the West up until the present. Later we talked about Chinese investment in East Africa. He responded passionately and with a good argument. He told me he loved Chinese investment here as it made things cheaper for the average person. He used a bottle of water for an example.

On reflection, it was ironic that he used a bottle of clean drinking water for his evidence. He believed Chinese investment could improve the standard of living in East Africa for the majority, through the production of products on African soil. Admittedly, my take on the issue is different from his, though nonetheless it was bizarre that here I was having an educated conversation about improving the lives of East Africans, through a new form of investment liberated from the heavy baggage of history’s Western-orchestrated dependency, with none other than one of my assailants. The irony was that this man was talking about improving the lives of East Africans, whilst at the same time holding an innocent traveller for a ransom fee far beyond the reach of most of the subjects he based his argument on.

And so, the discussion was not only bizarre, but sad. The sadness and frustration of East African friends was touching. What was particularly sad though was the injustice of giving a gang £3,000 for my release, when honest, kind and remarkably resilient people remain on wages which just about keep them going – or marginalised by the global economy in a perpetual state of unemployment – excluded by the monster that is capitalist exploitation.

This was an event which has a history – not a justification, but a root. This was bred greed beyond survival. This event was a product of negative cycles set in motion in the past. Some make it out of horrific experiences as defenders of moral conduct, some turn to the shadows when darkness is all they have known. The rotten fruits of rotten roots offer a valuable lesson for the present and the future.

The transfer was ready.

‘Okay, this is what is going to happen,’ I was told by the orphan. ‘We will now take you to Western Union.’ There was an air of anticipation mounting in the smoke-filled saloon car now. ‘You will enter the building with John. He will make sure you don’t try anything. And I tell you, don’t try anything. One man did, and he not around anymore. You go in, you get the money. You get back in the car. Now, when you get back in, you sit on the door side. Then you give us the money. You go free.’ Simple.

I listened to the instructions intensely. I certainly wasn’t going to try anything. My plan was to get free, and there wasn’t anything to stop these guys taking it to the next level if I didn’t play along.

The car stopped. ‘John’ and I got out and proceeded towards Western Union, crossing the road as if two good friends picking up some hard-earned cash. Whilst in the queue waiting to see the lady at the counter, I felt the adrenalin and anticipation pumping through my body. To my relief, after some questions, I succeeded in receiving the money – two large bricks of cash. As ‘John’ slipped a 5,000 shilling note into the security guard’s hand, I knew I had made a good decision not to try any moves. We got back in the car, and as promised I was now seated on the door side of the vehicle. Everything had gone as planned, and I had played my only ace card. My heart dropped as the car promptly started moving again.

With the race for capital, at all costs, exploitive capitalism is sucking the life out of those on their knees, with little done to stop it in its tracks. We are surrounded by objects and mechanisms which are the sour fruits of this exploitation. Coltan (or columbite-tantalite), the metallic ore which is unique in its ability to store electronic charge, often ends its corrupt and corporate journey, which most often begins in rebel-controlled mines in the eastern region of the DRC, in the circuit boards of the majority of our electrical equipment. It is the drive for global capital which allows such age-old exploitation to disrupt and extinguish the lives of millions. As we speak, multinational companies are buying coltan from sources in the DRC with connections to rebel factions in the country which feed off the insecurity they promote in their pursuit of riches, murdering and pillaging along the way. Lurking behind every exploitive capitalist fortune is a network, and an even more extensive history, of human suffering. It is this complete disregard for humanity, and the making of tragic history and historical relationships, that must cease. History is not an isolated space in time; history is the making of the present and the future. It seems to me that this simple concept is often hidden in the blind spot of today’s society’s peripheral vision. Global political and economic players need to grasp the present and future implications of the sustaining and stimulation of such human suffering from the safety of their ivory towers. At this most uncertain moment, I felt I was now struggling to stay afloat in the toxic quagmire that festers in the gutters of this world system.

‘We are going to see the Boss’.

I was determined to stay calm at this point, as I stared out of the window praying for some delivery from this ordeal. We drove on as the four men split the money and began hiding it beneath each of their seats in an intense flurry, as if the cash had never been delivered. Their focus was now on the prize, and the concealment of it. At this point ‘John’ turned to me and said: ‘Don’t worry, you are almost free.’ How strange, I thought. Could it be that ‘John’, the trickster, was reassuring me at a time when he knew I would be feeling on edge, perhaps from some slither of compassion?

Then came the final test. I hadn’t, as they had led me to believe, completed the final task of the game I was being forced to play. ‘John’ turned to me once more with my orders:

‘Tell him you gave us 1,850,000.’ ‘Tell who?’ I asked. ‘The Boss.’

Considering I had just given them 6,850,000, this seemed a hard bluff. It appeared they were gambling with me. I was now a pawn in these gangsters’ dealings with the Boss, and no doubt other factions too. We came to a halt and the window went down once again. This was a whole different game now. Now I had given these guys what they wanted. They wanted to pocket most of that money themselves; I was their game plan. This wasn’t a game between me and my kidnappers; it was a game between two different factions of a gang that I did not understand.

The Boss was at the window again. We had stopped by a roundabout on a busy highway, something I was grateful for, though these guys could do whatever they wanted in this city – that had already been made clear. An argument I didn’t bother trying to follow began between the Boss and the men in the car. John turned to me.

‘Tell him how much you gave us!’

I responded: ‘1,850,000’. The rest was up to fate now.

I could see the Boss step back from the car. After all, there were four of them and one of him.

The orphan got out to open my door. I exited, now focused on getting somewhere safe. Even as I walked round the front of the car he instructed me to walk round the back and take one of the rickshaws parked opposite: he was still giving me orders. Was I to be followed? Perhaps in a moment of stupidity, but certainly also with a sense of purpose mixed with sadness and emotion for the state of this world, I turned to him and shook his hand, and departed with the words: ‘Someday the world will be a better place. Someday we’ll be in Heaven together.’ He laughed in surprise and I crossed the road in relief. I was free. He was not.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Jonathan Beale is treasurer of the SOAS Swahili Society.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Diamonds and disappearing tax revenues

Khadija Sharife

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68877

cc Stewart LeiwakabessyPetra Diamonds, the largest diamond-mining group listed on the UK's Alternative Investment Market (AIM), may deal in the glittering rocks that bring lovers together in holy matrimony. But the company’s activities behind the scenes may just be tearing people – and societies – apart, writes Khadija Sharife.

The Africa-focused company, with a resource base of 261 million carats, recently landed a US$40 million loan agreement with the World Bank's opaque International Finance Corporation (IFC) to support the expansion of the company's Williamson Diamond Mine.

But whether the loan benefits Tanzania remains to be seen. All revenue from production is to be shifted through Willcroft Company Limited, a 100 per cent owned intermediate company based in Bermuda, a tax haven, before being remitted back to Williamson Diamonds Limited (Tanzania). Bermuda is just one of over 30 tax havens belonging to the UK, 'managed' through the City of London, head office to the empire's hidden vaults.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Each year developing countries lose over US$385 billion to mispricing while more than 60 per cent of Africa's illicit flight is caused by corporate tax avoidance and evasion. This occurs primarily through the use of jurisdictions intentionally structured to provide criminogenic environments facilitating such activities.

An estimated 26 per cent of Bermuda's GDP is generated from a host of 'secrecy' services specifically designed to cater the needs of foreign clients eager to escape the rule of law in both developed and developing countries, despite fully exploiting infrastructure, labour and resources on the cheap. Besides the obvious near zero tax holidays, Bermuda provides company redomiciliation (easy corporate inversion), protected cell companies (locking up assets etc), and lack of disclosure concerning company ownership, beneficial or ultimate ownership, company accounts, trusts amongst other legal and financial tools. Of course, Petra is only one of over 480 multinationals to maintain subsidiaries in Bermuda.

The secrecy factor cultivates corruption. The opacity concerning beneficial owners (those ultimately benefitting from resource revenue) opens the door to potential political corruption at the lower or higher state level acting in direct collaboration with the corporation. The Tanzanian government, for instance, holds 25% and Petra, 75% of the Tanzanian entity (Williamson Diamonds Limited).


Tanzania is not the only country to have resources funnelled through a tax haven: Petra's mines in South Africa, its primary stronghold also launders revenues through Cullinan Investment Holdings Limited based in the British Virgin Islands, while the company's exploration in Sierra Leone in similarly passed through an entity based in the Seychelles called Basama Diamonds Limited (51 per cent).

To get an idea of what Petra's operating boundaries (or lack thereof) we could delve back into the company's involvement in US$1- $2 billion 800 sq km DRC diamond concession about a decade ago.

In 1996, Zimbabwe's authoritarian strongman Robert Mugabe gave then-DRC head Kabila US$5 million to fund the war against Mobutu. In addition, Mugabe facilitated a US$53 million deal negotiated by the Zimbabwean Defense Industries (ZDI), itself owned by Mugabe's government, to provide Kabila's army with arms, bombs, food, transport and other requirements. The ZDI served as the economic vehicle penetrating the DRC's resources via the barter exchange. Directors of ZDI, a highly secretive company, were disclosed in 1993 as Army General Vitalis Zvinavashe, Mugabe's close aid Perence Shiri, amongst others.

ZDI's Zvinavashe was also, for instance, a director in Osleg, Operation Sovereign Legitimacy, used as a means of financing the Zimbabwean forces. One of the deals included the Sengamines diamond concession south of Mbuji Mayi, through a joint venture (COSLEG) with Kabila's armed forces Comiex.

Caymen Islands-incorporated Oryx Natural Resources came to acquire the concession. According to Diamond Intelligence, (Oryx's head), ‘Al-Shanfari, an Omani national,’ had, ‘close ties to Robert Mugabe and his top officials who has also been designated, ...uses Oryx to enable Mugabe and his senior officials to maintain access to, and derive personal benefit from, various mining ventures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).’

Spokesman for Oryx and CEO for the South Africa-based African Mining Management Company (AMMCO) Geoffrey White disclosed to the Financial Gazette, ‘There was no payment by Oryx to Osleg or individuals related to Osleg when the new Sengamines was formed and Osleg departed.’ AMMCO's Rob Scott revealed to the same paper that the lack of payment was a political decision between the governments of DRC and Zimbabwe. Oryx allegedly owned 49 per cent of Sengamines, Comiex, 35 per cent and MIBA, the DRC's state-owned diamond company, 16 per cent. The company planned a listing on the London Stock Exchange in June 2000. However, a UN Panel report (2000) revealed that Mugabe's Osleg owned the 49 per cent of Sengamines concession, situated in an area allegedly controlled by Zimbabwean forces, claimed by Oryx.

This was because Osleg, the beneficial shareholders, nominated Oryx to hold its share. The panel stated that this was done in order to, ‘disguise the close association between Sengamines and ZDF, and to deceive international investors.’ Oryx's response was that the report, ‘is highly inflammatory and riddled with unsubstantiated and undocumented allegations.’

Plans to list Oryx were foiled when the independent regulator Grant Thornton objected just days before the proposed floating. Petra Diamonds had intended to merge with Oryx, allegedly managed by close Omani associates of Mugabe. Arthur Levy, author of ‘Diamonds and Conflict’, wrote that Petra and Cosleg were to split profits equally.

By 2003, by presidential decree, 'Oryx' owned 80 per cent of Sengamines, and MIBA, 20 per cent. According to Petra's chairman Adonis Pouroulis (concerning the foiled 2000 listing), ‘I understand the position that they have adopted was put to them by 'certain regulators' very late on Friday afternoon.’

Foiled it may have been, but had the regulator not pulled out after substantial and unambigious evidence, it is unlikely that Petra, headquartered in another UK tax haven of Jersey, would not have eagerly gone ahead.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Khadija Sharife is southern Africa correspondent at The Africa Report magazine and a contributor to the Tax Justice Network.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Naspers: Where art thou, and why?

Khadija Sharife

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68840

cc stockvaultMedia and entertainment giant Naspers ‘has engaged in the kind of “aggressive” tax planning devised to strategically move such assets into low-tax regions’, writes Khadija Sharife.

Where I come from, South Africa, Naspers is a pretty big deal, handling everything from print (production, publishing and distribution of newspapers, books and magazines), to internet (content, communication and commerce) and television. Of course, it’s not just any television, but, arguably, the finest subscription or pay-television the flat screen (or, in my house, fat screen) has to offer.

Incorporated in Cape Town in May 1915, Naspers created M-Net in 1985, the year of my birth. Thanks to M-Net, many dreary hours that should have been spent on maths were instead invested in series like ‘Boy Meets World’ or ‘Full House’, developing me as a well-rounded mathematically obtuse individual.

By all accounts, Naspers is a world-class entertainer. The company's most significant operations, by its own admission, are emerging markets. This includes not only South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, but also China, Latin America, Russia, India and central and eastern Europe.

We can draw two conclusions from these locations: first, that Naspers operates in developing economies, i.e. countries that are anxious to source 'development' finance from a sustainable tax base; and second, that the tax rate in said economies would not, by and large, be considered 'tax havens'.

Most do not offer banking secrecy, high-level client confidentiality, low or zero taxation and lack of disclosure concerning crucial details that should be made public, such as company and beneficial ownership.

Yet like most mega-corporate entities, including those deriving considerable income from intangible assets such as intellectual property, Naspers has engaged in the kind of 'aggressive' tax planning devised to strategically move such assets into low-tax regions.

Naspers intangible assets include trademarks, patents, title rights, brand names and intellectual property, as well as software, web and other forms of development. While Naspers, no doubt complies (even if creatively) with South Africa's tax rate, as the company stated, 'international tax rates vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.’

Naspers owns 100 per cent of the MIH Group. In 2010, the group’s revenue increased by 5 per cent to R28 billion. The Group's CEO (chief executive officer) and CFO (chief financial officer) are directors of several corporate tentacles such as MIH B.V. (Netherlands) and MIH Limited (Mauritius).

WHY WOULD THEY CHOOSE SUCH LOCATIONS?

As mentioned in a previous post, the Netherlands is a crucial conduit used by corporations to shift profits as a means of reducing taxes due elsewhere, and is a classic holding-company location.

In 2007, a report by SOMO revealed that about one-eighth of financial holding companies registered in the Netherlands (where information on beneficial owners were identified) were 'mail box companies' managed by 'trust' offices, and 43 per cent had a parent corporation registered in a tax haven.

Benefits include little or no taxation on repatriated profits, while profits derived from active foreign branches or subsidiaries that are taxed in foreign locations are exempt from Dutch corporate taxation. But here's the kicker: 'Management' entities located in tax havens may provide internal high interest loans to subsidiaries intentionally allowing heavy charges to be imposed, artificially diminishing profits, even creating losses. The interest payments – as well as profits – are then shifted to any low-tax subsidiary, including Mauritius, providing tax exempt entities through vehicles such as Global Business Category II (GBCII), in addition to banking secrecy and almost zero-disclosure concerning the nature and substance of corporate entities, such as beneficial owners. Known as thin capitalisation, it is a commonly used system.

The Dutch 'patent box' is taxed at 10 per cent or less. By transferring the rights to intangible assets to related entities based in tax havens, the parent company is able to 'legally' minimise taxes.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), intangible assets are 'one of the most important commercial developments in recent decades'. But unlike labour and physical assets, the value of intangible assets, especially when determined through opaque transfer pricing between subsidiaries of the same corporation, is difficult to financially evaluate using 'arms length transfer' (market price), thus providing companies with considerable leeway to exploit low tax jurisdictions. The 'relocation' of intangible assets, given that the geographic location itself remains marginal, is thus specifically identified to provide tax benefits.

Respectable multinationals specialising in accounting like KPMG peddle services catering to the transfer of such assets through 'disposal or sale and transfer of IP portfolios', the 'design of appropriate protective measures'. This is the kind of terribly important-sounding wink-wink language that has allowed for Google, Microsoft, Fox and other major media, technology and pharmaceutical corporations to avoid revenue owed to countries like the US and South Africa.

Of course, such activity is not limited to Naspers – openly using the British Virgin Islands (just prior to the first democratic elections), the Netherlands, Cyprus, Greece and Mauritius. This document from KPMG advises clients to 'consider shifting income from India to Israel given that corporate tax is higher than India’, while also emphasising the important possibility of intermediate holding companies in Mauritius, Cyprus and the Netherlands.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Khadija Sharife is a journalist, visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society (CCS) based in South Africa, and contributor to the Tax Justice Network.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Looking into the future

Art and the law in Zimbabwe

David Coltart

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68867

cc Sokwanele - ZimbabweThe banning of works of art at a national gallery both curtails ‘fundamental rights of freedom of conscience and expression’ and ‘derails attempts’ to grapple with Zimbabwe’s traumatic past in ‘a palatable manner’, argues David Coltart.

The artistic field is one of the most important areas of liberated and investigative thought, a bastion of an expressive cultural identity, the most communal in outreach; bold, entertaining, and intelligent. Any nation which does not uphold such ideals and avenues, risks producing a people stultified, numb and unquestioning. It is the role of art to intervene in every society, to make conscious in the most intimate mode of our senses. Nothing could be more precious or urgent in the evolution of a nation.

Art as well plays a vital role in defining a nation; in giving it an identity, a history, a present, a future. It can also be balm for a nation; it can heal and bond a nation; it can enable it to recover from trauma and live again. For it can interpret hard times and reconcile us all to them and to each other. Pablo Picasso once said:

‘We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth’.

In similar vein the Irish poet W.B. Yeats in his poem ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ wrote:

‘The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours, the sentimentalist himself; while art is but a vision of reality’.

In other words because art is not actual reality it can usher reality in and help us deal with it in a moderated or graduated way – which in turn helps us individually and nationally to grapple with our past and current failings and successes in a palatable manner.

Zimbabwe is a nation with a bloody history; a history which has been littered for decades with serious human rights violations, violence, abuse of power, racial and ethnic discrimination. For the first 90 years post Zimbabwe’s colonisation black Zimbabweans were discriminated against because of their race and serious human rights abuses were perpetrated against them by successive white minority governments. The first 30 years post independence have been marked by serious and consistent human rights abuses including a politicide, if not genocide, which occurred in the mid 1980s in the south west of the country. In other words Zimbabwe has had a lot of psychological and physical trauma to deal with as a nation and art has a critical role to play as we delve beyond subjective interpretations of history and begin to realise the truth of our past. As Yeats wrote – through art we get a mere ‘vision of reality’, but nonetheless and importantly a vision which is not reality itself but an objective truth about that reality.

Jesus Christ when being tried by Pontius Pilate said ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’. Those words apply to us as individuals but also to nations. For it is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past, learn from it and through that educative process build stronger foundations for the future. It is in this context that art has a critically important role to play in the development of nations. For through art comes that ‘realisation of truth’ and that ‘vision of reality’ which enables us to get past the very first hurdle of acknowledging our past. And it is only when we have truly acknowledged and accepted our past that we can ‘Look into the future’ in a constructive and positive way. Because if we dare look to the future without understanding our past then we are doomed to repeat our failures of the past.

THE CLASH BETWEEN ART AND LAW

This year has been a traumatic year for the National Arts Gallery in Bulawayo because it has been the focus of a clash between certain arms of government and art. The exhibition by Owen Maseko entitled Sibathontisele, regarding the Gukurahundi, has opened a can of worms. Shortly after the exhibition opened both Owen Maseko and the director of the Gallery Voti Thebe were arrested. Subsequently the exhibition itself was banned and Owen Maseko still faces very serious charges. At the same time the sculpture ‘Looking into the Future’, of a nude man, which the Bulawayo public has enjoyed for some 16 years, was also banned. In short that ‘vision of reality’, that ‘realisation of truth’ that both these works of art constitute is now being subjected to scrutiny and challenge by certain elements of government and in the process I fear that an attempt to grapple with our past in a palatable manner is being derailed, with potentially fearsome consequences.

Our current constitution enshrines the rights of artists in two key clauses. Firstly we have the right of freedom of conscience.

Section 19 Protection of freedom of conscience

(1) Except with his own consent or by way of parental discipline, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, that is to say, freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, whether alone or in community with others, and whether in public or in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief through worship, teaching, practice and observance.

That right is not absolute and is subject to the proviso in subsection (5):

(5) Nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be in contravention of subsection (1) or (3) to the extent that the law in question makes provision—

(a) in the interests of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health;

(b) for the purpose of protecting the rights and freedoms of other persons, including the right to observe and practise any religion or belief without the unsolicited intervention of persons professing any other religion or belief;

Secondly we have the right of freedom of expression.

20 Protection of freedom of expression

(1) Except with his own consent or by way of parental discipline, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of expression, that is to say, freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, and freedom from interference with his correspondence.

That right also is not absolute and is subject to the provisos in subsection (2), for example:

(2) Nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be in contravention of subsection

(1) to the extent that the law in question makes provision—

(a) in the interests of defence, public safety, public order, the economic interests of the State, public morality or public health;

(b) for the purpose of—

(i) protecting the reputations, rights and freedoms of other persons or the private lives of persons

concerned in legal proceedings;

(ii) preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence;

(iii) maintaining the authority and independence of the courts or tribunals or the Senate or the House of Assembly;

In other words the constitution enshrines the rights of artists to create works of art at their pleasure so long as they do not affect, amongst other things, public order, public morality and the reputations of others. This is the great interchange between artistic freedom and law in Zimbabwe. I do not this evening have the time to delve into the intricacies of the boundaries of these respective rights and laws and of course these boundaries vary greatly from nation to nation and have been interpreted greatly by different judges over time.

Suffice it to say that two different sets of laws have been used to curtail these fundamental rights of freedom of conscience and expression in Zimbabwe. In the case of Owen Maseko security legislation (based on notions of public defence, safety and order) have been invoked to proscribe his art. In the case of the sculpture ‘Looking to the future’ the notion of ‘public morality’ has been invoked to ban that piece of art. I will need to look at the two actions separately.

OWEN MASEKO

The case involving Owen Maseko is sub judice so I cannot comment directly on that case and will have to confine myself to more general comments about the use of security legislation to restrict politically critical works of art.

Let me say at the outset that nowhere in the world do artists have completely unrestricted or unfettered freedom to produce works of art which are politically controversial. For example works of art which incite violence or hatred against racial, religious or ethnic groups are banned. In Germany artistic works which for example deny the reality of the holocaust are illegal. Likewise any work of art that seeks to glorify or justify the holocaust would be illegal. The boundary of these laws is subjective and varies greatly from country to country but all countries have some restrictions.

However art works which are sombre and accurate visions of reality or which help nations to realise the truth of their past are not just allowed but are revered. For example the Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is not a pretty work of art. It is in many respects ugly – a rambling, chaotic assembly of concrete blocks which in many ways is at variance with the glorious architecture which surrounds it. It is surrounded by beautiful parks and historic buildings such as the German parliament and the Brandenburg Gate itself. It is also obtrusive and large and in one’s face – it is impossible to ignore it. But it is a necessary work of art – a stark reminder of a terrible past which no-one should ever forget.

There are other terrible things that have happened in Zimbabwe – for example the Nyadzonia massacre which took place on 9 August 1976 was one of the darkest days of our history, when well over 1,000 Zimbabweans were killed or wounded on a single day. Should works of art which present a ‘vision of reality’ or which realise the truth of what happened that terrible day be banned? The same applies to artistic works which graphically portray the horrors of apartheid. Internationally the same applies to films such as ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘The Deer Hunter’ which do not glorify war and display it in all its horror and gore. Films like this take away all the glamour and gloss of war. The world is a better place for it because they act as a deterrent for future generations who otherwise would not have the slightest inkling of the reality of war.

Surely that is a principle that we need to uphold in Zimbabwe? The danger of burying reality is that we then do not confront it and learn from it. There must be a danger that if we frustrate these forms of expression that the anger that certain communities have will remain bottled up, only to fester and explode later. In doing so any hope of building reconciliation is lost.

I personally feel that it is a shame that we have never been able to deal with the reality of what happened in our nation in the 1970s through a truth, justice and reconciliation process. The white community has never had to confront the excesses and gross human rights violations of the Rhodesian Front war machine and the fundamental injustices of white minority rule and I think that the white community is all the poorer for it. I confine my comments specifically as a white Zimbabwean but the same applies to all racial groups in Zimbabwe. It is the great dilemma all citizens of our nation have as we grapple with our bloody past. We pretend as if it didn’t happen; we run away from it and bury it.

The challenge for all of us is what we are to do with our past. Are we prepared to learn from it or are we determined to bury it and run the risk of repeating the shocking mistakes of the past? Whether we like it or not the past did happen and we need gentle means to deal with it.

It is in this context that art has a vital role to play in reconciliation. For it can introduce us to our collective past in a relatively gentle way. It can introduce ‘visions of reality’ and help us all as we ‘realise truth’ and with that the mistakes we have made.

The tragedy of simply banning politically controversial art is that we then never get the opportunity to debate it and learn from it. Ironically by taking a step further and prosecuting an artist one stands the risk of further inflaming a sensitive issue and thus retarding any hope of reconciling communities.

In conclusion my belief is that art should only be banned on the grounds of public security when works of art are gratuitously inflammatory and not by any stretch of the imagination ‘visions of reality’ but rather ‘visions of unreality or untruths’. Even then I believe that artists should only be prosecuted when they are guilty of repeated and deliberate attempts to subvert truth with the intention of stirring up racial, ethnic or religious enmity or hatred.

‘LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE’

The banning by the Censorship Board of the nude sculpture ‘Looking into the future’ is fortunately not sub judice so I can direct my comments more squarely in that regard.

I know the statue well and I believe that its banning is not only ridiculous but also a violation of our fundamental constitutional rights. The statue is not promiscuous or suggestive in any way – it is simply an interpretation of the male human body. It is also of course a fine work of art and we can be justly proud that a Bulawayo citizen is responsible for it.

I use the word ridiculous because the banning will subject us to international ridicule. For example would we in Zimbabwe ban the statue of David? ‘David’ is the masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a 5.17 metre (17 feet) marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence. Originally commissioned as one of a series to be positioned high up on the facade of Florence Cathedral, the statue was instead placed in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. Because of the nature of the hero that it represented, it soon came to symbolise the defence of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states.

The point is simply that our own ‘Looking into the future’ is no more promiscuous or suggestive than ‘David’, indeed if anything ‘David’ is far more detailed and graphic. The banning of ‘Looking into the future’ potentially makes us the subject on international ridicule, and by that I include the rest of Africa.

We also need to ask ourselves the question of where this banning order takes us. Does it mean for example that all classical paintings of nude subjects are now to be considered against ‘public morality’? Should they all be banned and the books containing them destroyed? Where does this end up – are we to ban anatomy classes in medical schools?

I suggest that this is patently ridiculous and that the Censorship Board knows this. It is my belief that this banning was simply a foil – designed to divert attention away from the political banning of Owen Maseko’s works, which has nothing to do with the maintenance public morality. In short my view is that the banning of ‘Looking into the future’ was solely designed to give the politically motivated banning a veneer of moral respectability. It was designed to cast the National Art Gallery as some sort of illicit, immoral organisation, which of course it is not.

As a member of the Cabinet responsible for this banning I cannot say in this forum what should be done about this. Suffice it to say that as minister of arts and culture I do not support the banning and believe that it constitutes a fundamental and serious breach of artistic freedom as enshrined in the constitution.

CONCLUSION

Zimbabwe is blessed by having a wide array of supremely talented artists. If these are artists are allowed to give full vent to their talents I have no doubt that they will not only help heal our nation but will also assist us in the serious challenge we face of rebranding Zimbabwe in a more positive light. For Zimbabwe is not a country of gloom and doom; it is as we know a country filled with amazing, courageous and wonderful people. Our artists are some of our greatest nation assets and I hope that during my tenure in office I can do all things possible to promote them both domestically and internationally.

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* This speech was presented as the 2010 Lozikeyi Lecture, at the National Gallery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
* Senator David Coltart is a human rights lawyer and Zimbabwe’s minister of education, sport, arts and culture.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The greatest threat to Nollywood

Dibussi Tande

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68868

cc Michael RankProtecting Nigeria’s thriving film industry from piracy, political alliances in Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea’s elections through the eyes of a Peace Corps volunteer are among the posts in this week’s roundup of the African blogosphere, by Dibussi Tande.

Afribiz highlights the poor state of Intellectual Property (IP) governance in Nigeria using the case of the Nigerian film industry:

‘The growth of Nollywood has been impeded by the inability of filmmakers and industry stakeholders to secure complete IP protections for their investment in time and capital. Piracy stands to be the greatest threat to Nollywood, as it is estimated that for every legitimately sold movie, more than five are sold illegitimately. Some sources report that as high as nine out of every ten CDs, DVDs, VCDs, and other copyrighted work is pirated. Pirated works represent at least twenty-five percent of the entire market place…

‘Ineffective enforcement of IP laws and weak anti-piracy efforts provide a breeding ground for the prevalence of piracy.

‘However, achieving a successful creative industry will require political commitment to prioritize the creative industry’s needs. While Nollywood stakeholders are enthusiastic about the future of Nollywood, the lack of government support could cause a detrimental impediment to the industry’s success.

‘Enacting IP laws and anti-piracy campaigns is necessary, but insufficient. Proper oversight is essential and a decrease in corrupt practices is vital. Corruption in Nigeria’s business climate is the hobgoblin of economic under-development, as it deters foreign investment and weakens trust in government. Anti-corruptive campaigns will be as essential to the continued success of Nollywood as will anti-piracy campaigns. But most importantly, an overall commitment to these campaigns will provide a stable and reliable environment wherein Nigeria may harness its creative industry.’

Elie Smith comments on the longstanding tradition of ephemeral political alliances in Cote d’Ivoire:

‘It has to be pointed out that alliances in Ivory Coast seldom last. In 2000, it was the alliance between the left-leaning FPI party of Laurent Gbagbo and the Conservative RDR party of Alassane Dramane Ouattara that propelled the first to power. But as soon as Gbagbo reached the presidency, the alliance fell apart. Similarly, late General Guei is alleged to have entered into an agreement with Laurent Gbagbo, in which, the first would become president in 2000 elections and the second will be his prime minister.

