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If Sexuality were a human being ...

Introduction to 'African Sexualities: A Reader'

Sylvia Tamale

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73150

‘African Sexualities’ is a groundbreaking new volume, forthcoming from Pambazuka Press. As well as using popular culture to help address the ‘what, why, how, when and where’ questions, the book’s contributors provide a critical mapping of African sexualities that informs readers about the plurality and complexities of sexualities on the continent – desires, practices, fantasies, identities, taboos, abuses, violations, stigmas, transgressions and sanctions. At the same time, the contributors pose gender-sensitive and politically aware questions that challenge the reader to interrogate assumptions and hegemonic sexuality discourses, thereby unmapping the intricate and complex terrain of African sexualities.

The following article by ‘African Sexualities’ editor Sylvia Tamale comprises the book’s introduction.

If Sexuality were a human being and she made a grand entrance (l’entrée grande) into the African Union conference centre, the honourable delegates would stand up and bow in honour. But the acknowledgement of and respect for Sexuality would no doubt be tinged with overtones of parody and irony, even sadness, because although Sexuality might represent notions of pleasure and the continuity of humanity itself, the term conjures up discussions about sources of oppression and violence. In fact, once Sexuality got to the podium and opened her mouth, the multiple complexities associated with her presence would echo around the conference room.

The Reader on African Sexualities (hereafter referred to as the Reader) intends to translate these echoes into comprehensible notions and concepts, carefully examining their different wavelengths and the terms of their power and laying bare the theoretical, political and historical aspects of African sexualities. The term ‘African sexualities’ immediately provokes the questions: who/what is African? What is sexuality? Who determines what qualifies as African sexualities? Among other things, the Reader attempts to address these deeply complex questions through the lenses of history, feminism, law, sociology, anthropology, spirituality, poetry, fiction, life stories, rhetoric, song, art and public health. In this way the Reader offers a rare opportunity to theorise sexuality through various modes. The idea is to deconstruct, debunk, expose, contextualise and problematise concepts associated with African sexualities in order to avoid essentialism, stereotyping and othering.

The material in this Reader has been carefully selected to surface the complexities associated with what has been pandered as African and the issues surrounding sexuality that have been taken for granted. One of the main challenges for contributors to the Reader was to refuse to perpetuate colonial reification of ‘African’ as a homogenous entity. Hence, the title’s reference to African sexualities is not because we are unaware of the richness and diversity of African peoples’ heritage and experiences. Jane Bennett’s essay in Chapter 6 addresses this issue at great length.

Any reference to the term ‘African’ in this volume is used advisedly to highlight those aspects of cultural ideology – the ethos of community, solidarity and ubuntu[1] – that are widely shared among the vast majority of people within the geographical entity baptised ‘Africa’ by the colonial map-makers. More importantly, the term is used politically to call attention to some of the commonalities and shared historical legacies inscribed in cultures and sexualities within the region by forces such as colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, globalisation and fundamentalism. Even as these commonalities are proposed, however, readers will find them challenged.

Although diverse forces interrupted the shape of sexualities on the continent – redefining notions of morality, for example, and ‘freezing’ them into social and political spaces through both penal codification and complex alliances with political and religious authority – differences among continental spaces meant that such interruptions had diverse effects. Such forces further attempted to standardise global ideas about African sexualities, often erasing questions of diversities and complexities of sexual relations. As the material in Part 1 reveals, however, colonial methods of researching, theorising and engaging in sexualities in Africa left indelible and significant imprints on people’s sexual lives.

This, however, is not to suggest that the continent became a hostage of its late colonial history. As the materials in this Reader clearly show, the continent is currently replete with vibrant movements, some seeking to reinforce sexual hegemonic powers and others challenging, subverting and resisting imposed modes of identity, morality and behaviour patterns. Some of the subversions have deep roots – Parts 2 and 3, titled ‘Sexuality, power and politics’ and ‘Mapping sexual representations and practices of identity’, respectively, offer expansions of these issues and excavate the political origins and social consequences of the politics of sexualities in Africa.

We speak of sexualities in the plural in recognition of the complex structures within which sexuality is constructed and in recognition of its pluralist articulations. The notion of a homogeneous, unchanging sexuality for all Africans is out of touch not only with the realities of lives, experiences, identities and relationships but also with current activism and scholarship. Ideas about and experiences of African sexualities are shaped and defined by issues such as colonialism, globalisation, patriarchy, gender, class, religion, age, law and culture. Because these phenomena are at play elsewhere in the world, and because of the various historical links that connect Africa to the rest of humankind, some theoretical and conceptual approaches that have informed sexualities studies elsewhere have relevance to the way writers think through questions of African sexualities.

Sexualities are often thought of as closely related to one of the most critical of biological processes, namely reproduction. But contemporary scholarship understands sexualities as socially constructed, in profound and troubling engagement with the biological, and therefore as heavily influenced by, and implicated within, social, cultural, political and economic forces. The study of sexualities therefore offers unending lessons about pleasure, creativity, subversion, violence, oppression and living. Attempts to define the term sexuality often end in frustration, and become in themselves exercises about writers’ own orientations, prioritisations and passions. As Oliver Phillips reminds us:

‘Sexuality can be defined by referring to a wide range of anatomical acts and physical behaviour involving one, two or more people. We can relate it to emotional expressions of love, intimacy and desire that can take an infinite variety of forms. Or it can be implicated in the reproduction of social structures and markers through rules and regulations that permit or prohibit specific relations and/or acts. In the end, it emerges that these definitions are far from exhaustive. None of them are adequate on their own but that when considered all together they reflect the multiple ways that sexuality is manifest and impacts on our lives, and that above all; these definitions all consistently involve relations of power.’ (Phillips 2011: 285)

It is this question of power to which the materials in this Reader return time and again.

As a continent, Africa has made significant progress in creating the space at policy level for discussion of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Since the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, the African Union has adopted the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol),[2] the Plan of Action on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (Maputo Plan of Action),[3] and the Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA).[4] These continent-wide efforts have boosted the possibility of creating national policies on a wide variety of issues including gender-based violence, access to reproductive healthcare and a focus on sexualities education, among others.

Although these policies are numerous, missing are the theoretical and practical sparks to ignite the commitment required from both state and non-state actors to implement them. Moreover, studies have revealed the direct link between the delivery of sexual and reproductive health services and sustainable development (UN Millenium Project 2006). Part 5 of this volume addresses the latter, with the opening essay by Beth Maina Ahlberg and Asli Kulane clearly framing the link between sexual and reproductive rights and issues of development.

The law turns sexualities into a space through which instruments of state control and dominance can be deployed. For example, the criminal legal system in most African states attempts to regulate how, when and with whom we can have consensual sex. The offences of prostitution, abortion and adultery clearly curtail both women’s and men’s sexual autonomy (although as the Reader material suggests, it is women’s autonomy that is most severely under threat), and the criminalisation of homosexuality affects both men and women who do not conform to the dominant ideology of heterosexuality. The material in Part 6, titled ‘Sex and masculinities’, demonstrates this very well.

Western scholars have thus far conducted the bulk of studies on sexualities and a big chunk of what has been published on the African continent emanates from South Africa.[5] This phenomenon has more to do with geopolitical power differentials than academic superiority. The dominance of Western theories and perspectives on sexuality studies and the fact that the main languages of academia are colonial have serious implications for rapidly growing sexualities scholarship on the continent. African feminists and other change agents are well aware of the dangers associated with the uncritical application of Western theories to non-Western contexts (Adomako Ampofo and Arnfred 2010). They constantly struggle to overcome the limitations and encumbrances that come with creating and disseminating cultural-specific knowledge in a foreign colonial language. They understand the capacity of language to confer power through naming and conveying meaning and nuance to sexuality concepts. Concepts such as silence, restraint, choice, gay, lesbian, coming out and drag queen, for example, all carry specific social meanings steeped in Western ideology and traditions.

It is worth reiterating the point made earlier: as researchers and theorists of sexualities we must always take great care not to fall into the homogenising trap. One of the salient points made by various authors in this volume is to avoid homogenising and essentialising people’s sexualities (whether Africans, Europeans, Asians, Middle Eastern or Hispanics).

Although many writers often hold romanticised notions of pre-colonial African sexualities as having been unrestricted and unbridled, the facts are quite different. As in all social organisations, African societies historically involved the organisation of gender, sexuality and reproduction – the diverse shapes, fluidities, the visible and invisible, the spiritual and the political and economic dynamics of those societies – which resulted in certain restraints.

For instance, almost all societies on the continent would have treated sexual interaction with a child or between parent and offspring as abominations. Part 8 is titled ‘Sexuality, spirituality and the supernatural’, and provides a glimpse of some of the complexities that pervade African sexualities in light of traditional beliefs and practices.

In the context of a resurgence of cultural, religious and economic fundamentalist movements, feminists and gender activists on the continent have forged global alliances in the struggle for women’s bodily integrity and sexual autonomy. After all, patterns of control seen in sexual and gender-based violence, marital rape, sex trafficking, teenage pregnancies, women’s sexual pleasure and so forth bear no national, religious or cultural stamp. But as feminists across the continents increase their global political activism for women’s reproductive health and sexual rights, so do they have to account more carefully for the differentials in culture and history.

So, although it is important to pay attention to the intersections among nations regarding gender inequality, it is crucial that the strategies employed by African feminists be informed by the lived experiences of women and men on the continent and the specificities of what they hold as their culture, taking into account that there is not always agreement among people in the same locale about the nuances and meanings of culture. Part 7, titled ‘Who’s having sex and who’s not?’, surfaces some of the most common stereotypes and prejudices about sexualities and the lived experiences of marginal groups in our societies.

Debates on sexual inequality represent the most fundamental challenge to struggles for global democracy. One of the biggest challenges of our times is how to confront the complexities of intersecting oppressions so that people identified as sexual minorities, for example sex workers, lesbians, gays, transgendered, intersexed, rape survivors and people living with HIV/AIDS, are able to stand with full status on the same podium such as those representing groups fighting dictatorships, corruption, social injustice, insecurity, discrimination against women, or people with disabilities. There are of course sexual minorities within each of these groups and often implicit among groups are concerns about sexualities. Until we close the gap between different voices demanding justice and equality, embracing the infinite possibilities of our sexual, social, economic and political beings, the African renaissance or the transformation that we are striving for will forever remain a mirage.

One important way of closing these gaps is by raising awareness through formal and informal education on sexualities. Part 9, titled ‘Pedagogical approaches’, demonstrates how this can be done in creative and effective ways.

HOW TO USE THIS READER

The key objective of this Reader is to amplify the voices of Africans on the topic of sexualities. This is achieved through a critical mapping and unmapping of African sexualities.

The process of mapping is meant to inform readers about the plurality and complexities of African sexualities, including desires, practices, presentations, fantasies, identities, taboos, abuses, violations, stigmas, transgressions and sanctions. At the same time, it poses questions that challenge the reader to interrogate assumptions and hegemonic sexuality discourses, thereby unmapping the intricate and complex terrain of African sexualities. How is sexuality linked to gender and subordination? What is the ‘Africanness’ in sexualities? How has history shaped African sexualities? What explicit and implicit diversities exist within sexuality?

The Reader exposes the hidden or subtle lines that link the various aspects of our lives and sexualities. Such exposure facilitates our understanding of the negative and positive factors associated with the complex phenomenon of sexuality, including how it is instrumentalised, commodified and politicised, as well as its reproductive, pleasurable and empowering aspects.

Generally speaking, by the time we grow into adults many of us have done a great deal of learning, most of it rote (uncritical). Mechanical learning (cram, cram, cram, drill, drill, drill) is the norm for most of us as we move along the conveyor belt of examinations in post-colonial African education systems. The informal cultural systems of education that largely emphasise children’s unquestioning obedience to adults do not help either. Both formal and informal education in the main promote learning in dualisms and absolute truths, such as right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, inclusion and exclusion and male and female. These do little to foster reflective and critical thinking.

The end result is that our learning processes grossly neglect to instruct us in the important concept of unlearning. Without this skill, it is extremely difficult for us to think critically and to question unjust frameworks or challenge the established order. Most of us passively absorb the assumptions and perspectives of the dominant view and many of us have a visceral negative reaction to the concept of sexuality. Unlearning literally requires us to discard our old eyes and acquire a new set with which to see the world. It requires us to jettison assumptions and prejudices that are so deep-seated and internalised that they have become normal and appear to be natural.

The critical process of transformative learning requires us to apply our intellect, unlearn deeply entrenched behaviour patterns and beliefs and relearn new ones. It requires us to acquire the vital skills to critically analyse internalised oppression and complicity with patriarchy and capitalism. It further requires us to step out of our familiar comfort zones and enter the world of discomfort and anxiety associated with change. Such processes, which call for a reorganisation of the old, are always fraught with difficulty, disequilibrium and stress.

This Reader on African Sexualities calls on us to do exactly that. It challenges us to confront issues that society has clothed in taboos, inhibitions and silences, to unclothe them, quiz them and give them voice. It certainly requires us to unlearn and relearn many things that we take for granted about sexualities and may well leave us confused, shocked, offended, embarrassed, scared and even a little excited. Many of us, for instance, will be baffled by the fact that issues of sexuality and desire, which are viewed as apolitical and private, are in fact steeped in politics and power relations. But such realisations are part of transformational learning and are reflections of our intellectual and political growth and our personal development.

To get maximum benefit from this Reader we need to pry our minds open to fresh ideas, absorb new knowledge and apply our intellect, knowledge and experience to develop a critical analysis of the issue at hand. Opening our minds means to accept differences, to see the world through the eyes of others, to open our ears to diverse viewpoints and to venture beyond our familiar horizons. To appreciate the Reader we have to tap deep into our inner resources of respect, empathy, tolerance, self-reflexivity and courage. We have to let our minds drift beyond the box, to see with our hands, hear with our skin and taste with our mind’s eye.

The Reader is divided into nine thematic parts, each containing essays that introduce the reader to the main concepts as well as key issues and debates in the area, thus providing a solid framework for analysis, review of knowledge and transformative action. There is an inevitable overlap of issues across the parts, which serves as a constant reminder of the intertwining nature of sexualities in every aspect of our lives and the web-like political effects. The structured divisions are forced for conceptual neatness and reading convenience more than anything else. In addition to the essays, the Reader unconventionally carries a wide variety of genres including poetry, fiction, life stories, songs and diary entries. The range of writings is meant not only to connect readers to everyday, real-life sexual experiences, but also to stimulate creative, interesting and critical thinking about the inter-linkages between sexuality, power, rights, (under)development and various structures of inequality.

At the end of each thematic part, the reader will find a set of questions that acts as a guide for a systematic and critical approach to the key issues. Though this Reader attempts to use accessible language, analyses of African sexualities inevitably involve the use of complex and unfamiliar terms and concepts. For this reason, we have included a glossary at the end of book.

A final note concerns the authorship of the material. Almost all of the authors can be described as African writers, if the term African is understood as a geopolitical space. All of them can be termed African in the sense that the passion driving their research and writing comes from engagement with the idea that serious global knowledge creation requires that the lives, experiences, ideas and imagination of people throughout the continent be considered critically important.

The diversity of the authors defies categorisation: they are men, women, sex workers, intersexed and transgendered; they speak many languages and write, here, in English; they live in 16 of Africa’s 54 countries and in the diaspora; they have experienced multiple African realities; they live their own sexualities across diverse possibilities of desire, attraction, family creation, political activism and identity. When working with this Reader, it is also important to recognise that many of the authors represented here are prolific and previously published writers in addition to a crop of fresh and exciting new scholarship.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Edited by Sylvia Tamale, ‘African Sexualities’ is a groundbreaking volume, coming soon from Pambazuka Press.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] The African philosophy of ubuntu (humaneness) refers to understanding diversity and the belief in a universal bond and sharing (Ramose 1999). Justice Yvonne Mokgoro of the South African Constitutional Court elaborated this difficult-to-translate concept:
In its most fundamental sense it translates as personhood and ‘morality’. Metaphorically … [it describes] the significance of group solidarity on survival issues so central to the survival of communities. While it envelopes the key values of group solidarity, compassion, respect, human dignity, conformity to basic norms and collective unity, in its fundamental sense it denotes humanity and morality. Its spirit emphasizes a respect for human dignity, marking a shift from confrontation to conciliation. (Quoted in Sachs 2009: 106–107)
[2] Adopted in 2003 and brought into force in 2005, the Maputo Protocol addresses the health and reproductive rights of African women in Article 14.
[3] The Maputo Plan of Action was adopted in 2007 as a strategy to implement the continental policy framework for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
[4] Launched in 2009, CARMMA was meant to speed up the process of implementing the Maputo Plan of Action.
[5] These facts are clearly reflected by the dominance of Western theories as well as the over-representation of South African scholarship in this volume.

REFERENCES

Adomako Ampofo, A. and Arnfred, S. (eds) (2010) African Feminist Politics of Knowledge: Tensions, Challenges, Possibilities, Uppsala, The Nordic Africa Institute
Phillips, Oliver (2011) ‘Teaching sexuality and law in southern Africa: locating historical narratives and adopting appropriate conceptual frameworks’, in Tsanga, A. and Stewart, J. (eds) Women and Law: Innovative Approaches to Teaching, Research and Analysis, Harare, Weaver Press
Ramose, M. (1999) African Philosophy through Ubuntu, Harare, Mond Books
Sachs, Albie (2009) The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law, London, Oxford University Press
United Nations Millennium Project (2006) Public Choices, Private Decisions: Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals, New York, UN Millenium Project

An African reflection on Tahrir Square

Mahmood Mamdani

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73187

cc E OWhile European interpretations of the events of Egypt’s Tahrir Square see the uprising’s roots through a lens of ‘coloured’ revolutions following the decline of the Soviet Union, Mahmood Mamdani instead stresses the resemblance to South Africa’s Soweto in 1976, a struggle ‘identified with the onset of community-based organisation’.

The discussion on justice in this conference focused on two of its forms: criminal and social. There has been little discussion of political justice. My object in this talk will be to look at the events identified with Tahrir Square through the lens of political justice.

I want to begin with giving you a taste of how Tahrir Square has resonated with official Africa. Not only has this new way of doing politics, politics without recourse to arms, bewildered officialdom; it has also sent a chill down many an official spine.

I will give an example from Uganda.

In Uganda, it has provided the lens through which all participants have made sense of a new form of protest we call ‘Walk to Work’. The immediate background to it was government’s refusal to permit any form of peaceful assembly to protest any aspect of its policy. The one exception was a permit the government granted the Pan African Movement, an organisation that had been set up under the auspices of Presidents Museveni and Gaddafi a couple of decades ago, to march in solidarity with Colonel Gaddafi and the Libyan people and in opposition to NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombardment of Libya. The march was to end up as a rally to be addressed by an army commander. But the government changed its mind at the last minute, most think because it realised the demo could be joined by opposition supporters, or for that matter anyone disgruntled with government policy, and so the government decided to teargas and disperse its own demonstration.