‘Both men are reported to have agreed to exclude Alassane Dramane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bedie from the 2000 presidential elections bid. General Guei who was killed in a counter coup operation in 2000 by loyalist forces, did not know that as he was negotiating with Laurent Gbagbo how best to sideline Ouattara and Bedie, the same Laurent was also plotting with Ouattara on how to hoodwink the Christmas Day coup plotter. It is also rumored that, the 1999 coup d’état was sponsored by Alassane Ouattara in revenge to what Henri Konan Bedie did to him in 1995. Ten years later, the Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane Dramane Ouattara, who are or were former foes, have now united to oust from power, Laurent Gbagbo, the one whom both consider a dangerous impersonator. But will their alliance last? Will it overcome the deep suspicions and resentments it has created. Will members of Konan Bedie party follow loyally the orders of their leader to vote for the man they derided yesterday?’

Kate with Dreadlocks, a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Guinea, gives an overview of the recent elections in that country:

‘As of late Monday night results are IN from the November 7 Presidential run-off!! As the results were announced, an unexpectedly late storm pounded Conakry, rain washing the streets clean. Symbolic? We can only hope. The Electoral Committee cleverly released the results on the eve of the Fête de Mouton, or Eid al-Adha, one of the largest Muslim holidays of the year, when people are expected to be visiting friends and family, eating sheep (in memory of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, before the sheep handily stepped in), and generally, not violently protesting. Most folks seemed to stay close to home yesterday, celebrating the Fête on a scaled-down level.

‘Guinea’s Supreme Court now has eight days to confirm the election results. Once things are calm, we’ll head to our posts. It’s true that there has been unrest in Conakry, I can hear the gunshots, but I’m happily hunkered down in the Peace Corps house with plenty of reading material and a very large stash of yogurt (although no sheep). Hopefully, the supporters of the losing candidate, Diallo, who have been quoted as saying “Victory or Death!” will take another look at that stance… I’m encouraged to know that the roughly 2,000 election observers from the Carter Center, the European Union, and local groups did not find the “massive fraud at all levels” that Diallo has accused. I’m equally curious to see if Condé, the winning candidate, will make good on the pledge both candidates made prior to elections to include the other in a unity government, and if extending the olive branch would quiet the street riots.’

Lambom’s Vuvuzela feels that it is time for Africans in the United States to establish a political caucus to defend their interests:

‘In the last election cycle, the huge Hispanic turnout in key battleground states paid off; Harry Reid, for example, the most endangered senator in the last election who had his seat on life support owes his victory in part to the Hispanic vote angered by Angle’s anti-immigration ads.

‘In the light of the foregoing, one may rightly ask – where are the Africans?

‘Africans are surely lost in the madding crowd of “African American” and are more concerned with bread-and-butter issues. Most of us are on the wild goose chase for the dollar...

‘In seeking to navigate US political landscape, the African Diaspora must borrow a leaf from the Hispanic caucus. Three lessons worth drawing on are first, Hispanics have made their voices heard and articulated their plight; next they have put their money where their mouth is, and lastly they are an organized bunch.

‘Many [Africans] may not be able to vote, but let none hear any idly saying there is nothing they can do. Making the African voice heard in the very crowded supermarket like US politics needs the vuvuzela of grassroots mobilization. The moment is opportune and the time is ripe.’

Gay Uganda writes about the burden of being gay in Uganda:

‘Sunday, a friend came and told me that he had tested, and was HIV positive.

‘There is nothing like that shock, when you realise a friend is so burdened...

‘He is gay.

‘And, closeted…

‘Double closeted, that is what my gay friends who are positive have to be. They cannot tell members of our community that they are HIV positive. And, they cannot disclose outside the community that they are gay. Of course HIV still has a huge stigma. Yes, despite the “enlightened” attitudes now. It is still a stigmatizing condition, despite the drugs...

‘Now, for those of you not in the know, Uganda is a worldwide leader in HIV prevention. You will hear that in HIV circles. No, I am not lying.

‘And, Uganda does not have an HIV prevention programme for gay people. Again, I am not lying.

‘People like Ssempa, teaching and preaching Abstinence and Being Faithful have huge influence with the Uganda AIDS Commission. Ssempa is on record saying that we can’t have an HIV prevention programme for gay men. Because we gay people are illegal...

‘No. I am NOT kidding you.’

Myne Whitman explains the impact of Ken Saro Wiwa’s death, 15 years after he was put to death by the Abacha regime in Nigeria:
‘I had previously ignored the military regime of the now late Gen. Sani Abacha, but I was forced to consider how they stifled free speech, and how this might affect my own writing, my life. It was not an encouraging picture I saw...

‘In the years in between Ken Saro Wiwa's death and today, I read two more of his books of his experiences during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Sozaboy: a Novel in Rotten English, of a naive village boy recruited into the army; and On a Darkling Plain, his personal diary… Both books and most of his others made references to the abuse he saw around him, as the oil companies took riches from beneath the soil of Ogoni land, and in return left them polluted and unusable. The fed into my world view of how the world worked, and why I needed to tell my own story however I could.

‘Today, 15 years later, I am more grown up and socially aware. I live in the United States by choice and will travel to Nigeria in the next couple of weeks. I am a full time writer, editor and author. My book, A Heart to Mend, has also been published and is doing very well in Nigeria. In March of this year, I established and currently serve as managing editor for a critique website for Nigerian writers called Naija Stories. The aim of the website is to provide a platform of opportunities to aspiring Nigerian writers and get them telling their stories on their own terms. In a press release yesterday by the Niger-Delta Restoration of Hope, two of Naija Stories members had won in a writing competition held to commemorate the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Their entries were appropriately titled "Road to Martyrdom" and "Life before Death”.

‘Ken Saro Wiwa had died for speaking out and making his voice relevant. I, and others, will continue speaking.’

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* Dibussi Tande blogs at Scribbles from the Den.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

When loyalty becomes a threat to society

S’bu Zikode

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68878

cc Abahlali'Loyalty to political parties and to those who try to privatise the history of the struggle against apartheid for themselves becomes a very serious threat to the poor in a top-down system of governance,' writes S'bu Zikode, president of South African shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. 'But loyalty has also been the source of our survival. Loyalty is fundamental to the strength that we build in our families and with our friends, our movements and our communities … Our loyalty should start from the bottom of society, where we are, and not from the politicians at the top of society.'

I have been invited by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative to come to the United States of America to speak, to learn and to share our experiences of struggle in South Africa. I wish to thank the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative for their invitation and for their solidarity with our struggles. Over the last years a number of comrades from our movements have received invitations to travel to other countries to try and build a living solidarity between our different movements. As members of Abahlali baseMjondolo we only get these invitations because of the strength of the movement of which we are part and so we are very clear that we travel as elected and rotating representatives of a living movement of the poor and not as individuals.

The churches and friends of Abahlali all over the world, including here in the United States of America, have rallied to our support in most difficult times. After the shack fires that have taken many lives of our children and parents, after flooding, after beatings by the police and politicians, after violent attacks etc. We thank you for all that. If it was not for your support we fear we would not still be surviving. When the poor ask for what is basic to life we are taken as a threat to society by many rich people. The most basic and humble demands are shown to the world as if they are the work of criminals, third forces and people who can’t think and who are violent. For this reason it is very important for the survival of our struggles that we can build alliances with people who are willing to testify to the world that it is not the organised poor who are a threat to society, but that it is the system that makes some people poor and others rich that is a threat to society.

I will speak on various issues while I am here in the USA but today I will speak on the question of loyalty.

Our living politic begins with the fact that all of us were created in the image of God and are therefore equal. Our living politic starts by recognising the full and equal humanity of every human being. We struggle as human beings with equal worth and intelligence to all other human beings against a system that produces inequality by denying, everyday, the humanity of some of us.

When our movement started in 2005 it was out of anger, hunger and frustration. We were becoming desperate and we needed to be heard. Our first collective act, the act that gave birth to our movement, was a road blockade in March 2005. When we blocked the road none of us had planned to form such a movement. In fact none of us had even planned the road blockade long in advance. Many of us did not know that the road blockade was such a political act. Yet we realised how political it was when fourteen of us were arrested, unlawfully detained and beaten in prison. We had thought that we were being ignored because our voices were not being heard. But we discovered that when we forced our voices to be heard and asked to speak to the authorities they would send the police instead. We discovered that in the eyes of the state our demand to be heard was taken as a criminal demand. Later we discovered that some parts of civil society took the same view. We discovered that we were supposed to suffer in silence while other people, politicians and experts, debated our lives, our struggles and our futures. But we also discovered our collective strength as the organised poor, the self organised poor.

Loyalty has been both our weakness and our strength.

Loyalty was destroying us when we gave it to the political parties. Our loyalty did not help any of us with our various party political affiliations. Our loyalty did not even help those of us who struggled and made a lot of sacrifices within the United Democratic Front (UDF) during the struggle against apartheid.

But loyalty has also been the source of our survival. Loyalty is fundamental to the strength that we build in our families and with our friends, our movements and our communities. As a poor person you cannot survive in this world on your own. Without loyalty there would be no one to care for your children when you are at work, to offer you a place in their home after a fire or an attack, to introduce you to a community when you need a place to live, to stand with you when the police and the land invasions unit comes. Maybe it is because we cannot survive without loyalty that we take loyalty to be such an important thing.

But while loyalty is the great strength of the poor it is also at the same time a great threat to the poor. Loyalty to political parties and to those who try to privatise the history of the struggle against apartheid for themselves becomes a very serious threat to the poor in a top-down system of governance. It is even dangerous to our democracy, a democracy that continues to serve the interests of the few, while the majority are rotting in the shacks, without homes, without jobs and without dignity. Loyalty becomes too dangerous when political leadership exercise their loyalties to their political parties and to individuals within their parties to advance themselves while excluding the poor. This has promoted a culture of corruption, favours, nepotism, political intolerance, violence and the party politicisation of government service delivery.

Those of us who are opposed to this loyalty to the politicians will not only be excluded but we will also be severely punished. It is on this basis that the shack dwellers and the poor are taken for a ride and are made to serve their life sentence in the shacks, despite numerous calls for small steps forward such as the Millennium Development Goals. In fact in our country the MDGs have just become a new licence for those in power to advance themselves through BEE. Our country is at the brink of catastrophe. The poor continue to get poorer while the rich get richer and more oppressive to the poor. We feel the world closing in on us. We have long been warning that the anger of the poor can go in many directions.

Loyalty should start with us. It should start from where we are, with what we have. We must first be loyal to ourselves without seeking to impress anyone else with this. We must then be loyal to our families, to our communities and to our society. Our loyalty should start from the bottom of society, where we are, and not from the politicians at the top of society.

I must also warn that loyalty does not come from being rich nor from being successful in one’s career. It does not mean that we should agree when there is no need to agree. It should not be seen in terms of peace and compromise. What may be moral and benefit the most vulnerable groups in our society and our future generations may take us into conflict with the politicians and the rich. Sometimes it may also take us into conflict with some parts of civil society.

Today let us review our loyalties just to check how much of damage or good they do to others. Let us continue with those loyalties that keep us safe, that affirm our dignity, that louden our voices, that build our power. Let us put away those loyalties that tie us to the people and systems that keep us oppressed.

Loyalty to political parties, to the experts and to the whole top down system has resulted in these loyalists denying the shack dwellers and the poor their rights to citizenship, to cities, to well located land, decent housing, safety and education. We have been denied basic services, such as water and sanitation, electricity, road access, refuse collection. We have been excluded from participating in the discussions on our future. And most importantly we have been denied our dignity, Ubuntu and Abahlalism. It is through this denial that the state - with the support of some few regressive leftists - think that they can buy or intimidate our struggle in order to bury our struggle so that they may continue to have the only legitimate right to speak for the poor. We will never accept this. The poor have the same rights as everyone else to be at the centre of the discussions concerning our future.

We are calling upon all the poor and all the marginalised along with all the progressive social movements of the poor and those NGOs, churches and individuals that are willing to speak to and not for the poor, to struggle with and not for the poor, to join us in our journey to a fair world which is a world of equality, a world in which everyone counts. This is not an easy journey. Sometimes it is very difficult. Sometimes it is accompanied by lies, beatings, arrests and death. But we will keep going forward although we know that victories are not certain and that when they are won they are sometimes won at a considerable price.

For example in 2009 we won a case in the Constitutional Court against the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act 2007. We slaughtered two cows in celebration for this victory. But we were punished for this victory by means of a planned violent attack on our movement. The violence that followed the attack left two people dead and several injured. The Abahlali headquarters were looted, the homes of its leadership and their families homes burnt down and several hundred people forced into hiding. Our attackers were fulfilling their loyalties to those politicians who instigated the attack. The premier of the province and the president of the Republic were all silence. None of our attackers were arrested and the few charges that we succeeded in opening against them were never investigated.

This was clearly an attack on our hard won democracy. Our constitution allows for all such formations as democratic organisations like our movement. But the state and its party are shutting down the spaces of democracy. Abahlali have worked hard to create our own space to share, learn and build living solidarity amongst the poor. We have worked very hard to protect such a space even when the party loyalists want to hijack it for themselves to secure their future career with it. Although we have taken our space in our society humbly we also take it firmly and we refuse to give our power away. We will not allow the loyalists to the people and the system that oppresses us to destroy our movement and compromise our morals. Our loyalty remains with the oppressed and with all people who are willing to take a side with the oppressed in our struggle to build a just world.

Uyishayile!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This speech was presented on 8 November 2010 at the University of Chicago.
* S’bu Zikode is president of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Shack Dwellers’ Movement, South Africa.
*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.

Biofuels and world hunger

Mae-Wan Ho

2010-11-18

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/biofuelsAndWorldHunger.php

cc tonrulkensA damning report confirms critics’ accusation that industrial biofuels are responsible for the world's food and hunger crisis, writes Mae-Wan Ho.

Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.

The report blames the biofuels targets set by the European Union (EU), and concomitantly, the huge financial incentives given to the biofuels industry, which together, provide a powerful driver for industrial biofuels. In 2006, the EU biofuel industry was already supported by tax exemptions and agricultural subsidies to the sum of €4.4 billion. In 2008, EU member states committed themselves to a target of 10 per cent of transport fuels from renewable sources (i.e. biofuels) by 2020. If the same level of subsidies continues, the industry would receive €13.7 billion per year.

If all global biofuels targets are to be met, food prices could rise by up to an additional 76 per cent by 2020 and starve an extra 600 million people.

FUEL VERSUS FOOD

The main agricultural crops used for industrial biofuels are vegetable and seed oils such as palm, soy, sunflower, rapeseed, and jatropha for biodiesel; and maize, wheat and sugars for ethanol. Except for jatropha (see later), the feedstock is all food crops. The most immediate effect of the push for industrial biofuels is to compete with food for feedstock, thereby inflating food prices. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that in 2008/9, 125 million tonnes of cereals were diverted into biofuel production. In 2010, more cereal (1,107 million tonnes) were diverted into animal feed and industrial uses than for feeding people (1,013 million tonnes). Overall, world food prices increased by 75 per cent from 2006 to the middle of 2008, but the price for staple food grains (such as wheat, rice and maize) went up by 126 per cent. For the 82 low-income food deficient countries, import bills shot up. Each 10 per cent increase in the price of cereals adds nearly US$4.5 billion to the total cereals import cost of developing countries that are net importers. Independent analysts have concluded that industrial biofuels have been responsible for 30 to 75 per cent of the global food price increase in 2008.

To make matters much worse, huge tracts of land have been taken out of food production, exacerbating landlessness everywhere (see [2] 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify, SiS 46). ActionAid reports that [1] in just five African countries 1.1 million hectares have been given over to industrial biofuels for export; while 1.4 million ha were taken over simultaneously to produce food for export. As biofuels displace food from agricultural land in developed countries, and as rich countries run out of water for agriculture, food production is increasingly outsourced to cheap land available in poor countries [2].

Food and fuel are competing everywhere for land. EU companies have already acquired or requested at least five million hectares of land for industrial biofuels in developing countries [1]. Just to meet the EU's ten per cent target would require 17.5 million hectares for growing biofuels in developing countries.

LANDLESSNESS AND HUNGER

While driving up food prices can create hunger, driving people off the land that they have traditionally cultivated deprives them of the last resort of growing their own food. This is happening all over the developing world.

In Mozambique, farms are destroyed for industrial biofuels. Elisa Alimone Mongue, mother and farmer said: ‘I don't have a farm, I don't have a garden … the only land I have has been destroyed. We are just suffering with hunger … even if I go to look for another farm, they will just destroy it again.’

‘They actually took the land when it was already tilled. They haven't paid us anything. What we want is to get our farms back because that is what our livelihood is dependent on. We are dying of hunger and there is nothing we have that is actually our own,’ Matilde Ngoene, another mother and farmer said.

Julio Ngoene is fighting to save his community and its way of life. He is the village chief of approximately 100 households of more than 1,000 people. A biofuel company is setting up a project near his village and has taken over 80 per cent of the village farmland without permission, and destroyed the crops. At the beginning of the project, the company promised to resettle the village, but two years later, Julio and the villagers have still heard nothing, and no one in the village has received compensation.

Land expropriation is sometime violent, and often by false promises and trickery.

In Indonesia, in the village of Aruk, people have come into direct confrontation with palm oil plantations. Twenty-five plots were cleared without permission. One villager lost his 10-acre plot. ‘I went to my land one morning, and found it had been cleared. All my rubber trees, my plants had been destroyed. Now I have to work as a builder in Malaysia, so I can feed my three children.’

In Tanzania, where ActionAid has conducted interviews, 175 villagers have been displaced. Farmer Rashidi Omary Goboreni said: ‘We deeply regret we agreed on letting [the biofuel company] operate on our land. Now we think the employment and the possibility to use their tractors was only their strategy to get the agreement. We realised we did not know if we had agreed on selling our land or leasing it for 50 or 99 years. A neighbour told us he had leased his land for 99 years and we got worried. What is hiding behind the 6 000 schilling [about €3 as an initial payment], we wondered? If we do not get employed then how will we make our living? Without land we will not be able to farm and our children will have nowhere to settle down when they grow up. I've heard stories about other villages who have leased their land and the villagers there are now not even allowed to pass their land. If they pick up firewood, someone from the company will tell them to put it back.’

The Chair of the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues estimated that 60 million indigenous people are globally at risk of displacement because of industrial biofuels.

THE JATROPHA SCAM

There have been warnings against jatropha biodiesel going back several years [3] (Jatropha Biodiesel Fever in India, SiS 36). Jatropha has been hyped as a miracle non-food biofuel crop that would simply grow in marginal areas not suitable for food crops. But there was clear evidence that it would only deliver anywhere near the promised 1,300 litres of oil per ha when grown in fertile land with plenty of water, and that's what companies have set their eyes on.

In Tanzania, jatropha is being grown in areas with good rainfall and fertile soils. In Sahel regions of Senegal, jatropha will only survive with irrigation; and it's a similar story in Swaziland, which is suffering persistent drought.

Jatropha is also promoted as offering employment and livelihoods. But the evidence is otherwise. Employment is often sporadic, being labour intensive during planting and very little until harvesting. In India, where jatropha is becoming well established the promise of high yields has remained unproven regardless of whether they are grown on fertile or poor soils. The initial forecast was that it would only be cost-competitive if yields reached 3-6 tonnes of seeds per ha per year. Private companies have now had to revise projections down to 1.8-2 tonnes per ha, but even that remains to be achieved.

And worse has come from reports on the ground:

‘Until now I haven't got any seeds from this jatropha. I feel bad. Now it is almost four years and I am not getting any income. There is no improvement.’ Wanjang Agitok Sangma, in India said.

In northeast India, local farmers and communities were being enticed to experiment with jatropha. Raju Sona grew jatropha for one year on land he used to grow vegetables for his family. ‘No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market, but we didn't see such good market. When I got the message that there was no market, I got discouraged. I was very upset. I felt very bad. I expected profit. I threw it [the seeds] away.’ He went back to growing food, adding. ‘If we plant jatropha we will have a problem because [it means] we have to buy food from outside. Vegetables are very expensive [so] we can save money with all the things we grow - we are cultivating potatoes and cabbages. If the land is planted professionally, it could grow 4 000 to 6 000 cabbages in six months to sell in the market. This is good land for growing ginger, onions and garlic.’

Another farmer in India, Parindra Gohain (alias), said: ‘Until now we have had no income from the jatropha plantation. They told me it would be two years before we would have income, but it is already three years. People are a little down now because the whole project is already four years running and there is no income. I still hope that I will get profit otherwise I will pull up the plants.’

COMPROMISED FOOD SECURITY AND LABOUR CONDITIONS

Some farmers were tempted to sell their land in return for employment, only to find that the promised level of pay failed to materialise, and the low earnings left them unable to buy sufficient food. One farmer in Senegal, Mamadou Bah (alias) said: ‘I and the community expected to increase our cash income and revenues by working on the plantation. Our food is insufficient because we gave away our land. We have to fight for our rights and find alternatives to fill the gap in food and livelihoods.’

‘Instead of farming their land, people go to work for the [biofuel] company. There are now fewer farmers involved in farming their own land. Food is becoming a problem.

‘The price of food has been increasing every now and then. The increasing food prices have to do with food shortages within the village due to lower production on the farms,’ Tanzanian farmer Aailyah Nyondo (alias) said.

In Ghana, Sanatu Yaw told ActionAid: ‘The shea nuts I am able to pick during the year help me to have my children in school, to buy cloth and also to supplement the household's food needs when the harvest from my husband's farm runs out. But this year I could not get much because of the trees that have been cut. Now they have destroyed the trees so we have lost a good source of income forever, yet we have not been paid anything in compensation. That is why I confronted the white man at the meeting.’

Brazil is the largest industrial biofuel producer in the developing world, where the sugar cane (ethanol) plantation industry is well established. However, working conditions are often poor. Of the one million cane workers, about half are employed as cutters, mostly done by hand, in intense heat for long hours; and a number of deaths have been reported. The government's own investigations uncovered virtual slave labour conditions, exploitative subcontracting systems, poor sanitation and food, unfit drinking water and overcrowded living conditions. In one investigation, the team rescued 11,000 labourers working in unacceptable conditions.

POLICY GOT AHEAD OF SCIENCE

More and more scientists are providing evidence that most biofuels currently used actually release more GHGs compared to fossil fuels, and uses more fossil fuels to produce [2. 4] (see Biofuels = Biodevastation, Hunger & False Carbon Credits, in ‘Food Futures Now: *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free’, ISIS publication).

Unfortunately, all of the figures currently used in EU legislation in the recently agreed Renewable Energy Directive (RED) are out-of-date, and over-optimistic about the carbon emissions and energy savings of the biofuels. I shall deal with the scientific evidence on the false accounting on carbon and energy savings on biofuels that conceal their huge contributions to global warming [5, 6] (Scientists Expose False Accounting for Biofuels, and Biofuels Waste Energy, SiS 49).

MORATORIUM ON INDUSTRIAL BIOFUELS

It is clear that biofuels are socially unsustainable in competing for land that should be growing food, increasing food prices and landlessness, causing widespread hunger, and depriving millions of the poorest of their livelihood. Meanwhile, evidence from real production data, and new analyses bear out what many scientists have been saying: most if not all biofuels offer no savings in energy or carbon emissions, especially when indirect emissions from deforestation and other land use changes are taken into account, as they should be.

ActionAid has reiterated the call for a global moratorium in its recommendations:
- Moratorium on further expansion of industrial biofuel production and investment
- Ensure member states do not lock into industrial biofuels in their 2010 national action plans
- Reduce transport and energy consumption
- End targets and financial incentives for industrial biofuels
- Support small-scale sustainable biobuels in the EU and abroad

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* This article was first published by The Institute of Science in Society
* Dr Mae-Wan Ho is a geneticist and the director of The Institute of Science in Society.

REFERENCES

[1] Meals per gallon, the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger, ActionAid, 2010,http://www.actionaid.org.uk/doc_lib/meals_per_gallon_final.pdf
[2] Ho MW. 'Land rush' as threats to food security intensify. Science in Society 46, 42-45, 2010
[3] Ho MW. Jatropha biodiesel fever in India. Science in Society 36, 47-48, 2007.
[4] Ho MW. In Ho MW, Burcher S, Lim LC, et al. Food Futures Now, Organic, Sustainable, Fossil Fuel Free, ISIS//TWN, London/Penang, 2008. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/foodFutures.php
[5] Ho MW. Scientists expose false accounting for biofuels. Science in Society 49 (to appear).
[6] Ho MW. Biofuels waste energy. Science in Society 49 (to appear).

Denying Rwanda: A response to Herman and Peterson

Adam Jones

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68880

cc hoteldephilFollowing concerted efforts to deny the Rwandan genocide from Edward Herman & David Peterson, Adam Jones urges Pambazuka readers to ‘do what they can to spread word of Herman & Peterson's denialist enterprise’.

To readers of Pambazuka News

Many of you will have followed the exchange among Gerald Caplan, Edward Herman & David Peterson, and myself concerning allegations that Herman & Peterson are engaged in a systematic campaign to deny the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Herman & Peterson's most recent contribution to this debate, posted to the Monthly Review website, took the form of: 1) a restating, and indeed deepening, of their denialist position on the slaughter of Rwandan Tutsis; and 2) a personal attack on me and my work on Rwanda and genocide in general.

I have now responded at length to Herman & Peterson's contentions and denialist fabrications. The full text of this response, along with links to the earlier correspondence and relevant online sources, is available on my ‘Genocide Studies Media File’ at http://jonestream.blogspot.com/2010/11/denying-rwanda-response-to-herman.html

An excerpt of this response follows. I urge Pambazuka readers to do what they can to spread word of Herman & Peterson's denialist enterprise, and to counter it in the forums available to them.

Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Political Science
University of British Columbia
Kelowna, BC, Canada

======================================

From the response:

‘[...] On the basis of [Herman & Peterson's] casual abandonment of scholarship, we are supposed to reject and invert the entirety of the scholarly literature on the 1994 Rwandan genocide; all major human-rights investigations; and the immense wealth of survivor testimony. Herman & Peterson's hubris is awe-inspiring. But it prompts me to ask: just whom do they expect to buy their swill? The authors include passing citations of a small handful of distinguished Rwanda scholars -- Gérard Prunier, René Lemarchand, Linda Melvern, Filip Reyntjens. None of them supports (to say the least!) the denialist interpretation advanced by Herman & Peterson, depicting the RPF/Tutsis as the principal agents of the mass killing in Rwanda in 1994, ordinary Hutus as the primary victims, and ‘Hutu Power’ as an utterly disorganized and victimized entity. Nor do I know of any human-rights report that asserts it, and Herman & Peterson cite none in their supporting notes.

So let us face it. This brand of extreme revisionism and denial of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is shared by only ‘a tiny number of long-time American and Canadian genocide deniers, who gleefully drink each other's putrid bath water,’ as Gerald Caplan so aptly phrased it in his review of The Politics of Genocide. Like Herman & Peterson, the deniers cherry-pick a few useful factoids and declamations from serious scholarship on Rwanda (or halfway serious, like [Christian] Davenport & [Allan] Stam), while dismissing the vast bulk of the scholarly and human-rights literature as hopelessly corrupted by nefarious (western/imperialist) interests. This has the additional advantage of cutting down on what would otherwise be an onerous reading list, since the literature on Rwanda is now so extensive, detailed, and utterly contrary to Herman & Peterson's formulations.

I confess I wondered, when preparing my first response to Herman & Peterson, whether their depiction of events in Rwanda in 1994 resulted from ignorance and incompetence, rather than actual malice. Their latest post rules this out, I'm afraid. In first criticizing their framing, I drew special attention to a passage to which they had given considerable analytical weight (it appears in very similar form in their book, pp. 56-57): ‘Would it not have been incredible for Kagame's Tutsi forces to conquer Rwanda in 100 days, and yet the number of minority Tutsi deaths be greater than the number of majority Hutu deaths by a ratio of something like three-to-one? Surely then we would have to count Rwanda 1994 as the only country in history where the victims of genocide triumphed over those who committed genocide against them, and wiped the territory clean of its 'genocidaires' at the same time. If ever a prima facie case existed for doubting the collective wisdom of 'academics, human rights activists, [and] journalists' whose opinions the establishment respects, we find it here, with the alleged Hutu perpetrators routed and fleeing for their lives in neighbouring countries, and the alleged Tutsi victims in complete control.’

I responded: ‘By conflating Rwanda's civilian Tutsis with 'Kagame's Tutsi forces' -- Herman and Peterson none-too-subtly adopt Hutu Power's justification for slaughtering Tutsi civilians: that they constituted a 'fifth column,' indistinguishable from the invading RPF.’ It was, I asserted, ‘a disgraceful ploy [that] ... by itself ... casts Herman and Peterson's 'analysis' into utter disrepute.’

It is frankly nauseating to witness Herman & Peterson retreating not an iota from this calumny against a defenseless civilian population. Indeed, they press the point further [in their latest post]: ‘Jones fails to mention the long historic class division and warfare between Tutsi and Hutu, and the creation of many hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees after the RPF invasion of Rwanda,’ along with similar irrelevancies and imputations of guilt-by-ethnocultural-affinity, all intended to support a framing that -- yes, Rwandan Tutsis were intimately in cahoots with the murdering RPF. So they really were responsible for their own genocide ... except that, of course, Herman & Peterson deny they ever experienced a genocide. At which point words fail me. [...]’

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

Currency war: Stakes for Africa

Sanou Mbaye

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/68810

cc Beige AlertWith Western countries battling to maintain low currencies and the US accusing China of deliberately undervaluing the renminbi as part of an ‘international currency war’, Sanou Mbaye asks ‘what does this herald for African countries?’

A weaker exchange rate makes a country’s exports cheaper, potentially boosting a key source of growth for economies battling to find growth, as they emerge from the 2008–09 credit crunch and economic crisis suffering from chronically deficient demand. Global imbalances are on the rise again, as is the risk of protectionism. Western countries are battling to keep their exchanges rates low in order to export their way out of trouble. It is against this background that the US accuses China of intentionally undervaluing its currency to support its domestic industry. All parties concerned, including Western and major developing economies such as South Africa, Brazil and South Korea, have failed so far to agree on the issue. The situation could even lead to an ‘international currency war’. What does this herald for African countries?