Soon after that, the opposition announced that it would resort to a new form of protest: it would walk to work in response to rising fuel and commodity prices. Walk to Work, the opposition said, was not an assembly and so required no police permit. The result was a true theatre of the absurd as police arrested opposition politicians walking to work and then looked for reasons to justify it. Let me give you a few instances from press accounts of the events that followed. Salaamu Musumba, a high opposition official, was walking with one other person, and was stopped by a policeman. ‘Have you no car?’ asked the policeman. Musumba answered, ‘Yes I have.’ ‘Then why are you walking?[1] Musumba was arrested. Asked what was wrong with walking, the information minister suggested that the opposition must have a hidden agenda; if not, why would it not ‘come up with proposals on how to handle the challenges … instead of going to the streets’.[2] The minister of internal affairs said the problem was more sinister. The motive behind Walk to Work was really political, why the organisers should have sought police guidance. But the organisers did not follow official guidelines: ‘Police was not notified, the organisers did not identify themselves, the routes were not agreed to,’ he said. Asked why the police had sprayed schools and health centres with teargas, he said the fault really lay with those walking: ‘some of them, when engaged by the Police, decided to run into schools and health centres to use children and patients as human shields.’[3]

The chief political commissar of the police insisted that since the Walk to Work demo was bound to turn into a procession, the organizers were law-bound to notify the police. ‘I have no quarrel with anybody who wants to walk but it must be in accordance with the law by notifying the Police and agreeing on the routes and maintenance of order.’ Realising the absurdity of calling on people to get a police permit specifying when and where to walk, he added: ‘Many people walk but this has turned into a political matter.’[4]

The Inspector General of Police Major General Kale Kaihura tied himself in knots seeking to explain the distinction between ordinary walking and political walking. Referring to the leading opposition leader, Kiiza Besigye, he said, ‘Besigye can walk. There is no problem and he does not have to notify the Police. However, when he wants to use walking or running as a demonstration, then he has to notify us.’[5] Pressed to explain what was wrong with political walking, the inspector general of police said the opposition’s real intention was to create a Ugandan version of Egypt’s Tahrir Square.[6]

When the uprising we identify with Tahrir Square first happened, media commentators dismissed the very possibility of something similar happening in East Africa. In their view, local society was too ethnically divided to rise up as one. But events have shown that unity does not precede political praxis; it is produced through political struggle. This is why the memory of Tahrir Square today feeds opposition hopes and fuels government fears in many an African polity. To paraphrase a 19th-century political philosopher, the spectre of Tahrir Square is coming to haunt Africa’s rulers.

Observers of Europe have seen in Tahrir Square the spread of colour revolutions said to have begun in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Soviet Union. I want to place Tahrir Square in a different context. I propose to look back more than a quarter of a century, really three and a half decades, to an event that occurred on the southern tip of this continent, Soweto. Soweto 1976 signified a turning point in South African struggle. Soweto was identified with the onset of community-based organisation. Three years earlier, in 1973, spontaneous strikes in the city of Durban had sparked initiatives that led to the formation of independent trade unions. Together, Soweto and Durban, community-based organisations and independent trade unions, changed the face of anti-apartheid politics in South Africa.

Soweto 1976 was a youthful uprising. It marked a generational shift. In an era when adult political activists had come to accept as a truism that meaningful change could only come through armed struggle, Soweto pioneered an alternative imagination and an alternative mode of struggle. Soweto changed the conventional understanding of struggle from armed to popular struggle. Ordinary people stopped thinking of struggle as something waged by professional fighters, armed guerrillas, with the people cheering from the stands, but as a popular movement with ordinary people as key participants. The potential of popular struggle lay in sheer numbers, guided by a new imagination and new methods of struggle. Finally, this new imagination laid the basis for a wider unity.

To understand the efficacy of this new imagination, we need to begin with an understanding of the mode of governance, the mode of rule, to which it was a response. Apartheid rule had split South African society into so many races (whites, Indians, coloureds) and so many tribes (Zulu, Xhosa, Pedi, Venda and so on), by governing races and tribes, and even each tribe, through a separate set of laws, so that even when they organised to remove or reform the law in question, those opposed to apartheid organised and acted separately: the whites as Congress of Democrats, coloureds as the Coloured People’s Congress, Indians as the South African Indian Congress and Africans as the African National Congress (ANC). Each of these qualifiers – coloureds, Indians and Africans – mirrored how the official census named each population groups.

In this context came a new person, a visionary leader, Steve Biko, at the helm of a new movement, the Black Consciousness Movement. Biko’s message undermined apartheid statecraft. Black is not a colour, said Biko, black is an experience. If you are oppressed, you are black. In the South African context, this was indeed a revolutionary message. The ANC had spoken of non-racialism as early as the Freedom Charter in 1955. But the ANC’s non-racialism only touched the political elite. Whereas individual white and Indian and coloured members of the political elite joined the ANC as individuals, ordinary people continued to be trapped by a political perspective that continued to reflect the same old narrow racial and tribal boundaries. The point about Biko was that he forged a popular vision with the potential to cut through these boundaries.

Ten years later, in 1987, occurred another event reminiscent of Soweto. This was the Palestinian intifada. The first intifada had a Soweto-like potential. Like the children of Soweto, the youth of Palestine too shed the romance of armed struggle. They dared to face bullets with no more than stones. Faced with feuding liberation movements, each claiming to be a sole representative of the oppressed people, the youth of the intifada called for a wider unity. I am suggesting that we see Soweto and the first intifada as political antecedents of Tahrir Square.

THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION

Even though Tahrir Square has come more than three decades after Soweto, it evokes the memory of Soweto in a powerful way. This is so for a number of reasons. One, like Soweto 1976, Tahrir Square in 2011 too shed a generation’s romance with violence. The generation of Nasser and after had embraced violence as key to fundamental political and social change. This tendency was secular at the outset. But the more Nasser turned to justifying suppressing the opposition in the language of secular nationalism, the more the opposition began to speak in a religious idiom. The most important political tendency calling for a surgical break with the past spoke the language of radical political Islam. Its main representative in Egypt was Said Qutb. I would like briefly to look at Qutb as the standard bearer of radical political Islam.

I became interested in radical political Islam after 9/11, which is when I read Sayyid Qutb’s most important political book, ‘Signposts’. It reminded me of the grammar of radical politics at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s, when I was a young lecturer there. Sayyid Qutb says in the introduction to ‘Signposts’ that he wrote the book for an Islamic vanguard; I thought I was reading a version of Lenin’s ‘What is to be Done’. Sayyid Qutb’s main argument in the text is that you must make a distinction between friends and enemies, because with friends you use persuasion and with enemies you use force. I thought I was reading Mao Zedong on the correct handling of contradictions amongst the people. Later, at Columbia, I realised that I could also have been reading the German philosopher Karl Schmidt. In all these cases, the point of politics is to identify, isolate and eliminate the enemy, which is also why violence as a method of struggle is central to politics.

I asked myself: how should I understand Sayyid Qutb? In the context of 9/11, the question had a triple significance. The first concerned the relationship between culture and politics. Official public intellectuals in post-9/11 US insisted that one’s politics reflects one’s culture. Second was a claim that civilisations develop in separate containers – one Muslim, the other Christian, a third Hindu and so on, each closeted from the other, so that democracy and Islam belong to separate containers. Democracy in the public sphere requires that you leave Islam at home. Only secular Muslims could be worthy citizens of a democratic republic.

Third, underlying their claim was the assumption that there are two kinds of culture – modern and pre-modern, in the contemporary world. Modern culture changes. It is capable of reflexivity and internal debate. Able to identify and remove its weaknesses and build on its strengths, it is historically progressive. In contrast, pre-modern culture is traditional and static. It functions not only as an inheritance at birth but as a sort of life sentence. The bearer of this culture suffers as if from a twitch, so that culture is like an unthinking response to external events. I was familiar with a version of this literature in my reading of African politics. But I sensed something new in the post-9/11 literature. Africans were said to be pre-modern, and so would need to be tutored. Arabs, unlike Africans, were said to be anti-modern, the real other of modernity, they would have to be contained rather than tutored, quarantined and watched carefully. The violence of 9/11 said to be a prime example of this anti-modern culture.

I was critical of this perspective, this kind of understanding of the development of discourses through history. Is the history of thought best understood inside separate civilisational containers? Should I understand Sayyid Qutb’s thought inside a linear tradition called political Islam? Or do I also need to understand as part of a wider debate that cut across discursive traditions and defined his times? Was not Sayyid Qutb’s embrace of political violence in line with a growing embrace of armed struggle in movements of national liberation in the 1950s and 1960s – most accepting the claim that armed struggle was not only the most effective form of struggle but also the only genuine mode of struggle?

I had little doubt that Sayyid Qutb was involved in multiple conversations. He was involved in multiple debates, not only with Islamic intellectuals, whether contemporary or belonging to previous generations, but also with contending intellectuals from other modes of political thought. And the main competition then was Marxism–Leninism, a militantly secular ideology which seemed to influence both his language and his understanding of organisation and struggle.

I would like to explore further what it means to shed the romance with revolutionary violence. It means to move away from a reified notion of friend and enemy, of good and evil, where the enemy was evil and had to be eliminated. The language of evil comes from a particular religious tradition, one that has been secularised over time: you cannot live with evil, you cannot convert it, you must eliminate it. The struggle against evil is necessarily a violent struggle. I first came across this tradition when I read Tomaz Mastenak’s history of the Crusades, and I when I read it, I understood the difference between modern notions of pre-modern and anti-modern culture: pre-modern primitive was open to conversion, but the anti-modern was not; it would have to be eliminated.

The second resemblance between Soweto and Tahrir Square was on the question of unity. Just as the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa had uncritically reproduced the division between races and tribes as institutionalised in state practices, so it seemed to me that mainstream politics in Egypt had politicised religious difference. Tahrir Square, I thought, innovated a new politics. It shed the language of religion as central to politics but it did so without embracing a militant secularism that would outlaw religion in the public sphere. Instead, it seemed to call for a broad tolerance of cultural identities in the public sphere, one that would include both secular and religious tendencies. The new contract seemed based not on exclusion but inclusion – those who seek to participate in the public sphere must practice an inclusive politics with respect to others. The violence against the Coptic Christian minority in the weeks before Tahrir Square suggested that sectarian violence was often initiated by those in power, but without an effective antidote, it tended to rip through the social fabric.

Tahrir Square shared a third significance with Soweto. Soweto forced many people around the world to rethink their notions of Africa and the African. Before Soweto, the convention was to assume that violence was second nature with Africans who were incapable of living together peacefully. Before Tahrir Square, and particularly after 9/11, official discourse and media representations, particularly in the West, were driven by the assumption that Arabs were genetically predisposed not only to violence, but also to discrimination against anyone different.

THE QUESTION OF THE POLITICAL

I think of the common political history of the Middle East as defined by Ottoman rule. The millet system that defined Ottoman governance was in many ways similar to British indirect rule which it preceded. If the millet system politicised religious identity, British indirect rule politicised ethnicity as tribal identity. The millet system created a religiously sanctioned form of political authority inside the community, just as British indirect rule created an ethnically sanctioned form of political authority inside the community it politicised. If the millet system politicised religious identity, British indirect rule politicised ethnic or tribal identity. The African experience suggests that the key question faced by post-colonial societies is political: what are the boundaries of the political community? Who is a South African? Who is a Ugandan? Who an Egyptian? Is the Egyptian identity Islamic, or Arab, or territorial, so that we may say, as a paraphrase of the 1955 Freedom Charter of South Africa, that Egypt belongs to all those who live in it? What is at stake?

At stake is citizenship – who belongs and who does not, who has a right to rights and who does not. I would like to illustrate the argument with the example of Sudan. I want to focus on two official attempts to define the basis of nationhood and thus citizenship in Sudan, the first a claim that the nation is Muslim, and the second that the nation is Arab. Following these claims came two critiques of these nation-building and citizenship projects, one internal and the other external, but each claiming to formulate a critique from the vantage point of those disenfranchised by these projects.

I should like to begin with Ustad Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s critique of the Islamist political project. The interesting point is that Ustad Mahmoud did not dismiss the possibility of a democratic Islamic political project, in fact he posed it as an alternative to the official Islamist project identified with Hassan Turabi. Ustad Mahmoud’s critique was an internal critique. Calling for an alternative project, he formed an alternative organisation to the Muslim Brothers, called Republican Brothers. I am not sure why he called it that for, in spite of its name, Republican Brothers included both brothers and sisters. Ustad Mahmoud’s alternative was based on two claims.

Ustad Mahmoud distinguished between the Quran as a holy text and every reading of it as human and earthly. This distinguished the sacred text from its reading which was seen as a human interpretation. Taha’s interpretation was provided in his book, ‘The Second Message of Islam’. The argument is not unfamiliar to Egyptian ears or to students of tafsir. The Quran contains two messages, each a response to a different context – Mecca and Medina. The prophet preached in Mecca and formulated legislation in Medina. The Meccan message focused on morality – and was thus transhistorical. In contrast, the message in Medina was bound to the specific needs of the society. This body of legislation, known as the Sharia, was more time-bound than any other part of the Quran. The challenge, claimed Ustad Mahmoud, was to rethink the legislation in Medina in light of the moral vision of Mecca, that all are equal before God, man and woman, nation and nation, tribe and tribe. Taha identified two key challenges in an Islamic polity: the rights of non-Muslims, and the rights of women.

I want to locate the debate on Islam and politics in a wider context. That context is the wider debate of culture and politics in the post-colonial world. What is the relationship of culture, whether its cutting edge be religion or ethnicity, to politics?

It seems to me that two contrasting views have been formulated over the colonial and post-colonial view. The first is the modernist view that tradition – and religion or ethnicity as an integral part of it – must be banished to the private sphere to create the space for a democratic public sphere. We may call the second view nativist. It calls for a return to origins, to the period before colonialism, to the genuine and authentic history and culture of the colonised as the anchor from which to fashion a response to the modern world. It seems to me that just as the first view, militant modernism, is unable to make sense of pre-colonial history, militant nativism, the second view, is unable to come to grips with the colonial experience, especially the experience of the millet system and indirect rule which fashioned from the domain of the culture of the colonised resources for the colonial project. It thus created a single and authoritative authority said to be culturally legitimate with the right to define and enforce the official version of culture, whether as religious or ethnic.

Here then is the challenge for us: just as colonial powers found inside Islam and other religions and ethnic cultures the resources for an authoritarian colonial political project, we too must return to that same history of culture and find inside it resources necessary for a democratic political project. Neither a demonising of that history as militant modernism is apt to do, nor its romanticisation, as is the case with militant nativism, will do. The response will have to be a more analytic and critical embrace of that history.

I want to move on to John Garang’s critique of Arabism as a political project. Garang is the foundational thinker of the Southern Sudanese struggle of both Islamism and Arabism as political projects in Sudan. Garang wrote against a backdrop where the dominant critique of Arabism either highlighted the question of geography or that of race. The first claimed that, as a fact of geography, Sudan is an African, and not an Arab, country. The second found the identity of Sudan better identified by race. Sudan, it said, is an African country, a country for Africans, where Arabs can only be welcomed as guests. If you are an Arab, you are not an African and, vice versa, if you are an African, you cannot be an Arab. It went on to conclude that the problem with most northern Sudanese is that they fail to accept that they are Arabised Africans, really Africans and not Arabs. This failure to understand the true nature of their selves – their self-identity, this false consciousness – is really a sign of self-hatred. Those who claim to be Sudanese Arabs are really self-hating Africans.

Only against this prevailing mode of thought can we understand the truly subversive, and liberating, character of Garang’s thought. Garang began by identifying how the failure to address the problem of political identity directly led to refuge in notions of culture and race. I will quote from his historic speech to the conference of Sudanese oppositional movements at Koka Dam: ‘I present to this historic conference that our major problem is that the Sudan has been looking for its soul, for its true identity. Failing to find it … some take refuge in Arabism, and failing to find this, they find refuge in Islam as a uniting factor. Others get frustrated as they fail to discover how they can become Arabs when their creator thought otherwise. And they take refuge in separation.’ He then goes on to distinguish culture from politics: the cultural is not territorial, but the political is. The problem with cultural nationalism is that it confuses the two: culture and territory. ‘We are a product of historical development. Arabic (though I am poor in it – I should learn it fast) must be the national language in a new Sudan, and therefore we must learn it. Arabic cannot be said to be the language of the Arabs. No, it is the language of the Sudan. English is the language of the Americans, but that country is America, not England. Spanish is the language of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and they’re those countries, not Spain… We are serious about the formation of a new Sudan, a new civilization that will contribute to the Arab world and to the African world and to the human civilization. Cross fertilization of civilization has happened historically and we are not going to separate whose civilization this and this is, it may be inseparable.’ Here was a clear alternative to the political project called ‘The clash of civilisations.’

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

New ideas create the basis of new unities and new methods of struggle. Modern power seeks to politicise cultural differences in society and, having done so, turns around and claims that these divisions are inevitable for they are natural. To be successful, a new politics must offer an antidote, being an alternative practice that unites those divided by prevailing modes of governance. Before and after Soweto, Steve Biko insisted that, more than just biology, blackness was a political experience. This point of view created the ideological basis of a new anti-racist unity. I do not know of a counterpart to Steve Biko in Tahrir Square – may be there was not one Biko but many Bikos in Egypt. But I do believe that Tahrir Square has come to symbolise the basis for a new unity, one that consciously seeks to undermine the practice of religious secterianism.

Consider one remarkable fact. No major event in contemporary history has been forecast, either by researchers or consultants, whether based in universities or in think tanks. This was true of Soweto in 1976. It was true of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and it was true of the Egyptian revolution in 2011. What does it say about the state of our knowledge that we can foretell a natural catastrophe – an earthquake, even a tsunami – but not a political shift of similar dimensions? The rule would seem to be: the bigger the shift, the less likely is the chance of it being foretold. This is for one reason. Big shifts in social and political life require an act of the imagination – a break from routine, a departure from convention – why social science, which is focused on the study of routine, of institutional and repetitive behaviour, is unable to forecast big events.

It took nearly two decades for the Soweto uprising to deliver a democratic fruit in South Africa. The democratic revolution in Egypt has just begun – it seems to me that Tahrir Square has not led to a revolution, but to a reform. And that is not a bad thing. The significance of Egypt, unlike that of Libya next door, is threefold. First is the moral force of non-violence, of the many rather than just the few. Second, non-violence of the multitude makes possible a new politics of inclusion. And finally, it makes possible a radically different sense of the worth of self. Unlike violence, non-violence does not just resist and exclude. It also embraces and includes, thereby opening up new possibilities of reform, possibilities that seemed unimaginable only yesterday.

Key to the period after Tahrir is the political challenge that lies in the days, months and years ahead. That challenge is to reform the Egyptian state, to shape through a political process the answer to the question: who is an Egyptian? Who has a right to citizenship, to equal treatment under the law?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Professor Mahmood Mamdani is the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research.
* The article is the text of a keynote speech at the Annual Research Conference on ‘Social justice: theory, research and practice’, at the American University of Cairo, Cairo, 5 May 2011.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] John Nagenda, ‘To walk or not to walk,’ Saturday Vision, 16 April 2011, p. 8
[2] Saturday Vision, 16 April 2011, p. 2
[3] New Vision, April 15, 2011, p. 3
[4] Daily Monitor, April 14, 2011, p. 2
[5] New Vision, April 14, 2011, p. 14. When the Opposition insisted on continuing to Walk to Work, every Monday and Thursday, the official Communication Commission [UCC] sent verbal instructions directing radio and television stations to stop running live coverage of the events. Daily Monitor, April 15, 2011, p. 3
[6] ‘MPs Plot Hunger Strike,’ The Observer, April 14-17, 2011, p. 3

Whose dictator is Gaddafi?

Yash Tandon

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73153

cc P DYash Tandon explains the contradictions of ‘imperial finance capital’ in controlling neo-colonial states like Libya. While Gaddafi was being ‘accommodated’ by imperial powers, the ‘Arab Spring’ forced their hand, he says.

To put the West’s case bluntly and simply, it has apparently intervened in Libya to ‘protect the people’ from the ‘dictator’ Gaddafi. This begs the question: whose dictator is Gaddafi?

If there is one third world leader in the whole galaxy of the Empire’s neo-colonial dictators, one who best exemplifies the contradiction between the Empire and a neo-colony, it is Gaddafi. Libya is a neo-colony in the sense that Kwame Nkrumah used the term, and Gaddafi, like Robert Mugabe, is objectively a neo-colonial dictator though subjectively anti-imperialist.

To understand this apparent contradiction, one needs to appreciate the vital difference between a colony and neo-colony. A neo-colony is ruled by the Empire not directly; only indirectly - through its agents in the countries concerned. Whilst a neo-colonial economy, and hence the neo-colonial state, is, in the ultimate analysis, controlled by the Empire - on behalf of global finance capital. There is a ‘government’ that is in the seat of governance, and this government, or regime, is often in open defiance of the Empire. When the Empire talks of ‘regime change’, it means change in government without losing its control over the neo-colony.

To put the matter from the other side, a neo-colony is not, as the term might imply, a docile, submissive, community. It is a community, or a people, still in struggle against the Empire for its full liberation. The people occasionally rebel against the government if they are oppressed or economically marginalised, as, among others, in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Zimbabwe. In rebelling against a neo-colonial government, however, the people also rebel, objectively, against the Empire, against the neo-colonial economic and political order. These are two sides of the same coin; they are the same phenomenon. Flip one side of the coin, and you see the face of Gaddafi; flip the other side and you see the face of the Empire. The challenge facing a neo-colonial ‘upstart’ like Gaddafi and Mugabe is how to keep the coin with the face of the Empire visible. Of course, the Empire has the reverse challenge. In the case of both Zimbabwe and Libya, the Empire has been better than its rebellious neo-colonial dictators in keeping the coin with the ‘dictator’s’ face visible at the top.

How has the Empire managed to do this? It has done so by using three weapons: one, by exploiting the divisions among the people; two, by using the ‘humanitarian’ card; and three by exploiting its bigger control over the world media. In both Libya and Zimbabwe, the Empire has been able to portray itself as a ‘saviour’ of the people, an ‘ally’ to ‘help’ them remove the government and put in place one that is more ‘democratic’. This is what is currently happening in the Arab world and many parts of Africa where the people have taken to the streets to protest against a system that is oppressing and exploiting them.

Each neo-colony is different. Each has its own history, culture, economic links with the global economy and ethnic, religious and class configuration. To understand the specific character of Libya and Gaddafi, a bit of knowledge of history is necessary. It is important to bear in mind that Libya is part of an ancient civilisation going back to the Phoenicians in the 5th century B.C., well before the birth of western civilisation. In more recent times, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Libya fell in the hands of Italy. In October 1911, Italian battleships attacked Tripoli, bombing the city for three days. Resistance followed under Omar Mukhtar's Mojahideen guerrilla forces. Thousands of Libyans were forced to leave their land and live in concentration camps. Thousands died of hunger, illness and some of them were hanged or shot because they were believed to be helping the Mojahideen. The Libyan historian Mahmoud Ali At-Taeb said in an interview with the Libyan magazine Ash-Shoura (October 1979) that in November 1930 there were at least 17 funerals a day in the camps due to hunger, illness and depression. Mukhtar's nearly 20 year struggle came to an end when he was captured in battle and on 16 September 1931 hanged in front of his followers in the concentration camp of Sollouq by the orders of the Italian court. He was about 83 years old, but he kept on fighting until death. Today Mukhtar’s face is shown on the Libyan 10 Dinar bill. His final years were immortalized in the movie ‘The Lion of the Desert’ (1981). This history, and the heroic resistance put by Libya’s national hero, Omar Mukhtar, go some way to explain the arrogance of Gaddafi towards Western civilisation and colonisation.

This is the legacy that inspires Gaddafi, just as in Zimbabwe it is Kaguvi's spirit (his mudzimu) that inspired Mugabe and the people to fight the second Chimurenga against the British Empire. Coming to modern times, on 1 September 1969, Colonel Gaddafi overthrew King Idris in a bloodless military coup. The British tried to dislodge him (the so-called ‘Hilton Assignment’) but failed. Gaddafi has been in power ever since. In 1977, he renamed the Libyan Arab Republic the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Gaddafi created a system of ‘Islamic socialism’ which blended Arab nationalism; ‘direct, popular democracy‘; aspects of the welfare state; and Islamic morals (among them, outlawing alcohol and gambling), on all of which he elaborated in his ‘The Green Book’. He closed down American and British military bases and partly nationalised foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. In June 1972 he announced that any Arab wishing to volunteer for the Palestinian struggle for liberation could register at any Libyan embassy and would be given training on armed combat. In the hope of persuading the West to end support for Israel, he promoted oil embargoes as a political weapon. On 7 October 1972, he praised the Lod Airport massacre, carried out by the Japanese Red Army. In 1976 after a series of attacks by the Irish Provisional IRA, he claimed that he had been supplying arms to the IRA.

Notwithstanding all this, and despite Gaddafi being a thorn in the flesh of the Empire, Libya (like Zimbabwe) has remained a neo-colony of the Empire. A few facts attest to this reality. Libya is OPEC's 8th largest oil producer. It depends primarily upon revenues from the petroleum sector, which contributes practically all export earnings and over half of GDP. According to the International Energy Agency, more than 70 per cent of its oil is exported to European countries, especially Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, many of whom have invested heavily in Libyan oil. For example, by the end of October 2010, the number of French companies in Libya had nearly doubled from 2008 - most of them in the energy sector. It is no wonder that President Sarkozy is so nervous about the outcome of the current civil war in Libya. Italy alone buys a quarter of Libya's oil and 15 per cent of its natural gas. In all these years, Italian companies continued to retain a strong presence in Libya, which owned significant shares in Italy's Eni oil corporation, Fiat, Unicredit bank and Finmeccanica. In January 2002, Gaddafi purchased a 7.5 per cent share of Italian football club Juventus for US$ 21 million, through a long-standing association with Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli. As well as Italy, several other European and British companies maintained strong commercial interests in Libya. This is at the national level. But at the personal level, the Gaddafi family became extremely wealthy as a result of his continuing links with the Empire. The $70 billion Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) is a state institution, but it would be a safe bet that Gaddafi has (or had, until a recent freeze on it) full control over it. Whilst he financed many groups fighting the Empire, he and his sons, known to live in opulent luxury in the West, often donated money to ‘liberal’ causes, such as the London School of Economics Centre for the ‘Study of Global Governance’; indeed, the former Director of the LSE, Anthony Giddens, (Prime Minister Tony Blair’s political mentor) visited Gaddafi in 2007 to give him some lectures on ‘democracy’.

However, Gaddafi has his idiosyncrasies. He is trusted neither by the Empire nor by his fellow heads of state in the Arab League and the African Union. President Museveni, in praising Gaddafi as a ‘nationalist’ criticised him for his ‘mistakes’ - among them, backing Idi Amin in Uganda; pushing for a United States of Africa; proclaiming himself ‘king of kings’; ignoring the plight of Southern Sudan; and promoting terrorism. For the Empire, Gaddafi had become an unreliable, indeed dangerous, neo-colonial dictator. The Empire had to bring him to book.

Here is a brief account of how the Empire ‘disciplined’ Gaddafi and finally succeeded. For most of the 1980s and 90s, Libya was under the Empire’s economic and diplomatic sanctions. In April 1986, a joint US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps force attacked Libya. In 1993 the UN imposed sanctions against it. As the sanctions began to bite, President Nelson Mandela made a media-hyped visit to Gaddafi in 1997 followed by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. As a result of these overtures, Gaddafi agreed in 1999 to hand over two Libyans accused of planting a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which came down on Lockerbie, Scotland. Gaddafi paid compensation to victims of Lockerbie - US$2.7 billion to the families of the 270 victims, i.e. up to US$10 million each. The UN sanctions were thereupon suspended, but US sanctions against Libya remained in force. Gaddafi went on to cooperate with investigations into previous Libyan acts of state-sponsored terrorism, and agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. On 15 May 2006, the US State Department announced that it would restore full diplomatic relations with Libya, and that it would be removed from the list of nations supporting terrorism. Libya was thus restored to its ancien regime status as a neo-colony.

Following Gaddafi’s rehabilitation, several imperial Heads of State, most flamboyantly the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rushed to Tripoli to shower the ‘dictator’ with photo opportunities of kisses and hugs and to secure from him investment opportunities as well as access to oil. In March 2004, Blair went to Libya, and praised Gaddafi for his co-operation. In July 2007, Sarkozy visited Libya and signed a number of bilateral and multilateral (European Union) agreements. In August 2008, Berlusconi signed a landmark cooperation treaty in Benghazi, under which Italy agreed to pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation, in exchange for Libya agreeing to stop illegal immigration to Italy, and investments in Italian companies. As the diplomatic editor of The Daily Telegraph, David Blair, said, Libya's 'Brother Leader', had gone from being ‘the epitome of revolutionary chic’ to ‘an eccentric statesman with entirely benign relations with the West’. (The Daily Telegraph, 13 August 2009). Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron, not to miss his turn, went to Libya to sell arms to the Empire’s neo-colonial dictator, even as the people were marching against him in Tripoli.

But soon the imperial dictators were to regret their sudden passion for Gaddafi. The Tunisian and Egyptian ‘people’s revolutions’ took them by surprise. When the contagion spread to Libya, the Empire could no longer defend the recently rehabilitated Gaddafi. It jumped on the ‘democratic bandwagon’, making a quick U-turn, and ditched Gaddafi as quickly as they had dashed to hug him. That Gaddafi ran a tight-fisted autocratic regime in Libya for decades was a well-known fact. His autocracy was never a matter of much concern to the Empire. There were other equally harsh regimes in the service of the Empire in other parts of the Arab world, such as Bahrain and Yemen, as well as in many pro-imperial neo-colonies in Africa. What tipped the scale against Gaddafi was his unreliability, and not the fact that he was a ‘dictator’. The challenge the Empire faced since his turnaround in 1999 had been how to turn Gaddafi from a dictator who served ‘revolutionary’ causes to one who would serve imperial interests without creating problems for it. When this did not happen, he had to go, as indeed Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak, long time ‘allies’ (read, ‘neo-colonial dictators’) of the Empire.

But how to get rid of Gaddafi became a bigger problem for the Empire than getting rid of Ben Ali and Mubarak. Earlier, I explained two vital differences between a colony and neo-colony. There is a third difference between the two. Unlike colonies, neo-colonies are ‘sovereign’ states, and members of the UN. They have rights as ‘independent nations’, rights to self-determination, and rights to development. The Empire cannot just bomb a sovereign member of the UN, for example, without the UN’s sanction, especially of its Security Council, which is the organ in the UN that deals with matters of international peace and security. This creates hurdles for the Empire. In the UN context, for example, the Empire has to get Russia and China (the two other permanent members of the Security Council with a veto power) on board, and at least a majority of the remaining non-permanent members before it can attack a neo-colony. The Empire could not just attack Libya and take out Gaddafi. A proper rationale had to be engineered - one that could be sold to the Empire’s own sceptical publics, to ‘allies’ in the other neo-colonies, and to allies in non-imperial Europe and the rest of the third world. The critical support needed here was that of the other neo-colonies in the Arab World, best of all if it could be expressed institutionally by the Arab League. After much neo-colonial ‘persuasion’ and carrot dangling, this was achieved. For years the League has been belittled, even ridiculed, by the Empire for its flabbiness and foibles. Suddenly, when the League supported the ‘no-fly zone’ against Libya, it became ‘the voice of the Arab people’. In the event, Russia and China abstained, as also did India and Brazil, for reasons that we cannot go into here. For good measure, the African neo-colonies - South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon - voted in favour of the resolution.

Once these ‘enabling conditions’ of a new ‘diplomatic reality’ was created, the Empire was quickly able to get the Security Council to pass a ‘consensus’ resolution. Resolution 1973 (2011) demanded ‘an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians’, which it said might constitute ‘crimes against humanity’; it imposed a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace - ‘a no-fly zone’; and tightened sanctions on the Gaddafi regime and its supporters. It authorised Member States, ‘acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory’ - requesting them to immediately inform the Secretary-General of such measures.

However, even before the ink was dry, France had begun to bomb Libya. Soon France was joined by Britain and the United States, until the ‘authority’ of the UN was effectively transferred from it to NATO. International lawyers will no doubt write copious papers on the legality of the actions that followed in terms of both the resolution and international law. For example, in an ‘open letter to President Barack Obama on the crisis in Libya’ the National Conference of Black Lawyers argued that there was ‘no lawful basis for commencing a military campaign’ in Libya. But in the world of ‘diplomatic reality’, this is just ‘a lot of noise’ after the fact. And in any case, there are always several contending views on the legality or otherwise of such actions. Above all, there is no equivalent of the Nuremburg Tribunal or the International Criminal Court that dare put on trial the Imperial Dictators -Obama, Clinton, Sarkozy, or Cameron. The ICC is essentially a neo-colonial tool of the Empire, meant to be used only against third world or former East and Central European dictators and violators of human rights.

CONCLUSION

Libya is a neo-colonial state; it is imperial finance capital which, despite contradictions, is in effective control of the state and its economy. Gaddafi has been an unwilling neo-colonial dictator for finance capital, with a rather utopian vision to liberate from the Empire; utopian because he wanted to fight the Empire whilst still keeping the country’s and his own wealth within the imperial industrial, financial and banking system. The Empire might have accommodated him, and indeed did rehabilitate him after his turnaround in 1999, but the ‘Arab Spring’ upset the programme of the Empire, and it had to quickly take a U-turn and ditch Gaddafi just as it Ben Ali and Mubarak. The issue of how things might move forward in Libya is a big issue, one which I shall write about in the next column.

* Yash Tandon is a writer on development theory and practice, chairman of SEATINI and senior adviser to the South Centre.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Latest fibs from world financiers

Are ‘African lions’ really roaring?

Patrick Bond

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73149

cc D C NPatrick Bond makes a stinging critique of the recent report of the African Development Bank that claims that ‘one in three Africans is middle class’ and as a result, Africa is ready for ‘take off’.

Apparently, ‘one in three Africans is middle class’ and as a result, Africa is ready for ‘take off’, according to African Development Bank chief economist Mthuli Ncube last week at the World Economic Forum–Africa summit in Cape Town. ‘Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we've not spent a lot of time thinking about.’

Obviously not: Ncube defines middle class as those who spend between $2 to 20 a day, a group that includes a vast number of people considered extremely poor by any reasonable definition, given the higher prices of most consumer durables in African cities. Those spending between just $2 and $4 a day constitute a fifth of all sub-Saharan Africans, even Ncube admits, while the range from $4 to $20 a day amounts to 13 per cent, with 5 per cent spending more than $20 a day.

Below the $2 a day level, 61 per cent of Africans are mired in deep poverty, a stunning reflection of ongoing underdevelopment due to imperialism, the resource curse and nefarious African elites.

It’s just as Walter Rodney explained in his book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ nearly four decades ago: ‘the operation of the imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Secondly, one has to deal with those who manipulate the system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said system.’

Playing both roles, the likes of Ncube have not changed their neoliberal tunes, they simply hold up a small sliver of (desperately entrepreneurial) Africans engaged in petty commodity exchange as the hope for the future.

Such distortion-heavy Afro-optimism arrives in waves. After 1950s–1970s independence dreams soured, the early 1990s witnessed hopeful democratisation tendencies, yet most subsequent elections were tainted.

By the mid-1990s, as Time magazine reported, ‘when a new generation of leaders emerged, Africans dared to hope that things could finally be changing. People like Issaias Afewerki in Eritrea, Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia promised a new style of leadership that focused on building economies and democratic nations instead of shoring up their power by force and ensuring that they and their friends got rich. When President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he touted this generation as Africa's great hope.’

Though all were soon subsequently unveiled as ruthless dictators, Afro-optimism was revived thanks to the 2001 New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and its 2003 African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). But the programmes’ champion, Thabo Mbeki, was fired by his own party in 2008, and the two other highest-profile African Union (AU) leaders were the tyrants Zenawi (the lead AU climate negotiator and APRM chair still today) and Moammar Gaddafi (recent AU president). Nepad and the APRM were written off.

THE BROKEN ICT TECHNO-FIX

One oft-cited reason for the new Afro-optimism fad is cellular telephony access in many areas that were formerly off-grid for communications. Recall that similar high hopes for raised productivity through leapfrogging led to the last quarter-century’s microfinance fantasies. But it has become clear in recent months in India (with its 200,000 farm suicides) as well as the microdebt mecca of Bangladesh that there was too little economic space to allow women to borrow at high interest rates so as to compete in glutted petty commodity markets.

The bank’s most recent Africa policy paper argued that the ‘success of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), especially mobile phone penetration, shows how rapidly a sector can grow. It also shows how the public sector can set the conditions for the exponential growth of a vital industry that could transform the continent.’

The reality is less encouraging. Although Africa is better with cellphones than it was without (say, 15 years ago), the actual performance of the industry reveals telling weaknesses. These include the role of multinational capital in sucking out profits and dividends, the lack of genuine competition (collusion is notorious even in the largest economy, South Africa), relatively high prices for cellphone handsets and services, and limited technological linkages to internet service.

Last year, a report (‘Towards evidence-based ICT policy and regulation’) by Johannesburg researchers Enrico Calandro, Alison Gillwald, Mpho Moyo and Christoph Stork unveiled a host of ICT deficiencies, because although ‘the mobile market, has experienced significant growth, outcomes have been sub-optimal in many respects.’

For example, the authors argue, cellphone penetration ‘figures tend to mask the fact that millions of Africans still do not own their own means of communication.’ Moreover:

- Africa continues to lag behind other regions both in terms of the percentage of people with access to the full range of communications services and the amounts and manner in which they can be used – primarily as a result of the high cost of services
- the cost of wholesale telecommunication services as an input for other economic activities remains high, escalating the cost of business in most countries
- the contribution of ICT to gross domestic product, with some exceptions, is considerably less than global averages
- national objectives of achieving universal and affordable access to the full range of communications services have been undermined by poor policies
- as a general trend across the continent, while the voice divide is decreasing, the internet divide is increasing and broadband is almost absent on the continent
- the fixed-line sector continues to show no signs of recovery as most countries experienced negative growth between 2006 and 2008.

Indeed for nearly all of Africa, cellphone penetration rates ‘remain below the 40% critical mass believed to trigger the network effects associated with economic growth’ and even in more mature markets (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia and South Africa), ‘The high “penetration” figures result form the use of multiple-SIM cards, resulting in over-counting, often by several million.’

As for internet, they report:

- broadband uptake trails even other developing regions in the world with a penetration rate below 2 per cent
- low penetration rates are mainly a result of the prohibitively high costs of internet services
- the landing of several undersea cables and a number of terrestrial fibre investment projects have led to a significant reduction in the costs of accessing the Internet. In some countries, the drop in wholesale prices has not, however, filtered to end-user prices
- digital literacy and the affordability of access devices like personal computers is expected to remain a challenge.

The researchers conclude: ‘Large numbers of citizens across the continent still lack access to or cannot afford the kind of communication services that enable effective social and economic participation in a modern economy and society.’