If history is any guide, we might well look into previous currency conflicts to gauge the future. In the 1930s, currency wars led to competitive devaluations, protectionism and inflation running out of control, economic collapse, the rise of Hitler and national–socialism in Germany, and eventually the Second World War. Africans were drafted in their thousands to fight along the allied forces against the Axis armies. Many of them died or were mutilated. When they returned home, some of the veterans who survived were slaughtered by the French army in the infamous ‘Thiaroye Camp’ bombardment in Senegal for having dared to claim equal benefits with their European comrades in arms. Africa’s consolation prize came with the political awakening, the fight for freedom and the independence that ensued in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Post-war international euphoria did not last long before another currency conflict struck. In August 1971, the US president Richard Nixon imposed the ‘Nixon shock’, levying a 10 per cent import surcharge and ending dollar convertibility into gold. Both events reflected not only the US desire to depreciate the dollar but also to establish it as the sole world currency reserve. This is how the debt-economy was born in which money supply is closely tied to credits allocated to states, companies and individuals. This debt-economy was compounded and universalised by the ‘big bang’ of the 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the globalisation of economic liberalisation, and the repealing in 1999 of the ‘Glass–Steagall act’ which was enacted in 1933 to prevent commercial banks from investing in risky financial paper, such as the stocks, futures and derivatives that put Wall Street into big trouble in September 2008. Cheap money flooded the world, except into African countries which, with the exception of white-ruled South Africa and Northern Rhodesia (present Zimbabwe) were locked out of capital market borrowings while being addicted to the ‘aid industry’. They became saddled with an unproductive and unsustainable level of ‘aid debts’. Here also, their consolation came when, barred as they were from financial market activities, they escaped nearly unscathed the twin woes of financial turmoil and economic downturn. The continent’s economies experienced a slowdown, but not a recession.

Presently, the policy of quantitative easing (QE) adopted by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan – printing hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the stalling economies that they oversee – is flooding emerging market economies with volatile foreign capital as investors search for higher yields given that official interest rates set up by the above-mentioned central banks are already touching zero.

Officials from countries ranging from Singapore to Colombia have issued warnings over the strength of their currencies. Several countries’ central banks, including South Korea, Brazil, Switzerland and Taiwan have been intervening unilaterally to prevent the appreciation of their currencies. In South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, capital inflows, attracted in part by an interest rate higher than in much of the Western world, induced a rally in the rand, which reached R6.76 against the dollar in October, its strongest level in almost three years, undermining key export-led industries. The South Africa Reserve Bank might be obliged to intervene in the foreign exchange market to soak up capital inflows. This would be a costly path to walk, with little prospect of offsetting the strong capital inflows destabilising its economy.

The CFA franc is still more vulnerable. The franc zone, which gives France control of 65 per cent of the African member countries’ foreign-exchange reserves deducted directly from their oil, gold, cocoa, coffee and other commodities exports earnings, will be a first choice for hot money inflows. The currency is freely convertible in hard currency at a grossly overvalued parity pegged to the euro. A foreign exchange cover of 110 per cent, combined with soaring interest rates, low inflation and free capital movement, fuels capital flight to the benefit of French private companies such as Bouygues, Areva, Total, Sonatel, Air France, BNP Paribas (BICI) and Société Générale. This capital drain is reinforced by a foreign exchange control enacted in 1993 that restricts free capital flows to France. Moreover, the franc zone is particularly attractive to speculative capital inflows. Speculators transfer huge amounts of money to high-interest-bearing local deposit accounts, collect their tax-free gains every three months and take the no-risk plunge again.

The brewing currency conflict is all the more unwelcome when one considers that the continent is currently enjoying particularly good economic omens. Indeed, according to McKinsey & Company, in 2009 Africa was the third-largest contributor to world economic growth, after China and India. The prestigious global management consultancy has credited the continent as delivering the highest rate of return on foreign investment of all developing regions.

Africa’s improved macroeconomic conditions and microeconomic reforms, intended to create a better business climate, are part of the reasons for this surge in growth. Inflation has been halved since the 1990s. Foreign-exchange reserves have increased by 30 per cent. Public finances showed a 2.8 per cent-of-GDP (gross domestic product) surplus in 2008, compared to a 1.4 per cent-of-GDP deficit in 2000–05. Savings rates are between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, and external debt has decreased from 110 per cent of GDP in 2005 to 21 per cent in 2008. Since 2000, sub-Saharan African countries have achieved average economic growth of 5–7 per cent.

Africa’s growing young population is a key asset. There is rapid urbanisation everywhere in Africa, with 40 per cent of Africans already living in cities. This has created a dynamic informal sector unconnected to the modern economy. Although marginalised by African officials and with no access to banking facilities, this cash-based economy is a major contributor to the continent’s productive capacity. It employs more than 90 per cent of the workforce and is home to three-quarters of retailers.

By 2015, Africa will be the only continent where the working age percentage of the population is still growing. By 2050, Africa will number some two billion inhabitants. There will be 1.1 billion Africans of working age, more than in either China or India, and the number of households with earnings over US$5,000 – considered a threshold for consumption spending – will rise from 85 million to 128 million in the next decade. The combined GDP of the largest 11 African economies should reach more than US$13 trillion, surpassing Brazil and Russia.

Agriculture is another key African asset. The scrambles for large-scale purchases and leases of hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland in the region have made press headlines in a flurry of media reports across the world. And there is no doubt that the opacity and the dubious conditions surrounding part of these deals are causes for concern. A failed attempt to lease 1.3 million ha (hectares) has led to public unrest and a change of government in Madagascar. However, the fact remains that the only answer to the spectre of famine hovering over most parts of the world, global rising food prices, ‘food riots’ and climate change-induced food security concerns is long-term investment to harness Africa's huge agricultural potential, still barely exploited.

Nigeria, with possibly a population of 160 million or more, could, if everything falls into place, be bigger than any of Canada, Italy or South Korea. Kenya, the largest economy within the community of East Africa, now fully economically integrated, will benefit from a much larger target market with neighbouring countries – Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi – for its leading companies such as banks and breweries. The Kenyan government has launched its most ambitious investment programme ever in infrastructure, including energy projects and the construction of roads and railways. Good economic growth is expected now that the referendum on the new constitution has been successfully conducted.

Moreover, developing emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China have provided a platform for increased exports and the inception of a cooperation model based on trade, investment and technology transfer, rather than ‘aid’. China, particularly, has played a leading role in this turnaround. It has struck infrastructure-for-resources bargains across Africa over the past decade as it seeks crude oil, minerals and metals to fuel its break-neck economic expansion. China–Africa trade alone increased from US$10 billion in 2000 to US$107 billion in 2008.

The annual flow of foreign direct investment rose from US$9 billion in 2000 to US$62 billion in 2008 – relative to GDP almost as large as the flow into China. Investments are being made in banking, oil production, mining, transportation, electricity generation and transmission, telecommunications, tourism and other infrastructures, boosting employment and growth. Still, when oil and gas investments are stripped out, South Africa, the continent’s industrial and financial centre, is now the largest investor in the rest of the continent, not China or the US.

This is the bright prospect that the present currency sabre rattling is in danger of jeopardising. John Connally, Nixon’s secretary of the Treasury, famously told the Europeans that the dollar ‘is our currency, but your problem’. In September 1985, the governments of France, West Germany, Japan, the US and the UK met at the Plaza Hotel in New York and agreed to push for depreciation of the US dollar. With its export competitiveness damaged by a soaring yen and pressured by the US to reduce its current account surplus, Japan never recovered from the huge monetary expansion that followed and the consequent bubble that helped deliver 20 years of economic deflation, the so-called ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s. Once a world-beater, Japan fell into the prolonged doldrums.

China has a keen sense of its history and takes a long-term view of its own development. It is unlikely that it will follow in the footsteps of Japan. Furthermore, in spite of being the world's second economy, China remains a developing country in terms of per capita income. With its huge population and immense foreign exchange reserves, it still has considerable scope to expand domestic demand in a more timely way. Africa should apply the same long-term logic to its development, take measures to correct present imbalances and implement the right environment for sustainable growth. This will depend on stable macro-economic policies focusing on economic integration, food security, low inflation, reduced debt, stable governments, an enhanced rule of law, the improvement of basic levels of health and education, spread of mobile telephony and internet use, and last but not least, the eradication of corruption.

With an international currency war on the horizon, Africa is being caught in the crossfire. From past experience, she knows very well that when elephants fight, she is likely to be trampled. However, she might find comfort in the fact that when the world's major economies are in trouble, wary investors find solace in 'refuge values' like gold, silver and other commodities such as oil and base metals in which Africa abounds.

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* Sanou Mbaye, a London-based Senegalese development consultant and a former senior official at the African Development Bank, is the author of ‘L’Afrique au secours de l’Afrique’ (‘Africa to the rescue of Africa’).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Lessons on transparency in the extractive industry sector

Uche Igwe

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/68799

cc Sheila SteeleUche Igwe attends a speech by US Senator Benjamin L. Cardin about new legislation that requires both US and internationally based companies to publish what they pay to governments for the commercial development of oil, gas and minerals.

Last week I had the rare privilege of listening to and speaking with Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of the Unites States Senate. He was a guest lecturer at an investment conference organised by the Columbia University Law School in New York. It was very refreshing listening to him eloquently articulate the reasons why the US Senate passed the now famous Cardin Lugar provision on transparency - and the potential benefits of the legislation to resource rich but poor developing countries and the US enlightened self interest as a global promoter and defender of good governance. He charmed everyone in the audience as he simply but convincingly canvassed the need for increased transparency and corporate social responsibility in the global extractive industry dominated by US energy companies.

The now famous Cardin-Lugar Energy Security through Transparency (ESTT) provision was authored by Senator Benjamin Cardin, a democrat from Maryland and Senator Richard Lugar, a republican from Indiana. It requires both US and internationally based companies registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to publish what they pay to governments for the commercial development of oil, gas and minerals. It was passed on the 15 July 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

As he spoke, Cardin argued that confidentiality clauses in contracts should cease to exist in the extractive industry. He made a solid case for complete and mandatory disclosure of all so-called ‘sensitive’ information as this does not put any extractive industry company into a competitive disadvantage. Rather, he argued very lucidly that such disclosure would provide a level playing field for healthy competition to happen. He called for a comprehensive good governance approach to business and global affairs, hinging on the fact that ‘secrecy fosters instability, corruption and greater risk for investors, regulators and citizens.’

As I sat listening, I began to think about Africa in general and Nigeria, the country of birth. Experts say that Africa holds an estimated 10 per cent of global oil reserves, 40 per cent of gold, and 80 - 90 per cent of chromium and the platinum group of metals. The McKinsey report indicates that by 2015, 13 per cent of global oil production will take place in Africa and 19 countries, including Nigeria, will become more significant producers and players with new deep-water discoveries. And yet many African countries are submerged in poverty, under development and conflict. We have unfortunately become a poster for the so-called ‘resource curse’.

As I listened to Cardin, he came across as someone who speaks from conviction, deep understanding of the issues, experience, foresight and patriotism. And I saw in him the reason why the US plays an increasingly conspicuous role in global affairs. Here, partisanship takes a backseat for cooperation in many matters of policy - especially foreign policy. Parliamentarians close rank across party lines and place long-term national interest beyond political party, individual, corporate or, for that matter, any interest.

It further signifies how a vigilant civil society can collaborate with willing and committed parliamentarians. Many revenue transparency activists within the US worked closely with Cardin and Lugar on this legislation which, according to Isabel Munilla, director of Publish What You Pay US, ‘sheds light on billions of payments between oil and mineral companies and governments and provides a powerful tool to scrutinise the levels of public expenditure on economic development.’

Can I say the same for our parliamentarians in Africa? As I look to Nigeria, I see clearly that one of the most virulent features of democracy is our prostrate parliament. Our national assembly is filled with clueless parliamentarians who were catapulted to Abuja due to dubious elections. They simply should have no business with the seriousness associated and expected in law-making. Worse still is their gross inability to discharge the two other aspects of their responsibility: representation and oversight. Because they were appointed and not elected, their accountability is first to their godfathers and so they have no business with their constituency. In conducting their oversight, there have been many cases of compromise and lack of patriotism.

As I perused the media on events around the passage of the Dodd Frank Act, I learned that many oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute lobbied against the bill, albeit ineffectively. But if it were in Africa and particularly in Nigeria, things would obviously be different. For instance, despite the lip service support by multi-national and indigenous oil companies to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), section 14 (a) of the NEITI Act was watered down in between our parliamentary sessions.

Another relevant issue that came to my mind at the New York conference last week was the new Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). Nigerian parliamentarians are currently considering this landmark reform legislation that will potentially improve the Nigerian petroleum sector. I wondered how many months has passed since our late former President Umaru Yar'Adua submitted the draft for consideration. We have been told that the bill has been in between committees since then. Many Nigerians are anxious due to the past performances of our national assembly and looking at how for instance the NEITI Bill undertook the same journey and came out a mutilated Act in 2007.

Many other reasons further increase our anxiety. Weak capacity is a preponderant quality of many of our legislators, a quality shared by their aides and consultants. These parliamentary support persons are mostly drawn from their friends and cronies for personal reasons rather than added value, professionalism or expertise. Worse still, as the 2011 elections approach, many parliamentarians are in dire need of a financial war chest for the election battle ahead. Rigorous scrutiny of any bill can never be and indeed has never been on our national parliamentary agenda.
So, as Nigerians await the passage of the PIB, the timing can lead us to hazard a guess of what will be a most likely outcome.

The Cardin-Lugar provision in the US is an example of a unique victory for good governance against the tide of vicious corporate interest. It offers an example for parliaments and parliamentarians worldwide in their role of shaping good laws for global prosperity. I hope and believe that one day, African and Nigerian parliamentarians will emulate, Cardin and Lugar.

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* Uche Igwe is an Africa public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and visiting scholar at the Africa Studies Program, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, USA.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Tea ‘n d pot: Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill

Uche Igwe

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/68811

cc KK+With Nigerian National Assembly officials stressing that they will not submit to pressure from oil multinationals, Uche Igwe considers the extent to which the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will facilitate reform of the country’s oil and gas sector.

NIGERIAN PETROLEUM INDUSTRY PERAMBULATION (PIP)

Nigeria’s Senate President David Mark declared a few days ago that the National Assembly will not succumb to pressures from oil companies to pass a watered-down version of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). This sounds very positive and patriotic coming from the leadership of the Senate. But how true is this threat? Everything about the PIB has been controversial. One scholar aptly described the events as very ‘murky’. The PIB potentially promises to deliver far-reaching reforms to the Nigerian petroleum industry. The reforms include: transforming the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation from a cost centre to a profit centre competing with Petrobras of Brazil and Petronas of Indonesia; deregulating the downstream sector; boosting funding to arrest decline in production; introducing globally competitive fiscal systems; increasing revenue streams through gas production; and improving the overall transparency regime in the sector. But how can it go?

Since the draft bill was submitted to the National Assembly in 2008 by the late president, its consideration by the Parliament has been shrouded in utmost secrecy, giving opportunities to all forms of speculation, rumours and uncertainty. More than three different versions of the same bill have been circulating, raising anxiety about which version will finally become an act. Even the Inter Agency Team which drafted the bill did a u-turn by submitting a memorandum suggesting areas of amendment to what was their own bill. Both chambers of the National Assembly held poorly coordinated public hearing sessions which attempted to collect memos from stakeholders. A few weeks ago, unconfirmed sources within the National Assembly indicated that a particular version gave multinationals in the oil industry significant concessions, including juicy fiscal terms on gas and off-shore investments.

RETAINING OBSOLETE CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSES

The promise of the PIB to improve transparency in the sector is based on its compliance with the principles of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). It prescribes that the reforms in the sector must comply with the NEITI Act 2007. Many observers are unaware that Section 14(a) of the NEITI Act states that disclosure of audit information will only happen if such information is not prejudicial to the proprietary interest and contractual obligations of the audited entity. With this clause in place, the NEITI Act retains the issue of confidentiality and so it is worrisome to make PIB compliant on such an act.

Interestingly however, section 173(1) of the PIB states that ‘Confidentiality clauses or other clauses contained within any licenses, leases, agreements or contracts for upstream petroleum operations that are for the purpose of preventing access to information in respect of any payments … shall be null and void’. Many observers believe that this clause in the initial draft might have been tampered with too.

The worrisome implication of this is that the so-called reforms to be ushered in by the Petroleum Industry Bill when passed will likely accommodate a practice that has already been abandoned in the oil and gas industry worldwide.

IMPROVED METERING OMITTED

Of all the prescriptions of the PIB, the fundamental issue of crude oil metering is conspicuously missing. Very few suggestions on improved metering philosophy are contained in the bill. It is public knowledge that the NEITI audit 1999–2004 recommended a change in the metering infrastructure to include measurements at the flow station to ascertain the number of barrels of oil Nigeria is currently producing and to compute royalties based on that figure as contained in many MOUs (memoranda of understanding) entered with the joint-venture partners. However, crude oil metering is currently done only at the export terminals, which provide export figures only. Verifiable practice is that in many other oil-producing countries, precision metering begins at flow stations, but not in Nigeria. The inter-ministerial task team put together to implement the recommendations of the NEITI audit confirmed that it is both technically and financially feasible to install precision meters at the flow stations in Nigeria. The Norwegian government at one point was willing to offer technical support, but such recommendations and support have been continuously rebuffed by the oil multinationals to date.

The silence of the PIB on metering means that the questions stakeholders are asking about the numbers of barrels of oil we produce per day will yet remain unanswered.

RESOLVING NIGER DELTA ISSUES?

Resolving the Niger Delta is biggest nightmare in the Nigerian petroleum industry. One of the most interesting aspects of the Petroleum Industry Bill was the introduction of equity payments to oil-bearing communities. This fairly popular memo was introduced by the office of the presidential adviser on petroleum matters. It recommended the idea of 10 per cent equity ownership of the joint venture by oil-producing communities. This sounds like a great idea on the condition that drafters could offer additional clarity and implementation suggestions. The idea took off as we were told as 10 per cent of joint venture equity, later became 10 per cent of profit and now finally US$600 million annually as host community dividends. Could this be another community windfall or the usual handout that will end up in the pockets of self-appointed community leaders? What about the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC)? What concrete provision different from all that have not worked in the past will this bring to reduce the Niger Delta conflict – or will it escalate it instead?

NATIONAL INTEREST OR PERSONAL GAINS?

Our politicians and bureaucrats often tell us that their actions are in the promotion of ‘national interest’. But what really is national interest? Is it an amalgamation of patriotic actions that will promote national prosperity and wellbeing, or have our ‘parasitic’ elite appropriated this word and used it to advance personal gains instead? The oil and gas sector is one area where the so-called national interest is daily misrepresented by those who are supposed to safeguard it. Government officials in most regulatory agencies have been often alleged to be deep in tokenism, as nothing that will promote national interest has even been on their agenda. As soon as they receive a hand-out, they look elsewhere and allow the multinationals to do as they like.

The NEITI audits described these complexities as information asymmetry and capacity gaps. But that sounded too simple. They may well be as a result of a deliberate attempt to allow a convoluted process to be manipulated to permit preventable leakages from our national patrimony. A watered-down PIB will mean reduced revenue to government at all levels, an export-oriented oil and gas sector with minimal downstream multiplier effect on the economy (poor local content), increased unemployment and low incentive for domestic gas utilisation leading to hiccups in power generation and industrialisation.

Despite the threats of Senator Mark and our ‘wise’ parliamentarians, it is crystal clear that the Petroleum Industry Bill as it is being conceived and pursued cannot reform the Nigerian oil and gas sector. We are just undertaking another national adventure from point A. After spending so much energy, time and resources, we will suddenly find ourselves at the same point A where we began. It is called a national perambulation!

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* Uche Igwe is a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy scholar and visiting scholar at the Africa Program at Johns Hopkins University.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Not the best of times in Zimbabwe

Japhet M. Zwana

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/68871

cc Sokwanele – ZimbabweAs the two-year lifespan of Zimbabwe’s coalition government draws close to an end, Japhet M. Zwana finds little cause for optimism about the country’s future.
The Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe is a coalition that was created on 13 February 2009. It was a three-way marriage among Robert Mugabe of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (Zanu PF), Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Arthur Mutambara of the breakaway MDC.

The arrangement was an instrument inspired by SADC (Southern African Development Community) to facilitate power sharing mainly between Zanu PF and MDC in the aftermath of the inconclusive national elections of 2008. Although President Mugabe had lost in the exercise, he nevertheless stole the election when his opponent Tsvangirai withdrew due to state-sponsored violence against his supporters. The three pillars of the coalition are: president (Mugabe); prime minister (Tsvangirai) and deputy PM( Mutambara). It is rather unfortunate that the prophetic words of Ghanaian journalist, writer and commentator, Cameron Duodu are becoming a reality. Some months after the new formation, he wrote, ‘Zimbabwe has emerged from the near-civil war of election’s aftermath with an uneasy coalition that looks as if it may not take the country into the next election.’

The immediate tasks at hand for the new outfit were to rescue the battered economy, to stop wanton farm invasions and rampant violence (arrests, killings, abductions and torture). For the president, it was not supposed to be business as usual.

To be sure, according to the memorandum of understanding, the coalition has a two-year lifespan culminating in fresh elections in 2011. All things being equal, the present government should be done with its agenda. But, in fact, the sticking points at the signing of the agreement are still unresolved. The basis of next year’s election should be a new constitution. Zanu PF has deliberately placed so many obstacles on the constitution-making process to the extent that, it is unlikely that the document will be ready on time.

Déjà vu! Now, in spite of the unprepared ground, Mugabe is blowing the whistle for the vote to occur early next year against the popular grain. As he did the last time, he is oiling his violence machinery to ensure ill-gotten victory once again. The city of Masvingo, population 100,000, is located in the south east of the country, about 290km from the capital, Harare. It is close to Great Zimbabwe, the phenomenal national monument after which the country is named. Recently, it was reported that the city’s residents spent a Sunday indoors in utter panic because more than 600 armed soldiers were marching up and down the streets, demanding that people should say out loud that, ‘Mugabe should rule forever and ever.’ They literally brought gridlock to the city when they blocked roads and forced motorists to park on roadsides. Praises to the president filled the air and included, ‘We want our President to stay in power forever; if you provoke our hero, then you must be prepared for war; if you need food, you are advised to secure a Zanu PF membership card; keep away from MDC since, it is a foreign sponsored party.’

Just as it seems that Zimbabwe is approaching retrofitting, the ghost of its tormented present and recent past keeps showing up. This, certainly, is not the best of times for Zimbabwe. The constitution process and hopes for next year’s election will likely be stillborn, considering the recent foreboding statement of the powerful minister of defense, Emmerson Mnangagwa. He told a group of soldiers that, ‘ZANU-PF would not concede power even if it were to lose in the next elections.’

It is not the best of times when the security chiefs (army, airforce, prisons, police, CIO) are known to be vehemently opposed to any transfer of power from Zanu PF to any other political entity, in particular, MDC. They are afraid that if the former labour organisation assumes power, it might justly make them and their ilk pay for political violence and human rights transgressions for more than a decade. That includes the 1980s Gukurahundi army atrocities, when more than 25,000 people in Matebeleland were massacred. Indeed, today is the worst of times in Zimbabwe – for business, the poor, school and college students, teachers, white farmers, parents, the unemployed, the sick, non-Zezuru ethnics, and human rights activists. Pray for Zimbabwe!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Dr Japhet M. Zwana is a retired professor and administrator from the New York State University System (SUNY) and Syracuse University.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The art of war journalism

Mwaura Kaara

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/68874

cc stevendepoloReflecting on how the media and war industries often feed off each other for political and commercial ends, Mwaura Kaara considers the prospects for ‘peace journalism’ that ‘captures the truths as they are without bias or favour’.

For the last two weeks I have been experiencing the hospitality of the Norwegian people. As an orientation to my new environment, I was part of the team that was organising the 80th birthday celebration of Professor Johan Galtung.

Professor Galtung is one of the celebrated sons of Norway, and an authority in the field of peace studies. He has written over 1,000 articles and published over 150 books on the subject, spoken to many audiences across the globe, and consulted with many governments on this important issue.

For me this is a remarkable fit, and I could not help but admire the courage of a man who has not only walked his talk, but who has also been courageous enough to dream of a better world.

The celebrations of his 80th birthday took place within the context of a peace seminar, allowing for a critical reflection, not only on his life and works, but also on the discussion on the larger concept of peace within the context of our world.

This has left me reflecting on the whole question of peace, in relation to the reality at hand, trying to understand on the extreme: Why is there war? What perpetuates these wars? How do we deal with it?

WHY IS THERE WAR?

Dealing with the concept of war is not easy; to understand why war exists, one will need to look in detail into the cause of wars – and unfortunately there is no consensus as to why and how wars come about.

Different theories and approaches have been offered by the social sciences; genetic and evolutionist theories (aggression as a genetically based function to maximise survival); behaviourist theories (war as a learned behaviour); rational theories (maximisation of profits); various economic theories (greed, relative depravation, bad economic situation, the interest of the armament industry); various political theories (power imbalances, the institution of the state, repressive political systems especially when there is rapid change, lack of access to power, cycles of peace and war, the institution of the military); ecological theories (worsening ecological conditions and availability of resources); cultural theories (ethnicity or nationalism) and cognitive theories (attitudes and beliefs).[1]

There has even been less agreement on how to overcome wars. Those who consider economics as the root cause – either directly in form of the armament industry and other war profiteers, or as a result of the capitalist and consumerist system in general – see the solution lying in a changed world wide economic system. Those who are coming from the realpolitik position point out that democracies have more or less stopped fighting each other, and therefore suggest working on international governance with democratic rules. Those who consider the psyche of the individual human-being and its shortcomings as the beginning of the problem argue that individuals must be at the centre, that individuals must first change, that attitudes towards violence and towards life must change and everything will follow.

What this scenario clearly captures is that irrespective of what school of thought you ascribe to, there is a central driving force in all cases to safeguard interests. In scenarios that perpetuate wars, it is as a result of pushing to safeguard personal interests, drawing out much room for collective bargain. To those people who believe that power ultimately rests with the people and not governments, go for people’s uprisings and civil disobedience.[2]

HOW ARE THESE WARS PERPETUATED?

As highlighted, wars are as a result of a drive to safeguard personal interests, as this will rule out room for collective bargain. To this end, the drive has been to manipulate the psyche of the civilians to see wars as the only solution and the best among the solutions.

Acclaimed political scientist, David Easton, postulated that ‘politics is the authoritative allocation of values.’ How then do we get ourselves to a situation of relative comfort amidst an environment of raging wars?

Politics and war have been turned into entertainment. Such a collapse of the mind produces a society dominated by entertainment – which places little burden on thinking – rather than critical inquiry, which helps to explain why there has been a symbiotic relationship between the media industry – focus on it being an industry as it churns ideas to the highest bidder – and political formations.

Entertainment fosters a passive consciousness, a willingness to ‘suspend disbelief’ with a purpose to generate amusement. Government officials know what every magician knows, that to carry out their illusions, they must divert the audience’s attention from the hidden purpose.

The authority of the state is grounded in a consensual based definition of reality, whose content the state insists on controlling.[3] This is why so called ‘public opinion polls’ rather than factual analysis and reason have become modern epistemological standard and why imagery – which the media helps to foster – now takes priority over the substance of things.

The media helps shape the content of our consciousness by generating institutionally desired moods, fears and reactions, a role they have perfected over the course of time. We need to ask ourselves about the extent to which our understanding of our history and other human behaviour has been fashioned by pictures and television drama. Through carefully scripted fictions and fantasies, others direct our experiences, channel our emotions and shape our views of reality. The fantasies depicted are more often of conflict not cooperation; of violence not peace; of death and not the importance of life.

All of this leads me to ask whether media industry is an extension of the war system or whether war is an extension of our need for the media industry?

What should be clear to us is that the media can be used as a principle means by which our thinking can be taken over and directed by others. This is what has been the case as testified in the war imageries, and the support we have accorded. But it is out of our compliance, as we have made our minds passive, which we do and have done, when we are asked – whether by political establishments or by media establishments – to suspend or judgment about the reality of the events we are witnessing.

When we are content to be amused, to have our attention diverted from reality to fantasy, and have our emotions exploited by those skilled in triggering unconscious forces, we set ourselves up to be manipulated by those producing the show.

HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THE SITUATION?

The complacency of the media industry indicts journalism as a profession. As such it allows for the binary view of the professionals within the industry categorising them in two groups: War journalism and peace journalism.

There is a growth in numbers for the group that can be labelled as war journalists. With their sheer financial might, and numbers, they have taken centre stage to shape and map the thinking of our society. Through sensationalising content, they have captured the attention of the society, keeping them in a circus of life through well-laid propaganda, allowing them to lose their values and focus, while they continuously maintain the interests of the status quo.

Peace journalism on the other hand, though smaller in number has held to the principles of journalism as a profession. Telling the story as it is, by capturing the truths as they are without bias or favour, have laboured and researched to authenticate facts and sources, have been strong enough to link their stories to the reality of the lives of the people. They have been bold enough to envision solutions to problems.

But largely what this illustrates is that, amidst the confusion, there has been a drive to give journalism the face it so deserves. The contention is between ethical journalism (peace journalism) – which truly put is true journalism – and the runaway journalism which has managed to steal the show to serve corporate interests, thus being labelled war journalism.

I support Professor Johan Galtung, in his call, can journalism get its face again amongst professions!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Mwaura Kaara is the regional youth coordinator for the UN Millennium Campaign, Africa. Currently he is the 2010 Ragnar Sohlman Scholar supported by the Swedish – Norwegian Friendship Organization and the Voksenasen together with the Networkers South North at the Dag Hammarkjold Programme.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] C. Schweitzer,2010, Overcoming War: The importance of constructive alternative ‘Experiments with peace, celebrating Johan Galtung’s 80th Birthday, Pambazuka Press.
[2] Sharp, Gene, 1973, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher
[3] E. David, 1957, An approach to the analysis of political systems, In world Politics 9

Exiled former President of Haiti talks with filmmaker Nicolas Rossier

‘When we say democracy we have to mean what we say’

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/68813

Currently in forced-exile in South Africa, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still the national leader of Fanmi Lavalas - one of Haiti's most popular political parties. A former priest and proponent of liberation theology, he served as Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1990 before he was ousted in a CIA backed coup in September 1991. He returned to power in 1994 with the help of the Clinton administration and finished his term. He was elected again seven years later, only to be ousted in a coup in February 2004. The coup was lead by former Haitian soldiers in tandem with members of the opposition. Aristide has repeatedly claimed since, that he was forced to resign at gunpoint by members of the US Embassy. US officials have claimed that he decided to resign freely following the violent uprising. He now lives in exile in South Africa where he still waits to get his diplomatic passport renewed. He is not allowed to travel outside South Africa.

Aristide is still the subject of many controversies. He is reviled by the business elite and feared by the French and American governments, who deem his populism dangerous. But he remains loved by a large portion of the Haitian population.