MACRO-ECONOMIC MUMBO-JUMBO

Given this reality across the board, there are practically no micro-economic successes to speak of. Thus the current Afro-optimist wave is a tsunami of macro-economic propaganda, led not by African politicians and their northern helpers, but by resurgent multilateral development banks.

In February, the World Bank issued a strategy document, ‘Africa’s future and the World Bank’s support to it’, followed in April by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ‘Regional Economic Outlook’ for Africa.

The latter report notes ‘a structural upbreak in growth encompassing 21 of the region’s 44 countries. Many of the strongest performers have sustained their superior performances for a decade or more through good times and bad and increasingly they exhibit characteristics associated not only with faster growth, but more sustained growth. For now, at least, the lions continue to roar.’

But once we correct the economists’ definitions of GDP (gross domestic product) growth by factoring in environmental destruction and non-renewable resource depletion, even a 2006 World Bank report (‘Where is the wealth of nations?’) concedes a net ongoing reduction of African wealth.

One motivation behind this hype is a return to austerity and intensified globalisation, following a brief period of much higher African deficit spending required to counteract the world crisis. The IMF Regional Economic Outlook’s ‘Main findings’ argued that African countries’ budgets ‘should be moving away from the supportive stance of the last few years.’

And African central banks should raise interest rates, says the IMF: ‘Monetary policy remains looser than desirable in many countries in the region, even before the recent surge in fuel and food prices.’ Normally with higher prices on imported oil and grains, a lower interest rate would compensate to boost weaker domestic economies. But no, the IMF’s main fear is always inflation, since the institution represents bankers, who fear the erosion of the value of their main asset, money.

Out of 22 recent IMF Africa programmes, according to a 2010 Center for Economic and Policy Research study, 17 were contractionary orders and just five expansionary. Even South Africa was advised in September 2008 to intensify its neoliberal bias.

By that time, African fiscal deficits were blooming: a slight spending increase conjoined with a huge revenue drop, generated a switch from a positive fiscal balance (6 per cent of GDP) to a huge deficit (-6 per cent) between 2008 and 2009. That’s how Africa survived the world crisis without more damage.

POPULAR PROTEST AS ANTIDOTE

Imposing a new round of Washington consensus policies risks what even World Bank chief Africa economist Shanta Devarajan in 2009 termed ‘the specter of political instability and social unrest’. For Devarajan, ‘market-based reforms, which were painful in the first place but which African countries implemented because they could see the impact they were having on growth, are likely to lose political support because they no longer deliver results.’

At the same press briefing, Bank Africa Vice President Obiageli Ezekwesili worried: ‘It is precisely in a season of crisis like this that African governments must stay the course of market-based reforms.’

Last month, a journalist asked IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn about the North African uprisings: ‘Do you have any fears that there is perhaps a far left movement coming through these revolutions that want more, perhaps, closed economies? I mean, there have been a lot of pictures of Che Guevara there.’

Strauss-Kahn’s reply was telling: ‘Good question. Good question. There’s always this risk, but I’m not sure it will materialize.’

Instead, Strauss-Kahn’s institution claims that Africa has 17 ‘great takeoff’ countries with at least 2.25 per cent per year per capita GDP rates over the prior 13 years, featuring ‘macro stability, good institutions, and pro-growth structural reforms’.

Likewise, authors of the World Bank’s new Africa strategy ‘conclude that Africa could be on the brink of an economic takeoff, much like China was 30 years ago, and India 20 years ago.’

The African Development Bank parroted at the World Economic Forum: ‘Due to strong progress in and across many African countries, people are beginning to predict that Africa’s economy may take off as did China’s 30 years ago and that of India 20 years ago.’

These raised expectations are absurd. In a low-profile study published in February, three IMF economists (Gonzalo Salinas, Cheikh Gueye and Olessia Korbut) at least recognised (while disagreeing): ‘The apparent stagnation of SubSaharan Africa (the poorest region in the world) in an era of freer markets has fueled strong criticisms against market reforms. Indeed, condemnation of economic liberalization has become part of mainstream development thinking, and several commentators urge African countries to accelerate growth by modifying their comparative advantage on natural resources.’

Given how disastrous globalisation has been for Africa, a ‘far left movement’ is long overdue, to democratise societies (as is underway in not only Tunisia and Egypt but Swaziland, Uganda, Zimbabwe and other countries), to preserve natural resources (especially fossil fuels) and rethink the merits of extractive industries, and to meet basic needs and balance local economies through domestic (‘import-substitution’) production.

Only with such a movement can we move from the Bretton Woods institutions’ feeble-minded hucksterism to a genuine Afro-optimism – bottom-up and people-powered. Until then, the global financial agencies’ desperation for an African success story should be taken with not a grain, but a calabash full of salt.

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* Patrick Bond is with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Tell no lies, claim no easy victories…

Amilcar Cabral

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73135

cc CaboindexIn these 1965 writings, Amílcar Cabral, the Guinea-Bissau leader assassinated in 1973, discusses the responsibilities of those involved in revolution.

Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.

We should recognise as a matter of conscience that there have been many faults and errors in our action whether political or military: an important number of things we should have done we have not done at the right times, or not done at all.

In various regions - and indeed everywhere in a general sense - political work among the people and among our armed forces has not been done appropriately: responsible workers have not carried or have not been able to carry through the work of mobilization, formation and political organisation defined by the party leadership. Here and there, even among responsible workers, there has been a marked tendency to let things slide…and even a certain demobilisation which has not been fought and eliminated…

On the military plane, many plans and objectives established by the Party leadership have not been achieved. With the means we have, we could do much more and better. Some responsible workers have misunderstood the functions of the army and guerilla forces, have not made good co-ordination between these two and, in certain cases, have allowed themselves to be influenced by preoccupation with the defence of our positions, ignoring the fact that, for us, attack is the best means of defence…

And with all this as a proof of insufficient political work among our armed forces, there has appeared a certain attitude of 'militarism' which has caused some fighters and even some leaders to forget the fact that we are armed militants and not militarists. This tendency must be urgently fought and eliminated within the army…

If ten men go to a rice field and do the day's work of eight, there's no reason to be satisfied. It's the same in battle. Ten men fight like eight; that's not enough…One can always do more. Some people get used to the war, and once you get used to a thing it's the end: you get a bullet up the spout of your gun and you walk around. You hear the motor on the river and you don't use the bazooka that you have, so the Portuguese boats pass unharmed. Let me repeat: one can do more. We have to throw the Portuguese out.

Create schools and spread education in all liberated areas. Select young people between 14 and 20, those who have at least completed their fourth year, for further training. Oppose without violence all prejudicial customs, the negative aspects of the beliefs and traditions of our people. Oblige every responsible and educated member of our Party to work daily for the improvement of their cultural formation.

Oppose among the young, especially those over 20, the mania for leaving the country so as to study elsewhere, the blind ambition to acquire a degree, the complex of inferiority and the mistaken idea which leads to the belief that those who study or take courses will thereby become privileged in our country tomorrow…But also oppose any ill will towards those who study or wish to study…

In the liberated areas, do everything possible to normalise the political life of the people. Section committees of the Party (tabanca committees), zonal committees, regional committees, must be consolidated and function normally. Frequent meetings must be held to explain to the population what is happening in the struggle, what the Party is endeavouring to do at any given moment, and what the criminal intentions of the enemy may be.

In regions still occupied by the enemy, reinforce clandestine work, the mobilisation and organisation of the populations, and the preparation of militants for action and support of our fighters…

Develop political work in our armed forces, whether regular or guerilla, wherever they may be. Hold frequent meetings. Demand serious political work from political commissars. Start political committees, formed by the political commissar and commander of each unit in the regular army.
Oppose tendencies to militarism and make each fighter an exemplary militant of our Party.

Educate ourselves, educate other people, the population in general, to fight fear and ignorance, to eliminate little by little the subjection to nature and natural forces which our economy has not yet mastered.

Convince little by little, in particular the militants of the Party, that we shall end by conquering the fear of nature, and that man is the strongest force in nature.

Demand from responsible Party members that they dedicate themselves seriously to study, that they interest themselves in the things and problems of our daily life and struggle in their fundamental and essential aspect, and not simply in their appearance. Learn from life, learn from our people, learn from books, learn from the experience of others. Never stop learning.

Responsible members must take life seriously, conscious of their responsibilities, thoughtful about carrying them out, and with a comradeship based on work and duty done.

Nothing of this is incompatible with the joy of living, or with love for life and its amusements, or with confidence in the future and in our work…

Reinforce political work and propaganda within the enemy's armed forces. Write posters, pamphlets, letters. Draw slogans on the roads. Establish cautious links with enemy personnel who want to contact us. Act audaciously and with great initiative in this way…Do everything possible to help enemy soldiers to desert. Assure them of security so as to encourage their desertion. Carry out political work among Africans who are still in enemy service, whether civilian or military. Persuade these brothers to change direction so as to serve the Party within enemy ranks or desert with arms and ammunition to our units.

We must practice revolutionary democracy in every aspect of our Party life. Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others. Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Source: Amilcar Cabral, ‘Revolution in Guinea, stage 1’, London, 1974, pp70-72. These extracts were first published in English in Basil Davidson's ‘The Liberation of Guiné, aspects of an African revolution’.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

No democracy relies so much on the military

Joe Oloka-Onyango

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73168

cc US ArmyMakerere University law professor Joe Oloka-Onyango made a presentation at the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) post-election 2011 conference in Kampala on 27 April 2011. President Museveni, who closed the conference, was very critical of Professor Oloka’s presentation, accusing him of poisoning the minds of ‘our children’. Uganda’s The Observer published a slightly edited version of the paper that got Museveni so worked up.

Today my first message to you is: Pray for Uganda!

But as you pray, I urge you not only to think of matters spiritual. Rather, I ask you to think of religion today as a means through which we can correct the many ailments that afflict us, and for you to go back to the manner in which the founders of the world’s great religions used their power: not as a means to guarantee that their flock grow in number, but as a mechanism for enlightenment and caution.

Today I want to urge you to face the main challenges of governance confronting the country and to step out from your mosques, churches and temples and confront the evils we are facing head on. In other words, as you pray, please keep one eye open!

I have been asked to examine the key governance challenges we face in Uganda today. I want to focus on what needs to be undone. In other words, what things do we need to rid ourselves of in order to improve the state of governance as we approach the swearing-in ceremony of a new/old government and move into the next five years of NRM rule? In order to answer that question, it is necessary for us to take a small step back in history.

When 42-year-old guerilla leader Yoweri Kaguta Museveni emerged from the five-year bush war to claim the presidency of Uganda in 1986, he was proclaimed as a great redeemer. Although there were many questions as to whether he had the credentials to lead such a decimated and demoralized population out of the doldrums, there can be little doubt that Uganda has done fairly well under his steerage.

It is not for me to sing the praises of the government, but even the most ardent critic must admit that Uganda is no longer “the Sick Man of Africa” that it used to be in the 1980s. Twenty five years later, Museveni remains at the helm of Ugandan politics, and on February 18, 2011, he received yet another endorsement in an election that extends his term in power until 2016.

He has already entered the record books as East Africa’s longest-serving leader, outstripping both the late Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenyan ex-President Daniel arap Moi. By the end of this 6th term, Museveni will be 72 years old, and at 30 years in power will join the ranks of Africa’s longest, among them, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Angolan president Eduardo dos Santos and the beleaguered Muammar el Gaddafi.

But it will also be the time to ask whether Museveni’s legacy will be that of the former Tanzanian president, who left office still loved and revered, or a figure of tragedy and hatred like Moi? Indeed, as North Africa witnesses the nine-pin like collapse of long-term dictatorships starting with Tunisia and spreading like wildfire, it is necessary to inquire how it is that Museveni won the February 18 election, and what lessons this has for political struggle and freedom in Uganda.

Drawing on Libya for comparison is particularly apt since Museveni has long been an ally of Muammar Abu Minyar al Gaddafi. You will recall that on one of many trips to Kampala, the eccentric leader of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya urged Museveni to stay in office for life, arguing that revolutionaries are not like company Managing Directors.

The former do not retire from office! It is a lesson Museveni took to heart, removing presidential term limits from the constitution in 2005, and setting himself well on the way to a de facto life presidency.

But before we look to the future, we need to return to the past, especially to understand the recent election. What explains Museveni’s February victory, especially given that while largely predicted, the margin by which he won (68% of the presidential vote and 75% for his National Resistance Movement in the parliamentary poll) stunned many!

We need to compare this margin with the three previous elections in 1996 (when he won with 75%), in 2001 (69%) and in 2006 (59%). According to the pundits who filled the radio airwaves before the poll, while still popular and dominant and thus likely to win, the downward trend would continue. Some even predicted that there would be a run-off because the 50.1% margin would not be scaled in the first round. The other issue of surprise was the relative calm and lack of violence that attended the election.

Most foreign observers, from the European Union to the US government, described the vote as generally peaceful, free of bloodshed and largely a “free and genuine” expression of the wishes of the Ugandan people. It was only the African Union (AU) that declined outright to describe the poll as “free and fair”.

The local media described it as the “most boring” poll in recent history, lacking as it did much of the drama, intrigue and confrontation that Ugandans had become accustomed to. It is thus not surprising that Museveni’s rap ditty, ’Give Me My Stick/You Want Another Rap?’ garnered more attention than the substantive issues at stake.

NOT YET MULTI-PARTY

To fully comprehend the outcome of Uganda’s recent poll, it is necessary to understand a number of basic facts. The first is that Uganda is yet to become a functioning multiparty democracy. For the first nineteen years of Museveni rule, we operated under a “no-party” or “movement” system of government, which was little better than a single-party state.

Under that system, government and party institutions overlapped right from the lowest level (resistance or local councils) through to Parliament. Indeed, in many respects Museveni took a leaf from Gaddafi’s popular councils, creating these LCs as supposedly representative of grassroots democracy, but essentially a cover for single-party dominance.

Today, many of the no-party structures remain intact and operative. They function as the main conduits of political mobilisation and for the channeling of state resources, buttressed by a massive local bureaucracy of government agents and spies.

These include the Local Councils (especially 1 and 2), and although they may appear insignificant, they in fact play a crucial role in governance in the country. Indeed, that system remains intact, and only this week we were advised by the Electoral Commission that elections for the lower levels of local government would be postponed, yet again.

It is clear that not only is the postponement illegal, it also reflects a reluctance on the part of the ruling party to make the final necessary transition from the movement to a multi-party political system of governance.

POWER OF INCUMBENCY

We also need to recall that in most countries it is very difficult to remove incumbent governments through an electoral process. In the history of African electoral democracy, only a handful of ruling parties have lost a poll.

In Uganda, the fact of incumbency guaranteed President Museveni unfettered access to state coffers, such that the NRM reportedly spent $350 million in the campaign. Whether or not this is true, we have not yet received a proper accounting of how much the NRM [or indeed any other party] spent and from where they received this money; already, this means that we are being held hostage to the lack of transparency and the underhand nature of politics that we thought we had long left behind.

Indeed, the enduring image of the past several months has been that of the President handing out brown envelopes stashed with cash for various women, youth and other types of civic groupings. I don’t know if religious leaders were also beneficiaries of this largesse. If you were, then you must acknowledge that you have become part of the problem. For in those envelopes lies a key aspect of the problem: the phenomenon of institutionalized corruption that has become the hallmark of this regime.

MILITARISED CONTEXT

The other reason for Museveni’s victory lies in the highly-militarised context within which politics and governance in Uganda is executed. We know that after five years of civil war (1981 to 1986), and twenty-plus years of insurgency in the north of the country, Uganda has virtually never been free from conflict. Unsurprisingly, the idea of peace and security occupy a very significant position within the national psyche.

For older Ugandans there is some fear of a reversion to earlier more chaotic times, while for the younger generation who have only experienced Museveni, the claim that he has restored peace has a particular resonance. Ironically, both groups also fear that if Museveni lost an election, he would never accept the result, and instead would either return to the bush or cause such great instability that it is not worth it to even think about an alternative candidate.

This explains what to many is the most surprising outcome of the election: Museveni’s victory in northern Uganda despite facing two sons-of-the-soil in ex-diplomat Olara Otunnu and the youthful Norbert Mao.

I believe that the looming presence of the military also explains why the turnout for the election at 59% was much lower than any of the previous three polls, where figures were closer to 70%. Many people simply stayed at home, partly out of apathy, but more on account of the fact that the streets of Kampala and other parts of the country were swamped with military personnel.

Any visitor to Uganda over the election period would not be wrong to question whether the country was not a military dictatorship. Moreover, and unfortunately, the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) is more akin to the army in Libya than that it is in Egypt.

UPDF is not well known for exercising restraint when dealing with civilian insurrection or politically-motivated opposition. Indeed, when the red berets and the green uniforms come out on the streets you know that there will be correspondingly higher casualties. That is why we should condemn the increased militarisation of the political context.

It is why we should demand that instead of spending on jets, tear gas and APCs, we need more [money] to be spent on roads, hospitals and our UPE schools.

NO OPPOSITION PARTIES

Museveni’s performance in the north reflects the other side to the story, and that is the fact that Museveni is only as good as the opposition he faces. The dismal performance of the opposition is attributable to a host of factors, not least of which is the fact that there are really no opposition parties in Uganda.

Rather, there are only opposition personalities epitomized by three-time presidential contender, Col. (rtd) Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) who have constructed around themselves weak or non-existent party structures that only come to life in the run up to the election.

During the election Uganda’s opposition seemed to lack a firm ideological position, and while the death of ideology is an ailment affecting the ruling NRM too, its absence among the opposition has proven particularly harmful as there is a lack of a central organizing message around which the opposition can translate obvious disgust and support against Museveni into electoral victory.

Thus, at the start of the election season, the opposition wavered between a united front against Museveni or a boycott, citing the bias of the Electoral Commission and the unlevel playing field.

As we are all aware, neither option was adopted, and at the end of the day all major opposition parties decided to field candidates in both the presidential and parliamentary elections, while decrying the inequality in the contest.

It is important and ironic to note that the opposition may have found a more united voice after the election. This is in the Walk-to-Work (W2W) protests. The fact that the government has failed to find a suitable response to this opposition unity speaks volumes of the foundations on which the February 18 victory rest.

Most importantly, the W2W protests demonstrate that Ugandans can be mobilized around issues as opposed to the mobilization of fear (“we brought you peace”), the mobilization of money (brown envelopes), or the mobilization of elite benefits (the promise of new ministries and the creation of more unviable districts).

At the end of the day, while President Museveni’s victory is not much of a surprise, and in the short run ensures the continued charade of economic and political stability that has characterized the last two decades, I would like to suggest that it portends considerable apprehension for the future of the country.

MUSEVENI CHARACTER

While the President has dismissed comparisons with the fallen dictators of north Africa, there are indeed many parallels. First of all, the state in Uganda has assumed what can only be described as a ‘Musevenist’ character, such that an election such as the recent one can only be an exercise in endorsement of the incumbent, complete with his iconized symbolic hat.

This is because the leadership of the state was afflicted with the disease I have described as ‘stayism’ for which the antidote has never been an election. Secondly, the Ugandan state has also devolved to a situation in which there is little to distinguish between the personal and the political, and where it is increasingly being marked by the growth of what can only be described as family or personal rule.

Thirdly, we are in very real danger of beginning an era of dynastic politics. While President Museveni has only one son (in comparison to Gaddafi’s seven), Muhoozi Kainerugaba is clearly being groomed for greater things. Thus, he has taken charge of the Presidential Guard Brigade, the elite force designed to guarantee his father’s personal security, and he recently wrote a book about the bush war, to burnish his credentials as an intellectual-cum-soldier able to fit into his father’s rather large shoes.

This is clearly the same path that Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi pursued, only to find themselves thwarted by the movement of the people. While it may be true that revolutionaries don’t retire, if there is no other lesson of the recent northern African upheavals, it is that revolutionaries can be forced to resign. It is all simply a matter of time.

It is important for us to underscore a number of lessons [from North Africa] that cannot be ignored:

1. Regardless of the size of the military apparatus one constructs, even the most powerful of regimes can be brought down;

2. Resistance and reaction to poor governance can come from anywhere, even from those who are weakest or most marginalized; it is not necessarily the elite or opposition political forces who lead movements for change, and

3. The terrorism of hunger is much more dangerous than the terrorism of so-called terrorists.

Finally, given all that we have seen above, how do we go about undoing the political damage and rebuilding Uganda’s democracy?

1. We need to begin by undoing the tendency towards political monopoly, and to tackle the desire to absolutely dominate the political arena to the exclusion of any contending force, and particularly the burning desire to try to eliminate all forms of opposition to the existing system of governance. In this regard we need to undo unlimited presidential terms and end the phenomenon of longevity in office;

2. We need to force the ruling party to accept that opposition in a multiparty system is a fact of life; the sooner the NRM learns to live with it the better; it thus needs to adapt its methods of response from coercion and abuse, to dialogue and compromise.

We need to undo the detention-without-trial of political opponents like Besigye and Mao and of all the other political activists who have been detained as a result of the W2W strikes, and of earlier events such as the September 2009 (pro-Kabaka) uprising.

3. We need to undo the links between the state and the ruling (NRM) party, first by undertaking a full audit of where and how the NRM raised the resources to finance the last election and secondly through establishing a permanent Political Party Oversight Commission made up of civil society actors, academicians, peasants, religious leaders, and other individuals and groups from all walks of life, with the goal of ensuring that all political parties adhere to the constitution and work towards the expansion of democratic space, rather than its contraction.

4. We need to undo the legal manipulation and the misuse and abuse of law and of the constitution in order to achieve sectarian political objectives. In particular, we need to condemn and combat the constant shifting of the goalposts when the existing ones do not suit the achievement of a particular political objective. We also need to undo the infrastructure of intolerance and exclusion that is manifest in the following laws:

a. The Institution of Cultural and Traditional Leaders Bill;

b. The NGO Act, HIV/AIDS Act, The Equal Opportunities Commission Act, The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, etc.

5. We need to undo the use of coercive (particularly militaristic) methods to achieve political objectives, of which we have seen numerous examples, culminating with the W2W shootings last week.

There is no other country in the world that lays claim to being a democracy which so extensively relies on the military. We are fed up of the notoriety of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU), the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) and of para-military shadow militias like the Black Mamba; the PGB and the many Generals who have invaded political life. We need to remove the UPDF from directly involving itself in politics as is normally the case in a functioning multiparty system.

6. We need to undo the hypocrisy that claims the high moral ground when we are mired in CORRUPTION, a corruption which has become institutionalized and ‘normal’, and which begins and ends in state house.

7. We need to stop ignoring the youth and treating them like they are the ‘leaders of tomorrow’ or else they will take up arms against us today.

8. We need to undo the monopoly of political power that is exercised only by political actors. All of us have to become politicians; hence while the President’s call for talks with the opposition is welcome, it cannot be a discussion only between the NRM and opposition parties; we also want to be heard and to make sure that no deals are made behind our backs.

Hence, there is a need for a national convention of all civil and social groupings to decide on the future course of the country.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need to stop being complacent about our country. We will wake up and find it gone!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in The Observer (Uganda).
* The author is professor of law at Makerere University and head of the Human Rights Peace Centre (HURIPEC).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Uganda is ready for change

Sokari Ekine

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73163

cc WikipediaAs Ugandan citizens take to the streets in protest against rising food and energy prices, Museveni’s government has once again wheeled out its Anti-Homosexual Bill in an attempt to divert attention from the real source of the problems the people face.

Uprisings continue across the continent, with Uganda being the latest country where citizens have taken to the streets in protest against rising food and energy prices. The Ugandan protests have been organised by Action for Change in a ‘Walk to Work’ campaign, which the majority of media are reporting is led by long-time opposition leader, Kizza Besigye who has since fled the country. However a number of bloggers claim the protests are not led by Besigye.

Mad and Crazy writes:



‘The architects, the brains behind the walk to work demonstrations were Muwanga Kivumbi, Mathias Mpuuga and Mukono North MP, Betty Nambooze Bakireke. Far from spotless characters, they nevertheless believed that it is possible for Ugandans to come together and demand a change. This is probably why before the walk to work demonstrations, they had formed an Activists for Change group that transcended their political party groupings and sought to form an arena where concerned Ugandans can air their grievances and plot how to find redress. It is that last part that particularly appeals to this blogger. That A4C, as they have dubbed their Facebook page, do not just want to be a complaining platform, they actually are trying to come up with solutions.’

The protests have met with a violent response from the government of Yoweri Museveni, with police firing live bullets at crowds, beatings and mass arrests. lexis Okeowo Alexis Okeowo writing in The New Yorker provides some background to the uprisings:

‘Only about a fourth of the four hundred thousand new entrants to the Ugandan labor market find formal employment; the rest enter the informal economy, where wages are minimal and survival is a struggle. Roads, hospitals, and other public services have all withered from government neglect. Residents are amazed as the government prepares to spend almost $800 million on new fighter jets and over 1 million on a lavish swearing in ceremony for Musveni’s new Presidential term, while food prices jumped by thirty-one per cent from April of last year (a jump the government blames on drought) and year on year inflation stands at fourteen per cent, up from eleven per cent last month.’

Africa on the Blog reports on the massive riots following the second arrest of Besigye:

‘The arrest this time round stirred up massive riots with in Kampala city. Ugandans this time want change and are ready to use force. I recently read a statement from the minister of internal affairs who just Besigye form arrest and “the bullets invented by the British and Americans” for killing the protestors. I couldn’t believe this was from a university graduate. The president’s statement was much worse, he used Idi Amin as a benchmark for his leadership skills and claimed Uganda was one of the most democratic countries in the world.’

Ndumba Jonnah Kamwanyah in the Southern Africa FBP likens Museveni to Egypt’s Mubarak with the same mindset and the same relationship with the West:

‘Typical of a mindset of a dictator, President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for 25 years, does not see the connection between the uprisings and his governing style. Instead his delusional mentality makes him see how indispensable he is to Uganda. Narcissistic is what he is, just like all dictators and autocratic leaders, and he does not care about what the Ugandan citizens think or want.

‘The west still considers him as an ally, disregarding his repressive policies on ordinary Ugandans. In fact he is the Hosni Mubarak of sub-Saharan Africa, coddled by the West and other African leaders despite the reality that Museveni has caused several times more deaths of Ugandans as well as citizens of neighboring countries like Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo.’

In what appears to be a calculated move on the part of the Ugandan government, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill [AHB] has been brought back minus the death penalty for a third reading on Wednesday 11 May. Gay Uganda makes the connection between the Walk to Work anti-government protests and the almost certain passing of the AHB. Whether the ‘Walk to Work’ protesters will see it that is a different matter entirely:

‘Less than a week ago, the opposition parties started a 'walk-to-work' peaceful protest. The government responded with over whelming violence. Currently, as I write, the major opposition leader is in neighbouring Kenya, for medical attention for injuries he received during one of his 4 arrests. They sprayed tear gas and pepper direct into his face, after breaking down his car windows. And, this was in full view of the press. The next day, riots paralysed the country. It was after the video of that arrest was shown on TV. Ugandans, the citizens of the country were appalled. They came out on strike. And, the government responded with overwhelming violence again. So bad that the spectre of Idi Amin Dada, famous dictator and life president of Uganda was raised. So, the country is in a ferment. With the coronation to happen in just a few days time. So, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is beind discussed... and ready to be passed. So, it is a DIVERSION. The government needs a heady diversion for the country. For the outraged citizens of Uganda.............If you want to condemn the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, please CONDEMN in the strongest terms possible, the general state of Human rights in Uganda.............But, remember that this is time for the GAY MOVEMENT around the world to make COMMON CAUSE with the average citizen of Uganda to decry the abuse of human rights of ALL UGANDANS.’



There are two petitions circulating to try and prevent the AHB from being passed with the ghastly headline ‘Stop the Kill the Gays bill’. On a positive note there were over 700,000 signatories in less than 24 hours and the Twitter stream for #Uganda was moving so fast it was impossible to read. The last time I had seen such speed was during the resignation of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

In other news, Pan African News Wirereports that the International Criminal Court [ICC] and the International Contact Group have met to provide ‘economic and pseudo-legal assistance for regime change in North Africa’:

‘The proceeding of the so-called “International Contact Group” resulted in the announcement of the establishment of a fund to finance the counter-revolutionary rebel groups that are fighting at the behest of the western states to overthrow the Libyan government. Under the banner of the Transitional National Council (TNC), the rebels are slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the imperialist states...

‘Another controversial institution has weighed in once again as it relates to the situation in Libya and that is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Referred to by many as the “African Criminal Court,” the ICC has a reputation of only targeting and indicting states and individuals on the continent. In Sudan, the ICC has issued warrants against the President Omar al-Bashir and other leading figures within the oil-rich nation, Africa’s largest geographic nation-state.’

Mayibuye Africa - Migration Blog reports that NATO forces deliberately ignored the crises for help from a boat full of African migrants escaping Libya which resulted in the death of 61 people.

“The facts as they appear are clear: A French ship, member of a NATO force acknowledged being in the area close to where the boat was. A helicopter labeled “ARMY” approached the boat and roped down emergency supplies of water and biscuits telling the migrants to hold off, help was on the way. After that? Nothing. No attempt was made to rescue them, nor get additional supplies of food and water. They were left to starve and die of thirst, a harrowing death of anguish and suffering of the men, women and children.’

In Egypt, Egyptian Chronicles explains the reasons for the strike by doctors in the country:

‘Egyptian doctors are having the first strike in country since year 1961 today , thousands of doctors are on strike today across the country from north or south.It is initially a partial strike which means ER , ICU , critical surgeries , neonatal units and acute renal failure units will be operating.Not all the hospitals thought are participating in the strike despite in some governorates almost all the hospitals are participating. In some public hospitals the patients themselves participated in the strike and joined the stands outside the hospitals.’

Gambian blog, The North Bank Evening Standard, writes on the violence around recent elections on the continent, the latest taking place in Nigeria. He writes that the failure of African states to ratify the African Charter on Democracy has contributed to the violence:

‘It is disheartening to note that only 10 of 53 countries on the continent have ratified the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and with South Sudan ready to put on the number (54) in a few months time, soon it will be 44 countries defying their own undertaking. For a continent that have seen terrible suffering, it is common place for States to approve of Charters, Protocols and Conventions, however, domestication and implementation, which are a principal mandate of governments is as hard to take as trying to move a mountain.

‘When African leaders continue to perpetuate themselves in office, winning every election, the credibility of the electoral system may be questioned on whether the results are a fair representation of the will of the people.

‘In fact, at the recently concluded NGOs Forum, human rights defenders agreed that the lack of independence of electoral systems has made elections a growing source of conflict in Africa. Holding of credible elections, addressing electoral fraud has become a major problem on the continent as in many African countries most elections are believed to be rigged in favor of the incumbent president; leaving polls to be hardly free or fair even if they are regard as being so. Similar cases have been witnessed by Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Ivory Coast leading to political unrest in these countries, and the forging of marriages that never were. Ivory Coast knew how unworkable these marriages (Unity Government) are and the negotiators between Gbagbo and Ouattara noted clearly that a “marriage” was a non-starter.

‘In these countries, post election violence has destroyed the lives of many people, mostly the poor and vulnerable, taking away their wealth, health, livelihoods and in some cases their lives.

Black Looks reports on yet another two lesbians raped and murdered in South Africa. Since writing the above post, another sister was found raped and murdered, Nqobile Khumalo from Kwamashu township in Durban and a young transman was also raped in Pretoria. South Africa is now a warzone for the LGBTI community:

‘Today is the 17th anniversary of South Africa’s independence but for Black lesbians there is little to celebrate as today we learn of the rape and murder of yet another young sister. The Constitution debated and formed to protect all South Africans has failed the majority of South Africans. It has shamefully failed the most vulnerable people in the country and in particular young Black lesbians. The body of Noxola Nogwaza was found on Sunday morning. This is just 4 weeks after the body of 20 years old Nokuthula Radebe was discovered and which has not even been reported in the media. The pain of these brutal attacks grows and my heart goes out to their family and friends. May both Nogwaza and Nokuthula Rest in Peace’.

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

Uganda: Statement on the use of excessive force

Uganda Women’s Civil Society Organisations

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73190

cc UN PhotoFollowing the ‘brutal and often excessive manner’ with which the Ugandan state and law enforcement agencies have responded to citizens' demands for government action to address increased prices, cost of living, growing poverty, inequality in distribution of resources and corruption’, Uganda Women’s Civil Society Organisations have issued a statement highlighting their concerns.

Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed a series of disturbing events in which we have seen the State and its law enforcement agencies respond in a brutal and often excessive manner to citizens' demands for government action to address increased prices, cost of living, growing poverty, inequality in distribution of resources and corruption.

During this period, the Police and other security agencies have sought to quell demonstrations under the ‘Walk to Work’ Campaign using live ammunition and copious amounts of tear gas resulting in the loss of life, injuries to persons, and destruction of property. We have seen our sisters, brothers, and children affected in various ways with many still nursing injuries in hospital and others arrested and imprisoned, some without charge. In some incidences, sections of the public have exploited the volatile situation to break the law further spawning a downward spiral of violence both in Kampala and in other towns upcountry.

The shooting to death of two year old Juliana Nalwanga in Masaka, seven-month pregnant Ms. Nalwendo in the stomach and the brutal arrest and treatment of demonstrators and some bystanders are but some of the horrific incidents that have shocked us and invoked unease and a range of reactions from various sections of Uganda’s population and international actors including the Inter Religious Council, the Uganda Law Society and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

While the State has a duty to ensure law and order, the State is also obliged to respect, promote, protect, and fulfill the rights of its citizens as enshrined in the 1995 Constitution and other regional and international treaties to which Uganda is a signatory.[1] In attempting to fulfill its obligations in the last few weeks, the State has instead used excessive force resulting in the infringement of some of the fundamental rights enshrined in Chapter 4 of the Constitution including the right to life, the freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, right to access prompt, fair and timely justice and freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment.

We are also deeply concerned about the suffering that has been occasioned by the escalating food and fuel prices. Many women, men and children are subsequently unable to meet their basic needs and enjoy their basic right to food, education, health and shelter. While we recognize the myriad of causes behind the current crisis, we also wish to express our profound disappointment with government’s indifference, exhibited by the lack of urgent action to curb the situation and apparent disregard of pressing priorities in allocation of government expenditure.

We as Women in Civil Society are hereby convening to register our deep concern and condemnation on the use of excessive force by the Police and other security agencies and subsequent escalating violence and to call upon the State to take critical measures to address the key issues/ concerns raised by the public so as to avert a national crisis. In particular, we wish to register our deep concern of:

– The use of excessive force and especially the use of live ammunition to quell demonstrations, indiscriminate physical assaults on civilians, spraying of vast amounts of tear gas in closed spaces including cars, schools, dispensaries and homes occasioning loss of life and property, severe injuries and pain among innocent children, by standers, those at work and urban dwellers. We are greatly concerned that rather than enjoy state protection, citizens are preoccupied with defending themselves against its wrath;

– The brutality of officers of the Uganda Police Force and other security operatives in handling the “Walk to Work” campaign which amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for those that were arrested;

– The intimidation of human rights defenders who have spoken out on various issues of concern including the declining space for engagement;

– Censorship of the media and a curtailing of press freedom and freedom of expression, including intimidation and security threats to journalists and media houses carrying out their duty as a watchdog of the state and provider of information to the public;

– The increased erosion of the independence of the three arms of government and lack of . The actions and decisions of some judicial officers which cast doubt in the minds of the public on whether justice is being done. We are equally concerned that contrary to the public appeal for the perpetrators of violence to be brought to justice, the Minister for Internal Affairs has instead defended the use of brutal force. Such responses from government risk promoting impunity.

The increased militarization of the State and use of armed forces to enforce law and order and quell peaceful protests which heightens risks of violent conflict and will affect the entire population of Uganda including men, women and children.

We as women’s civil society organisations are calling upon the Government to respect, promote, protect, and fulfill the rights of its citizens as enshrined in the 1995 Constitution and exercise restraint in fulfilling its obligations. Government must recognize that the language of force and violence alienates more then 50% of Uganda’s population – the women and diminishes our initiative to exercise our civic duties within the public sphere;

We are calling upon Government to take proactive measures to address broader social justice issues, and ensure that key concerns voiced by various sections of the public are addressed. We demand for strong policy measures to address issues food security, unemployment, health and education. We also demand for government’s resolve to ensure greater transparency in the allocation and management of public resources, reduction of excessive government expenditure and equitable distribution of benefits of economic growth to all the citizens of Uganda.

We are formally submitting an appeal to the Government and to the International Community through the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights defenders (UNSR) requesting for thorough, prompt and impartial investigations into the human rights violations committed by the security forces.

Finally, we are calling upon the public to remain peaceful in the pursuit of various rights and to desist from violent actions. We are also calling for national dialogue between key parties and urge all stakeholders including the regional and international community to intervene in ensuring peace and justice prevails in Uganda.

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

Bob Marley and emancipation from mental slavery

Horace Campbell

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73194

cc S MReflecting on the life and work of Bob Marley, Horace Campbell discusses the positive messages of hope, mobilisation and self-esteem at the core of the legendary reggae artist’s music.

On 11 May 2011 it was 30 years since Bob Marley joined the ancestors. Bob Marley was a cultural artist who became internationally known as a defender of love, freedom and emancipation. This week we remember him, his songs and his contributions to both revolutionary consciousness and his call for us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery.

BOB MARLEY FROM THE JAMAICAN COUNTRYSIDE

It is usually from the most rural areas where the cognitive skills and the history of community solidarity continue to prevent total mental breakdown. Robert Nesta Marley was born in the rural areas in the island of Jamaica in February 1945. Jamaica was one of the slave-holding territories of British imperialism. The history of rebellions among the enslaved informed the consciousness of the peoples of this island to the point where its name has grown beyond its size as a small island with less than 3 million persons. British cultural imperialists worked hard to inculcate Anglo-Saxon eugenic values of individualism and selfishness but cultural resistance from the countryside provided an antidote to oppression. The assertiveness of the people meant that even among the imperialists, some from among the British fell in love with the island and with its people.

Bob Marley was the product of an interracial relationship between an English military person (Norman Marley, a captain in the colonial army and overseer) and an African woman, Cedilla Booker, from Jamaica. Marley identified with Africa and broke the long tradition of mixed-race persons who denied their African heritage. Bob Marley spent his early years in the lush countryside of St Ann, but moved with his mother to Kingston while still in his early teens. He grew up in Trench Town among the most oppressed sections of the working-class districts of Kingston and was influenced by the Rastafari movement. His formal education came from the Rastafari who developed independent bases for educating the people so that they could escape ‘brainwash education.’ The Rastafari movement has been one of the most profound attempts to transform the consciousness of the Caribbean people so that they recognised their African roots and celebrated Africa’s contributions to humanity. From the Caribbean, this movement has spread to all parts of the world. Bob Marley was one of the most articulate spokesperson for this movement.