In a 10 June report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, ‘Haiti: No Leadership - No Elections’, ranking Republican member Richard Lugar denounced the systemic injustice of excluding his Fanmi Lavalas party.

*****************************************************
Nicolas Rossier: Mr. President Aristide, thank you for having me today. My first question is about the earthquake that took place in Haiti in January of 2010. Can you tell me how and when you learned about the tragedy?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: It was morning here. I was at Witwatersrand University here in Johannesburg to work in the lab of the Faculty of Medicine for Linguistics and Neuroanatomy. I realised that it was a disaster in Haiti. It was not easy to believe what I was watching. We lost about 300,000 people, and in terms of the buildings, they said that about 39 per cent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, including fifty hospitals and about 1,350 schools.

Up until today they have cleared only about 2 per cent of these 25 million cubic meters of rubble and debris. So this was a real disaster. We could not imagine that Haiti, already facing so many problems, would now face such a disaster. Unfortunately this is the reality. I was ready to go back to help my people, just as I am ready to leave right now if they allow me to be there to help. Close to 1.8 million victims are living in the street homeless. So this is a tragedy.

Nicolas Rossier: Your former colleague, the current President René Préval, was highly criticised after the earthquake for being absent. Overall, he was judged as not having shown enough leadership. Do you think that’s a fair criticism?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: I believe that January 12, 2010 was a very bad time for the government and for the Haitian people. To have leadership, yes it was necessary, overall, to be present in a time of disaster like this one. But to criticise when you aren’t doing any better is cynical. Most of those who were criticising him sent soldiers to protect their own geopolitical interests, not to protect the people. They seized the airport for their own interests, instead of protecting the victims – so for me there should be some balance.

Nicolas Rossier: Can you give us your thoughts on the recent cholera epidemic?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: As for this recent incident of cholera, whether or not it was imported – as the evidence strongly suggests – it’s critical. First, those who organised the coup d’état/kidnapping of 2004, paving the way for the invaders now accused as having caused the recent outbreak of cholera, must also share the blame. Second, the root causes, and what facilitated the deadly spread of the disease are structural, embedded in Haiti’s historical impoverishment, marginalisation and economic exploitation. The country’s once thriving rice industry – destroyed by the subsidised US rice industry in the 1980s – was in the Artibonite, the epicenter of the cholera outbreak. The near destruction of our rice industry coupled with the systematic and cruel elimination of the Haitian pigs rendered the region and the country poorer. Third, in 2003 our government had already paid the fees on an approved loan from the InterAmerican Development Bank to implement a water sanitisation project in the Artibonite. As you can remember, that loan and four others were blocked as part of a calculated strategy by the so-called friends of Haiti to weaken our government and justify the coup d’état.

Many observers in Haiti and elsewhere keep asking me the same question, which is this: what are you doing here and what prevents you from coming back to your own country? The Haitian constitution does not allow political exile. You have not been convicted of anything, so what prevents you from going back? You are a Haitian citizen and should be allowed to move freely.

When I look at it from the South African perspective, I don’t find the real reasons. But if I try to understand it from the Haitian perspective, I think that I see the picture. The picture is that in Haiti, we have the same people who organised the invasion of 2004 after kidnapping me to put me in Africa. They are still there. That means there is a kind of neo-colonial occupation of 8,900 UN soldiers with 4,400 policemen spending, more or less, fifty-one million US dollars a month in a country where 70 per cent of the population lives with less than a dollar a day. In other words it’s a paradise for the occupiers. First we had the colonisation of Haiti and now we have a kind of neo-colonial occupation of Haiti. In my view, they don’t want me back because they still want to occupy Haiti.

Nicolas Rossier: So you see the elite in Haiti basically influencing those currently in power and pressuring them to prevent you from coming back? There is certainly a more friendly administration now in Washington. Are they still sending the same messages to South Africa regarding you?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: No … (laughs)

Nicolas Rossier: I heard that you tried to go to Cuba for an urgent eye surgery and you were not allowed to go. Is this true?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Allow me to smile…(laughs) because when you look at this, you smile based on the contradiction that you observe in the picture. They pretend that they fear me when I am part of the solution, based on what the majority of the people in Haiti still continue to say. If they continue to ask for my return by demonstrating peacefully, that means you still have the problem. So if you want to solve the problem, open the door for my return.

Nicolas Rossier: You have said that you do not intend to become involved in politics, but rather return as a citizen. Is that your vision?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Yes, and I said it because this is what I was doing before being elected in 1990. I was teaching and now I have more to offer based on my research in linguistics and neurolinguistics, which is research on how the brain processes language. I have made a humble contribution in a country where once we had only 34 secondary schools when I was elected in 1990, and before the coup of 2004 we had 138 public secondary schools. Unfortunately the earthquake destroyed most of them. Why are they so afraid? It’s irrational. Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it’s not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It’s just a matter of psychology. So this pathology, this fear, has to do with psychology, and as long as we don’t have that national dialogue where fear would disappear, they may continue to show fear where there is no reason to be afraid.

Nicolas Rossier: What has to be done for you to be able to return to Haiti? What do you intend to do to make that happen? It’s been six years now. It must be very tough for you not to be able to return with your family. You must feel very homesick.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: There is a Swahili proverb which says: ‘Mapenzi ni kikohozi, hayawezi kufichika’ - or ‘love is like cough that you cannot hide.’

I love my people and my country, and I cannot hide it, and because of that love, I am ready to leave right now. I cannot hide it. What is preventing me from leaving, as I said earlier, if I look from South Africa, I don’t know.

Nicolas Rossier: But when you ask the question to the people responsible here, they say they don’t know.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Well (pause) I am grateful to South Africa, and I will always be grateful to South Africa and Africa as our mother continent. But I think something could be done in addition to what has been done in order to move faster towards the return, and that is why, as far as I am concerned, I say, and continue to say that I am ready. I am not even asking for any kind of logistical help because friends could come here and help me reach my country in two days. So I did all that I could.

Nicolas Rossier: Do you think that the Haitian government is sending signals to the South African government that they are not ready? For instance, maybe they do not want you to return because they are concerned about security issues for you. The Haitian government may not be able to ensure your security. There are some individuals who, for ideological reasons, don’t support you and could go as far as to try to assassinate you. Is that part of the problem?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: In Latin they say: ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’ or ‘after this, therefore because of this.’ It’s a logical fallacy. In 1994, when I returned home, they said the same: if he comes back the sky will fall. I was back during a very difficult time where I included members of the opposition in my government, moving our way through dialogue in order to heal the country. But unfortunately we did not have a justice system, which could provide justice to all the victims at once. However slowly, through the Commission of Truth and Justice, we were paving the way to have justice. Now I will not come back as a head of state, but as a citizen. If I am not afraid to be back in my country, how could those who wanted to kill me, who plotted to have the coup in 2004, be the first to care about my security? It’s a logical fallacy. (laughs) They are hiding, or try to hide themselves behind something that is too small…no no no no.

Nicolas Rossier: Are they afraid of your political influence – afraid that you can affect change?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Yes, and I will encourage those who want to be logical (laughs), not to fear the people, because when they say they fear me, basically it’s not me. It’s the people, in a sense that they fear the votes of the people. They fear the voice of the people and that fear is psychologically linked to a kind of social pathology. It’s an apartheid society, unfortunately, because racism can be behind these motivations.

I can fear you, not for good reasons, but because I hate you and I cannot say that I hate you. You see? So we need a society rooted in equality. We are all equal, rich and poor and we need a society where the people enjoy their rights. But once you speak this way, it becomes a good reason for you to be pushed out of the country or to be kidnapped as I was (laughs). But there is no way out without that dialogue and mutual respect. This is the way out.

Nicolas Rossier: In your view, what is the last element missing for you to go back? You said there was one more thing they could do for you to go back. Can you tell us that?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: They just need to be reasonable. The minute they decide to be reasonable, the return will happen right away.

Nicolas Rossier: And that means one phone call into the US State Department? One green light from one person? Technically, what does that mean?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Technically I would say that the Haitian government, by being reasonable, would stop violating the constitution and say clearly that the people voted for the return as well. The constitution wants us to respect the right of citizens, so we don’t accept exile. That would be the first step.

Now if other forces would oppose my return, they would come clear and oppose it but as long as we don’t start with a decision from the Haitian government, it makes things more difficult.

Nicolas Rossier: So the first gesture has to come from the Haitian government?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Yes

Nicolas Rossier: And they could make this happen by telling the US State Department you should be allowed to come back, and should come back.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: They would not have to tell the State Department.

Nicolas Rossier: So it’s not a political decision in Washington? It’s between the Haitian government and the South African government?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: As a matter of fact, I don’t have a passport because it is expired. I have the right to a diplomatic passport. By sending me a normal diplomatic passport there would be a clear signal of their will to respect the constitution.

Nicolas Rossier: But it’s the Haitian government that has to do that?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Yes

Nicolas Rossier: Or they could just renew your Haitian passport?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Yes

Nicolas Rossier: Ask you for a new photo of yourself and issue a new passport?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: (laughs) You see why when I said earlier that we should not continue to play as a puppet government in the hands of those who pretend to be friends of Haiti. I am right because as long as we continue to play like that we are not moving from good to better or good to good, but from bad to worse.

Nicolas Rossier: There was a lot of noise lately in the US media about the candidacy of singer Wyclef Jean, who eventually was denied running by the CEP (Haiti's Interim Electoral Commission). Any comment about the whole commotion around his candidature?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: When we say democracy we have to mean what we say. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Haiti. They talk about democracy but they refuse to organise free and fair democratic elections. Is it because of a kind of neocolonial occupation? Is it because they still want exclusion and not inclusion that they refused to organise free and fair democratic elections?

Last year, we observed that they said they wanted to have elections, but in fact they had a selection and not an election. Today they are moving from the same to the same. They are not planning to have free and fair democratic elections. They are planning to have a selection. They excluded the Lavalas* party, which is the party of the majority. It is as if in the US they could organise an election without the Democrats. So from my point of view, Wyclef Jean came as an artist to be a candidate and it was good for those who refuse elections because they could have a ‘media circus’ in order to hide the real issue, which is the inclusion of the majority. So this is my view of the reality.

Nicolas Rossier: Looking back at the dramatic events that lead to your overthrow in 2004, is there anything in hindsight that you wished you had not done? Anything tactically or strategically that you wish you had done differently and that could have prevented the coup?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: If I could describe the reality from that day in 2004 to today, you would allow me to use the Hebrew phrase again (speaks in Hebrew), which means ‘from bad to worse’. That is how it has been from 2004 to today. When we look at that coup d’état, which was a kidnapping, I was calling for dialogue and they manipulated a small minority of Haitians to play the game of moving from coup d’état to coup d’état, instead of moving to free and fair democratic elections. The first time Haiti had free and fair democratic elections was 1990, when I was elected. Then we wanted to move from elections to elections. So in 2004, we were moving towards a real democracy and they said no. The minority in Haiti – the political and economic elite – is afraid of free and fair elections, and their foreign allies don’t want an election in Haiti. That is why they excluded Famni Lavalas. As long as they refuse to respect the right of every citizen to participate in free and fair democratic elections, they will not fix the problem.

Nicolas Rossier: That is an interesting answer, but I was more thinking of strategic mistakes you made such as asking France to pay reparation in 2003. In doing that, you lost a natural ally that could have stood with you before the coup and within the United Nations Security Council to protect your government. In fact, France stood with the US and did not come to your rescue this time, probably because they were very upset by your demand for restitution.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: I don’t think this is the case. The first time I met with French President Jacques Chirac, I was in Mexico. At that time he was with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. I invited them to join us to celebrate freedom as a universal value. So that was an opportunity for France to realise that yes, Haiti and France can stand up together to celebrate freedom as a universal value.

In 1789, when France had their revolution, they declared ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ for all people, but in the back of their minds slaves were not human beings. To them neither Haitian nor African slaves were human. We fought hard and we got our independence; it was not a gift. It was the blood of our forefathers that was shed to gain our freedom. Despite that, we did not want to celebrate our 200 years of independence with any kind of spirit of vengeance, nor a spirit of glory to remind France of what they had done. It wasn’t that. It was an invitation to celebrate freedom as a universal value. So that would give a wonderful opportunity for France if they wanted to do it together. That would not exclude the truth because the truth is they obliged Haiti to pay 90 million francs, which for us today, is more than 21 billion USD. This is restitution, not reparation.

In 2001, here in Durban South Africa, the UN gave the Haitians and French an opportunity to address this issue of reparation. The French refused, but we respectfully asked them to let us have an opportunity to address this issue in a mutually respectful way. In one word – if today I were the President of Haiti, as I was in 2004, I would ask France to join Haiti to celebrate freedom, but also to address this issue of 21 billion USD. As a matter of fact, a head of state elected by his people must respect the will of the people. When President Sarkozy went to Haiti after the earthquake, Haitians were not begging for cents, they were asking for the 21 billion USD because it is a question of dignity. Either we have dignity or we don’t, and Haitians have dignity. That means we respect your dignity, so you should also respect our dignity. We will not beg for cents. Cents will never solve the problems of Haiti. After 200 years of independence, we are still living in abject poverty. We still have what we had 200 years ago in terms of misery. It is not fair. So if we want to move from misery to poverty with dignity, France must address this issue with Haitians and see what kind of agreement will come out from this important issue.

Nicolas Rossier: But don’t you think now, with hindsight, that this may have cost you your presidency?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: It could be part of the picture but I don’t think it was the main reason.

Nicolas Rossier: If France had asked the UN Security Council to send UN peacekeepers to maintain your government, do you think you would not have been pushed out of power?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Sometimes you know there are diplomatic words to cover something else. I think at the time, the burning issue was Iraq.

France opposed the US on this issue and that was a golden opportunity for them to sacrifice Haiti in terms of leading and participating in a coup or in the kidnapping of a president.

Nicolas Rossier: But the real reason underneath was that France did not want you to annoy them anymore with this request. 2003 was the first time, at least publicly and officially, that a Haitian President made such a request.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: I smile because former colonists defend their interests, not their friends. Even if they call themselves friends of Haiti, they will always continue to defend their own interests.

We could compare what is going on right now today, post-earthquake, to what was going on in 2004, in order to find out if France is really helping Haiti and if they would change their policy or not. From my point of view, they would not change their policy because they have enough in front of them, in terms of the disaster, to address the issue of 21 billion USD now. But they still don’t want to, meaning that if they don’t want to address it today after what happened in Haiti in January 2010. I don’t think they would have changed their policy in 2004.

That is my way to read it. But maybe one day the French government will take up the issue because men can change if they want to change. I wish they would change their policy to respectfully address the issue with Haiti, because it’s a must.

Nicolas Rossier: As a matter of fact, as soon as Gérard Latortue was placed as Prime Minister after your removal, the Haitian government dropped the issue right away.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: But that did not kill the issue (laughs). If we look at the history of Haiti before 2004, no one dared to address the issue, but we were moving from misery to poverty with dignity. Then when we addressed the issue they did not want to answer – but that does not kill the issue. It means that it will remain a reality as long as they refuse to address it.

My wish is that, one day, they will realise that they have to do it. What happened with Italy and Libya? Italy addressed the issue of reparation and that was good for both countries. The same way that we must address with France the issue of restitution.
 I remember a recent article from Jacqueline Charles in the Miami Herald where an historian was quoted as saying: ‘Lavalas was never a party. It was a movement, which is now in deep crisis and divided among distinct factions led by some of its old barons …They all want the Lavalas vote without appealing to Aristide. So, yes, Lavalas as we knew it is dying a slow death.’ He was commenting on the current debate around the future elections in Haiti. What do you think of what he said?

Some people pretend they are experts on Haiti but they often act like people suffering from social amnesia. When you take a group of mice and you put them in a lab, if these mice don’t have the capacity of producing oxytocin in the brain, they are not able to recognise other mice. That is how it is, it is a fact. These people suffer from social amnesia. They are unable to recognise Haitians as human beings because of our color, our poverty and misery. The majority of the Haitian people declared ‘Lavalas is our political party.’ That is what the majority said and they have their constitution, so how can someone pretend that it’s not? These people, from my humble point of view, act as if they were mental slaves, meaning they have their masters giving them financial resources to say this, and they can cover themselves under a ‘scientific’ umbrella, when in fact they are mental slaves.

Nicolas Rossier: So there is this amnesia because most commentators admit that Préval won in 2006 thanks to the Lavalas base. Many in Haiti want to use Lavalas as well to win, but nobody wants the Lavalas party to win or mention your name in the process. How do you feel about this contradiction?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Unfortunately, what South Africa had before 1994 is what Haiti still has as a reality today. The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don’t see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti. The people exist, but they don’t see the people and they don’t want to see them. That is why they don’t count them. They want to use them, but they don’t want to respect their will.

When they talk about Lavalas and the Haitian people, they fear them because if there is a fair election the people will defeat them. So they have to exclude the Lavalas party or the majority, in order to make sure that they will select what they want to select. So this is the kind of apartheid that they have in Haiti. If you say that, they will hate you and they may try to kill you. It is because they don’t want you to see the reality. Why do I say this? It’s because I love my country. If you have a cancer and refuse to call it a cancer, it will kill you. You better accept it and find a way to prevent death. That is what I want for my country.

Nicolas Rossier: But there has been some opportunism lately. We saw people like your former friend and later foe Evans Paul asking for your return. They are using you to get support from the Lavalas base. Or many want to appeal to Lavalas but are scared to mention you. What is your thought on this current reality in Haiti?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: The day I would think that I can use the Haitian people, the Haitian people would start to distance themselves from me and deny me. They would be right to do that, because no one, as a politician, should pretend the people are dumb enough to be used for votes, for instance. I did my best to respect the Haitian people and I will continue to do my best to show respect for them and for their wishes. In 1990, when I was elected president, people were working in sweatshops for nine cents an hour. When I managed to raise the minimum wage it was enough to have a coup. And it happened in Honduras last year because part of the game was this: don’t raise the minimum wage, so people must work as slaves.

Today, the Haitian people remember what together we were trying to do. We were not just using them for votes. They are not dumb: we were moving together through democratic principles for a better life. If now they continue to ask for my return six years after my kidnapping that means they are very bright. They may be illiterate, but they are not dumb. They remember what together we were trying to do. So I wish that the politicians would not focus on me, but rather on the people and not the people for elections but for their rights – the right to eat, the right to go to school, the right for healthcare, and the right to participate in a government. Unfortunately, in 2006 they elected someone who betrayed them, so they realise that now. Wow. They say: Who else will come? Will that person betray us after getting our votes? They are hesitating, and I understand them because they are not dumb.

Now here is a practical question. How do you want to deal with the Lavalas party in Haiti? You are still the national leader of Lavalas. Don’t you think that it would be a better idea to transfer the leadership to someone in Haiti? Would that not be a better long-term strategy, rather than hanging on to the title of party leader? After all, that's one of the pretexts used to not allow Lavalas to participate in the past elections and the future of Haiti as well?

If we respect the will of the people, then we must pay attention to what they are saying. I am here, but they are making the decisions. If today they decide they have to go that way, then you have to respect their will. That means I am not the one preventing them from moving on with a congress and having another leader and so on. As a matter of fact I am not acting as national leader outside of Haiti, not at all. I don’t pretend to be able to do that and I don’t want to do that. I know it would not be good for the people to do something like that.

They have said that it is a question of principle. First, they want my return, and then they can organise a congress to elect a new leader and move ahead. I respect that. If today they want to change it, I will respect their will. That is democracy.

What is behind the national picture is a logical fallacy. It’s a logical fallacy when, for instance, they pretend they have to exclude Lavalas to solve the problem. To not have Lavalas in an election, because it's a selection, it’s a logical fallacy.

Before I said ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’ or ‘after this, therefore because of this’ and now I can say ‘Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc,’ - ‘With this therefore because of this.’ It’s a logical fallacy as well. They would not solve the problem without the majority of the people. They have to include them in a free and fair democratic election with my return or before my return or after my return. The inclusion of the people is indispensable to be logical and to move towards a better Haiti. That’s the solution.

Nicolas Rossier: So practically, if you were to say today that you would endorse Maryse Narcisse as the national leader they would accept Lavalas candidates?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Last year I received a letter from the Provisional Electoral Council, by the way, a council that was selected by the president, which is why they do what he wants. Excluding Lavalas was the implementation of the will of the government of Haiti.

I received a letter from them inviting me to a meeting and I said to myself, ‘Oh that is good. I am ready. I will go.’ Then they said in the letter, ‘If you cannot come, will you send someone on your behalf?’ So I said okay and I replied in a letter [1], which became public, asking Dr. Maryse Narcisse to represent Lavalas and to present the candidates of Lavalas based on the letter I received from the CEP. But they denied it because the game was to send the letter to me and assume that I would not answer. Then they could tell the Haitian people, ‘Look he does not want to participate in the election.’ So they were using a pretext to pretend that they are intelligent, but in reality to hide the truth.

Nicolas Rossier: Did they not claim it was false at some point, or that it was not your signature?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: They claimed that the mandate from me should have been validated by the Haitian consulate in South Africa, when they know that there is no representative of the Haitian government in South Africa, you see.

Nicolas Rossier: No embassy at all.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: No. When I was President, I had named an Ambassador to South Africa, but that ended with the coup. After our independence, we had to wait until 1990 to have free democratic elections. We cannot change the economic reality in one day, in one year, but at least we should continue to respect the right of Haitians to vote. So today, why play with the right to vote? It’s cynical. You cannot improve their economic life and you deny them their right to vote. It’s cynical. South Africa did something which could be good for many countries, including Haiti. In 1994, when South Africans could vote, they voted. They are trying to move from free and fair elections while trying to improve their economic life. This is the right way to go. Not denying the right for poor people to vote while you cannot even improve their life.

Nicolas Rossier: The night of the coup. You spoke about it already and at the time you said to me that you were writing a book about it. Is that still in the works?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: The book has been finished since 2004.

Nicolas Rossier: Ready to be published?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: It was ready to be published and it would be published if I were allowed to do that.

Nicolas Rossier: Do you still remember the night of the coup - and I am sure you do because nobody is used to being awakened in the middle of the night and sent on a plane surrounded by armed people. Do you wish you had said no to Mr. Moreno, ‘I am not signing this letter of resignation’ or ‘I won’t get on that plane. I will deal with the security issues in Haiti with my government?’

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: As I just said, if I were allowed to publish the book, the book would have been published in 2004. So in the book, you have the answers to your important questions and that is why now I will not elaborate on it, based on what I just said. In one word, I would do exactly what I did and I would say exactly why I said because it was right what I said and what I did. They were wrong, and they are still wrong.

Nicolas Rossier: What is known is the letter [2] in Kreyol that you signed and was according to you mistranslated.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Of course it was mistranslated.

Nicolas Rossier: Right, but you also clearly stated that you were forced at gunpoint and that’s public knowledge.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: It is, but if I don’t elaborate, it’s not because I want to give an evasive answer. It’s just based on what I said to you before.

Nicolas Rossier: What if the book never gets published?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Maybe it’s the same reason why I am still here (laughs). I wish they let me leave as well as let the book get published (laughs).

Nicolas Rossier: There have been these accusations [3] of corruption against you starting with filmmaker Raoul Peck and then taken over by Ms. Lucy Komisar and Ms. Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal about your personal involvement in a Teleco/IDT deal back in 2003. Can you put these accusations to rest?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: First, they are lying. Second, what can we expect from a mental slave? (laughs) He will lie for his masters. He is paid to lie for his masters, so I am not surprised by these nonsensical allegations. As I said, they are lying.

They are lying. But it’s possible that maybe under you at some level in your government there was some corruption involving Teleco and IDT?

I never heard about things like that when I was there and I never knew about it. If I had known, of course we would have done our best to stop it or to prevent it or to legally punish those who could have been involved in such a thing.

Nicolas Rossier: Why have you not declared this publicly? Because these things happen all the time. I am sure there is corruption at every level in the South African government as there is under the Obama Administration. Things happen and we don’t need to examine Haiti only to find it. You could say that you were the head of state but not the head of Teleco. Things happen.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: As I said, there are more people receiving money to lie than people receiving money to tell the truth. I don’t know how many times I have answered this question, but sometimes the journalist may have the answer but is not allowed to make it public. (laughs).

Nicolas Rossier: Would you be in favor of creating a Haitian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, similar to what South Africa did, that would allow some of the people who have been exiled under Duvalier and Cedras and your two presidencies to come back and be called to appear in that commission - and ask for forgiveness and amnesty if needed?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: What I will say now, is not because I am now outside Haiti wanting to go back that I will say it. No, I already said it and I will just repeat it: There is no way to move forward in Haiti without dialogue. Dialogue among Haitians. Once we had an army of 7,000 soldiers controlling 40 per cent of the national budget, but moving from coup d’état to coup d’état. I said no. Let’s disband the army, let’s have a police force to protect the right of every citizen, let’s have dialogue to address our differences. There is no democracy without opposition.

We have to understand one another when we oppose each other. We are not enemies, so we have to address our differences in a democratic way and only then can we move ahead. I have said it so many times already. We still have people calling themselves friends of Haiti coming to exploit the resources. They don’t want national dialogue. They don’t want Haitians to live peacefully with Haitians.

South Africa did it when they had The Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. People came and realised that they had made mistakes. Everybody can make mistakes. You must acknowledge that you made mistakes, and the society will welcome you. If you cannot do that through tribunals because of the numbers, then find a way to address it. We cannot pretend that Haiti will have a better future without that dialogue. We must have it.

In 1994, when I went back to Haiti from exile, we established a Commission for Truth and Justice and Reconciliation. I passed the documents to the next government, and I never heard about it again. Haitians never heard about it because the government wanted to move fast towards privatisation of state enterprises instead of that path which was recommended.

Nicolas Rossier: Would that mean allowing all the political exiles to come back no matter how bad they were, including people like Raoul Cedras and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: I will not move forward with conclusions outside of that framework of justice. The Commission addressed the case of these criminals and paved the way for justice and dialogue. You see, so I said it and will continue to say it: We need to continue to address this issue of dialogue, truth and justice. Otherwise, we will continue to play either like a puppet government or be mental slaves in the hands of those who still want to exploit our resources and they will not decide to change it for Haitians. Haitians must start to say no. Let’s change it – not against foreigners, not against true friends, with them if they want, but they will not do it for us unless we start to do it.

Nicolas Rossier: Do you hold a grudge today against president René Préval for not being more forceful in trying to facilitate your return to Haiti? He owes his election thanks to the Lavalas base.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: If I pay attention to what the people are saying, they describe President Préval as someone who betrayed me and it's true. They voted for him. I did not vote, I was here, but those who elected him now realise he has failed them. He betrayed them.

He is playing in the hands of those who are against the interests of the people – that is what they said.

Nicolas Rossier: Do you feel personally betrayed? I am sure you realise the difficulties of the situation he was in.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Personally, I say let’s put the interests of the people first. Not my interests. If I can do something for him, or if I have to, I will do it. It’s a matter of principle and in his case he did not have to do anything for me. He just had to respect the constitution. The constitution does not allow exile. He should not violate the constitution. That is it. But as he did, history takes note and history will recognise that he failed, unfortunately.

Nicolas Rossier: I remember a famous progressive journalist in Geneva reviewing my film [4] and one of the criticisms he had was that I did not speak about voodoo and how it affects Haiti’s politics. What do you think of this tendency among many western journalists who try to explain voodoo as one main reason for Haiti’s problems?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: I enjoy drawing parallels between voodoo and politics. Why? Because in the west when they want to address political issues, they may, as you suggested or indicated, mix it with voodoo as a way to avoid going straight to the truth. The truth could be, for instance, historical.
Fourteen years after Christopher Columbus arrived in Haiti, in 1492, they had already killed three million indigenous people. Do they speak about it today? Do they know about it? I don’t know. At that time, one could be 14 years old and would have to pay a quarter of gold to Christopher Columbus or they would cut your arm or feet or ears. Do they talk about it? If you do, it’s like ‘oh really or maybe.’ They have problems exposing the truth, acknowledging what was going on at that time. And if you look at the reality of today, it is almost the same thing.

Last week there was some trouble because of storms and earthquakes and Haiti lost about ten people, some say five some say more than ten. In any case, even if it were one person, it would already mean a lot for us because a human being is a human being. Instead of focusing on what is the reality of misery, abject poverty, occupation, colonisation, some prefer to find a scapegoat through voodoo. The UN itself had to expel 114 soldiers for rape and child abuse. So we see people invading a country, pretending to help, while they are actually involved in rape, child abuse and so on. And it is not an issue for people who like to talk about voodoo as if voodoo by itself could cover this reality. The same way they don’t want to face our historical drama linked to colonisation.

Nicolas Rossier: Is it a racist distraction?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: It is, it is. I respect religion and will respect any religion. Africans had their religion here. They went to Haiti and continued their practice and I have to respect that. In addition, the Haitian constitution, respects freedom of religion. So let’s address the drama, misery, poverty, exploitation, occupation, and people without the right to vote or eat. People want to be free. They don’t have self-determination. Let’s focus on people who have no resources and are dying. We had such a wonderful solidarity after January 12 in the world, where citizens worldwide were building solidarity with Haitians. That was great to see whites and blacks crossing barriers of color to express their solidarity with the victims of the deadly earthquake.

And on behalf of the Haitian people, if I may, I will say thank you to all those true friends who did it while others who call themselves true friends of Haiti preferred to send soldiers with weapons to protect their own interests instead of protecting human beings who were really suffering.

Amputations – we had them by the thousands without anesthesia. They were cutting hands and feet of victims and it’s not an issue for some people who prefer to talk about voodoo as if voodoo could be the cause of what is going on in Haiti. No, what is going on in Haiti is rooted in colonialism, neo-colonialism in that neoliberal policy applied and imposed upon Haiti, not in religious issues like voodoo. For me, as long as they don’t try to face the reality as it is, they may continue to use issues like voodoo to hide facts, any attempt to replace truth by racist distractions will fail.

Nicolas Rossier: Anything that you would like to add that you have at heart and have not been able to tell?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Well … if you ask a Zulu* person the way to reach somewhere while you are on the right path, that person will tell you (in Zulu): ‘Ugonde ngqo ngalo mgwago’ which means go straight on your way.

That is why the Haitian people who are moving from misery to poverty with dignity should continue to move straight towards that goal. If we lose our dignity we lose everything. We are poor – worse than poor because we are living in abject poverty and misery. But based on that collective dignity rooted in our forefathers, I do believe we have to continue fighting in a peaceful way for our self-determination, and if we do that, history will pay tribute to our generation, because we are on the right path.

Nicolas Rossier: Mr. President, thank you for your time.

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* Nicolas Rossier is an award winning independent filmmaker and reporter who lives in Brooklyn New York. In 2005, he directed and produced the outstanding 85-minute documentary, ‘Aristide and the Endless Revolution.’ For copyright information and publishing rights, please contact the author at Nicrossier@gmail.com
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
* An online petitionis currently running calling for the return of Aristide to Haiti.

NOTES:


* Lavalas is a Creole word meaning ‘flood’, ‘avalanche’, a ‘mass of people’ or ‘everyone together’. Fanmi means ‘family’.
* Zulu is the name of the largest ethnic group in South Africa and the most widely spoken home language as well.

[1] Letter of President Aristide - November 2009 - authorising Dr. Maryse Narcisse to register Lavalas candidates. http://www.hayti.net/tribune/index.php?mod=articles&ac=commentaires&id=725

[2] Letters of resignation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide - The Kreyol translation by professor Bryant Freeman, http://www.nathanielturner.com/aristidedidnotresign.htm
The official translation provided by the US embassy and used most widely in mainstream media, http://articles.cnn.com/2004-03-01/world/aristide.letter_1_constitution-..
[3] ‘Aristide’s American Profiteers’, an article by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720095066688387.html

[4] ‘Aristide and the Endless Revolution’, a documentary by Nicolas Rossier, http://www.aristidethefilm.com

Gambia: Trial of two women's rights defenders

Coalition for Human Rights in Gambia and Senegal

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/68809

Press Release
11th November 2010

URGENT: The Gambia: The trial of two Women's Rights Defenders Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho : A theft Case Without A Complainant – Yolocamba Solidaridad Not Present In Court As Principal Witness

The last court hearing of the trial of Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) that took place on last Wednesday, 3rdNovember 2010, before Magistrate Emmanuel Nkea of the Banjul Magistrates’ Court has begun to raise eyebrows.

The Duo were accused of theft of 30000 Euro from Yolocamba Solidaridad. The whole Gambia was expecting the principal witnesses to be Spanish citizens representing Yolocamba Solidaridad: but they were absent. It appeared that the Gambia Government was representing Yolocamba Solidaridad.

The court heard the testimonies of two female circumcisers, Aminata Damba and Kaddy Damba, from Taibatu Village in Wulli West, Upper River Region (URR) and Saruja village in the Central River Region (CRR) respectively. The women explained how they got involved in working with GAMCOTRAP and from whom they each received more than D3000 (over US$100). One of them even said that even though it is her profession to be a female circumciser, if the Government were to ask her to stop she would do so. This should be noted by all those who are combating harmful traditional practices. This also raises the question whether the Government is really committed to abolishing harmful traditional practices like Female Genital Mutilation when professionals are even waiting for it to take the lead.

Innocent villagers were dragged to court to testify the benefits they have received so that they would drop the knife as circumcisers. The whole exercise of dropping the knife was done at the Stadium in Basse (about 400km from Banjulthe capital) and witnessed by all the District Chiefs of the Upper River Region,Village heads and Women’s leaders representing the Circumcisers, and other dignitaries and representatives of National and International organizations and institutions including a representative of Yolocamba Solidaridad, Maria Jesus Rodriguez alias Susy who also gave a statement at the celebration. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia only hopes that the state will not dare to drag Gambian village women to court and exclude representatives of Yolocamba Solidaridad from appearing as witnesses.

The new prosecutor Superintendent Sainey Joof informed the court of his intention to register an additional charge of fraudulent accounting but this was rejected by the team of defence counsels led by Mr Lamin Mboge. According to eyewitness accounts, the court was full to capacity and the witnesses looked infuriated and distracted by their lack of comprehension of what was going on.

It could be recalled that the two prominent Women Human Rights Defenders spent ten days in detention before being granted bail on Wednesday 20thOctober, 2010 after a hearing in a crowded courtroom at the Banjul Magistrates’ Court. The bail bond is One Million Five Hundred Thousand Gambian Dalasis (over US$ 50, 000) each, and two sureties with a landed property.

Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) were arrested on Monday October 11th, 2010 by Gambian security personnel, detained at the Banjul Police station where they spent the night and then whisked to Banjul Magistrates’ Court the following day October 12th, which refused them bail and sent them to Mile Two Central Prisons. They were charged with theft of 30,000 (Thirty Thousand) Euros received from a Spanish NGO Yolocamba Solidaridad.

It is difficult to comprehend why the Gambia government is interested in this case which is simply a civil matter involving two NGOs. Moreover, the report of the panel it had earlier set up is at variance with the allegations. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia is calling on the Gambia Government to desist from intimidating witnesses and to allow them to speak freely without coercion or manipulation. It urges the government to withdraw the criminal case from court, to allow the two NGOs to sort out any problem that may exist between them and for civil matters to take civil processes without any interference. The Coalition further demands that if the representatives of Yolocamba Solidaridad are not to appear as principal witnesses to show beyond doubt what they are claiming to have been stolen from them, then the Gambia Government should withdraw the case from court and allow them to pursue their claim through civil suit.

Questions are being asked by our colleagues abroad whether GAMCOTRAP may not be seen as a political threat by the Government. The Coalition is therefore calling on all human rights defenders to follow the testimony of the women from the villages. One would discover that they are usually close to the Governors and headmen of villages, who are usually involved by NGOs because of the traditional set up. The Coalition is also calling on the defence to bring all those Governors, Village Heads, Women leaders to testify how much they have consumed and received from GAMCOTRAP and whether they did so for any political reason. This should be transformed into the best forum to combat harmful traditional practice by showing how everyone is a beneficiary of programmes, irrespective of party affiliation or non involvement in politics. The two women will again appear in court again on November 22nd, 2010.

NOTE:

Dr. Isatou Touray and Ms. Amie Bojang-Sissoho have for many years been active in the promotion of gender equality, rights of women and children, particularly in the fight against Female Genital Mutilation and other discriminatory practices. Dr. Touray is also Secretary General of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC). She is a board member of Women Living Under Muslim Laws for the past two years, and also a board member of MUSAWA based in Malaysia. At the national level Dr. Touray is a board member of the network of women positively living with HIV/AIDS in the Gambia – MUTAPOLA and Chairperson of the Network for Peace Building in Africa – WANEP.

Dr. Touray was named ‘Gambian of the Year’ in 2008 by The News and Report Weekly Magazine for her work around FGM and promoting the rights of women and children. An award she received when she was attending a training programme in the Bwiam. Dr. Touray was also awarded the “Woman of Courage” in 2008 by the American Embassy in Banjul. She was also a winner of the One Hundred Heroines of the World by the Rochester Women’s Health Project at Rutgers University in the United States of America.

Amie Bojang-Sissoho is a journalist and has contributed significantly to women and children’s development particularly in the area of educational programming at the Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS). She has initiated and has been instrumental in creating programmes that are grounded on the principles of promoting gender equality and women’s human rights. She was also instrumental in bringing out the voices of the poor and powerless women using the radio as a tool for empowerment. Ms. Bojang-Sissoho is also Chairperson of the Young Journalists’ Association of the Gambia – YJAG.

Both women have been active in various networks relating to women’s human rights promotion.

For more information, contact +221 33 867 95 87

ORGANISATIONS:-

- Inter African Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development – (FAMEDEV)

- International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)

- Syndicat des Professionnels de l’Information et de la Communication du Sénégal (SYNPICS)

- Rencontre Africaine pour le Défense Des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO),

- Amnesty International, Section Senegal

- Radio Alternative Voice for Gambians-Radio AVG

- Article 19

- Organisation Nationale des Droits de l’Homme (ONDH)

- Réseau Presse et Parlement du Sénégal (REPPAS)

- West African Journalists Association (WAJA).

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

The Casablanca Call for democracy and human rights

Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/68812

13 November 2010

We, the signatories to this call, as politicians, intellectuals and civil society advocates, believe that the achievement of democracy and the embodiment of human rights in the Arab world is an absolute necessity and requires a broader engagement of all citizens and political and social forces.

We observe, with great concern, the dramatic and alarming backsliding of political reforms in the Arab world, due to several structural obstacles since the beginning of the new century. We hereby appeal to all parties concerned with the future of democracy - governments, civil society institutions, political organisations, trade unions, and the media - in the belief that the achievement of real and effective reforms is the responsibility of all parties.

We affirm that confronting the various obstacles that continue to prevent the achievement of a peaceful transfer of power requires the following:

1. An immediate undertaking of profound and effective political reforms that respect the rule of law and institutional integrity based on the principle of separation of powers. This must be done in accordance with the principle of peoples' sovereignty, respect for human rights and freedoms, and by confirming the ballot box as the only legitimate method of achieving a peaceful transfer of power, and ensuring the transparency of the electoral process, accepting its results, and enhancing the efforts of independent monitors in accordance with international standards.

2. Protection of an independent judiciary as a top priority for democratic change, as a prerequisite for the protection of human rights and freedoms, and as the guarantor for the supremacy of the rule of law and state institutions.

3. The immediate release of all political prisoners - numbering in the thousands in various Arab prisons - and putting an end to political trials of any kind, torture of political opponents, and the practice of kidnapping.

4. Enabling and encouraging political parties and trade unions to engage in their right to organise freely, use all available media outlets, take advantage of public funding, and be free of any interference of the state apparatus in their affairs.

5. Acknowledgment of the right of civil society organisations to perform their advocacy roles freely and effectively, having their independence and privacy duly respected, their internal affairs not disrupted, and their sources of financial support kept open and active. We call upon all Arab governments to engage with civil society organisations in real partnerships to achieve sustainable human development and to empower women and youth to take part in the development process.

6. Guarantee of freedom of expression, free access of the media and journalists to information and news sources. The respect for the independence of journalists' syndicates and allowing them to disseminate information and opinion without censorship, and undue administrative, or judicial pressures, and the abolishment of the imprisonment penalty in cases against journalists.

7. Development of mechanisms to ensure the neutrality of state institutions and their placement in the direct service of their constituents regardless of political allegiances, and without interference in the affairs of political parties and civil society organisations.

8. Mobilisation of all forces and efforts to comply with good governance, political integrity and transparency, and combating corruption as an unethical social, political, and economic phenomenon that has turned administrative corruption into a system for administering corruption. We believe this undermines development efforts, drains national resources, and threatens social peace.

9. Summoning of the private sector to play its role in the contribution to political reforms, the preservation of freedoms and to strive for social justice, affirming the strong link between development and democracy, and ensuring transparency and free and fair competition.

10. Supporting efforts to achieve national reconciliation and unity and avoid the dangers that threaten unity, and feed the sectarian, religious, ethnic, and political conflicts that destabilise Arab states and societies.

11. Appealing to democratic forces in the entire world to put pressure on their own governments to refrain from supporting non-democratic regimes in the Arab world, and from adopting double standards in their relations with Arab regimes.

12. Reaffirmation of the interconnectedness of political reform with the renewal of religious thought, which requires support for, and expansion of, the practice of ijtihad in a climate of complete freedom of thought, under democratic systems of government. Furthermore, we support the dialogue that began several years ago between Islamists and secularists at the local and regional levels and emphasise the importance of continuing such endeavours in order to provide solid ground for the protection of democracy and human rights from any political or ideological setbacks.

* Join other Arab scholars, leaders, and activists and Sign the Casablanca Appeal (in Arabic)

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Uganda: Activists protest LGBTI exclusion from healthcare access

Kikonyogo Kivumbi

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/68872

The policy, the National Health Sector Strategic Plan III is to be launched before the end of November this year.

Currently, the MARPS in Ugandan policy documents include sex workers, inmates, uniformed personnel, internally displaced persons and migrants.

The stigma attached to same sex relationships in Uganda force many gays underground, failing to seek treatment and safer sex practices.

The group, Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA-Uganda), a network of groups and individuals working to mainstream minority rights in Uganda’s Public Health Policies and laws has written to the Ministry of Health to protest the exclusion.

“We are concerned about the omission/ exclusion of sexual minorities from accessing vital health services in the soon to be launched Health Sector Strategic Plan III,” Mr Kikonyogo Kivumbi, the UHSPA Executive Director said in a November 7th letter. The letter copied to the Uganda Aids Commission and the Uganda Human Rights Commission called on the Uganda government to honour its international Human Rights Obligations.

“Uganda as a current member of the United Nations Human Rights Council cannot afford to jubilate the vulnerability of some sections of its population by keeping them off the health access radar,” the letter noted. It cited a recent report to the United Nations General Special Session Report for Uganda (UNGASS Report 2010) which noted that Uganda had no intervention for LGBTI access to HIV/AIDS prevention.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THIS DISCRIMINATION

The Health Sector Strategic Plan III runs for the next five years, with a possible extension for another five years. It will guide the distribution and access to donor and public resources in the management of health in Uganda. Mr Kivumbi said the HSSPIII is an important opportunity for LGBTI members to be afforded senstisation, awareness creation and information on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infection. ‘A number of gay men do not identify themselves as gay. They have heterosexual relationships, but think they can only get HIV infection in heterosexual relations,’ Kivumbi said.

He noted that there was a deliberate danger in the management of HIV/AIDS if people in same sex relationships do not et access to information and senstisation on treatment and safer sex.

The letter called on the Uganda government to honour its commitments to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights state parties to non discrimination to health.

“The right to health which HSSPIII intends to omit for sexual minorities is closely related to and dependent upon the realisation of other human rights as contained in the International Bill of Rights. By virtue of article 2.2 and article 3 of the ICESCR, the covenant proscribes any discrimination in access to health care and underlying determinants of health, as well as to means and entitlements for their procurement,” the letter reading parts.

Read the full letter here.

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Jacob Odipo: Source of strength to many

Raphael Obonyo

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/68870

Comrades,

On behalf of The Youth Congress and on my own behalf, I want to relay our condolence to the family, friends and comrades of our fallen soldier Jacob Odipo.

No doubt, Odipo was a real champion of those who are oppressed, marginalised, excluded and violated by the system. He did not only criticise the oppressive system and its beneficiaries, he fought against the oppressive system and injustice at all times!

Like his name (Odipo), he provided the shade that we needed to replenish our strength and to soldier on. He was a source of inspiration and strength to many of us who interacted with him.

Like a real leader, he accommodated divergent views in the belief that there was always plurality of ways to looking at issues and that we all have a contribution to make. He always appreciated that he was first amongst equals!

At a personal level he taught me great lessons that us agents of change we must be honest and must lead from the front if we are to capture the change that we so much need. His resilience and resolve for a more equal Kenya was always on full display!

Today he is gone but the torch that he lit remain alive in our midst! Let us keep it burning!

Fare the well our fallen soldier and comrade Odipo!

Lives and challenges: Debut works of three female African writers

Solomon Gebre-Selassie

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/68861

Looking at Africa through the eyes of its female literary protagonists might be perhaps a better way at understanding the hopes and concerns of the masses of Africans. Thus this essay reviews the common themes in the debut works of three writers – Maaza Mengiste’s ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze’, (W.W. Norton & Co., 1988, p. 308); Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’, (Seal Press, 1988, p. 204); and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus’, (Algonquin Books, 2003, p. 307). The authors are from Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria respectively.

The main shared themes in all three books are the esteemed status given to education in each society; strict family upbringing that in at least two cases (Chimamanda and Tsitsi) borders on child abuse, or is unambiguously family brutality; political oppression by the state and survival skills, and most notably in Tsitsi’s work, a dignified, native feminism that is non-modernist and unmediated by Western influences. (I will address the authors by their first names, but as a side note, I am not sure how some writers commenting on the EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) and Ethiopia address/call the prime minister not Meles but Zenawi, using his father’s name, a totally autonomous man in the style of Ethiopian appellation).

EDUCATION

The characters in each book put a high premium on the value of education. For Tsitsi’s female character Tambu, it can even be said it is the defining theme of the book, as captured by the first line of the first chapter that says ‘I was not sorry when my brother died.’ She said this because her intense desire to get educated was stymied and ridiculed by her parents and relatives who disparaged her quest for education by saying ‘Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables.’ She was at last able to get the education she so desired after her brother suddenly died, and an opportunity opened up. Her brother, the only male heir, was the one selected by the elders to receive an education. He was then expected to get a good job and provide for the family. When he dies, the family decides that it would be Tambu as the eldest daughter to replace him to get education. The decision was made, however, as a reluctant act, for the family was still concerned that even with education, a female would help out her husband and his family and not her own.

The man responsible for financing their education was their uncle, who had obtained a degree in England and was a principal at a local mission where he took his cousins for education, because he felt tremendous responsibility about the security and safety of his extended family. Coming back to the homestead during school breaks meant for the kids weeding plants using hands and hoes; bathing in cold water in a flowing river – not in a bathtub using gushing hot and cold water; eating sadza regularly with fingers and meat hardly at all – and never with a knife and fork; and enjoying no light beyond the flickering candles and home-made paraffin lamps. Thus education was the liberator from the mundane hard chores of rural life, and a gateway to better and modern life, hence the high premium. Although Tambu is allowed to stay with her uncle and start school at the mission once her brother who was there dies, she has a hard time to go beyond elementary school. Catholic sisters came to her school to matriculate the kids for advanced schooling at a faraway Catholic high school. She was one of the two kids who passed the entrance exam, but her uncle and all male relatives, including her father, refused to send her away. Her mother was her ally who steadfastly supported her daughter’s education, and Tambu was able to go to an all-white Catholic high school.

For Chimamanda, it was her female character Kambili’s father that was obsessed with his children getting the best education his money can afford and the kids showing the results of his investment. After exam results were announced one semester, and Kambili came in second, she came home to face a dejected father:

‘Good evening, Papa?’

‘Did school go well?’

Kambili said yes and handed the report card to her father. He seemed to take forever to open it and even longer to read it.

‘Who came first?’, Papa asked finally.

‘Chinwe Jideze.’

‘Jideze? The girl who came second last term?’

‘Yes.’

After he asked his daughter to follow him into his bedroom, the father holds a stern conversation with his daughter:

‘“Kambili, you did not put in your best this term. You came second because you chose to.” His eyes were deep and sad. After a few days, her father dropped at her school and asked her to show him the girl who came first (Chinwe). A group of girls were chatting at the door of the class.

“She is the girl in the middle.”

“Look at her,” Papa said.

“How many heads does she have?”

“One. I did not need to look at her to know that, but I looked at her anyway.”

“When you look at the mirror, how many heads do you have?” he continued.

“One.”

“The girl has one head too, she does not have two. So, why did you let her come first?”’

He then goes on to tell his daughter how poor he grew up, how he did not have anyone to give him the privileges that she has, all the familiar stuff that most of us with kids tell our children. Kambili did not disappoint her father. By the next semester she came out first.

In Maaza, we read a heartbreaking story that opens in Addis Ababa on the eve of a revolution; her characters such as the father, Hailu, is a prominent doctor educated in England, who is awarded a golden watch by the emperor for his scholastic achievements, and who is very meticulous at what he does. His older son, Yonas, is also an intellectual par excellence, teaching history at the local university.

FAMILY MATTERS

It would not be an exaggeration to say that in ‘Purple Hibiscus’ the author brings up the subject of ‘excessive and illegal love’ by a high-strung father. The father that cared for the education of his kids was also a controlling and brutal father. The author paints him in such opposing sheds and colours, it is very sad to pronounce Kimbali’s father as a child abuser. But alas that is what he is. Whenever they visit their relatives, his children take with them a schedule the father has made for each of them, dictating what to do from what to what time, and who to see and what not to see! Angered by this robotic-like control, their aunt, who is a university lecturer, takes the schedule away from Kambali and lets the girl spend her day as she wishes.

The father resents his own father (Kambili’s grandfather) for not being a Christian, and for believing in traditional gods. For that, Kambili and her brother are forbidden from staying at his house for more than what is necessary (to exchange greetings and such). Kambili’s brother sustained a crushed little finger as a result of an injury his father caused in the course of a severe beating of the son for some minor infraction. Kambili herself was also taken into a bathtub by her father, and her feet scalded with hot water so much so she could not walk for days. Soon after that, he beat her so hard, she had to be rushed to a hospital, and was hospitalised for a long time. Such a brute of a man. And yet, this same man, had the kindest of hearts running his newspaper business and caring for his employees and his extended family. When the Nigerian police killed his editor, he took care of the funeral costs and started financially taking care of the widow and her daughter.

In ‘Nervous Conditions’, Tsitsi’s monster character is the uncle who is providing for all his extended family, including for the education of Tambu, but again showing a split personality.

He was mad one night at his own daughter, Nyasha, who came home late. He thought she was dishonouring the family’s name by staying late, but she was just playing with friends and learning a new dance move with friends, including her own brother and cousin, Tambu.

‘“Er, Nyasha,” began her father, “can you tell me why you are back so late?”

“I am sorry, Daddy. I was talking to friends.”

“What sort of friends are these that you are out all night talking to them? Good friends would know it is late and time to go home.”

Nyasha was silent.

“Answer me girl!” her father insisted. The atmosphere was growing tense. The father continued and repeated that no decent girl would stay out alone. Nyasha started getting angry now and challenged her father if he wanted her to admit guilt over something she had not done: “I am guilty, all right then. I was doing it, whatever you are talking about. There. I have confessed.”’

The father felt disrespected and started moving towards Nyasha to grab her. All family members tried to intercede, but he forcefully and loudly told them all to get out and keep out. A fight ensued between father and daughter, because the daughter started punching him back.

In ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze’, the family turmoil is mostly around Dawit’s (the youngest son) political involvement. He belonged to an underground political party that was fighting the military junta. This did not sit well with his father. This was a father–son rancour occasioned by a directionless revolution:

‘“I found this. Where the hell did you get this?”, the father said showing a pistol to his son.

The son stood stiff without saying a word for a few minutes.

“I asked you a question,” said Hailu.

“Do you really think this is mine?” asked Dawit.

“Do you think I’d use it?”

“Don’t lie to me! I already know what you are doing. Tell me the truth.”

“You’d rather believe a lie than the truth, I could tell you it isn’t mine, but that is not what you want to hear. You want to hear what you think you already know. And you don’t know anything.”

Then the father said, “You think you are strong enough to fight them with this?” Hailu dangled the gun in front of Dawit’s face. “Where do you keep the bullets?”

“I don’t have the bullets. There was a boy from my school,” he said softly, releasing the tension between the two, “they left him near the road like trash. They are the killers not me.”’

There is also a heated argument between the two brothers, the younger, radical Dawit who belongs to an underground opposition party, and the older non-political Yonas:

‘“What do you know about peasant rights? Have you ever been outside the city? Have you ever tried to learn about the people you say you are speaking for? All your demonstrations are about higher pay and lower petrol costs – middle class elitist concerns, how does that help the poor in the countryside?”, Yonas admonishes his younger brother.

“Who is going to speak up for them?” Dawit asked. “People like you, who just want to hide until things get better? At least we are trying to get things changed.”’

This was a time in Ethiopia when a searing revolution was underway, and the military dictatorship was killing tens of thousands of youth in what was called ‘the Red Terror’. In Maaza’s novel, we see that even a decent father who was serving his family and nation in his capacity as a doctor was not spared from being victimised by the dictatorship, and ended up being severely tortured in jail narrowly escaping death.

POLITICAL REPRESSION

Africa is no stranger to political repression and dictatorship. In Chimamanda’s Nigeria, we see how daily life is an uphill struggle for an ordinary citizen. Kambili’s father runs a paper (the Standard), and his editor Ade Coker, is in and out of jail before the regime finally kills him. The lack of freedom of press is an all-too-familiar phenomenon across much of Africa.

Kambali’s aunt Ifeoma is a university lecturer and loses to theft her exam questions. In order to prevent that, she asks the university administration to bolt her office door so that it cannot be broken into. Their response is no and the reason blamed on a lack of budget. She has to organise her family to get wood planks, and bolts up her office door. On top of that, she is blacklisted as a troublemaker by the regime. Ordinary Nigerians (like most Africans) suffer power outage, a lack of clean water and a lack of a regular supply of gasoline for those with cars. When students riot protesting the bad governance, they are routinely beaten up by the police. The author captures the resilience of citizens faced with instability and a series of coups; the struggle to maintain intellectual freedom and autonomy in higher education; and most of all, like across most of Africa, the preponderance of want and poverty in the midst of so much wealth. Bright intellectuals and educators, such as Aunty Ifeoma, flee the country for fear of their lives.

In Tsitsi’s book, if one expects to sense a rage against Robert Mugabe’s regime, one would be disappointed. The only window into her view of the current regime there comes from some reporter’s question following the publication of her book:

‘“Q. After living in Germany for some time, you have recently relocated to Zimbabwe. Why?”

“A. Life is difficult in Zimbabwe, but my soul breathes more freely here.”’

Her political theme is a native feminism that reveals the suffering women undergo in African societies. Some have divided Tsitsi’s female characters in her book into three categories: the escaped females (from patriarchy); the entrapped females; and the rebellious females. Tambu is cited as a character that has escaped from patriarchy, while her mother and aunt are considered trapped. Nyasha, the girl we saw above entangled with her father, is the example of the rebellious female. Had it not been the accident of history (the death of her brother), Tambu would have remained an uneducated country girl married away to some poor peasant and toiling the farmlands. Contrary to the prohibition imposed on Ethiopian girls in some rural areas to kill a chicken to prepare a meal, girls in Zimbabwe and Nigeria at least appear not to be victims of such male chauvinistic prohibition that is shrouded in religious and traditional garb.

Maaza’s ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze’ is through and through political – describing how a repressive political system pervades through and across each and every element of a society through its long-reaching tentacles. The family, headed by medical doctor Hailu, is ravished by the state. It all began when a tortured teenager girl was brought to the doctor’s care by units of the military who tortured her in the first place. They had realised that they had mistakenly nearly killed the daughter of one of the higher-ups in the military hierarchy. They order the doctor to save her life without telling him about their new-found kindness. The doctor thinks that they wanted her alive in order to get more information out of her to implicate her friends, and thereby to torture her more. He decides to do mercy killing and deny them the pleasure of hurting her more. For that he himself is tortured beyond recognition, losing his teeth and with busted lungs. When he is finally released, his sons and granddaughter could not tell who the stranger at their door was.

The family goes through hell while he was in jail. His older son, Yonas, believes in the power of prayer to right the wrongs of a society, and vehemently disagrees with his younger, radical brother. Dawit, the younger one, as stated earlier, is a member of an underground political organisation and has convinced himself, along with his comrades, that there is no other alternative than fighting against the repressive regime. His childhood friend, Mickey, was raised and educated by Dr Hailu, bringing him up like his own sons because Mickey’s parents were too poor. Mickey has decided to go into the military and is now one of the top guns of the repressive regime. Undoubtedly, this does not sit well with Dawit and the Hailu family. However, they try to get Mickey’s help to get Dr Hailu out of jail, but Mickey is so opportunistically latched on to the system, he has no guts to try such a project that he thinks if he tried it might make himself a suspect in the eyes of his bosses. Maaza’s political narrative is so gut-wrenching that she does not even leave out the brutality of the regime’s killing of small children. Her story begins with the removal of Emperor Haile Selassie from power, an emperor that did not have a good record on respecting the rights of the people either. Unfortunately, the people who replaced him proved to be worse. And like a bad horror film, Africa continues to suffer from interminable cycle and recycle of dictatorships.

LOVE AND SENSE OF JUSTICE

In Maaza, she shows us the high sense of justice Dawit has towards those he feels life has treated badly. In one such instance, we see how readily he jumps to the defence of a much older servant woman almost being sexually violated by a teenage rich boy. She says:

‘There was a shuffle and rustling coming from the open door of the servants’ quarters, and a desperate pinched cry. He [Dawit] ran in and took a few seconds to comprehend what he was looking at. There was a woman, older than his mother, sitting naked on the bed, tears running down her face, and trailing between her heavy, sagging breasts. In front of her, holding his penis, was Fisseha, equally naked, the familiar smirk on his face.’

“Mulu?” Dawit said. He did not recognise her without her clothes on.

“Get out of here!” Fisseha said, “Go!” He still had his hand on his penis, his scrawny hips still arched towards Mulu.’

At that moment, Dawit decided to right this injustice, and started beating the bigger Fisseha, and teaching him a lesson. He beat him so hard and shamed him so much, Mulu (the older woman), was concerned about getting fired.

In Chimamanda, it is a subtle and an unconsumed love story between 16-year-old Kambali and Father Amadi, a young Catholic priest who is himself a victim of mandatory Catholic celibacy. Like a young teenager experiencing the magic of love the first time, Kambili just adores the feelings her senses exude whenever the young priest is around. She starts feeling happy the moment a car drives up to her aunt’s house, and secretly wishes it is Father Amadi. She enjoys his voice whenever he utters a word, even when that word is not directed at her. Her cousins and friends tease her about their secret love, and she does not resist or deny it a bit. Father Amadi takes her with the boys a couple of times and alone at times to a soccer field where she plays and enjoys herself for many hours. He once took her to a hairdresser to get her hair done, and the hairdresser asks her if he were her brother. Knowing he was not, the hairdresser swears that Kambili has a young priest for a lover, and suggests that he might abandon the church for the teenager’s love.

This did not take place, and Chimamanda lets the two lovers stay in a suspended fate.

WORDS IN LOCAL LANGUAGES

The three writers sprinkle their works in English with words from their local languages – Shona, Igbo and Amharic respectively. Some words are loaded with cultural meanings. For instance, a woman calling another woman ‘Nwunye m’ in Chimamanda’s is revealing: it was Kambili’s aunt Ifeoma calling her mother that. It meant ‘my wife’. A woman calling another woman ‘her wife’ is not the post-modernist version of same-sex relationship, but rather an Igbo notion that confers and extends family status to an outsider woman who becomes family by marriage. There are many other Igbo words in Chimamanda’s: ‘nodu ani’, ‘yeye’, ‘gbo’, ‘Njemanze’, ‘Nne Nne’.

In Tsitsi, we find the following Shona words: ‘mhunga’, ‘rukweza’, ‘nhodo’, ‘yuwi’, ‘sadza’. And Maaza, although not a frequent user as the other two, has her share of word usage: ‘berbere’, ‘zebegna’, ‘emebet’, ‘shamma’. Both Maaza and Chimamanda use italicisation to denote the local words, while Tsitsi just treats them the same. Some book critics have suggested an appended glossary to help decipher the meaning of the local words. However, I think it is part of the excitement of reading a book written in English by a non-native, marvelling at the art of hit-and-miss in solving the riddle of unfamiliar words. Oftentimes, it is easy to understand the meaning based on the context.