Marley’s career as a cultural artist started in 1961 and by 1964 he had teamed up with Neville Livingston (Bunny Wailer) and Winston McIntosh (Peter Tosh) to form the ‘Wailing Wailers’. As a youth I grew up listening to the lyrics of the Wailers and witnessed their transition from rude boys pushing the culture of defiance (in the music of ska and rock steady) to Rastafari spokespersons articulating a different version of peace and love.

Because social movements are not static, the dynamism of the Rastafari culture has been challenged by the mainstream attack on the Rastafari along with the attempts at cooptation within the system. However, one of the severe weaknesses of this movement was the extent to which some of the most conscious elements of the movement succumbed to homophobic and patriarchal ideas.

The fact that this movement had extended itself to embrace a king in Ethiopia reflected the traditions of the colonial society. Many were critical that the Rastas held defensively unto the Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie. There were those intellectuals such as Orlando Patterson who called them escapists and millenarian. But these writers and intellectuals never said why Caribbean peoples who claimed a European king and queen as the head of state were normal but those who called for an African king were escapists. Unfortunately, if labeling the Rastas escapists was the only crime of the intellectual, this would not be fatal. What was significant was how some of these intellectuals justified state repression and violence against the Rastafarian movement. From the original attacks against the Rasta camps in the hills of Jamaica to the use of the dangerous drugs laws to incarcerate thousands, the repression and the persecution of this social movement demonstrated what the African and the poor had to withstand in all parts of the world.

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer came from the ranks of the oppressed youth and soared to great heights internationally. Together they had formed Tuff Gong Label in 1970, which marked a turning point in their career. Soon the Wailers' reputation spread outside Jamaica after they began to tour Europe and the USA. After the breakdown of the group in 1974, Bob Marley formed his own group ‘Bob Marley and the Wailers’. Bob Marley was backed up by three of the most gifted female artists in Jamaica: Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley and Judy Mowatt. From 1974 to 1981 Marley became a world leader for truth and justice. He did not allow individual fame to detract from the message of the music.

THE INSPIRATION OF MARLEY AND HIS REGGAE PHILOSOPHY

Bob Marley was one of the most articulate spokespersons for peace, love and justice. His music of inspiration continues to act as a rallying cry for those who are struggling for change. In the past 30 years, the literature and writings on the philosophy of Bob Marley served to shed more light on the role of music and song as a mobilising force in society. His songs of love and inspiration are now enjoyed in all parts of the world, breaking language and racial barriers. It is now acknowledged on all continents that Bob Marley was one of the most influential musicians of all time. His performance at the Zimbabwe independence celebrations in April 1980 sent the message to the apartheid rulers that oppression would not stand. Within South Africa, Lucky Dube deepened a brand of progressive reggae so that today in all parts of the world there are reggae groups placing their own stamp on this culture of resistance. In 1999, Time magazine dubbed Bob Marley and the Wailers' Exodus the greatest album of the 20th century, while the BBC named One Love the song of the millennium.

The hypocrisy of the British knew no bounds: the same British imperialists who celebrated the song One Love as the song of the millennium were the same down-pressors who unleashed police to arrest and harass young persons who identified with the Rastafari movement. Bourgeois intellectuals in Britain continue to criminalise youths who identify with Bob Marley, stating that these youths belong to a ‘criminal subculture’. Yet it is the Rastafari reggae song and the positive musical healers from among the Rastafari who continue to inspire young people to stand up to defend their humanity in the face of the massive push to turn young people into mindless consumers and gadgets without a care for the world in which they live. These youths listen to Peter Tosh, who wailed, ‘everyone is talking about crime, but who are the criminals’. The progressive wing of the Rastafari movement continues to challenge young people in the capitalist centres to oppose the current social order that is ‘dominated by the relentless privatising and commodification of everyday life and the elimination of critical public spheres where critical thought, dialogue and exchange take place.’

One of the songs that continues to be played in all parts of the world is ‘Get up stand up, stand up for your rights.’ Bob Marley was aware that there could be no peace in a world of injustice and brutal exploitation.

IT TAKES A REVOLUTION TO MAKE A SOLUTION

Though Bob Marley transitioned on 11 May 1981 when he was 36 years old, today we can hear the music of reggae in different languages around the world. Today, as revolutionary upheavals shake Africa and the Middle East, young rebels listen to the lyrics of Bob Marley as they instill in themselves the confidence to stand up for their rights. In Tunisia and Egypt, home-grown reggae artists were parts of the revolutionary process which is still unfolding. Tunisian youths played reggae music and other songs calling on the soldiers, ‘don’t shoot the people’. Clearly, in the revolution, one of the tools was progressive hip hop and reggae. The music of Lion revolution used symbols popularised by Bob Marley to rally the youths of Tunisia to stand up and fight.

Marley had emerged as a Caribbean revolutionary who wailed to promote the spirit of love as the basis for revolution. The revolutionary Che Guevara had clearly stated that, ‘At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love.’ It is this revolutionary love that informs the philosophy of Rastafari, and their principles of peace and love could be discerned in the present international revolutionary pressures. Wherever one goes, young people instinctively turn to the song ‘One love’ to express group solidarity. It is to this song, ‘One love’, where we have to turn from time to time to cope with the challenges of ‘Babylonian provocation’.

Today, many are again turning to the inspiration of Bob Marley in their search for levers to understand the chaos and destruction of the capitalist world. Over the years, I have written on the electric presentation of Bob Marley at the independence celebrations in Zimbabwe in 1980. Such was the power and force of the music that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans flocked to the stadium that night to turn the independence celebrations into a people’s celebration. Because many people could not get into this official celebration, Bob gave a free concert the next night at the Rufaro stadium in Harare and pledged that the music of reggae was now at the gates of apartheid South Africa and that the task of the reggae artists was to continue the fight, just as Peter Tosh had sung, ‘We have to fight, fight against apartheid.’

In his small newspaper called Survival, which was published from the Hope Road Headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, Marley had this to say in 1980:

‘I and I make our contribution to the freedom of Zimbabwe. When we say natty going to dub it up in Zimbabwe, that’s exactly what we mean, give the people of Zimbabwe what they want, now they got what they want, do we want more? Yes, the freedom of South Africa. So Africa Unite, Unite, Unite. You’re so right and let’s do it.’

REGGAE AND REVOLUTION

In any revolutionary process, one of the most important tasks is for the people to recover their self-confidence in order to make history. Rastafari imbued confidence in the peoples of the Caribbean, and it was this same self-confidence and self-esteem that underpinned the spirit of resistance among the Rastafaris from the hills of Jamaica to the streets of Zimbabwe. In his song, Africans a liberate Zimbabwe, Marley prophetically predicted that, ‘soon we would find out who are the true revolutionaries’. Robert Mugabe and his clique exposed themselves soon after independence, when the Zimbabwe government attacked the Rastafari movement in Zimbabwe, castigating Rastas for nor dressing ‘properly’ because they did not wear British suits like the leaders. Mugabe called the Rastas ‘dirty’ and ‘unwashed’, but this was the first sign of a regime that attacked women, same-sex persons and those who opposed the self-enrichment of a small clique. Many Rastas are now listening to the words of Bob Marley, who in the song ‘Ride natty ride’ calls on politicians to pull their own weight and stop making speeches to confuse and oppress the people.

The Caribbean reggae lyrics of confidence and personal dignity continue to spread as people gear themselves for today’s revolutionary moment in world history. As one of the commentators on the Egyptian revolution stated:

‘what the revolution offered the people was the opportunity to restore their sense of self-esteem, honor and dignity. Once the fear barrier was knocked down, they acquired a new sense of pride and empowerment that not only challenged the state monopoly on violence but also defeated it using solely peaceful means. With each passing day they became more determined to fight for their rights and quite willing to tender the sacrifices needed to gain their freedom.’

Bob Marley articulated the need for radical revolutionary change and he dug deep into black life to grasp what C.L.R. James had understood, that black people formed a revolutionary force in world politics because of where they had been located in the system since the Atlantic slave trade. The task of the revolutionary artist and revolutionary intellectual was to unearth the revolutionary potential of the people. This Bob Marley consciously sought to do through his music and concerts. In his last years, his concerts were like giant political rallies.

Of his many renditions about emancipatory politics and the emancipation of the mind, Marley turned to religious language and images to reach a section of the population that is not usually reached by traditional radical discourses on revolution. Those who study wave theory and the physics of music are examining the lyrics and vibrations of the music produced by Bob Marley and reggae artists to see how this art form and spiritual message emerged as a revolutionary form. They are studying the real meaning of Rasta vibrations. Today, these vibrations are helping to inspire revolutionaries as they remember the words of Bob Marley: ‘It takes a revolution to make a solution.’

Bob Marley’s use of religious metaphors stimulates the imagination of the oppressed. In the song, ‘It takes a revolution to make a solution’, Marley starts out with the need for a memory of truth. He used the word revelation, which served as the opener for his call for truth. Secondly, this truth telling would allow the people to expose the mainstream politicians who perpetuated what was termed, ‘the Babylonian system.’

In contemporary society, politics is more or less about accumulation, exclusion and divisions. Bob Marley said that one cannot trust a politician: ‘Can’t trust no shadows after dark.’ He added: ‘never trust a politician to grant you a favour.’ In addition to calling on the people to self-organise by standing up for their rights, Marley in this song on revolution also called for the people to fight so that ‘Rasta can never flop.’ He used the metaphor of the storms and hurricanes to remind the people of the chaos caused by the social system and to call for the overthrow of this system which is capitalism: ‘blood a go run.’ Marley states: ‘In this process of revolution there will be redemption as righteousness covers the earth, as the water covers the seas.’ For Marley, the weak in mind and heart cannot make revolution. The weak conceptions of inferiority had to be transcended in order for revolution to develop. Revolution and freedom were the constant theme of the lyrics in which Bob Marley was calling for the prisoners of Babylon to be free:

‘Too much confusion; so much frustration

‘I don’t want to live in the park

‘Can’t trust shadows after dark

‘Like the birds in the tree, the prisoners must be free.’

Eusi Kwayana, the Caribbean revolutionary, grasped the importance of the Marley intervention and called his contribution one of the landmarks achievements of the Caribbean revolution. In the preface to my book, ‘Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney’, Kwayana wrote:

‘The placing of the stamp of Babylon on the whole of official society and the wide acceptance of this description is one of the landmark achievements of the Caribbean Revolution. The more it is seriously accepted, the more the culture divides into two poles of authority: a necessary forerunner to any long term revolutionary objectives. Those members of the society who do not accept or embrace the dress, or need the religious ideas, accept the language, those who do not accept the language with the movement’s definition of the order of things, accept the music. In fact, such is the power of art that Bob Marley’s music has done more to popularize the real issues of the African liberation movement than several decades of backbreaking work of Pan Africanists and international revolutionaries.’

PAN-AFRICANIST MARLEY AND AFRICAN UNITY

Bob Marley was very conscious that the African revolution and African unity were inseparable. In February 2005 at the moment of his posthumous 60th birthday celebration, Rita Marley and other members of his family organised the massive African Unity concerts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Members of the Marley family were reminding the youth that long before Colonel Muammar Gaddafi claimed to have supported African unity, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and Bob Marley were supporting the full unification of Africa. In all parts of Africa the people sing the song of Bob Marley, ‘Africans unite’.

This call for African unity from the grassroots is as urgent today as it was 31 years ago when Bob Marley uttered these words of unity from the stage in Harare, Zimbabwe. Marley had joined his voice to the push for the full liberation of Africa. He understood that no black person could be free until Africa was free, united and liberated from foreign domination and military interventions. Bob Marley worked hard. I witnessed this in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1980 when he was spending his time grounding with Zimbabwean musicians attempting to learn as much as possible about Zimbabwean music while he was there. One could also see that he was intimately studying the situation on the ground. This capacity for hard work ensured that the Rastas of that period developed independent sources of information on Africa.

In the last year of his earthly life Bob Marley worked hard to unearth spiritual energies to make the people stronger. In his growing awareness of his own mortality, Bob Marley intensified his work and pushed himself to the point where he collapsed in his final concert. Bob Marley was suffering from cancer. This suffering showed him that he only had a short time on earth. Today, Bob Marley is larger in death than when he was alive but as we remember him, we must remember him as a human with strengths and weaknesses. We now know more of these weaknesses and Marley himself communicated his pain and hurt in his songs. It is this same pain and hurt that infused his songs that connected him with other persons going through similar pain. Despite the weaknesses and the pain, Marley stressed the positive and as we remember him, we seek to highlight the positive while learning from the negative.

In the last album, appropriately called ‘Uprisings’, Marley reminded the people that they should ‘have no fear of atomic energy for none of them can stop the time’. The song ‘Redemption song’ exposed the versatility of Marley when he returned to strumming the guitar and asked simply, ‘How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?’ This was where Marley called on the people to ‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but our selves can free our minds.’

This theme of self-emancipation sought to bring the fusion of the ideas of spirituality with the revolutionary changes in the material and technical conditions of production. Reggae music was an early attempt at this fusion in order to provide emancipation from mental slavery so that humans could unleash the latent power of self-expression. In essence, when the Rastafari and Bob Marley called on us to ‘emancipate ourselves from mental slavery,’ they are admonishing the intellectuals and the activists to make a break with the epistemologies that justify and cover up oppression.

Bob Marley seems to have anticipated today’s capitalist push towards mindless consumerism and the attempts to dumb down the kind of deep, critical thinking that is required to challenge entrenched capitalist exploitation and dehumanisation.

Thus Marley’s call for emancipation from mental slavery also speaks to all humans seeking alternatives to the massive push towards mind control and robotisation that is promised in the era of technological singularity, where human beings would be rendered inferior to super-humans who would be products of biology, genetic engineering and robotic science. In such a climate, the Rastafarian movement and the humanist philosophy of Marley promise to act as a force to hold the youth together as humans.

The Rastafari movement has been one of the most profound attempts to transform the consciousness of the Caribbean people. The movement confronted problems pertaining to the colonial and neocolonial world, humans’ relationship with the universe, humans’ relationship with spirits, humans’ relationships with matter and how to reorganise society. In its own way, this movement that arose out of the hills of the Jamaican countryside challenged the greed, competition and individualism of capitalism.

Bob Marley opposed conspicuous consumption and the obscene accumulation of wealth. Up to the time of his passing there were efforts to make him succumb to the disposition of his material wealth, but he eschewed the capitalist forms of inheritance. One witnessed court cases and long litigation because of his opposition to capitalist wills.

Thus even on his bed while he was making the transition to the ancestors, Bob Marley was opposed to the obscene consumptive patterns of the capitalist mode of production and railed against the forms of economic organisation that placed material goods before human needs.

My work on the Rastafari movement in the book ‘Rasta and Resistance’ was an attempt to learn from the positive traditions of this movement to be able to inspire the youth to the long struggles for freedom. This was an attempt at trying to lay the foundations for the move from resistance to transformation. This attempt remains premature, for such a transformation will only be possible when there is the harmonisation of the culture and language of the majority with that which is taught in the schools, colleges and universities in the region. The Egyptian revolution of 2011 has opened new possibilities at the political level. As we remember Bob Marley, revolutionaries will seek his inspiration to push for a quantum leap beyond the world of capitalist oppression, dehumanisation and injustice. Most importantly, in order to move from resistance to transformation and achieve the quantum leap that takes us beyond the world of exploitation and dehumanisation, we must ultimately emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, and from the capitalist forces that celebrate genocide, subjugation, military invasions, environmental plunder and crimes against humanity as progress.

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* Horace Campbell is professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University. He is the author of ‘Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA’. See www.horacecampbell.net.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Journalist in a paper democracy

Interview with Eskinder Nega

Ron Singer

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73174

cc S ARon Singer engages with dissident Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega about the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) and how his wife was forced to give birth while in prison.

Understandably, the democratic risings in the Middle East and North Africa make the rulers of neighbouring countries very nervous. Since all of these rulers have at least a skeleton or two in their own closets, they worry about anything that looks as if it might spark discontent.

Ethiopia, a democracy on paper, is actually under the autocratic rule of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF). Recently, riot police briefly detained and threatened long-time dissident journalist Eskinder Nega. According to an email Eskinder sent me on 14 February, here is what happened:

‘Meant to respond earlier but heavily armed riot police picked me up last Friday and took me to their second in command. He accused me of trying to incite an “Egyptian like protest in Ethiopia” and warned me that the government is losing patience with me. “We are tired of imprisoning you,” he told me. “This time it will not be imprisonment." And I just don't know if he is bluffing or not. Since then, they have made it a point to be visibly present wherever I am.’

The content of some of Eskinder’s recent blogs suggests the government’s motives for this threat. First, there was Eskinder’s implied call for the armed forces not to obey government orders to put down hypothetical protests, and for diplomats to defect:

‘The military is all the EPRDF has in Ethiopia … In the unlikely event that it will remain fiercely loyal to the EPRDF in the face of nation-wide mass protests, civilian fatalities that run in the low hundreds, as is officially the case for the 2005 post-election riots, will be too much for the international community. This is not 2005…

‘EPRDF could count on even less officials to stay faithful to it. This will be particularly true of its diplomats …Perhaps the only faithful embassy left will be the one in Beijing. But nothing is certain even there.

‘All in all, the message to the EPRDF from Libya is crystal clear: don’t fight change. You will not win.’ (Addis Voice, 11 February 2011, http://addisvoice.com/2011/02/libyas-gaddafi-and-ethiopias-eprdf/)

Then, there was his open letter to Meles, suggesting that he resign forthwith:

‘You have essentially wasted the two decades with which you were blessed to affect change. In place of pragmatism dogma has prevailed, in place of transparency secrecy has taken root, in place of democracy oppression has intensified, and in place of merit patronage has been rewarded.

‘Ato [Sir] Meles Zenawi: the people want—no, need—you to leave office. The people are closely watching events in North Africa as I write this letter. They are debating the implications for Africa, including Ethiopia. And they have been inspired by the heroism of ordinary Libyans.

‘Listen to them before it’s too late.’ (Addis Voice, 7 March 2011, re-posted on Ayyaantuu Oromiyaa)

In the February post, Eskinder referred to the watershed events of 2005–06, when the press covered peaceful student protests in the aftermath of rigged elections. More than a dozen journalists were arrested, including Eskinder and his wife, publisher Serkalem Fasil. Some wound up spending as long as 18 months in jail, and their newspapers’ licences were revoked. In the aftermath, the independent press in Ethiopia, which had blossomed between 2000 and 2005, all but disappeared.

Eskinder was one of those hardest hit. In the course of two long interviews in Addis Ababa in February, he told me the horrific story of the circumstances attending the birth of his son in prison. This story goes well beyond previous accounts of the same events by Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International. (For those accounts, see, for instance, http://www.ethiomedia.com/above/2050.html.)

Surprisingly, our interviews ended on a very optimistic note. Eskinder, who has suffered ruinous fines and has not been licensed to publish a newspaper since 2005, predicted a peaceful course leading to a democratic future for his country. This prediction gives the lie to the government’s perception of him as a destructive rabble-rouser.

RON SINGER: … And then [2005–06] you’re back in prison, and your son is born. How long were you in prison that time?

ESKINDER NEGA: A year and a half. Both of us. My wife was less than a month pregnant when we went in. We didn’t know she was pregnant.

RON SINGER: When the child was born, did your mother care for him?