African folk tale also features in at least Chimamanda. When his grandkids ask him to tell them a folk story, the grandfather teases them by asking that they have first to explain to him how the people he sees in television got into it in the first place. After every one laughs, he goes on to tell them a folk tale on how the tortoise has a cracked shell.

CONCLUSION

Africa has arrived for some time now at a historical intersection where famous women – highly educated and/or activists, such as Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, South Africa’s Winnie Mandela, Ethiopia’s Judge Birtukan Mideksa and Kenya’s Wangari Maathai are fighting hard for human rights, environmental protection and social justice. Between them and the attainment of these goals (at least in the case of the last two) are Africa’s big men that are responsible to a large extent for the deprivation of the continent, and the suffering of Africans. These women writers have in their debut novels successfully showed the face of Africa and the similar fate of its citizens through the medium of literary work.

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Protest arts revisit Zimbabwe

Deep Roots

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/68873

Societies where poverty and inequality are endemic always experience forms of discontent and rebellion. And in most cases, those who are challenging the status quo are often socially excluded, branded as opposition or social misfits, and seen as befitting suppression especially by the political elite presiding over repressive regimes, be it in politics, work places and even homes.

Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, a country that has earned notoriety over the last decade in the arena of governance was host to an arts and culture festival aimed at promoting protest or anti-establishment activities deliberately designed to enhance the chances of societies being democratised by harnessing the energies of young people.

In the spaghetti bowl of its activities that ranged from seminars, performances led by poets, musicians and academics, poets for human rights seemed to have mastered well the art of taking the audience along with them.

When Robson Shoes, Michael Mabwe and Taku Mafika teamed up to perform, the flow was like a river whose source is somewhere up in the mountains, digging its way through the valleys and ultimately getting angry and oozing floods till all it has carried along the way is emptied into the salty seas.

Beginning on a slow note and poking fun at a society, they reminisced of how the country was now governed through processes that carried a codename ‘operation or commission’.

They weaved through streets of this country where garbage is rotting and stinking because the authorities claim they have no capacity to clean the city. They tickled people’s imagination when they made references to rivers emerging from burst pipes and bloated with raw sewage.

The voice of women was well projected by the energetic young female activist, ZAZA aka ERS whose trailblazing poetry earned her loud applause as she was going through her pieces, especially ‘Knock Knock’. Hers was a celebration of womanhood and she clearly urged people to think outside the box and be ready to be counted when the chips are down.

Heading to Theatre in the Park, Leroy Gono, Everson Ndlovu and Precious featured in the play ‘Revolutionary’, where they brought to life the dilemmas of an impractical idealist bent on righting incorrigible wrongs. This sounded like acting out the life story of the ancient character Don Quixote, hero of a satirical chivalric romance found in Miguel de Cervantes’ work. The play was centred on the pursuit of valour and honour in love; ultimately it portrayed that the biggest prize one earns in fighting a dictatorship is death.

Unparalleled hilarious moments of the festival were in the play ‘Election day’, featuring Teddy Mangawa, Tafadzwa Bobby Mutumbi, Privilege Mutendera, Brezhnev Kuveya and Eunice Tava. This was one of those moments when I felt the validity of Chinua Achebe’s observation that when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb, an old person feels uneasy. The play did not mince its words and message. African leaders steal elections and at times, when panic hits their establishments, the former faithful lieutenants within it resort to ill-gotten resources as guarantees for the future especially when they want to continue enjoying the same comfort levels. It was apparent in the play, that dictators listen and ponder over alternative advice, but just ignore all sober things and opt for the bizarre.

More plays were featured at the University of Zimbabwe, an institution that seems to be struggling with unshackling the evils of fascism in its own corridors, under a leadership which seems to have no clue about what academic freedom means in the wake of external hands meddling in its day to day affairs. Community-based organisations showcased three plays – ‘Inmates’, ‘Apokalypses’ and ‘My son’. All these reinforced the challenge Zimbabwean society is facing these days – how to manage diversity and promote pluralism.

In the rest of the seminars, academics moved from the ivory towers and grounded with ordinary Zimbabweans in interactive platforms where they spoke on how they want people’s basic human rights to be safeguarded and how vulnerable people should be protected against poverty and exploitation.

The reflections were challenging all present to think seriously of how the political system functions, how decisions are made and implemented, how resources and opportunities are distributed and how justice and fairness is achieved.

In the seminars and plenary sessions that took place, all pointed to the fact that festival was growing and the depth and breadth of engagement.

Recommendations for the future ranged from proposals for institutionalising an annual festival, sharing of experiences beyond the country’s borders, publishing proceeding especially the papers that were presented in workshops and expanding the catchment area of participants and resource persons beyond those in the arts industry.

Some felt that the festival would benefit tremendously by adding short films and other artistic forms that can enhance of the growth and free expression of protest through cultural activities.

For a festival that started off with 50 people participating in 2009, it is clear that it has come of age and will be a household event in Zimbabwe if the organisers, Savannah Arts, invest in their vision and consolidate the gains they made this year.

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Pambazuka News 167: Guinée: Un parcours qui mérite indulgence

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/68875

Pambazuka News 33: Brasil e Moçambique, que vantagens para o último?

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summarypt/68876

Bush and 'Decision Points'

Gado

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68807

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Gender and army recruitment

Gado

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68808

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Kikwete and the CCM horse

Gado

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68806

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Royal weddings and divorces

Gado

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68864

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Zanzibar elections and European media

Ahmed Viriyala

2010-11-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68805

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Billboards on torture removed

2010-11-18

http://www.hrforumzim.com/frames/inside_frame_press.htm

Officers from Bulawayo police’s law and order section say calling for the ratification of the Convention Against Torture and the abolition of torture is offensive and causes disharmony. Chief Superintendent Patrick Moyo summoned representatives of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (the Forum) over billboards and street pole signs calling for the abolition of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Despite having agreed to a meeting for 12 November, the Forum representatives found most of the billboards already destroyed.

MDC-T protests cause Senate adjournment until February

2010-11-15

http://www.kubatanablogs.net/kubatana/?p=4074

For the second day running MDC-T Senators brought the Senate to a standstill in protest against the presence of 'intruders'. Immediately after the opening prayer MDC-T Senator Tichaona Mudzingwa rose to object to the presence of Thokozile Mathuthu, David Karimanzira, Jason Machaya and Faber Chidarikire in the House. (These are persons who the MDC-T say are no longer ex officio members of the Senate, as they were illegally and unconstitutionally appointed as provincial governors by President Mugabe.)

Restrictive measures in Zimbabwe - the way forward

2010-11-17

http://www.idasa.org.za/

The signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) and the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) prevented Zimbabwe from continuing to spiral out of control and helped to establish a measure of political and economic stability, says this research report from the Institute for Democracy in Africa. 'However, major concerns remain, given the intransigence of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) specifically over honouring its responsibilities outlined in the GPA...The international community has three options: maintain the status quo, completely lift restrictive measures, and the calibrated lifting of restrictive measures tied to six benchmarks.'

Statement on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe

Report to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 48th Ordinary Session

2010-11-18

http://www.hrforumzim.com/frames/inside_frame_press.htm

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum urges the African Commission to call upon the Government of National Unity:
- to fulfil its obligations in terms of the African Charter on the rights and freedoms of its citizens;
- to implement fully the provisions of the GPA and accept and implement various recommendations from civil society;
- to effect genuine electoral reforms in line with the Declaration by the African Commission on principles governing democratic elections in Africa before the conducting of any new elections.

Africa: Women, peace and security handbook

2010-11-15

http://www.peacewomen.org/security_council_monitor/handbook

For the 10th anniversary of 1325, Peacewomen has launched the ‘Women, Peace and Security Handbook,’ which examines the degree to which the Security Council has internalised the thematic agenda of Women, peace and security in its geographic work over the past 10 years, specifically in the Council’s country-specific resolutions. Divided into thirteen thematic chapters, the handbook is a reference guide for both progress made and action to be taken on the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

DRC: Rape victims opt for extrajudicial settlements

2010-11-18

http://iwpr.net/report-news/drc-rape-victims-opt-extrajudicial-settlements

When 14-year-old Judith, not her real name, was raped in Goma, her father decided not to report the matter to the authorities. Instead, the family of the victim sat down with that of the rapist and hammered out a so-called friendly settlement. Irène Ntambuka, programme director at Dynamique des Femmes Juristes, a local NGO that provides legal aid to rape victims, says that such agreements in sexual violence cases are becoming more common, largely because of a lack of trust in the local justice system.

Malawi: Women Push for a place at the table

2010-11-18

http://www.ips.org/africa/2010/11/malawis-women-pushing-for-a-place-at-the-table/

No sooner had Mariness Luhanga announced her intention to contest local elections in Mzimba district in northern Malawi, than she was summoned to appear before a village court on allegations of insulting men. 'I knew that some people in the village were not amused by my campaigns and had started to circulate stories that I was disrespectful to male candidates, that I was calling them names,' Luhanga, who wants to stand as a People Development Movement (PDM) candidate in Chapitamuno village told IPS.

Mauritius: Gender Links welcomes woman as vice president

2010-11-17

http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article/mauritius-gl-welcomes-first-woman-vice-president-2010-11-16

NGO Gender Links has welcomed the appointment for the first time of a woman, Monique Oh San Bellepeau, as vice president in the Republic of Mauritius. After nearly four decades of independence and two decades of Republic, her nomination is a strong sign that gender equality is high on the agenda of the present government. It is also a victory for gender activists and Mauritian women at large, as well as for women in the region.

South Africa: The media’s role in reporting the alleged gang rape of a school girl

2010-11-15

http://www.mediamonitoringafrica.org/images/uploads/MMA_analysis_of_rape_coverage.pdf

Gender-based violence is a persistent human rights violation in South Africa, especially seeing girls and women of all ages continually enduring incidents of rape and assault. Official estimates that have been criticised as being overly conservative, put the number of women raped in South Africa at 27,750 a year, or three an hour. Last week, an 8th grade girl was allegedly gang raped by three schoolboys on the high school’s premises. The incident was allegedly filmed by students using mobile phones. Media Monitoring Africa says that numerous aspects of how this story has been reported have given cause for concern.

Uganda: Sexual crimes go unpunished

2010-11-18

http://www.ips.org/africa/2010/11/uganda-sexual-crimes-go-unpunished/

Thousands of women were raped during Uganda’s civil war but there have been few government efforts to assist them, especially with psychosocial and counseling services. The two-decades long war in northern Uganda between government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) resulted in the internal displacement of about 1.5 million people and the death of thousands. Women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps suffered sexual violence from government soldiers and civilians.

Zimbabwe: Prisons harsh on female inmates, say officials

2010-11-15

http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article735018.ece/Prisons-harsh-on-female-inmates-say-officials

A top official with the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) has confirmed that Zimbabwean prisons are a harsh environment for female prisoners, adding that new prisons need to be built as the old ones are dilapidated. ZPS Commissioner, Retired General Paradzayi Zimondi, told journalists during a tour of Khami Prison in Bulawayo that there is need to build new prisons. 'We need special prisons for juveniles and females with children. Our prisons are old and they do not have facilities to cater for such prisoners,' he explained.

Angola: Angola launches slum restoration project

2010-11-16

http://bit.ly/8WYGhs

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has launched a national programme to improve living conditions in the oil-rich country's informal settlements and slums, local media said Tuesday. According to a UNICEF report published in June, 87 per cent of Angola's urban population lives in shanty towns and just 42 per cent of people have access to water, down from 60 per cent in 2001.

Angola: Chinese workers attacked in Cabinda province

2010-11-16

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11741356

An Angolan minister has told the BBC that a convoy carrying Chinese mine workers was attacked in the region of Cabinda this week. He said that two soldiers guarding the workers, contracted by Angola's state oil company Sonangol, were killed. A faction of the Cabinda separatist movement Flec has said it carried out Monday's attack.

Chad: Former dictator may face trial

2010-11-18

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53589

International donors meeting in Dakar next week are expected to finance the prosecution of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré nearly two decades after his removal from power, according to a coalition of rights organisations. Legal proceedings against Habré - who is accused of thousands of political murders and brutal torture during his rule of Chad from 1982 to 1990 - have been delayed for nearly a decade since he was first indicted in Senegal in February 2000.

Somalia: UN experts condemn 'brutal summary execution' of teenage girls

2010-11-18

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=10522&LangID=E

Six independent UN experts have condemned the recent public execution, by firing squad, of two teenage girls in central Somalia, saying the executions are the latest manifestation of the 'appalling human rights crisis that is plaguing the country'. The six experts called on the parties to the conflict 'to immediately refrain from committing acts of extrajudicial executions, torture, stonings, decapitation, amputations and floggings as well as other human rights violations, including with regard to freedom of religion'.

South Africa: Assistance available for victims to comment on pardons process

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/8YQWkb

Victims and other affected parties are working on a short deadline to engage with the process that could see up to 149 persons convicted of murder, robbery and theft, pardoned through Special Presidential Pardons. While the Department of Justice has published the names of 149 convicted persons who have been recommended for a presidential pardon, victims affected by these crimes have not been directly informed. The South African Coalition for Transitional Justice (SACTJ) has sought to make victims aware of the process and to inform them of how they can engage with the process to make sure that their voices are heard.

South Africa: Protesters slam Cape Town Opera in Israel

2010-11-18

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/protesters-slam-cape-town-opera-in-israel-1.831843

A group of human rights campaigners have protested outside the Tel Aviv Opera House, denouncing the Cape Town Opera for what they say is its support of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, SA Artists Against Apartheid said on Tuesday. See a video of the protest at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk

The Gambia: Court case against human rights workers raises eyebrows

2010-11-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/68703

The last court hearing of the trial of Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) that took place on last Wednesday, 3 November 2010, before Magistrate Emmanuel Nkea of the Banjul Magistrates’ Court has begun to raise eyebrows, says a press release from a coalition of NGOs.
Coalition for Human Rights in the Gambia, Dakar, Senegal.
Press Release
11th November 2010

URGENT: The Gambia: The trial of two Women's Rights Defenders Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho : A theft Case Without A Complainant – Yolocamba Solidaridad Not Present In Court As Principal Witness

The last court hearing of the trial of Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) that took place on last Wednesday, 3 November 2010, before Magistrate Emmanuel Nkea of the Banjul Magistrates’ Court has begun to raise eyebrows.

The Duo were accused of theft of 30000 Euro from Yolocamba Solidaridad. The whole Gambia was expecting the principal witnesses to be Spanish citizens representing Yolocamba Solidaridad: but they were absent. It appeared that the Gambia Government was representing Yolocamba Solidaridad.

The court heard the testimonies of two female circumcisers, Aminata Damba and Kaddy Damba, from Taibatu Village in Wulli West, Upper River Region (URR) and Saruja village in the Central River Region (CRR) respectively. The women explained how they got involved in working with GAMCOTRAP and from whom they each received more than D3000 (over US$100). One of them even said that even though it is her profession to be a female circumciser, if the Government were to ask her to stop she would do so. This should be noted by all those who are combating harmful traditional practices. This also raises the question whether the Government is really committed to abolishing harmful traditional practices like Female Genital Mutilation when professionals are even waiting for it to take the lead.

Innocent villagers were dragged to court to testify the benefits they have received so that they would drop the knife as circumcisers. The whole exercise of dropping the knife was done at the Stadium in Basse (about 400km from Banjulthe capital) and witnessed by all the District Chiefs of the Upper River Region,Village heads and Women’s leaders representing the Circumcisers, and other dignitaries and representatives of National and International organizations and institutions including a representative of Yolocamba Solidaridad, Maria Jesus Rodriguez alias Susy who also gave a statement at the celebration. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia only hopes that the state will not dare to drag Gambian village women to court and exclude representatives of Yolocamba Solidaridad from appearing as witnesses.

The new prosecutor Superintendent Sainey Joof informed the court of his intention to register an additional charge of fraudulent accounting but this was rejected by the team of defence counsels led by Mr Lamin Mboge. According to eyewitness accounts, the court was full to capacity and the witnesses looked infuriated and distracted by their lack of comprehension of what was going on.

It could be recalled that the two prominent Women Human Rights Defenders spent ten days in detention before being granted bail on Wednesday 20thOctober, 2010 after a hearing in a crowded courtroom at the Banjul Magistrates’ Court. The bail bond is One Million Five Hundred Thousand Gambian Dalasis (over US$ 50, 000) each, and two sureties with a landed property.

Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) were arrested on Monday October 11th, 2010 by Gambian security personnel, detained at the Banjul Police station where they spent the night and then whisked to Banjul Magistrates’ Court the following day October 12th, which refused them bail and sent them to Mile Two Central Prisons. They were charged with theft of 30,000 (Thirty Thousand) Euros received from a Spanish NGO Yolocamba Solidaridad.

It is difficult to comprehend why the Gambia government is interested in this case which is simply a civil matter involving two NGOs. Moreover, the report of the panel it had earlier set up is at variance with the allegations. The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia is calling on the Gambia Government to desist from intimidating witnesses and to allow them to speak freely without coercion or manipulation. It urges the government to withdraw the criminal case from court, to allow the two NGOs to sort out any problem that may exist between them and for civil matters to take civil processes without any interference. The Coalition further demands that if the representatives of Yolocamba Solidaridad are not to appear as principal witnesses to show beyond doubt what they are claiming to have been stolen from them, then the Gambia Government should withdraw the case from court and allow them to pursue their claim through civil suit.

Questions are being asked by our colleagues abroad whether GAMCOTRAP may not be seen as a political threat by the Government. The Coalition is therefore calling on all human rights defenders to follow the testimony of the women from the villages. One would discover that they are usually close to the Governors and headmen of villages, who are usually involved by NGOs because of the traditional set up. The Coalition is also calling on the defence to bring all those Governors, Village Heads, Women leaders to testify how much they have consumed and received from GAMCOTRAP and whether they did so for any political reason. This should be transformed into the best forum to combat harmful traditional practice by showing how everyone is a beneficiary of programmes, irrespective of party affiliation or non involvement in politics. The two women will again appear in court again on November 22nd, 2010.

NOTE:

Dr. Isatou Touray and Ms. Amie Bojang-Sissoho have for many years been active in the promotion of gender equality, rights of women and children, particularly in the fight against Female Genital Mutilation and other discriminatory practices. Dr. Touray is also Secretary General of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC). She is a board member of Women Living Under Muslim Laws for the past two years, and also a board member of MUSAWA based in Malaysia. At the national level Dr. Touray is a board member of the network of women positively living with HIV/AIDS in the Gambia – MUTAPOLA and Chairperson of the Network for Peace Building in Africa – WANEP.

Dr. Touray was named ‘Gambian of the Year’ in 2008 by The News and Report Weekly Magazine for her work around FGM and promoting the rights of women and children. An award she received when she was attending a training programme in the Bwiam.

Dr. Touray was also awarded the “Woman of Courage” in 2008 by the American Embassy in Banjul. She was also a winner of the One Hundred Heroines of the World by the Rochester Women’s Health Project at Rutgers University in the United States of America.

Amie Bojang-Sissoho is a journalist and has contributed significantly to women and children’s development particularly in the area of educational programming at the Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS). She has initiated and has been instrumental in creating programmes that are grounded on the principles of promoting gender equality and women’s human rights. She was also instrumental in bringing out the voices of the poor and powerless women using the radio as a tool for empowerment. Ms. Bojang-Sissoho is also Chairperson of the Young Journalists’ Association of the Gambia – YJAG.

Both women have been active in various networks relating to women’s human rights promotion.

For more information, contact +221 33 867 95 87

ORGANISATIONS:-

- Inter African Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development – (FAMEDEV)

- International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)

- Syndicat des Professionnels de l’Information et de la Communication du Sénégal (SYNPICS)

- Rencontre Africaine pour le Défense Des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO),

- Amnesty International, Section Senegal

- Radio Alternative Voice for Gambians-Radio AVG

- Article 19

- Organisation Nationale des Droits de l’Homme (ONDH)

- Réseau Presse et Parlement du Sénégal (REPPAS)

- West African Journalists Association (WAJA).

Africa: The refugee space project - giving a voice to refugees

2010-11-15

http://www.refugeespace.net/index.html

Refugee Space Project is a 'Space', a 'Platform' or 'Network' intending to connect refugees among themselves first of all, and then with other non-refugee people (friends of refugees) so that they can reason about the life of these people of concern and share their stories, ideas and ideals to raise public awareness about the reality of life they are leading in the world.

Chad: Displaced Chadians call on government to rebuild their villages

2010-11-18

http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/58388/2010/10/15-165406-1.htm

Hundreds of thousands of Chadians uprooted by violence in the country's east say they can't go home unless the government improves infrastructure and health services in their towns and villages, aid workers say. Four years after inter-communal clashes forced people to flee their homes, Chadian authorities believe there is now enough peace and stability for the displaced populations to return.

Egypt: Israel builds border barrier to keep asylum-seekers out

2010-11-15

http://www.IRINnews.org/report.aspx?Reportid=91058

Israel is building a 60km-long barrier on its southern border with Egypt aimed at physically keeping out African asylum-seekers amid a rising tide of intolerance towards people widely referred to as 'illegal workers'. The barrier will be built at two locations which witness the most crossings - near the Gaza strip and near Eilat. The estimated US$1.35 billion project is due to be completed at the end of 2013.

Global: Briefing paper on learning in displacement

2010-11-18

http://bit.ly/c9Cl0a

With displacement lasting 20 years on average, displaced children’s education cannot wait until solutions are found. All people have the right to education, including IDPs in emergency settings, in protracted displacement, or in the course of finding durable solutions. This paper introduces a series of case studies looking at education for IDPs. It examines the international human rights law framework for guaranteeing education to IDPs, focusing on issues such as non-discrimination and documentation that are particularly likely to arise in this context.

Sudan: UN moves Sudanese refugees away from volatile CAR border

2010-11-17

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36770&Cr=Sudan&Cr1=

Insecurity and logistical difficulties have prompted the United Nations refugee agency to relocate some 3,500 Sudanese refugees from a camp in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR) to safer areas in the south-central part of the country. Some 500 people have been moved so far in the airlift carried out by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the CAR Government, which began last week and is expected to take about one month.

Zimbabwe: Tussle over planned resumption of deportations

2010-11-15

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91056

As the deadline to deport undocumented Zimbabwean migrants on or after 1 January 2011 looms, human rights activists warn South Africa could face a potential human rights disaster, though a senior South African official says the government is not aiming for a 'massive deportation operation'. Rights NGOs working with Zimbabwean migrants said they were bracing for hundreds of thousands to be deported.

Haiti: Rebuilding a just country

2010-11-15

http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/Haiti

Other Worlds is working to document the ways that communities and social movements, together with their allies around the world, are working to build just economic, environmental, and political alternatives out of the ruins of the earthquake. You can read the ongoing reporting coming out of that work in the 'Another Haiti is Possible' archive on the Other Worlds website.

South Africa: ANCYL burnt vehicles, not us, says ABM Western Cape

2010-11-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/68767

'We have just heard that three vehicles were burnt during a protest in TR Section, Khayelitsha, today. One of them contained stationery for the matric exams. We want to make it absolutely clear that this protest was organised by the ANC Youth League and not by Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape. We only head about it for the first time when we started to get calls from the media.'
ANCYL burnt vehicles, not us - ABM WCape
Mzonke Poni
11 November 2010

Mzonke Poni says his organisation was not involved in protest in Khayeltisha

ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO MOVEMENT OF SOUTH AFRICA (WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE)

The Protests in TR Section Today Are Organised by the ANC Youth League and Not by AbM Western Cape

We have just heard that three vehicles were burnt during a protest in TR Section, Khayelitsha, today. One of them contained stationery for the matric exams.

We want to make it absolutely clear that this protest was organised by the ANC Youth League and not by Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape. We only head about it for the first time when we started to get calls from the media.

It is well known that the ANC Youth League represents the interests of the predatory elite within the ANC. They are part of the power structures against which we are struggling. They are attempting to hi-jack the legitimate struggles of the poor in Cape Town in an attempt to win back power from the DA. We condemn their attempts to hi-jack the struggles of the poor and we condemn their actions this morning.

We know very well that the ANC is evicting and oppressing shack dwellers all over South Africa. We know very well that the ANC Youth League is the most reactionary faction in the whole of the organisation. We condemn any attempt by the ANC Youth League try and camouflage their predatory agenda in Cape Town by making it look like it is part of the ongoing country wide rebellion by the poor. Our movement will provide no shelter for the ANC Youth League and their ambitions to return to power in Cape Town. We call on all other organised poor communities to take a principled position against the dirty tricks of the ANC Youth League and to organise, speak for and struggle themselves.

We also note that in Durban Abahlali baseMjondolo is accused by the ANC of being a front for the IFP and Cope. In Howick our movement is accused by the IFP of being a front for the ANC. In Cape Town we are accused by the DA of being a front for the DA. And here in Cape Town TAC has blamed us for the actions of the ANC Youth League. We are an autonomous and democratic poor people's that rejects all the political parties in South Africa. We often start our meetings by saying ‘Phantsi DA! Phantsi Cope! Phantsi IFP! Phantsi ANC!'. Our project is to build the power of the poor against all the political parties.

Our movement is driven by no force other than our members and the discussions in our meetings. It is time that the political parties, the media and the NGOs accept that poor people can think for themselves, organise themselves and mobilise themselves.

Statement issued by Mzonke Poni Abahlali BaseMjondolo Western Cape Chairperson, November 11 2010

South Africa: Workers sit tight at bankrupt firm

2010-11-18

http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/workers-sit-tight-at-bankrupt-firm-1.789007

The occupation of the premises of Mine Line and TAP Engineering in Krugersdorp, West Rand, by disgruntled employees is entering its 27th day on Monday. The employees, who are members of the Metal and Electrical Workers Union of South Africa (Mewusa), embarked on the occupation of the two companies, which are under one roof, following an application for the companies’ voluntary liquidation by Mulder. The workers say they have adopted their action to secure the assets of the companies and ultimately to take over the two entities to protect their jobs, and recover unpaid wages and benefits.

Tanzania: Employees accuse govt of betraying them in company takeover

2010-11-17

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/1052890/-/omcdrjz/-/index.html

The exit of multinational British Petroleum from the Tanzania market faces stiff opposition from its workers who want to know their fate before any transfer of assets is made. According to sources in the petroleum sector, workers are up in arms accusing management of ignoring their pleas for a negotiated settlement.

Africa: China to launch $1 billion fund for Portuguese-speaking countries

2010-11-16

http://bit.ly/d3ZGui

China will launch a $1 billion fund aimed at boosting trade and economic ties between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Saturday at a forum in Macau. He did not elaborate. Wen, who delivered a keynote speech at a economic forum for China and Portuguese-speaking Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and Timor-Leste, announced multiple initiatives to boost trade and investment between China and the seven nations.

DRC: Korea seeks $1 bn DRC mining-for-infrastructure deal

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/cLqFKz

A consortium of South Korean companies will seek a minerals-for-infrastructure deal in Democratic Republic of Congo that could be worth $1 billion, Congolese and South Korean officials told Reuters. The proposed deal - involving refurbishment of a copper mine and construction of an Atlantic deepwater port - would bolster South Korea's bid to secure long-term access to metals while speeding Congo's development, South Korean ambassador to Congo Kim Sung-chul said.

Latest Edition: Emerging Powers News Round-Up

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/68860

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers.
1. General

US wakes up to Chinese expansion in Africa
Last week, the chairman of the US-based Export-Import Bank, Fred Hochberg, was the latest US official to visit SA to identify infrastructure projects that would benefit from US investment. Last year, the bank invested about $800m in 41 sub-Saharan African countries, Mr Hochberg says. Last month, William Fitzgerald , the US deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was also in SA to brief US economic and commercial diplomats posted in Africa on White House plans to engage with the continent. Mr Fitzgerald concedes that China’s role as the preferred trade and investment partner for most African countries can no longer be ignored.
Read More

Africa’s New Trade Frontier
Read More

What’s the African Consensus for development?
United States President Barack Obama’s November 6 visit to India has brought into the forefront the long-running issue of what development philosophy is appropriate for each developing region, especially Africa where there hasn’t been any clear-cut development philosophy. Ahead of Obama, Larry Summers, Obama’s economic policy point-man, in New Delhi, India touted China’s and India’s development successes, grappled with whether China’s Beijing Consensus or India’s Mumbai Consensus was better for the rest of the developing world. With Brazil’s success over the years that has seen millions of Brazilians moved out of poverty and built an economy in which the middle class is the majority, we can safely say there is Sao Paulo Consensus in South America. That makes the African region as the only place without a notable developmental Consensus distilled from within itself.
Read More

2. China in Africa

China's Africa resource hunt needs transparency
Chinese companies eying African mineral resources must be transparent in their investments, or risk a backlash from closed-door deals, a senior World Bank executive said on Tuesday. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Bank's managing director, told Reuters on the sidelines of one of China's biggest mining conferences that investors in Africa needed to work more with local communities in order to avoid conflicts and eventually even reduce costs. "China's investment is welcome -- Africa has an investment deficit and there is room for everyone, but investment needs to have sound principles whether it is from China, Europe or the United States," she said.
Read More

UNDP, China to boost their partnership on Africa
UNDP will be strengthening its cooperation with China to boost poverty reduction efforts on the African continent. Coming to a close on 2 November, the Africa-China Poverty Reduction and Development Conference has led to the signature of two letters of agreement which will bolster the African focus of the International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC) and promote technical cooperation in the area of agriculture.
Read More

Zambia: US$1.5 billion hydro power station underway
Construction works of a new hydro power station at Kafue gorge lower are set to commence next year by June following the completion of a feasibility study, Energy minister Kenneth Konga has said. Speaking when he toured the construction site of the new power station, Mr Konga said the new hydro power station would be done at a cost of US$1.5 billion.
Read More

China Development Bank issues first Africa loan to Egypt
The China Development Bank has issued the first in a series of loans China is offering to support small and medium sized African development enterprises. The bank explained in a statement published on Friday on its website that the loan worth US$200,000 was granted to the company Wonder Lighting Egypt.
Read More

China Development Bank seeks to offer better financial service to Africa
China Development Bank (CDB), in light of China's national strategy of cooperation with Africa, has make great efforts to innovate in its financial services to better help African countries, CDB President Chen Yuan said before his visit to South Africa. Chinese Vice-president Xi Jinping just wrapped up his tour to Singapore, and will visit South Africa, Angola and Botswana on Nov. 16-24. Chen, who is accompanying Xi during the visit, told reporters that until the end of September the CDB has offered more than 10 billion U.S. dollars of intended financing to Africa and a total of 5.6 billion dollars of financing support to 35 programs in over 30 African countries.
Read More

China's Xi in S.Africa for minerals, investment
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping began a trip to mineral-rich South Africa on Tuesday aimed at securing resources for the Asian economic power, looking to extend its influence in the African continent. Beijing sees global mining power and regional financial services leader South Africa as a vital source of commodities to fuel its rapidly expanding economy and industries and as a stepping stone to access other African states.
Read More

S.Africa signs $435 mln solar deal with Yingli
South Africa has signed a deal with Chinese company Yingli Solar to build a $435 million manufacturing plant with a local partner, a senior government official said on Wednesday.
Read More

China's Datong Group eyes coal mines in S.Africa
Datong Coal Mine Group, China's third-largest state-owned producer, is seeking coal mines overseas and plans to invest "tens of billions" of yuan in the new energy sector as part of its five-year development plan, its chief said on Tuesday. Datong, parent of the Shanghai-lised Datong Coal Industry Company Ltd, wants to branch out into clean energy production, such as solar cells, polysilicon and batteries, as part of larger plans to tap into the country's growing demand, said Wu Yongping, president of Datong.
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Africa infrastructure next big move for China firms
The construction of transportation and power infrastructure across Africa could provide the next big opportunity for Chinese firms aiming to invest in the continent, a senior executive with South Africa's Standard Bank told Reuters. Speaking on the sidelines of a mining conference, Andrew King, the bank's Asia chief executive, said the big advantage Chinese developers have over their Western counterparts is the Chinese firms' access to financing from government policy banks.
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More China trade with Portuguese-speaking states: Wen
China will launch a US$1 billion fund to boost cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries and hopes to boost trade with these nations to US$100 billion by 2013, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Saturday. Mr Wen said China trade with Portuguese-speaking states, including Portugal and Brazil, surged 57 per cent from a year ago to reach US$68.2 billion in the first three quarters of this year. Chinese financial institutions will also provide 1.6 billion yuan (US$241 million) of discounted loans to Portuguese-speaking countries in Asia and Africa, Wen said at a forum for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking nations in Macau.
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Attack on Chinese Workers in Angola Kills Two Guards in Cabinda
Two soldiers protecting Chinese workers in Angola’s oil-rich Cabinda province were killed by the same separatist group that shot dead members of Togo’s national soccer team in January, according to China’s consulate.
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Ghana, China to hold investment exhibition
THE Hubei Sub-Council of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) is organising a four-day trade and investment exhibition aimed at creating a platform for' companies from the Hubei Province of China to explore areas of collaboration with their Ghanaian counterparts at the Ghana Trade Fair Centre, Accra from December 2 to 5, 2010.
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3. India in Africa

S.Africa's Zuma lauds 150th anniversary of Indians' arrival
South African President Jacob Zuma invoked Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy of passive resistance Monday in an address celebrating the 150th anniversary of South Africa's Indian community. Speaking the day before the anniversary, which marks 150 years from the day the first indentured Indian workers arrived by boat in Durban, Zuma said the Indian community had played a "vital role" in South Africa's history.
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Kenya PM roots for Africa-India ties
Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said that there is need for Africa and India to network in doing business. The PM noted that the two countries could form the INDO - AFRICAN GROUP to facilitate economic growth as they historically share a common heritage that could be enhanced for trade and Industrial Development.
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India-Africa partnership to mark 21st century global economy
The prime minister of Kenya and the minister of commerce and industry of India agreed that their countries are embarking on a new era of South-South cooperation that promises to become a hallmark of the global economy. “The India-Africa partnership is going to be a defining one in this century because of the resources, both natural and human,” said Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry of India. Speaking along with Sharma on a panel entitled “The New South: Developing the Africa-India Partnership” at the World Economic Forum’s Indian Economic Summit, Raila Amolo Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya, said that “we see Africa’s relationship with Brazil, India and China as strategic. They are important in the quest for socio-economic development of our continent.”
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Indo- South Africa Bilateral Trade has Potential to Touch US$ 10 Billion
India and South Africa, with a rich history of cultural similarities need to strengthen the economic linkages through a strong business and Governmental cooperation said Hon’ble Mr. Loganathan Naidoo, Deputy Mayor of Ethekweni, (Durban) South Africa while addressing a Seminar on “Indo-South Africa Investment and Trade” jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and ANC Progressive Business Forum, South Africa in Chennai today.
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KQ to double flights to India
National carrier, Kenya Airways, will soon double its flights to India following the acceptance of a request presented by Prime Minister Raila Odinga to his Indian counterpart Mr Manmohan Singh.
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Indian ICT link boon for Kenya
Kenya’s technology sector will benefit from trade in-flows amounting to $70 billion as it deepens links with India. Developments at the World Economic Forum held in New Delhi recently could see science and technology transfers and the creation of value-added products from raw materials, as well as infrastructure development, prioritised as the two countries move to cement their trade relations. “We see Africa’s relationship with Brazil, India and China as strategic. They are important in the quest for socio-economic development of our continent,” said Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
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To finalise $1 bn deal for overseas assets soon: Oil India
Oil IndiaState-run Oil India today said it hopes to seal an estimated $1 billion deal for acquisition of producing oil assets in Australia, South America and Africa in the near future. "Definitely some opportunities are being evaluated and we are hopeful that something should click very soon," Oil India Director (Finance) T K Ananth Kumar told reporters here on the sidelines of an Assocham conference.
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The India Economic Summit - New Delhi, India 14-16 November 2010
Implementing India
This year’s India Economic Summit pays particular attention to how inclusive social and economic progress can be delivered and serve as a model for other developing economies. India’s imperatives include building critical infrastructure, expanding skills development, addressing security threats and achieving income and gender equality.
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4. In Other Emerging Powers News

Mozambican government to intervene if Brazil’s Vale and India’s RITES unable to reach agreement
The Mozambican government will intervene if negotiations between Brazilian mining company Vale and India’s RITES for use of the Sena railroad, the Minister for Transport and Communications said in Maputo. According to daily newspaper Notícias, Paulo Zucula said that the process was still under negotiation and that only the interested companies were currently involved.
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Brazil to invest $300M in Ghana
In Ghana, Brazil’s Ambassador, Luis Fernando Serra stated in an interview with City & Business Guide that the Brazilian Government will be constructing a $300 million sugar cane facility to produce 100,000 cubic meters of ethanal and 42 MWe from the resulting bagasses.
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Brazil To Build Ethanol Factory In Ghana
The Brazilian government is to establish a $300 million sugar cane plantation to produce over 100,000 cubic meters of ethanol at Makango, near Salaga in the Northern region. Ethanol is expected to become Ghana’s fourth major export after cocoa, gold and timber. The factory would generate 42 Megawatts (MW) of energy from Bagasse, which is the fibrous matter that remains after the sugar cane is crushed to extract the juice.
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Russia’s FM to pay official visit to Kenya
Russia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov will make an official visit to Kenya from November 15-17, as part of his two African nation’s tour that will also take him to Nigeria, Kenya’s ministry of foreign affairs disclosed on Friday in a statement. This will be the first visit to Kenya by a Russian minister for Foreign Affairs. He will be accompanied by senior government officials from the Russian government.
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Russia May Help Nigeria Build Nuclear Plant, Launch Satellites
Russia and Nigeria are continuing discussions about building a nuclear power plant in Africa’s most populous country to help boost its power supply, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. Russia also plans to help launch two Nigerian satellites, Lavrov said at a briefing at the end of a one-day visit to the West African country today. He didn’t provide further details.
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Russia to invest in East Africa
Russia to invest in a modern railway system between Kenya and Uganda to enhance her economic presence in the region. The Russian government also intends to invest heavily in mining, education, transport and pipeline, according to the Russian foreign Affairs Minister, Sergey Lavrov.
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SA wants to be 5th 'Bric', Russia says
South Africa has "applied" to join the four-member "Bric" grouping of fast-growing emerging markets, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at the Group of 20 meeting on Friday. South Africa is the world's 31st-largest economy, according to World Bank data for 2009 and is less than a quarter the size of the smallest "Bric" economy, Russia, in the informal grouping that also numbers Brazil, India and China.
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Cosatu blocking job creation: Zille
The government will not be able to emulate the growth performance of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries until it stands up to Cosatu, says Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille. Zille wrote in her weekly newsletter that the Congress of SA Trade Union"s inflexible approach to labour legislation was undermining the chances of young South Africans to find jobs. "The truth is that whatever the ANC government pledges it will not be able to emulate the BRIC countries unless it calls Cosatu"s bluff," Zille said.
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SA boosts Africa's profile as development partner
South Africa is looking to fellow African states and high-growth developing nations to join the country in trade partnerships that would promote its global standing and economic growth. "As a country and a people, we stand ready to make our contribution both in our interest and in the interest of all of Africa's people," said Lindiwe Sisulu, the chair of International Cooperation, Trade and Security cluster during a parliamentary media briefing on the delivery agreement for Outcome 11.
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Bay mom in court bid to get child back from China
IN the first application of its kind in South Africa, a Port Elizabeth mother has gone to the High Court in a last, desperate attempt to effect the return of her child from his father in China. The application against the Department of International Relations and Co-operation seeks to compel the South African government to lend diplomatic assistance and effect the safe return of the child.
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5. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Ghana's New China Deals: What's the Real Story?
On September 22, 2010, Reuters reported a phone interview with Ghana's deputy finance minister in Beijing, who appeared to put the China Eximbank credit figure alone at US$9.87 billion, A separate story on the Government of Ghana's official website September 22, 2010 reported the Eximbank credit at $10.4 billion and said that it was "concessionary"). Now the story appears to have changed.
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VIDEO: Brazil invests big in Africa
Brazilian companies are investing billions in Africa for access to natural resources, especially in Mozambique.
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China and China-US Relations in the Era of Globalization - Speech by Ambassador Zhang Yesui at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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Is there a China-India race in Africa?
Once again Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserted recently, while answering a journalist, that the world was large enough to accommodate the growth ambitions of both India and China. In a similar vein but speaking specifically about Africa, a senior official in India's Ministry of External Affairs observed, at a recent seminar in Delhi, that India-Africa partnership 'stands on its own', thereby denying indirectly that China had anything to do with it. Characterising it as 'an old relationship, very mature and productive', he aptly remarked that it 'has worked for us and for them (i.e., Africans)'.
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China buys up the world
IN THEORY, the ownership of a business in a capitalist economy is irrelevant. In practice, it is often controversial. From Japanese firms’ wave of purchases in America in the 1980s and Vodafone’s takeover of Germany’s Mannesmann in 2000 to the more recent antics of private-equity firms, acquisitions have often prompted bouts of national angst. Such concerns are likely to intensify over the next few years, for China’s state-owned firms are on a shopping spree. Chinese buyers—mostly opaque, often run by the Communist Party and sometimes driven by politics as well as profit—have accounted for a tenth of cross-border deals by value this year, bidding for everything from American gas and Brazilian electricity grids to a Swedish car company, Volvo. There is, understandably, rising opposition to this trend. The notion that capitalists should allow communists to buy their companies is, some argue, taking economic liberalism to an absurd extreme. But that is just what they should do, for the spread of Chinese capital should bring benefits to its recipients, and the world as a whole.
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Being eaten by the dragon
A FEW years ago two executives of an international oil company were working late in its otherwise deserted office in England. A stunning young Chinese woman arrived at reception. “She was very attractive, decked out in Gucci,” one of them says. She delivered a letter from Sinopec, one of China’s giant, state-controlled energy firms, proposing a multibillion-dollar takeover. The executive adds, a little wistfully, that she then disappeared into the night in a car with local licence plates, never to be seen again. His firm was soon bought by another Chinese company. Since then Western bosses have been tapped by Chinese firms at conferences in Toronto and Cape Town and received walk-in offers in Scandinavia. Companies across Europe have solicited Chinese investment. Bankers all over the world have touted lists of Western takeover candidates among China’s big firms. This year buyers based in China and Hong Kong have accounted for a tenth of global deals by value, including investments in oil and landmark takeovers in industry, such as Geely’s purchase of Volvo, a Swedish carmaker. A decade ago China urged its companies to expand under the slogan “go out”. Now it is really happening.
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Who is behind China’s Foreign Policy?
So who influences China’s foreign policy today? As Jakobsen and Knox assert, Chinese decision making, like that of Brussels, is guided by the consensus principal. This need to appease all sides, means that any of the “cacophony” of voices vying to influence Chinese foreign policy can do exactly that by swaying the opinion of just one top leader.
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China's African safari strictly business
Read China's state media and you will learn that, thanks to projects financed by Chinese companies and the central government, Africa is booming while the continent's political leaders trip over one another to express their appreciation for Beijing's helping hand. And it's all true. Bridges, dams, roads, railroads and airports are rapidly multiplying. Oil refineries and zinc, copper and cobalt mines are going at full tilt. Beijing is even catering to Africa's favorite sport as Chinese-designed and Chinese-built football stadia sprout up across the continent.
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Building Africa with Brics
In the 2003 Goldman Sachs report, ‘Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050’, BRIC nations are projected to outperform many of the developed economies by 2050 in various key economic sectors. BRIC countries, bilaterally and as a collective block, represent an important economic partnership for African economies. From oil exploration to uranium exploitation, steel and textile industries, construction, finance, banking and agriculture. In the past 12 months, the president of the largest African economy, Jacob Zuma, crisscrossed the BRIC countries to negotiate entry into these nations. At present, South Africa is a member of IBSA, (India, Brazil and South Africa), trading US$7 billion at 2007 figures alone. This is the right approach as the centre of economic gravity and pulse in global commercial and finance has shifted from the West towards the BRIC countries and other virgin emerging markets, such as Africa. The economic strength and increasing policy symmetry of the BRIC’s has quickly eroded calls for a “G2” global economic system, the concept of ChiMerica, (China and America).
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Ties with China: good for some, bad for others
China cannot keep out of the news. The news and the reasons are varied and include these kinds of subjects. Dissident wins Nobel Peace Prize but remains in jail. Artist put under house arrest. The value of the Yuan is artificially kept low to boost Chinese exports. The latest on the long list, usually of complaints, is about the visit of Mr David Cameron, Prime minister of Britain. Even this has the usual slant familiar with news stories to do with countries outside the West.
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'India-Africa relationship a defining partnership'
Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma today described the India-Africa partnership as the defining partnership of the 21st century. India and Africa share a strategic relationship with each other which is aimed at sharing each others’ experiences and resources for mutual benefit, he added. Sharma made a strong commitment to India’s engagement with Africa and said that Free Trade Agreements (FTA) between India and different regions of Africa are the natural and the next logical step towards deepening the partnership between the two regions.
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Côte d'Ivoire: Hardest part of Ivorian elections yet to come

2010-11-17

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91102

Ivorians preparing for a tense presidential run-off on 28 November are hoping the fragile peace of the first round on 7 November will hold, but fear it could easily crumble as cracks begin to emerge. Having been repeatedly postponed, the long-awaited elections have so far gone relatively smoothly. International observers have broadly praised the conduct of voters and political parties. Gbagbo took 38 per cent of the vote in the first round, with former prime minister Alassane Ouattara winning 32 per cent.

Egypt: Ruling party says no to foreign poll monitors

2010-11-18

http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Egypt-says-no-to-foreign-poll-monitors-20101117

Egypt's ruling party has rejected as 'interference' calls, including by Washington, to allow foreign observers to monitor this month's parliamentary elections, media reports said on Wednesday. The National Democratic Party's secretary general Sawfat al-Sharif said only local groups would be allowed to observe the November 28 poll.

Guinea: Guinea tense as Conde declared winner

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/9WGdg9

Guinea’s veteran opposition politician Alpha Conde was declared the winner of the presidential election on Tuesday last week, as losing candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo called for calm after deadly clashes. News of Mr Conde’s victory came after a tense day in which violent clashes left at least one person dead and several wounded, and allegations of election fraud from Diallo.

Guinea: State of emergency declared after poll clashes

2010-11-18

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11778523

The Guinean authorities have declared a state of emergency as violence continues in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election. Reports say three people were found dead in the capital Conakry after the latest clashes between the security forces and opposition supporters. The winning candidate, Alpha Conde, says he wants to lead a process of national reconciliation.

Madagascar: Officers in coup claim

2010-11-18

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11776570

Military officers in Madagascar say they have taken over the island nation. Col Charles Andrianasoavina, who made the announcement, was one of the officers behind a coup that brought Andry Rajoelina to power last year.

South Africa: ANC to look into mines

2010-11-16

http://www.iol.co.za:80/news/politics/anc-to-look-into-mines-1.810360

The ruling ANC will appoint two independent researchers to investigate the nationalisation of mines, its secretary general said on Monday. 'The NEC (national executive committee) has resolved to appoint two senior researchers and a project manager to investigate successful models that could be considered on the role of the state in mining,' Gwede Mantashe told reporters in Johannesburg.

South Africa: Sacked ministers quit Parliament

2010-11-16

http://www.iol.co.za:80/news/embarrassed-ministers-quit-in-a-huff-1.789021

Three more former ministers have followed Barbara Hogan in resigning as MPs after being axed from the executive two weeks ago in the biggest cabinet reshuffle since 1994. The Sunday Independent has confirmed that former minister of Sports Makhenkesi Stofile, former Public Works minister Geoff Doidge and former Water and Environmental Affairs minister Buyelwa Sonjica this week tendered their resignations to National Assembly Speaker Max Sisulu.

Zambia: Zambia fares badly on Open Budget Survey

2010-11-16

http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=15675

Zambia has fared badly in the Open Budget Survey (OBS) coming out second from the bottom of 94 countries that were surveyed. Presenting the findings of the OBS, Economic Association of Zambia (EAZ) executive director Alexander Chileshe said Zambia ranked among the bottom two that failed to uphold transparency and accountability for their national budgets. He observed that Zambia did not give room for citizens and even parliament to have a say on how the budget was being implemented.

Southern Africa: Corruption by traffic police officers and vehicle drivers in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe

2010-11-18

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/demgg/101111actsa.asp?sector=DEMGG

A researcher from the Anti-Corruption Trust of Southern Africa (ACT-Southern Africa) traveled by road in public transport from Namibia (Windhoek) to Zimbabwe (Harare) via Botswana through the Mamuno border post. The journey to and fro Zimbabwe was an eye-opener on the nature and extent of corruption bedeviling traffic police officers in the three countries. In a nutshell, the following findings were made:
- Zimbabwean traffic police officials are more corrupt than their counterparts in Botswana and Namibia.
- The governments of Namibia and Zimbabwe could be losing significant amounts of revenue due to corruption in which police officers are involved.
- Transport business operators are losing income due to bribes paid to traffic police officers.
- There were no indications of corruption by traffic police officials in Botswana.

Africa: US and EU subsidies still out of bounds

2010-11-18

http://www.ips.org/africa/2010/11/agriculture-us-and-eu-subsidies-still-out-of-bounds/

The United States’ policy to double agricultural exports shows that its government 'has learnt nothing' from the last food crisis, a problem reflected in the dramatic increase in that country’s trade-distorting farm subsidies between 2007 and 2008. The US’s recent official report on its farm subsidies for 2008 to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) shows that trade-distorting subsidies doubled from the previous year, while permissible 'green box' subsidies reached a historic high.

Angola: IMF concludes Angola mission

2010-11-17

http://www.trademarksa.org/node/2538

A mission from the International Monetary Fund, led by Seán Nolan, visited Luanda during 1 -11 November 2010 to conduct policy discussions for the fourth review under Angola’s 27-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with the IMF. The SBA was approved by the IMF’s Executive Board on 23 November 2009 and provides for the disbursement of SDR 858.9 million (about US$1.4 billion) over the course of the arrangement. Following the visit, Nolan said implementation of the government’s stabilisation and reform program has been broadly as envisaged, with budgetary outlays tightly contained.

DRC: Paris Club cancels debt

2010-11-18

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11784773

The Paris Club of creditor nations has cancelled $7.35bn (£4.6bn) of debt owed by the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deal was agreed following a meeting between representatives of Paris Club members and senior figures from the DR Congo government. In a statement, the Paris Club said the figure represented more than half of DR Congo's foreign debt.

Global: Little social security for most people in the world

2010-11-18

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news.php?key1=2010-11-16%2022:56:50&key2=1

Though basic social security is critical for mitigating the dire consequences of economic crises, it remains out of reach for most people across the world, above all in poorer countries, finds a new United Nations report. According to the 'World Social Security Report 2010-2011: Providing Coverage in Times of Crisis and Beyond', most of the world's working age population and their families lack effective access to comprehensive social protection systems. Worldwide, nearly 40 per cent of the working-age population is legally covered by contributory old-age pension schemes,

Global: What Is economic degrowth?

2010-11-18

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/582.1

'It is difficult to pin down exactly what degrowth is. It is not a model for an alternative economic system. It is more a tool for opening up a discussion on the failures of and alternatives to the status quo,' writes Glenn Ashton for the The South African Civil Society Information Service. 'For instance we need to consider whether our primary reason to interact with strangers is to exploit and extract money from them. Surely happiness is more important than exploitation? Presently both rich and poor, exploited and exploiter alike are unhappy, unsatisfied and unfulfilled. Degrowth supports ways to achieve a far more functional society than our present model, which externalises damage to both psyches and planet.'

Malawi: Strong public sector needed

2010-11-17

http://www.trademarksa.org/node/2534

Malawi’s economy needs a strong and vibrant public sector that can craft helpful and significant policies if the country is to register sustainable economic development, a political science associate professor has said. Presenting a paper titled ‘The role of a strong public service in an economy: Lessons and Opportunities for Malawi’ during the third economic seminar jointly organised by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the Malawi Economic Justice Network (Mejn) and the Economic Association of Malawi (Ecama), Blessings Chinsinga, an associate political professor at the University of Malawi, described the public sector at the moment as too weak to lead the way to prosperity.

Uganda: Besigye gets backing on oil promises

2010-11-17

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1054976/-/cl793cz/-/index.html

Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom has backed a proposal by Dr Kizza Besigye that a portion of oil revenue should be dedicated to fighting poverty in the oil-rich region where the resource has been discovered. Besigye, the candidate for the four-party opposition Inter-Party Cooperation coalition, on Monday promised that his government will give Bunyoro region its fair share of oil revenue if elected president. Besigye’s proposal flies in the face of the ruling NRM party’s position, which considers the oil as a national resource and offers no affirmative action for Bunyoro.

Africa: Cuba launches next phase of African malaria project

2010-11-17

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/cuba-launches-next-phase-of-african-malaria-project.html

Cuba has announced plans to build biolarvicide factories in Brazil and several African countries in a bid to tackle malaria and dengue fever. Biolarvicides are biological products that are added to water to kill mosquitoes at the larval stage. Labiofam - the Cuban laboratory in charge of the project - has been producing two biolarvicides, Bactivec and Griselesf, since the 1990s.

Africa: Health experts meet in Accra to discuss unsafe abortion

2010-11-15

http://bit.ly/974yvA

More than 250 health care providers, advocates, parliamentarians, women’s groups, community members and allied agencies from across Africa are meeting in Accra, to share best practices and lessons and initiate an agenda for action. The four-day conference focuses on unsafe abortion as a critical issue for reproductive health and rights in Africa, and for achieving the Millennium Development Goal 5, to reduce maternal mortality.

Africa: Why has the Global Forum for Health Research collapsed?

2010-11-17

http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/why-has-the-global-forum-for-health-research-collapsed-.html

Barely a year ago nearly 1,000 people from 80 countries gathered enthusiastically at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana, Cuba, under the banner 'Innovating for the health of all'. They were attending the annual meeting of the non-profit organisation the Global Forum for Health Research (GFHR).
Now, less than a year after taking office, the forum's executive director, Anthony Mbewu, has resigned, and the forum itself is in failing health. Why did this international organisation, set up in 1998, founder so spectacularly and so quickly when the need for health research remains so great?

Ghana: Tax-for-healthcare funding lauded at international research forum

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/bnKSz3

Ghana's efforts to provide universal healthcare coverage for its nearly 24 million people won the hearts of researchers and medics gathered for the world's first-ever conference on health research. A modest West African nation usually classified as just one of the few developing countries closer to meeting the UN poverty goals, Ghana has been increasing its healthcare funding in line with the Abuja declaration on healthcare funding.

Global: Fixed dose the way to go on TB

2010-11-18

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20033013

Patients are at risk of developing resistance to Tuberculosis medicine due to lack of access to quality treatment, according to a report presented at the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health. TB patients should ideally receive a six months fixed dose combination regimen at the cost of around US$26 per patient but in some countries this is not the case according to 'Falling Short: Ensuring Access to Simple, Safe and Effective First-Line Medicines for Tuberculosis'.

Global: Report reveals link between poverty and poor health in urban areas

2010-11-18

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36786&Cr=urban&Cr1=

A new United Nations report shows for the first time how poor health is linked to poverty in cities and calls on policymakers to identify those that need the most help and target measures to improve their well-being. The report, entitled 'Hidden Cities: unmasking and overcoming health inequities in urban settings', was launched in Kobe, Japan, where leaders from governments, academia, media and non-governmental organisations have been meeting for the past three days to examine how to improve the health of city dwellers.

Kenya: High risk porn industry exposed

2010-11-15

http://www.ippf.org/en/News/Intl+news/Kenya+Exxxposed+A+highrisk+porn+business.htm

The US adult film industry was brought to a virtual standstill recently after an actor tested HIV-positive and all his sexual partners were tested for the virus. There are no such precautions in Kenya's porn industry, where actors usually perform without a condom or routine HIV testing. 'I don't know my HIV status and I can't say I know that of the men we act with,' said Angela*, who recently made the switch from eight years of street-based sex work to acting in local porn films.

Swaziland: Declining customs union revenues threaten AIDS response

2010-11-17

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=91103

An economic meltdown in Swaziland, exacerbated by a major decline in revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), is unlikely to leave the national AIDS response unscathed, say local health officials. Revenue from SACU - the world's oldest customs union, comprising Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa - contributed 76 per cent of the Swazi government’s income in 2009 but dropped in 2010 and is expected to continue declining over the next decade.

Botswana: Transgender community rise up

2010-11-18

http://www.mask.org.za/botswana-trans-community-makes-strides/

As the transgender movement rises across Africa and the world Batswana have formed their own transgender identity oriented organisation titled Rainbow Identity Association (RIA). It aims to offer support to trans people not recognised by the lesbian, gay and bisexual community as well as the general society.

Global: Governments remove sexual orientation from UN resolution condemning extrajudicial killings

Press Release

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/68814

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and ARC International are deeply disappointed with yesterday’s vote in the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly to remove a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. The resolution urges States to protect the right to life of all people, including by calling on states to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. For the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation in the list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based.
Governments remove sexual orientation from UN resolution condemning extrajudicial killings
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)
Press Release

(New York, November 17, 2010) – The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and ARC International are deeply disappointed with yesterday’s vote in the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly to remove a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. The resolution urges States to protect the right to life of all people, including by calling on states to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. For the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation in the list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based.

The removed reference was originally contained in a non-exhaustive list in the resolution highlighting the many groups of people that are particularly targeted by killings - including persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, persons acting as human rights defenders (such as lawyers, journalists or demonstrators) as well as street children and members of indigenous communities. Mentioning sexual orientation as a basis on which people are targeted for killing highlights a situation in which particular vigilance is required in order for all people to be afforded equal protection.

The amendment removing the reference to sexual orientation was sponsored by Benin on behalf of the African Group in the UN General Assembly and was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

‘This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development,’ said Cary Alan Johnson, Executive Director of IGLHRC. ‘It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people - a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality.’

This decision in the General Assembly flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that people are routinely killed around the world because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and renders these killings invisible or unimportant. The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions has highlighted documented cases of extrajudicial killings on the grounds of sexual orientation including individuals facing the death penalty for consensual same-sex conduct; individuals tortured to death by State actors because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; paramilitary groups killing individuals because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation as part of ‘social cleansing’ campaigns; individuals murdered by police officers with impunity because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; and States failing to investigate hate crimes and killings of persons because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

‘It is a matter of great shame that the responsible Committee of the United Nations General Assembly failed in its responsibility to explicitly condemn well-documented killings based on sexual orientation,’ said John Fisher, Co-Director of ARC international. ‘The credibility of the United Nations requires protection of all persons from violations of their fundamental human rights, including on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. We thank those States which supported the inclusion of sexual orientation in the text, and will redouble our collective efforts to ensure that Member States of the United Nations maintain the standards they have sworn to uphold.’

The amendment runs counter to other positive developments in UN and regional human rights systems where there is increased recognition of the need for protection from discrimination regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. At a September 2010 panel held in conjunction with a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon unequivocally recognized ‘the particular vulnerability of individuals who face criminal sanctions, including imprisonment and in some cases the death penalty, on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.’

Sixty-eight countries have also signed a joint statement in the UN General Assembly on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity which calls for an end to ‘human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity … in particular the use of the death penalty on this ground [and] extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.’

IGLHRC and ARC International urge all States, regardless of their vote on this amendment, to sign the UNGA joint statement affirming support of the human rights of all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity and to continue in efforts to decriminalize same-sex conduct and to end other discrimination, including violence, on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The votes to amend the resolution were as follows:

In favor of the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (79):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Opposed to the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (70):

Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Micronesia (FS), Monaco, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela

Abstain (17):

Antigua-Barbuda, Barbados, Belarus, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Fiji, Mauritius, Mongolia, Papau New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Absent (26):

Albania, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chad, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Marshall Island, Mauritania, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Sao Tome Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Togo, Tonga, Turkey, Turkmenistan

The mission of The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is advancing human rights for everyone, everywhere to end discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. A non-profit, non-governmental organization, IGLHRC is based in New York, with offices in Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Visit http://www.iglhrc.org for more information.

Contact:
Sara Perle, Ric Weiland Research & Policy Associate
International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission
phone: +1-212-430-6015; email: sperle@iglhrc.org
John Fisher, Co-Director, ARC International
phone: +41-79-508-3968; email: john@arc-international.net

Uganda: Civil society groups join fight

2010-11-18

http://www.mask.org.za/civil-society-groups-join-gay-rights-fight/

'Turning a blind eye when people are targeted because of their real or alleged sexual orientation, makes the authorities complicit in the abuse.' So said Chris Dolan, Director of the Refugee Law Project, a member of Uganda’s Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law. This after gay rights groups in Uganda expressed concern about the deafening silence of political leaders while human rights violations against sexual minorities continue unabated in the heart of Yoweri Museveni’s country.