ESKINDER NEGA: Born in prison. I’ll tell you why… I struggle with this experience every time my child catches cold. I’ll tell you why. About 15 days after we went into prison, a cellmate of mine who met Serkalem in a police hospital told me that she had tested positive for pregnancy. I was surprised, I was happy, this was our first child. I was 100 per cent sure they would let her go.

RON SINGER: She hadn’t been in prison before, right?

ESKINDER NEGA: No, no, her first time.

RON SINGER: Another reason to let her go.

ESKINDER NEGA: Plus, they were careful about not imprisoning husbands and wives at the same time. Except us. Her brother was there, too.

RON SINGER: A family reunion!

ESKINDER NEGA: They knew the minimum those they arrested would get for the charges were life sentences. So they didn’t want to destroy a family. But they were particularly angry at us. Despite pleas from everyone, including Mary Robinson, [UN High Commissioner for Human Rights], to [Prime Minister] Meles [Zenawi], he specifically refused. So she gave birth in prison. That’s not the worst part: I could understand that…

RON SINGER: Please go on.

ESKINDER NEGA: We’re not complaining about that. If someone is a suspect, pregnancy is not a legal reason, at least, to release them. This is a political case, so the question is if the government should have behaved like this. But, as far as the legal framework is concerned, they are within their rights.

RON SINGER: Okay.

ESKINDER NEGA: But that’s not the point. What they did was, before she gave birth, they denied her a…

RON SINGER: … pre-natal exam?

ESKINDER NEGA: No exam up to the seventh month. Though we insisted several times. Finally, and this is when Meles’s office intervened, her blood pressure was so dangerously high that they insisted she should stay at the hospital. They admitted her and had to do a Caesarean. They took the baby out prematurely because they said it was a choice between his life and hers. About eight months, plus he was underweight, because she wasn’t eating properly, she was under stress. So the baby came out, and she was under anaesthesia. Before she woke up, the doctor decided the baby needed to be put in an incubator. This was a life-saving decision.

RON SINGER: Do you know how much the baby weighed?

ESKINDER NEGA: No. Since there was no incubator at the police hospital, they took the baby to Black Lion Hospital, the largest in the country. Serkalem didn’t wake up. At the hospital, they wanted to know who the parents were. They said, ‘The mother’s in the hospital.’ The Black Lion people said, ‘Okay, someone needs to sign for this baby to be placed in an incubator, either the father or mother. In case something happens to the baby.’ The response of the police officers that were in charge of the baby was, ‘You know, the father is in prison.’ So they said, ‘Let the father sign.’ But they said, ‘No, the father is in prison.’ Then, they wanted to know why the mother and the father were in prison at the same time. And they said, ‘Because of the election.’ Now the Black Lion panicked. They said, “Unless one of them comes here, we’re not going to take the baby. Take back the baby!” Imagine!

RON SINGER: And you didn’t know any of this, you found it all out later?

ESKINDER NEGA: Months later. So they took the baby back to the police hospital. When the doctor asked what happened, they said one of the parents had to come to sign. They couldn’t take Serkalem, she was a prisoner, with three heavily armed guards outside of her room. So the police hospital called the prison and told them, ‘You know, this is an emergency, we need one of the parents to go there and sign, this is a life-saving situation.’ Since Serkalem couldn’t come out of the hospital, it had to be the father. The prison officials said it was a very difficult decision for them, that ‘We have to seek guidance from higher authority.’

RON SINGER: And they didn’t mean get down on their knees and pray.

ESKINDER NEGA: Exactly. We have no idea who they asked. But the permission was denied, and the baby was denied an incubator. They were so frightened about the baby dying in his mother’s embrace that they took the baby and put him in a separate room. Imagine! In a separate room, in a bed, alone. They shut the door and left. When Serkalem woke up, there was no baby. So she got out of bed and tried to walk out of the room. She wanted to know where the baby is. The guards wouldn’t let her out, but they told her, ‘You know, talk to the nurse.’ The nurse was called, and Serkalem said, ‘Where’s my baby?’ The nurse said, ‘It’s in the next room.’ Serkalem said, ‘Why is it in the next room?’ She couldn’t give her an answer. Serkalem wanted to go out to the next room, but the guards said, ‘You can’t go, this is not allowed.’ Serkalem said, ‘Shoot me!’ She opened the door and went to the next room and opened the door. There was our baby, all alone in a bed.

RON SINGER: A little baby.

ESKINDER NEGA: A little baby in there. Can you imagine that? So she took the baby without asking permission of the nurse or the guards, went back into her room, and kept the baby, put it on her chest. She didn’t know about the details.

RON SINGER: About the incubator, the going back and forth…

ESKINDER NEGA: No. It was so tiny she was startled. But her maternal instinct … she kept the baby there, and the baby survived.

RON SINGER: It started to eat. It’s lucky it was strong enough to do that.

ESKINDER NEGA: Yes. And it survived, despite the odds, despite the pessimism of the doctors.

RON SINGER: How much does your child know about this story?

ESKINDER NEGA: He’s only four years old, he wouldn’t understand. But … he’s all right. And … I’ll tell you what happened. About a year and a half ago, one morning he got up, and he had this facial paralysis. We went berserk, there’s no other word for it. We lost it. I blame the government. But, fortunately, he’s a child, he just needed physical therapy, he recovered 100 per cent.

RON SINGER: Did he have to take medicine?

ESKINDER NEGA: No, no medicine.

RON SINGER: Did they have any idea what caused it?

ESKINDER NEGA: No, no idea. Anything happens to him now … this was the most serious health crisis that he had. In other ways, his health is perfect, by the way.

RON SINGER: That’s wonderful.

ESKINDER NEGA: He’s never been sick, he’s the healthiest little boy you could think of.

RON SINGER: He’s a survivor.

ESKINDER NEGA: Yes, but every time he catches cold, we have to struggle with what happened to him. Our only child, by the way.

RON SINGER: You must be tempted to leave the country.

ESKINDER NEGA: The first time I was ever tempted to leave was when he had his facial paralysis. That was the only time I really thought about leaving. But, if anything happens to my child … I believe in forgiving, by the way, that we shouldn’t have any grudge against the EPRDF [the ruling party], despite what it has done. I believe that the best thing for the country is reconciliation. I believe in the South African experience, that model.

RON SINGER: Do you think this party, though, could ever turn to becoming a really good party for the country?

ESKINDER NEGA: That’s the only way. We have to hope against hope.

RON SINGER: You know, I always come back to the fact that Meles is a very pragmatic man. If he were sure enough of his power, his pragmatism might make him realise, ‘I’d better go in that direction.’

ESKINDER NEGA: I hope so. But it wouldn’t be because of his shift of attitudes. There has to be pressure on him from the ground.

RON SINGER: He’s also an authoritarian, he has the combatant’s mentality. [Meles was a leader in the brutal war against the previous regime, the Derg.] But it’s possible his good angel will get the better of the other one.

ESKINDER NEGA: Maybe. But, if you look at the South African example, it wasn’t the architects of apartheid that changed it. It took de Klerk, someone within the system, but who had a different perspective.

RON SINGER: There are others in the system here, too?

ESKINDER NEGA: I hope so. But, ultimately, what I think will make the difference is great pressure from the ground, from the people, as we are witnessing in Egypt now. And then I hope the EPRDF will be pragmatic enough to realise reform would be the better option, even for itself. I hope we’ll be able to avoid a revolution.

RON SINGER: If there was a referendum in the country today…

ESKINDER NEGA: I think there’s a consensus for democracy, even among farmers. People deep in the countryside, people who are not literate, even, are now conscious that the government needs their votes to be legitimate. This is a revolution in thought.

RON SINGER: And it’s very hard for the people, because of the way the kebeles [local administrative units] have been taken over by the government. It’s dangerous for them to think that.

ESKINDER NEGA: Exactly. But the belief that the government, any government, needs the people’s vote to be legitimate, is a new phenomenon. This is what democracy is all about.

RON SINGER: So change is not a matter of whether, but when.

ESKINDER NEGA: Yes. I have to go now.

RON SINGER: Just in case we’re being photographed, I’ll give you a cold handshake, instead of a hug.

ESKINDER NEGA: Very American. It’s been nice talking to you.

RON SINGER: A pleasure. Thank you.

This interview, which took place at the Jerusalem Hotel, Arbegnoch (‘Patriot’) district, Addis Ababa, was recorded by a government spy, presumably a policeman or member of the security services. After we started talking, a very ordinary-looking man sat down at an adjacent table in the nearly empty hotel restaurant and used his cell phone to capture the entire interview, including the patriotic and optimistic conclusion.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* These two interviews with Eskinder Nega will be incorporated into a chapter about the press in Ethiopia in Ron Singer’s book, ‘Uhuru Revisited’ (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Zero tolerance against (media investigating) corruption

Rafael Marques de Morais

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73177

cc S A‘Are we witnessing a new era of restricted media, or will Angolans find a way to report their news in an objective and truthful forum?’ asks Rafael Marques de Morais, as government strategies to silence investigative journalists kick into action.

A 2010 investigative report named three of President José Eduardo Dos Santos’ most trusted aides as business partners in seemingly illegal private business deals in oil, banking, telecom, bio fuel, and media, worth over US$1 billion.

After the piece, “Angolan Presidency: The Epicenter of Corruption in Angola,” was published, the resulting anti-corruption discourse was reminiscent of an Angola of 20 years prior, during its one-party Marxist-Leninist era.

In those days, the media sector was wholly owned by the state. The authorities had absolute control of its editorial line, and did not allow investigative journalism or references to corruption in government.

Since 1995, Angola’s independent media has expanded and become more professional. Yet today, when government officials are called out on embarrassing allegations of corruption, the “concerned institutions” maintain silence, turning instead to the state-owned daily Jornal de Angola, to respond with searing editorials in defense of the named officials.

As illustrated by the government’s reaction to the “Angolan Presidency” report, the country’s independent media is at a tipping point, again facing the extraordinary fate of being owned, controlled or driven out of business by the regime.

THE GOVERNMENT REACTION

The “Angolan Presidency” story depicted a series of joint-ventures with foreign investors and privatization deals that had the approval of the Council of Ministers, headed by President Dos Santos.

In one of the deals, the Council granted a license to a consortium established by Sonangol; U.S. oil company Cobalt Energy; and two Angolan private companies, Alper Oil and Nazaki, to explore deepwater oil blocks 9 and 21. The latter, according to the report, is 99 percent owned by three of Dos Santos aides: General Hélder Vieira Dias “Kopelipa,” head of Casa Militar (Dos Santos’s office of military affairs, which oversees the army, the police, the state security, and the presidential guard); General Leopoldino Fragoso, adviser to General Kopelipa; and Manuel Vicente, chairman and CEO of Sonangol.

Such deals seem to be in breach of anti-corruption laws that prohibit state agents from doing private business with or through the state.

Throughout the autumn of 2010, the leading weekly newspaper Semanario Angolense regularly headlined investigations coming out of the “Angolan Presidency”report, adding its own editorials and contributions, causing a major public outcry. Other weekly newspapers, like Folha 8, A Capital and Novo Jornal, also followed the investigation, bolstering its legitimacy and making regular references to it.

Owing to the stir the report caused in the country and abroad, Rui Pinto de Andrade, member of parliament and spokesperson for the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA -- Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola), told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that MPLA had discussed the report, but was not obligated to make a statement. “The country has competent bodies to respond to these kinds of accusations,” he said. “There is a rule of law in Angola and the MPLA would like to see these competent organs take a stand on these accusations.”

The government’s initial response to the report came on August 29, 2010, via the only daily newspaper in the country: the state-owned Jornal de Angola. A series of searing editorials defended the triumvirate of top officials exposed for their allegedly abusing their public offices.

The paper argued that government officials are beyond reproach because President Dos Santos and his officials have won the world’s “praise,” and that Angola is a role model for political stability and economic growth in Africa, as well as a magnet for Western and Chinese investments. “Corrupt are those who dishonor officials like General Kopelipa and Manuel Vicente,” it said.

Jornal de Angola claimed that the investigation amounted to an attack on the president: “To attack the President of the Republic,” said the editorial, “is to attack all Angolans.”

Some officials tried to defend themselves without dismissing the allegations. One in particular, Minister of Territorial Administration, Bornito de Sousa, acknowledged his joint-venture with state bank BPC in private insurance company Mundial Seguros. This acknowledgment came in the form of a one-page letter published by Semanario Angolense on March 20, 2010. The letter also included his resignation as chairman of the board of Mundial Seguros, and in it he made an offer of 5 percent of the company’s shares to the reporter who published the “Angolan Presidency” report.

The minister, who is also a law professor, had a stipulation to his offer: “it is valid for 30 days, to be claimed in writing, and in so far as it is not understood as a means to corrupt anyone.”

The government’s defensive and indirect approach to the report substantially differs from statements made in November 2009, when President Dos Santos announced a “zero tolerance” policy against corruption, which he identified as the country’s biggest problem. The government’s reaction also is in conflict with comprehensive anti-corruption legislation that came into effect in June 2010.

NEW MEDIA OWNERSHIP

In this context, a new strategy may have emerged from the bungled relationship between officialdom and the independent weekly newspapers: the wholesale purchase of such media outlets.

On June 5, 2010, various newspapers reported that a recently established company, Media Investments, had purchased both Semanário Angolense and A Capital, previously owned by independent journalists. It is unclear who owns Media Investments.

The reports also stated that Media Investments had taken over 40 percent ownership of the weekly Novo Jornal, partly owned by a subsidiary of the Portuguese bank Espírito Santo, Escom. The information about these purchases had been based on a press release provided to the media by Media Investments.

Media Investments later denied the takeovers. Manager of Semanario Angolense, Claribela Ferreira, said she could not comment on editorial matters, but dismissed the company’s press release as a mistake by the newspapers. “In the following issue, a new press statement denied the fact. Media Investments only bought Semanario Angolense,” she said.

Reginaldo Silva, a member of the government regulatory body National Media Council (CNCS) pointed out that media law requires full disclosure of the ownership structure of private media outlets. The purpose of the disclosure is to prevent the establishment of media monopolies, which could hinder impartiality, pluralism and market competition.

“Whoever bought the newspapers realized the serious infringement of the media law [on monopolies], only after the Media Investments’ press release,” Silva said. “Later we read that the weekly A Capital had a new owner, Media Vision.” At the end of 2010, he noted that “CNSC has not received any information that confirms the legal existence of Media Vision or of Media Investments as required by law.”

SILENCING THE “INDEPENDENTS”

With the relevant weekly newspapers now taking a more favorable approach to government news, a two-pronged strategy came into effect: The state media, led by Jornal de Angola, is on the attack against those who expose corruption and criticize the regime. Meanwhile, the private media has become the rear guard, censoring stories and journalists that address such issues.

Two incidents involving Semanário Angolense and A Capital underscore the new trend in Angola’s political economy, which is a threat to both media freedom and the public debate on corruption. Until the takeovers, both newspapers had stepped up their coverage of corruption issues, and were instrumental in stimulating political debate in the context of a paralyzed opposition and an incipient civil society in Angola.

On July 31, 2010, leading independent newspaper Semanário Angolense headlined the alleged participation of MPLA Deputy Chief Whip General Higino Carneiro in the takeover of a Brazilian regional airliner Puma Air.

The article, based on an investigation by the Brazilian business magazine Isto É, revealed that during his tenure as minister of Public Works, General Higino Carneir allegedly engaged in state deals in an airline with his Brazilian partner Gleison de Souza. The latter served in 2004 as vice-president of a small construction company, MetroEuropa, whose biggest client was the Angolan Ministry of Public Works.

The article described General Higino Carneiro as one of the richest men in Angola and questioned the origins of his fortune, considering the general had only served in the military and in government, and neither of these institutions pay salaries analogous to his wealth

Former deputy director of Semanário Angolense, Silva Candembo, tells the story of how the editorial team working on the Carneiro piece used the Internet to send the digital layout of the paper to the two censors very late at night, when it had already gone to print. “We did this to bypass censorship and to challenge the new owners,” he said.

As a result, reports Candembo, the new owners of the newspaper confiscated the whole issue at the Lito-Tipo printing press and burned the newspapers, thus killing the story.

There was a similar incident on August 7, 2010 with an issue of A Capital which contained an article critical of President Dos Santos’ housing policies. The president had recently announced that new social housing for the low-to-middle income population would start at US$60,000, despite the fact that up to 70 percent of the Angolan population live on two dollars a day, according to United Nations statistics.

The A Capital story questioned the housing prices, pointing out that they seem extraordinarily expensive in a time when home loans are hard to come by and public sector salaries are low. The issue containing that article also was burned at the Lito-Tipo printing press.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

In September 1990, during Angola’s one-party Marxist-Leninist era, an anti-corruption task force at the Ministry of Justice (MJ -- Ministério da Justiça) published a report (Multidisciplinary Study about the Phenomenon of Corruption in Society in General) stressing that the corruption scourge had a bearing on the country’s civil war, through the sale of weaponry and other military equipment in informal markets.

The report also described how corruption had brought the state to a virtual halt due to the plunder of state assets and malfeasance, and proposed the use of the media to disseminate anti-corruption campaigns and to denounce the scourge as a deterrent.

But the media in those days was state owned. The anti-corruption measures were never implemented, except for the approval of strict legislation to prevent impunity for high-ranking government officials, which soon faded into oblivion.

Twenty years later, Angola seems to be back-tracking toward this period of oppression, as journalists are silenced and media outlets loose independence. Are we witnessing a new era of restricted media, or will Angolans find a way to report their news in an objective and truthful forum?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article is an extract from Global Integrity Report.
* Rafael Marques de Morais is an award-winning Angolan journalist and human rights defender who currently researches high-profile corruption in his country, and runs the anti-corruption watchdog Maka Angola.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Africa's ministerial handbook uncovered

A better life for the few

Dale McKinley

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73193

cc M S‘As the public, we all have a right to know what rules and regulations govern the financial behaviour of our public officials and how they spend our public monies so that we can hold them accountable,’ writes Dale T. McKinley. So why is the South African government so keen to keep the contents of its ministerial handbook out of the public eye?

Most of us can surely well remember those times during childhood when we were caught eating something that we knew we shouldn’t and our immediate defence was to claim that mom or dad said we could. Well, that about sums up the contemporary behaviour of many of our highest political office bearers, only in their case it’s not the sweets meant for the guests but public monies and it’s not parents who are the rationalising crutch but the ministerial handbook. Yes, the little handbook that so many have heard about but have never seen, that senior politician’s ‘bible’ which one South African journalist aptly called, a ‘get-out-of-jail free card’.

Officially, according to the Department of Public Service and Administration, the handbook is ‘a classified document’ only accessible to the public through the use of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). Of course, this is an absolutely outrageous and untenuous position given that the handbook is, as its opening line states, a ‘guideline for benefits and privileges to which members and their families are entitled, in the execution of their duties’. Translated, what that really means is that the handbook is a specific type of public policy for a specific type of public official.

Since almost every senior politician including the President himself, has at one point or another over the last several years publicly cited the handbook to justify their expenditure of public monies and at times questionable individual business dealings, there can be no question of privatising its contents. As the public, we all have a right to know what rules and regulations govern the financial behaviour of our public officials and how they spend our public monies so that we can hold them accountable. It’s called democracy.