Uganda: Ugandan newspapers guilty of reinforcing homophobia

2010-11-15

http://www.issafrica.org/iss_today.php?ID=1058

A clearer example of hate speech would be hard to find, writes Chandre Gould, a senior researcher, at the crime and justice programme of the Institute for Security Studies. 'The authors of the report hide behind the worn, thin mantle of tradition and culture to justify their hatred of difference. They claim that homosexuality is "unAfrican" and goes against African tradition. This claim is nonsensical not only because homosexuality is the subject of just as much vitriol and hatred in the Western world as it is in Africa; but also because sexual orientation is not culturally determined.'

Cameroon: Study shows corruption in timber tax process

2010-11-18

http://bit.ly/czn70P

A new study finds a lack of transparency and corruption are reducing the impact of an initiative in Cameroon that channels a portion of national timber levies to rural forest communities. The study highlights the challenges of using a climate change pact to do something similar in forested regions around the world. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal International Forestry Review, scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) examined how revenues from a tax paid by logging companies in Cameroon, known as an Area Fee (AF), are distributed to local councils to reduce rural poverty and stimulate local economic growth.

Global: Natural disaster costs set to rise sharply

2010-11-17

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=91064

A new report by the World Bank and the UN says the cost of coping with natural disasters could triple to US$185 billion per year by the end of the century. The report - compiled mainly by economists over two years - said the projection did not include climate change impact costs. But added more frequent and intense tropical cyclones because of climate change could raise total costs by an additional $28-$68 billion a year by 2100.

Kenya: Cardboard coffins introduced to the market

2010-11-18

http://bit.ly/cfMAM5

Kenyans are likely from next month to start burying their dead in coffins made from corrugated cardboards or cartons following a local company decision to invest in this venture. The first samples of such coffins, the Eco Jeneza, have already been made and are on display in some major coffin outlets in the city. The coffin manufacturer, East African Packaging Industries (EAPI) Limited, says the coffins are going to be made from cast-off materials, reducing wastages and creating more jobs.

South Africa: Focus on Acid Mine Drainage

2010-11-15

http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport/acid-mine-drainage

South Africans are fearful that Johannesburg may soon be at the mercy of acid water, with whisperings of the CBD crumbling as basements flood and buildings corrode. The government is said to be too slow, gutless and corrupt to enforce necessary action, the mining companies too heartless and unwilling to pay, the community and environmental activists too alarmist and the solutions too expensive or ineffective. South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper is featuring a series on acid mine drainage, or AMD, in South Africa, with each week focusing on a different area.

South Africa: Study shows consequences of SA water crisis

2010-11-16

http://www.polity.org.za/article/uasa-study-shows-consequences-of-sa-water-crisis-2010-11-15

A Uasa economic impact study on the impact of South Africa's water crisis released on Monday predicted a possible decrease in disposable income, a hike in government spending, and thousands of job losses. The study was commissioned by the trade union Uasa to establish the real impact of the South African water crisis on the country. Macroeconomic effects of decreased water quality include a rise in the ratio of government debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 28 per cent, a drop of R16-billion in household spending, a drop of 1 per cent in the GDP growth rate as well as a drop of R9-billion (2,5 per cent) in total fixed investment.

Africa: Billions in subsidy shut out African cotton growers

2010-11-15

http://ind.pn/b3ZduP

Western governments are rigging the market against poor cotton growers in Africa by pouring billions of pounds of taxpayers' money into farms in the United States and Europe, according to a new report. The US and EU have handed cotton farms subsidies of $32bn (£20bn) in the past decade, disadvantaging otherwise cheaper West African imports, according to the report by the Fairtrade Foundation.

Ethiopia: Corporate India finds greener pastures in Africa

2010-11-15

http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/30269

Bangalore-based Indian company, Karuturi Global, the world’s largest flower producer, couldn’t get enough land in India to compete with rivals. So the company went to Ethiopia early this year and leased 1,200 square miles of land - larger than the State of Rhode Island - to grow flowers. After a few years, the land will become useless due to heavy use of fertilisers. Millions of Ethiopians are facing food shortage and yet the World Bank-financed dictatorship leases huge tracts of land to foreign agribusiness to grow and export flower, reports the Ethiopian Review.

Gabon: US$1.5b investment in Gabon

2010-11-17

http://farmlandgrab.org/17135

Commodities company Olam recently announced plans to invest US$1.5 billion in the African country of Gabon. Demand for agricultural commodities has outstripped supply for the last nine out of 10 years and agri-commodities companies are increasingly turning to unexplored regions like Africa for their resource needs.

Liberia: Searching for solutions to land disputes

2010-11-17

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91098

With close to 25 years surveying land and helping resolve land disputes, J. Patrick Vanie has unrivalled expertise on the nuances of land ownership in Nimba County. 'I know this county right down to my fingertips,' says Vanie. But Nimba’s land commissioner admits to feeling swamped by an overwhelming caseload. 'The land business here is tough, it is no joke,' Vanie concedes. 'The demand for land here has become very, very high.'

Mozambique: 800 SA farmers sign deals

2010-11-16

http://bit.ly/alWxo0

About 800 South African commercial farmers have already signed land deals to expand production in Mozambique, ahead of a conference next week to discuss other possible opportunities in the Gaza province. South African farmers have received new land offers to grow crops in over 20 countries.

Sierra Leone: Koroma gives 50,000 acres to CHICASON

2010-11-17

http://farmlandgrab.org/17139

President Ernest Bai Koroma has promised not less than 50,000 acres of land anywhere in the country to CHICASON group companies. The company would be involved in manufacturing, and mining oil and gas as part of its business expansion in Sierra Leone. 'My country is moving from a frontier state, I will give CHICASON not less than 50,000 acres of land anywhere in the country. I will serve as arbiter between the habitants and CHICASON. My government is supporting the private sector and Nigeria deserves our support,' he said.

Zambia: Land, policy and reality in women's land rights

2010-11-17

http://www.cohre.org/news/press-releases/zambia-women-and-land-policy-vs-reality

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), a Geneva-based international housing rights watchdog, has released a 'report card' examining the impact of Zambia’s land reform processes on women. The report, 'The Impact of National Land Policy and Land Reform on Women in Zambia', was released together with the Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA), a joint initiative of organisations dedicated to improving women's land and housing rights in Africa. The key finding in the report is that Zambian women’s enjoyment of land rights in both rural and urban areas is hampered by male-dominated structures and patriarchal decision-making mechanisms.

Global: Food prices may be even higher next year, warns new UN report

2010-11-18

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36784&Cr=food%20crisis&Cr1=

Global food import bills may pass the $1 trillion mark in 2010, a level not seen since food prices peaked in 2008, says a new United Nations report, which warns that harder times could be ahead without a major increase in food production next year. According to the latest edition of the Food Outlook report, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food import bills for the world's poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 per cent in 2010 and by 20 per cent for low-income food-deficit countries.

Egypt: Blogger Kareem Amer finally released

2010-11-18

http://en.rsf.org/egypt-blogger-kareem-amer-finally-17-11-2010,38830.html

Reporters Without Borders has hailed the release of Abdul Kareem Suleiman Amer, the blogger known as Kareem Amer. He was finally set free on the evening of 15 November, 10 days after completing a four-year jail sentence, and is now reunited with his family. He has decided for the time being to make no statement. The blogger was again subjected to physical mistreatment at the headquarters of the internal security department in Alexandria during the 10 days he was held illegally after 5 November, the date he should have been released.

South Africa: Right2Know launches national dialogue

2010-11-15

http://www.communitymedia.org.za/communication-activist-network/243-r2k-national-dialogue

After successfully protesting the Protection of Information Bill (the secrecy Bill) the Right2Know Campaign has emerged as a vibrant campaign with significant influence in the public discourse. This rapid growth has raised a number of questions and the R2K Working Groups have called for a National Dialogue amongst campaign supporters to deliberate on matters of the Campaign's scope, strategy, and structure.

Sudan: Radio Dabanga raid targets last uncensored media

2010-11-17

http://wapo.st/daEjpl

On 30 October, Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Services raided a Khartoum office shared by Radio Dabanga and Darfuri human rights activists, arresting 13 people, reports the Washington Post. According to Radio Dabanga's Dutch-based director, Hildebrand Bijleveld, the detainees are being held incommunicado in unknown locations.

Uganda: Anger over 'hip-hop president' photographs

2010-11-18

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11769806

Doctored photographs of Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni showing him as a rap star are damaging his image, his press secretary has told the BBC. The images started appearing in the local media after a rap remix of a song the president sang became a hit ahead of presidential elections next year. Spokesman Tamale Mirundi said those showing the president half-naked and wearing bling were the most offensive.

Zambia: Politician jailed for assaulting journalists

2010-11-18

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/11/16/zambia-policitian-jailed-for-assaulting-journalists/

A Zambia ruling Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) politician has been jailed for assaulting journalists who had gone to cover President Rupiah Banda at the Lusaka International Airport last July. Lusaka Province MMD youth chairman Chris Chalwe was convicted on 9 November by the Lusaka Magistrates Court which found him guilty of assaulting journalists from state-owned Times of Zambia and the privately-owned the Post newspaper when they went to cover President Rupiah Banda at the Lusaka International Airport.

Zimbabwe: Bill would restrict public access to official information

2010-11-18

http://en.rsf.org/zimbabwe-bill-would-restrict-public-access-17-11-2010,38832.html

Reporters Without Borders has called for the withdrawal of bill which is about to be submitted to parliament and which would allow the authorities to block public access to official documents including judicial decisions, new legislation and public records. Announced on 22 October and called the 'General Law Amendment Bill', the proposed law’s sole aim seems to be to place additional obstacles in the way of access to information and thereby hamper the work of the media even more.

Zimbabwe: IFJ slams arrest of journalists’ leader

2010-11-18

http://www.ifj.org/en/articles/ifj-slams-arrest-of-journalists-leader-in-zimbabwe

The International Federation of Journalists ( IFJ) has condemned the arrest and detention by police in Zimbabwe of Dumisani Sibanda, the President of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists. The IFJ has called for his immediate release and says the action is the latest in a series of hostile incidents that are putting the country’s journalists increasingly at risk. Sibanda, Bulawayo Bureau chief of The Standard, is being questioned over a story involving the police force.

Zimbabwe: Liberalisation of airwaves only key to democracy, says MDC

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/bMkjXL

'Media reforms are inevitable, they are by public demand,' says the MDC Information & Publicity Department in response to permanent secretary in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity George Charamba's announcement that the government has no intention of issuing broadcasting licences. 'Zanu PF wants to refuse these reforms and continue with its propaganda agenda on its failed policies and rampant corruption that is now in the public domain. By maintaining the status quo and denying the entry of private broadcasters, Charamba and his masters are desperately trying to prop-up Zanu PF’s declining grip through the airwaves ahead of elections expected next year.'

CAR: Food security fears rise as attacks increase

2010-11-15

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91074

A rise in armed incursions is restricting people’s movements, reducing their ability to farm and increasing food security concerns in the Haut-Mbomou and Mbomou regions in the southeast Central African Republic (CAR), says an international humanitarian agency. 'There is plenty of fertile land in the region but violence is interfering with traditional ways of life such as agriculture, hunting and fishing, with farmers often afraid to stray far from town to work their fields for fear of attack. This has reduced production, pushing up prices to the point at which not everyone can afford to buy food, even when it's available,' said Christa Utiger, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) economic security coordinator for the CAR.

Djibouti: Drought appeal for 120,000 vulnerable pastoralists

2010-11-17

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91075

A 'forgotten emergency' has left tens of thousands of pastoralists in Djibouti needing food and nutrition assistance as well as longer-term coping mechanisms, according to the UN. The tiny Horn of Africa state is the subject of a US$38.9 million appeal for food aid ($16.2 million), agriculture and livestock ($6.5 million), health and nutrition ($7.4 million), water and sanitation ($2.4 million), and emergency preparedness and sanitation ($6.4 million).

Haiti: Why desperate Haitians want to kick out UN troops

2010-11-18

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/18/haiti-crisis-un-troops

Conditions were ripe for cholera because international policy towards Haiti hasn't changed in decades, says this opinion piece in the London Guardian. 'Economic exploitation, political intervention, NGO gifts with chains attached, media misrepresentation, the same mistakes have been made over and over again. Sadly, even an earthquake doesn't seem to have changed that. It's little wonder Haitians are manifesting their anger in increasingly heated protests.'

Nigeria: Militants seize seven oil workers

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/aJQrW1

Nigeria’s main militant group said last week it had seized seven oil workers in a raid on an ExxonMobil facility and threatened a major attack while claiming the military fired rockets at one of its camps. The offshore raid was the latest such incident in recent months in the Niger Delta, the heart of the country’s huge oil industry, and the military warned of action at the weekend, saying residents near militant camps should clear out.

Nigeria: Military confirms 19 hostages freed

2010-11-18

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6AH0X0.htm

Nigeria's military confirmed on Thursday it had freed 19 foreign and local hostages being held by militants in the Niger Delta oil region. The hostages included two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Indonesians, one Canadian and 12 Nigerians, Major General Charles Omoregie, commander of a military taskforce in the Niger Delta, told a news conference in oil hub Port Harcourt.

Sudan: Security Council calls for ‘urgent action’ for peaceful, credible referenda

2010-11-17

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36774&Cr=sudan&Cr1=referenda

The Security Council has urged parties to the 2005 peace pact that ended the country’s long-running civil war to take urgent action to ensure the holding of peaceful and credible referenda on self-determination in less than two months’ time. Sudanese are slated to vote on 9 January on whether the south should secede from the rest of the country and also to determine the final status of Abyei, an oil-rich area in the centre of the country, as set out in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Western Sahara: Upsurge in repression challenges nonviolent resistance

2010-11-17

http://bit.ly/cQx8Ky

'Morocco has been able to persist in flouting its international legal obligations toward Western Sahara largely because France and the United States have continued to arm Moroccan occupation forces and blocked the enforcement of resolutions in the UN Security Council demanding that Morocco allow for self-determination or even simply the stationing of unarmed human rights monitors in the occupied country,' writes Stephen Zunes on www.opendemocracy.net 'Despite 35 years of exile, war, repression and international neglect, Sahrawi nationalism is at least as strong within the younger generation as their elders, as is their will to resist. How soon they will succeed in their struggle for self-determination, however, may well rest on such acts of international solidarity by global civil society.'

South Africa: Click against violence: taking 16 Days of Activism online

2010-11-18

http://www.apc.org/en/node/11403/

The United Nations estimates that 95 per cent of aggressive behaviour, harassment, abusive language and denigrating images in online spaces are aimed at women and come from partners or former male partners. Other surveys show that the victims of cyber-stalking are predominantly female. APC Women and Inter Press Service Africa co-hosted a media roundtable on 17 November entitled ‘Click Against Violence: Taking 16 Days of Activism Online’, to discuss online Gender Based Violence and resources available to cover the issue.

Tunisia: Youth employment subject of ICT forum

2010-11-18

http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2010/11/16/feature-02

Maghreb youths should play a key role in developing new technologies in the region, according to participants in a Hammamet forum that wrapped up on 12 November. The three-day event, dubbed 'ICT4 ALL Forum Tunis+5', brought together more than 700 managers from ICT companies and representatives of international organisations. The conference spotlighted ways to create job opportunities for the younger generation through modern communication and information technologies.

Issue three of the SA Reconciliation Barometer available

2010-11-17

http://sabarometerblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/newsletter-issue-3-released/

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation has announced issue three of the SA Reconciliation Barometer newsletter. It includes the following articles:
- Albie Sachs: Recipient of the 2009 Reconciliation Award, Jo Higgs
- The search for our shared South Africanness, William Gumede
- ANC revivalism and nonracialism, Tim Murithi

November issue of IDRC's Lasting Impacts out now

2010-11-18

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-159523-201-1-DO_TOPIC.htm

The November issue of IDRC's Lasting Impacts, 'Sustainable Agriculture' has just been published. It contains articles on:
- More food, higher incomes in the Andes
- Planting trees brings prosperity, opportunity to farmers, women in Nagaland
- Replanting hope in Africa’s highlands
- Sustainable agriculture key to solving land disputes in Lebanon
Click on the URL provided to read the November issue.

Africa: New dialogue portal on the African continent

2010-11-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/68705

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 'We are the World', United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa) and Trust Africa sponsored, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Africa Humanitarian Action, co-hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), a Symposium entitled 'Reflections on International Humanitarian Interventions in Africa' was held at the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 21-23 September 2010. The stimulating discourse of the symposium, which included thinkers, practitioners and activists on the continent and beyond, was the driving motivation for AfricaSpeaks4Africa.org.
www.a24media.com
10 November 2010
Press Release: A new dialogue portal on the African continent

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 'We are the World', United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa) and Trust Africa sponsored, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Africa Humanitarian Action, co-hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), a Symposium entitled 'Reflections on International Humanitarian Interventions in
Africa' was held at the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 21-23 September 2010.

The stimulating discourse of the symposium, which included thinkers, practitioners and activists on the continent and beyond, was the driving motivation for AfricaSpeaks4Africa.org, a continent based web portal, designed, developed and hosted by Africa's own A24 media. Throughout the symposium, the discussions, and the results that came out from it truly underscored that the discourse of the symposium was only a spark towards the dawn of shaping a new future. The continuation of such dialogue is essential for setting a platform that would promote dynamism and vigor for African voices, on the continent and beyond; one of the most prominent ways that this can happen is through the launching of a website that has been constructed to do just that, let Africa speak 4 Africa.

This website is live; the platform, will be a meeting place for Africans to have a voice and engage in dialogue and debate towards developing new ideas and paradigms on issues of humanitarian intervention in Africa, including the relationship of such interventions to social, economic, cultural and even political development on the continent.

The relationship between A24 Media, its sister company Camerapix, and USA for Africa began as a collaborative effort in response to a humanitarian crisis; the 1984 Ethiopian famine.

When the harrowing footage of the Ethiopian famine victims was relayed to millions across the world in 1984, thanks to African iconic photographer Mohamed Amin, it touched the conscience of many and spurred millions to action.

Governments, NGOs and individuals responded, sending all manner of help to alleviate the deep suffering of the famine victims. But of notable impact was the solidarity expressed by world's top rated musicians, under the aegis of USA for Africa, who went on to record the hit song 'We Are The World’. The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and it went on to sell more than seven million copies. The proceeds from these sales were channeled to the famine relief in Ethiopia and thousands of lives were saved as a result.

Off the back of this initiative, USA for Africa also announced a scholarship program at the Mohamed Amin Foundation (The MoForce), which is affiliated to A24 Media. The MoForce aims to help students gain the skills to pursue careers in the media and raise journalistic standards across Africa. Since 1998, the Foundation continues to churn out remarkable talent and its impact has resonated throughout the African media landscape.

'A24 Media is proud to be a part of this project. It has been a challenging and exciting journey developing the portal and this portal fits in perfectly with A24 Media’s vision of Africans telling the
African story,' said Salim Amin, Chairman of A24 Media.

*http://africaspeaks4africa.org

* About A24 Media
A24 Media is Africa’s first online delivery site for material from journalists, African broadcasters and NGO’s from around the Continent. A24 Media’s business model ensures that all contributors
receive a wide and previously unknown exposure to their content, thereby generating sustainable and generous revenues from the sale of their stories on a 60:40 basis in favour of the contributor. Most importantly, the contributor will continue to OWN the copyright of the original footage. Content generators from around Africa will send their material to our main office in Nairobi where it will be verified and re-edited as necessary to create a slick, marketable and branded story. A unique and easily navigable system has been developed to allow broadcasters to view and purchase high-quality video for broadcast on their TV Channels. This enhances their ability to continue sending high-quality content to us and to reach a global audience with their
stories… An African Voice telling the African Story.

* Notes to Editors:
For information on how to get involved with A24 Media please contact
Farah Chaudhry farah@a24media.com <mailto:farah@a24media.com>
+ 254 733 790 458
For access to the stories and more information on an African voice
telling the African story, visit www.a24media.com

Anita Borg Institute announces nominations for Women of Vision awards

2010-11-18

http://bit.ly/9DvvpB

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is accepting nominations for the Women of Vision Awards to honour women making signification contributions to technology. The awards are given in three different categories of Innovation, Leadership and Social Impact (each category has an award).

Front Line Fellowship Program

Deadline to apply 30 November 2010

2010-11-18

http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/front-line-fellowship

Human rights defenders can apply for the Front Line Fellowship Program, which offers them an opportunity to take some time out from their normal work. Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders founded in Dublin in 2001 aims to protect human rights defenders at risk. It offers its fellowships to help human rights defenders not only take some time off their work but also work on a project to build their capacities further and contribute to the protection of human rights defenders internationally.

New online database of the African human rights system

2010-11-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/68702

The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Human Rights Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS) launched a new online database of jurisprudence of the African Human Rights System on 8 November 2010.
AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS CASE LAW ANALYSER: http://caselaw.ihrda.org

The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Human Rights Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS) launched a new online database of jurisprudence of the African Human Rights System on 8 November 2010.

• New online database with automated high quality pertinent analysis;
• African human rights decisions in English and French available free of charge;
• Easy browsing of inter-related decisions;
• Quick access of primary case law for each violation;
• Automatic calculation of jurisprudential value of each decision based on frequency of citation;
• Comprehensive key word search;
• Hyperlinks to authorities (laws and cases cited);
• Easy annotation and sharing of commentary on interesting decisions.

OUTIL ANALYTIQUE DE LA JURISPRUDENCE AFRICAINE DES DROITS HUMAINS: http://caselaw.ihrda.org

Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) et Human Rights Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS) ont lancé une nouvelle base de données en ligne de la jurisprudence africaine du Système africain des droits humains le 8 novembre 2010.
• Nouvelle base de données en ligne comportant des statistiques pertinentes ;
• Les décisions du système africain des droits humains en anglais et en français ;
• Navigation facile et renvoi d’une décision à une autre ;
• Accès rapide aux décisions clés en rapport avec les thématiques des droits humains ;
• Des statistiques sur la valeur jurisprudentielle de chaque décision en fonction de la fréquence de citation ;
• Possibilité d’effectuer des recherches à partir des mots clés ;
• Liens sur les sources du droit (législations et jurisprudence citées)
• Possibilité de commenter sur les décisions de grade valeur jurisprudentielle et la possibilité de les partager.

http://caselaw.ihrda.org

Routledge African Studies: Free access to top downloaded articles

2010-11-18

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/top/AfricanStudies.pdf

Routledge African Studies has announced free downloads of the top five downloaded articles from each of their African Studies journals. Articles include:
- African diaspora and the metropolis: an introduction by Fassil Demissie
- An epidemic waiting to happen? The spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in social and historical perspective by Shula Marks
- A nation to be reckoned with: The politics of World Cup stadium construction in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa by Peter Alegi.

Call for Papers: 'Social Movements, Civil Society and Transitional Justice'

International Journal of Transitional Justice 2011 Special Issue

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/68817

The International Journal of Transitional Justice invites submissions for its 2011 special issue titled ‘Civil Society, Social Movements and Transitional Justice,' to be guest edited by Moses Chrispus Okello, Senior Research Advisor, Refugee Law Project and Coordinator, Beyond Juba Project, Uganda and Lucy Hovil, Senior Researcher, Citizenship and Displacement in the Great Lakes region, International Refugee Rights Initiative.
Call for Papers: 'Social Movements, Civil Society and Transitional Justice'
International Journal of Transitional Justice 2011 Special Issue

Social mobilisation as a collective enterprise: Common goals and shared values

The International Journal of Transitional Justice invites submissions for its 2011 special issue titled ‘Civil Society, Social Movements and Transitional Justice,' to be guest edited by Moses Chrispus Okello, Senior Research Advisor, Refugee Law Project and Coordinator, Beyond Juba Project, Uganda and Lucy Hovil, Senior Researcher, Citizenship and Displacement in the Great Lakes region, International Refugee Rights Initiative.

The edition aims to explore the role played by social movements and civil society organisations in engendering processes of democratic change by examining how mobilisation by ordinary citizens can influence the path and content of transitional justice policies. Civil society and social movements can be key drivers in ending repression and bringing about post-conflict reconstruction and justice. Yet recent history shows us that TJ processes are frequently top down – led either by international organizations and institutions, or through state-centric approaches, at times to the detriment of local civil society. Indeed, any transitional justice process that does not fully engage with civil society at all levels (local or international) is unlikely to be sustainable. That said, civil society organizations themselves, particularly those that are locally-based, have been victims of conflict and have equally suffered the impact of violence and restrictions on political space. Equal recognition that civil society itself is in need of rehabilitation is therefore critical to the engagement of these very same institutions in transitions to justice.

This issue will seek to better understand the different contexts and dynamics in which social movements germinate and operate. What environments are most conducive to the emergence of socio-civil organisations? How are social and civil movements affected by their operational contexts (local and international) and what conditions are necessary for them to bring about psychological, socio-economic and/or political healing? What strategies, methods, and resources do social movements and civil society organisations employ in sustaining TJ shifts and changes (and therefore ensuring their ability to stay the course and influence policy)? Are civil society TJ movements inherently reformist or insurrectionist in nature? Are they pro-active or reactive? What motivates some citizens to engage in civil social movements and not others? Which citizens engage? What are the implications for a transitional process of any of these means of approaching socio-political change? In short, what form(s) of organisation bring about post-conflict/post-atrocity justice and how?

Possible topics to be covered in this issue will include:
• Survivor/victim organizations and TJ
• TJ as a social movement
• TJ and the international human rights movement
• International civil society and TJ processes
• Relationship between local, national, transnational and international civil
society
• Political context for civil society operating in periods of transition
• Role of funding and funders: who controls the agenda?
• Limitations of civil society in advocacy (who speaks, who influences?)
• Role of international actors in norm setting and the establishment of models
• Role and influence of civil society – in establishing mechanisms, implementing TJ programmes, advocacy, monitoring and evaluation
• Impact of TJ mechanisms on civil society
• Linkages between TJ, Forced Migration and civil society
• Role of the media in TJ
• Role of popular culture in TJ
• Engagement of religious actors in TJ processes
• Art and literature in TJ
• Civil society, TJ and community-building
• Civil society and schools/curriculum reform
• Civil society and outreach programs
• Women's groups and TJ
• Civil society and DDR
• Civil Society, social movements and war department claims

The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2011.

Papers should be submitted online from the IJTJ webpage at www.ijtj.oxfordjournals.org

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

Creativity, dissidence and women: a course with Nawal el-Saadaw

2010-11-18

http://africanwritersabroad.org.uk/2010/02/nawal/

Nawal el Saadawi is a popular speaker and writer in the UK. For the first time ever she will be facilitating a course on her specialised area, creativity and dissidence. Places are limited and will be offered on a first come first served basis.

First call for papers: Seventh pan-African reading for all conference

11-14 July 2011, Gaborone, Botswana

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/68815

The deadline for the first call for papers is 31 December 2010. The conference is organised by 
Reading Association of Botswana (RAB) 
International Development Committee - Africa (IDC-A) 
and International Reading Association (IRA). The complete application and conference information is at: http://6thpanafricanrfa.blogspot.com/ All inquiries can be made to: Dr. D. Kasule, KASULED@mopipi.ub.bw

Introducing a new course on Pan-African thought at the University of Dar es Salaam

2010-11-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/68881

The College of Arts and Social Science is pleased to announce to all university students a new course onPan African Thought. The course begins this semester, i.e. November 2010.
University of Dar es Salaam
College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS)

New Course Announcement

The College of Arts and Social Science is pleased to announce to all university students a new course onPan African Thought. The course begins this semester, i.e. November 2010.

Name of the Course

AS 220: Pan-African Thought and Practice I: The Roots of Pan-Africanism

Course Units

3

Course Objectives

• To expose students to Africa’s balanced history;
• To account for the decline of Africa’s once record-breaking civilizations;
• To inculcate into students a sense of pride and confidence on the one hand and self criticism on the other, both of which are essential in order for Africa to realize socio-cultural and economic development

Additional Information

The course is offered in two parts, part one (AS 220) is offered in semester I, and part II (AS 221) is offered in the second semester. The course is elective (optional), and limited to only 100 students.

AS 220 will be taught as a complete course with its own modules and grading process; it will, at the same time, be considered a starter for AS 221. That is to say, a student will have to take both courses so as to acquire the intended values and skills.

The course will be taught in an intellectually rigorous fashion with an interdisciplinary approach. Lecturers from different disciplines, including outside social sciences and humanities, will be recruited to teach it. Whenever possible, guest lecturers from outside the university or the country will be invited.

Who is Eligible?

All undergraduate students, from second year and above (i.e. third year and fourth year students etc.)

Note: The course is open to all university students and from all fields of study. It is not limited to social sciences and arts students.

Where to Register?

Register online as you do for other courses

Lectures

There will be two lectures per week
Monday 12:00 Yombo 3 and Wednesday 08:00-09:00 Yombo 3

The first lecture starts on Monday 22nd November 2010

For further information contact:

The Course Co-ordinator: Ng’wanza Kamata, Office No. 409, Tower Block
Or write to panafrica.course@gmail.com
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http://udadisi.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-course-on-pan-african-thought-at.html

Participatory research for action

Now open

2010-11-18

http://www.newtactics.org/en/dialogue/participatory-research-action

Join New Tactics in Human Rights for an online 'Tactical Dialogue on Participatory Research for Action' from November 17 - 23 2010. Participatory action research is research which involves all relevant parties in actively examining together current action (which they experience as problematic) in order to change and improve it. Participatory research can create credible and critical documentation at the grassroots level. Not only can the information be utilised in advocacy and lobbying efforts, the research process itself can serve to create a network of activists, informing organisations working on issues that impact study participants, and directly benefiting the people themselves. This dialogue will be a space to share resources, challenges, approaches and ideas for using participatory research for social change.

Third World Network Africa hosts roundtable on gender and regional integration

2010-11-18

http://bit.ly/ce1mcD

The gender unit of TWN-Africa is hosting a round-table on gender and regional economic integration in Africa on 18-19 November, 2010, in Accra, Ghana. The meeting will bring together scholars, feminist economists and gender experts, as well as policy-makers, to discuss issues of gender equity and Africa’s economic integration.

Fahamu