So what have they been hiding from us all these years? Importantly, the handbook’s first chapter clearly sets out what ministers cannot do. They cannot: “use their position or any information entrusted to them, to enrich themselves or improperly benefit any other person; expose themselves to any situation involving the risk of a conflict between their official responsibilities and their financial and/or personal interests; (and) make improper use of any allowance or payment properly made to them.” The importance here lies in the fact that these are the golden standards against which the actions of all ministers must be judged. If, as has been the case, the public itself is not aware of such applicable standards then the ability to assess and judge adherence to them becomes the sole preserve of the ministers’ boss (the President and/or Premiers) who themselves are also subject to the standards. That’s called despotism.

The rest of the handbook is given over to exhaustively detailing all of the ‘benefits and privileges’ to which our senior politicians are entitled. Not surprisingly, they read like a members guide to the most exclusive political club in the country. Leaving aside the 40%+ of our population who have no regular income, unlike those of us in South Africa who actually do have a formal job income and who diligently cough up increasing amounts of it to the tax authorities, the base salaries of our political illuminati are tax-free. They receive what the handbook calls an “inclusive remuneration package” which includes top-up provisions for all tax liabilities. Additionally, the package provides for a housing allowance equivalent to 10% of the base salary, a full medical aide deal, death benefits as well as disability and funeral cover.

When it’s all added up the full salary amount that ‘club members’ receive puts them into the rarefied stratosphere of the top 0, 1% of all earners in South Africa. Our President sits at the apex of the golden triangle, pulling in a cool R2, 3 million a year. Then come national ministers on R1, 8 million a year, provincial premier’s on R1, 6 million, deputy ministers at R1, 5 million and the ‘poor’ provincial MECs who have to make do with R1, 4 million. When compared to the average salary of a worker which now stands at around R35 000 a year, not to mention the jobless millions whose average income from all sources tops out at R15 000 a year, this exclusive club of public representatives constitutes nothing less than a political aristocracy.

However, the lavish salaries are only the first course of the meal. While all members are entitled to a free state-owned residence, national ministers can also occupy a second state-owned house (if available in the ‘other capital’). For this second home, they are only required to pay what the handbook laughably calls, “a monthly market-related rental’ which is calculated by taking 1% of their base salary and dividing it by 12. That comes out to around R1500 per month, an amount that would not even get you a decent one-bedroom flat in Hillbrow. Besides this though, members housing privileges also include free water and electricity, all cleaning/domestic services, gardening, security, internet/phone, insurance and removal expenses. If the ministers want to have a private social function at their public residences, the state even chips in a free marquee, lighting and tables/chairs for “at least 150 guests”.

The gravy continues to flow when members and their families “out of necessity”, are somehow not able to make use of any of their official homes or numerous state residences when on ‘official business’. In these cases, they are entitled to stay at “any hotel or hostelry” at the expense of the state, something that has clearly put a big smile on the faces of a number of five-star establishments both at home and abroad. The minister doesn’t even have to hand over any of his/her spare change during such ‘temporary stays’ since the state also covers all “reasonable out-of-pocket expenses”. As if that is not enough, there is a further subsistence allowance available to “compensate him/her for incidental expenses not paid for by the host”. In an obvious stab at containing the well-established profligacy of some ministers on this front, the handbook offers a laconic antidote that such expenses “should be kept as low as possible by making use of hotels which suit the status of members but which have reasonable tariffs” … wink, wink.

Next, comes a host of mind boggling travel ‘benefits’. Not only do all members receive a motor vehicle allowance which is 25% of their basic salary (itself not subject to acquiring ownership of a private vehicle), the state provides two official cars for national ministers and one for the less fortunate. Those who daily struggle to access what limited public transportation there is will be heartened to know that the cost of such cars cannot exceed 70% of the members’ annual inclusive salary. What a shame! That definitely takes Aston Martin’s and Lamborghini’s out of the picture.

But not to worry, when official vehicles are “not available” the state will cover the costs of “any transport” for the members and their spouses and also all transport expenses for family members when the minister is away on “official business”. In those cases when a minister chooses to make use of a private vehicle (when an official one is not procured), he/she can claim a tariff “equal to 3 times the standard running and maintenance” state allowance. And we thought local government politicians had it good.

When ministers take to the air on ‘official business’ ubuntu gets thrown even further out the window. It is business class on domestic flights and first class internationally. But if there are “time constraints” or the “facilities of commercial airlines are not cost-effective and/or readily available”, our political elite can make use of SANDF as well as chartered aircraft. Even after the ministers have left office they are entitled to 48 single domestic flights per year as well as 24 for their spouses. Ex-deputy ministers only get 36 flights while their spouses must make do with 18.

If anyone has concerns that our political illuminati might join the vast majority of the population in old-age poverty once they have left office, put them to rest. With the state’s monthly contribution standing at 17% of basic salary, each minister is guaranteed a retirement “benefit … equal to 92, 5% of pensionable salary”. Even better for these public representatives, while there is no official retirement age for ordinary folks in South Africa, the handbook informs us that their “normal” retirement age is 50 years old. Talk about a sunset clause!

There you have it – it certainly pays to be a top-level public servant. The contents of the handbook clearly obviate the need, if there ever was one, for us to take seriously the continued political propaganda about how our top politicians are close to the people. What we have here is the official sanctioning of a better life for the few, in the name of the many. Thomas Sankara, where are you?

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* This article first appeared on The South African Civil Society Information Service SACSIS) (www.sacsis.org.za).
* Dr McKinley is an independent writer, researcher, lecturer and political activist based in Johannesburg.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Cocoa speculators cash in on Côte d'Ivoire conflict

Khadija Sharife

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73172

cc NestleCocoa speculators are among the few to benefit from the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, as disruptions to the supply chain drive up global prices of the commodity, writes Khadija Sharife.

Some weeks ago, a Pambazuka article written by Pierre Sané, former secretary general of Amnesty International, disclosed the relations between Côte d'Ivoire’s new president, Alassane Ouattara, and Loïc Folloroux, stepson of the head of cocoa and coffee-trading Armajaro's Africa division. Outtara's banning of cocoa exports was seen as serendipitous to the company's fortunes, particularly Armajaro's leading cocoa speculator, Anthony Ward. Known as 'choc finger', Ward – unlike other speculative traders – does his homework on the science of production, directly gathering intelligence on volume: Building weather stations, financing a small global army of ‘chocklings’ to count and monitor pods, primarily in Côte d’Ivoire – supplying 40 per cent of global cocoa.

Initially part of the 'Columbian Exchange', during the discovery of the New World, cocoa was considered both a currency and delicacy. In the United States, home to the world's major cocoa-seeking multinationals such as ADM, cocoa trading began in New York in 1952. The crop was said to have been introduced to Côte d'Ivoire in 1902, and in Ghana, another leading producer, just before that.

These days, the annual US$5.6 billion raw cocoa 'growers' industry supports five million farmers (indirectly, 60 million families) globally. Cocoa trading, especially given the limits of production (some 3 million or so tonnes), was a relatively simple business, allowing for futures trading to inform the market comprised of buyers/importers and sellers/exporters – until deregulated speculators, vying for possession of titles, hijacked the market.

This is particularly true for Britain, where GBP denomination of cocoa contracts, traded on the NYSE LIFFE (London International Financial Futures Exchange), leads the price of cocoa for over 38 weeks each year. Yet, as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) disclosed last year, just two per cent of all commodities futures end with an actual physical delivery. Nor is trading is not limited to actual quantity available, but instead to market prices structured on 'unlimited' quantities (i.e.: in 2010, certificates were traded for 60 million tonnes of cocoa, speculation falling into the several hundred billion).

One simple solution would be to protect farmers by limiting speculative trading of soft commodities. But the City of London (itself a corporation) hosts the largest agricultural commodities trading market in the world and speculation, alongside banking, remains the driver. Speculators, primarily interested in 'possession' of contracts, stand to cash in when the price of cocoa rockets. Though they are traded all year round, cocoa contracts arrive five times a year (in March, May, July, September and December), with traders either going long (if they feel price will rise from initiated position) or 'short' if they feel the price will drop.

The NYSE LIFFE does not publish information identifying speculators from those wanting physical deliveries, nor other crucial details such as who (persons/companies) control which positions, for how long, etc. Allegedly through various 'pet traders', Ward (forecasting intensifying scarcity in recent years, particularly from 2010 onward), acquired an estimated 50,000 tonnes of cocoa futures contracts at US$2,300 per tonne (2010) entitling him to 10 tonnes per contract or 500,000 tonnes. He closed out on half, keeping the remaining 50 per cent. Later, he took delivery of the 250,000 tonnes, warehousing it (at a cost of more than €1.5 million per month, doubled when factoring in cost of interest rates). Though the cocoa ban is no longer is place, for the past few months, as export flows were disrupted in real and imagined ways, Ward experienced the scarcity he sought to render the massive investment – 7 per cent of global production, worthwhile and very fortuitous indeed. For more on the fascinating Ward his passion for cocoa, this article in the UK’s Financial Times is worth reading (registration required).

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* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
* Khadija Sharife is southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report.

Reaping tomorrow’s harvest today

Khadija Sharife

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73188

cc N JThe purpose of agricultural futures contracts is to reduce risks for farmers and the people they supply. But as speculators in search of safe investments pour capital into soft commodities markets, they are driving ‘price inflation way beyond the effects of demand and supply pressures,’ writes Khadija Sharife.

This issue of Pambazuka News carries a piece on role of speculation in the cocoa futures market. The futures market is important, chiefly because – prior to unchecked speculation, futures contracts (agreements between buyers and sellers to exchange a certain on a certain day) could be used as a vehicle to diminish risk and volatile curves, caused by lack of information, disinformation, etc across global lines. Prices then reflected several crucial elements, namely three, as regards agricultural or 'soft' commodities: planting, availability of 'old crop', and demand for numerous agri-crops during different growth cycles.

‘Prices are determined the way most prices in moderately open market system through the aggregation of buyers and sellers in a market place,’ said Lincoln Ellis, managing director of the US-based Linn Group, a 35-year old clearing and trading business located at the Chicago Board of Exchange. Since inception, the company, a family-owned entity, has focused on agricultural markets, rooted in community faming and the commercial cash grain merchandising business.

According to Ellis, ‘the biggest problem facing African farmers in the US tax payer subsidies paid the US farmers,’ artificially elevated by EU and US protectionist subsidies, chiefly benefitting mega-corporations like ADM – subsidies estimated at US$1 billion per day. Volatility in the grain markets, claimed Ellis, would be five times higher were it not for futures contracts. While there is no such thing as 'perfect information', a regulated agricultural futures market (where weather plays a detrimental role) is one way in which buyers/sellers and importers/exporters can engage one another, accessing crucial data.

But in recent times, following the recession, volatility – playing on deregulated markets, has drastically increased thanks to the collective shift of investment capital, by monopoly interests into 'safe golden investments' such as agri-commodities markets, increasing from US$13 billion in 2003 to US$318 billion in July 2008. Gerry Gold, editor and author of 'A House of Cards: From Fantasy Science to Global Crash' stated that during the first two months of 2008, markets were flooded with some US$55 billion investment. ‘A great deal of the money found its way into the commodity markets, driving price inflation way beyond the effects of demand and supply pressures,’ wrote Gold.

Similar to 2008 – when global prices, especially concerning basic staples like corn, wheat and maize increased by over 140 per cent, driving 100 million people below the poverty line – the skyrocketing capital flow towards soft commodities, sent a further 44 million people falling, once again, below the US$1.25 poverty line since June 2010, claims the World Bank Food Price Watch.

What matters, then, is the nature of investments and the intentions underpinning the financiers’ rush to capture contracts. As I point out in my cocoa article, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) disclosed in 2010, that less than two per cent of commodities futures resulted in physical delivery of produce. Artificially elevated or gamed prices enable financiers to cash in, exacerbated by the lack of regulation limiting the number of speculators, type of speculation etc, pitting heavily constrained farmers against the unleashed power of unchecked capital from financiers.

Since the deregulation of the 1980s, initiated by former US President Reagan and others, multinationals have consolidated power through monopolies, including that of the futures market. No trading corporation holds as much power as Glencore, controlling 10 per cent of wheat, 45 per cent of lead, 50 per cent of copper, 60 per cent of zinc, to name a few commodities.

Between 2003-08, for example, Glencore frequently controlled as much as 90 per cent (and not less than 30 per cent) of the aluminium warehoused by entities listed in the London Metals Exchange. Unlike other 'pure trading' firms only recently engaging in vertical integration through acquisition of resource-producing assets, Glencore's farsighted corporate executives – fashioned into form by Marc Rich, the world's most controversial commodities trader – began purchasing assets such as Mt. Holly smelter in the US (1987), moving on to Bolivian tin, Zambian copper, Angolan oil, amongst other assets such as 300 000 hectares of farm land. This was a policy taught to Rich by Phillip Brothers, the trading firm that shaped him.

Glencore, said Devlin Kuyek, a writer and researcher with non-profit GRAIN to Al Jazeera, is ‘ of the world's largest farm operators,’ making markets through financialisation of every tradeable commodity. The opaque commodities firm, the largest in the world, recently launched a multi-billion IPO (initial public offering) enabling the corporation to access more capital more easily.

But despite its transformation to a public company, in theory, subject to the restraints of shareholders, boards and other components of corporate governance, Glencore's base in the globe's leading secrecy jurisdiction – Switzerland, guarantees the same level of 'business-as-usual' privacy, characterised by banking secrecy, zero disclosure of company accounts and other economic activities, nominee shareholders and directors etc.

When asked about the potential impact of the IPO on Glencore's trademark secrecy, Rich was alleged, in one interview, to have just smiled. He might have been remembering the statements of Zug's public prosecutor who 'forbade' Rich to share confidential corporate documents with the US, and who responded to the US authorities large-scale tax evasion investigation (described by then US District Attorney Guiliani as the 'largest scheme every prosecuted') with the words, 'the defendant trades in…and with...countries which are from a political aspect sensitive. It is not difficult to understand under these circumstances that especially governments or state-operated companies prefer to use intermediary trade for trading with other countries. The reasons for this are many (including) to cover up contradictions between economic and political action. A disclosure of such transactions and their details would have disadvantageous consequences for all participants.’

All participants – including apartheid South Africa, which exchanged uranium (earmarked by Rich for the Soviet Union) for Iranian oil that in turn was bartered for arms. Carpe diem?

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* Khadija Sharife is southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Science in the service of bad politics

Salim Vally

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73131

cc W ISalim Vally makes the case for the University of Johannesburg to severe ties with Ben Gurion University of Israel. ‘In the case of violent occupation, apartheid, genocide and gross human rights abuse, academic freedom must surely bear some reference to these very conditions for the criteria of its determination,’ he argues.

Shortly after the University of Johannesburg (UJ) resuscitated an apartheid-era agreement with Ben Gurion University of Israel (BGU) in late 2009, colleagues at UJ who disagreed with this development sought an audience with an academic key to the envisioned joint water research project.

He responded by writing, ‘I am afraid I may not be helpful in this instance since I do not hold any particular view on the Israeli-Palestinian matter. My involvement is purely on a research basis as I am engaged in this project based on the expertise in water research at Ben Gurion University. So it is purely for academic reasons.’

This snub, phrased cordially, is revealing of the mindset of many natural and physical scientists - and, incredibly, some social scientists too. It suggests a nurtured distancing of the social and political context, a privileging of technical expertise over social justice and a desire to separate the academy from societal engagement.

THE NEUTRALITY OF SCIENCE?

These academics are either naïve or disingenuous because they do not understand the profundity of social and political choices that inform their work and often the catastrophic consequences arising from it. This was the recognition that prompted Einstein to declare that the one great mistake in his life was to suggest to Roosevelt that the atomic bomb could be made. He had no idea about its devastating effects.

Nearly all the great Western natural philosophers - the philosophers who spoke about the value of scientific endeavour, including Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Bronowski and Einstein -had no illusions about the role of science since they claimed social (or spiritual) purposes for it and pursued their work on that basis. The fragmenting of scientific endeavour and its ostensible removal from sociocultural and political life today has obscured what was once the norm.

In addition, individual scientists, even if they are not aware of it, come to science with perspectives informed by their social settings, history, prejudices and the choices ingrained and developed in them by socialisation. The funding of science also illustrates the important role of political choice in scientific work.

Professor Steven Rose, world-renowned neurobiologist at the Open University in the United Kingdom, was a co-founder of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the period when biological and chemical weapons were used in Indo-China. He has written extensively about bad science in the service of bad politics. He also wrote, ‘You can’t solve unemployment with gene therapy or targeted drugs. The causes of misery are not predominantly biological.’

ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

The UJ/BGU imbroglio also prominently featured academic freedom. In the case of violent occupation, apartheid, genocide and gross human rights abuse, academic freedom must surely bear some reference to these very conditions for the criteria of its determination. Failure to recognise this will mean that the very concept of freedom more generally, and academic freedom in particular, becomes both meaningless and bereft of any practical possibilities.

The basic rights of academics, as explained by a Unesco report, do not exist for the majority of Palestinian academics. Pertinent too is the fact that unlike other countries where human rights abuses exist, Israel is pampered and privileged by the West instead of being sanctioned, despite countless instances of the violation of international law and conventions.

Unlike many countries where human rights abuses exist, an overwhelming number of Palestinians, the real victims, including a significant group among Israeli academics, have called for the isolation of the Israeli state and its institutions. This call is not as an end itself but toward real freedom for all. Ex-Israeli academic Oren Ben-Dor argues that, ‘A boycott to foster real academic freedom in Israel should unite academics all over the world…[T]he boycott I wish to see is a boycott intended to produce academic freedom.’

Ben-Dor insists that academic freedom is not some idle abstraction that unconditionally shields academic pursuits. Professor Hilary Rose, a sociologist of science, reminds us of academics, including liberal and left geneticists, who actively collaborated with their German counterparts who in turn provided the ‘scientific’ basis for the ugly concept of ‘lives not worth living’ and Rassenhygiene.

Rose writes: ‘Here, an absolutist principle of academic freedom…[facilitated] the eugenic project of the Final Solution.’ It is instructive that both Hilary and Steven Rose are members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine and supporters of the boycott campaign against Israel.

Through the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Palestinian academics speak to the many ways in which Israeli academic institutions scientifically collude with occupation, ethnic cleansing and racism in practical terms - whether through engineering, geography, demography, hydrology or psychology, among other disciplines.

WHY BOYCOTT?

The intention of our spurned attempt, referred to in the opening paragraph, was to bring to the attention of our colleague the comprehensive report issued by Amnesty International in the same week UJ signed the agreement with BGU. The report, titled ‘Troubled Waters - Thirsting for Justice: Palestinians’ Access to Water Restricted’, detailed meticulously Israel’s discriminatory water policies.

The report shows how Israel permits Palestinians access to only a fraction of water, mostly under the occupied West Bank in aquifers, while Israeli settlements receive virtually unlimited supplies. It states that ‘Israel uses more than 80% of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20%.’

In addition, the aquifer is the only source of water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.

While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day. In some rural communities Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater. The report also mentions that ‘[in] contrast, Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools’.

In the Gaza Strip, 90 per cent to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated. Israel’s medieval siege of Gaza has prevented the import of basic building materials, spare parts and energy for the treatment of waste water. Chemicals necessary for desalinating the brackish water are prohibited by Israel.

These restrictions are compounded by Israel’s frequent bombing sprees against infrastructure, utilities and Gaza’s only power plant - and in March of this year Israel confirmed holding the chief engineer of this power plant in an Israeli jail. Chief engineer Dirar Abu Seesi was kidnapped from a train in Ukraine in February while on his way to visit his Ukrainian wife and their children.

Israel has also imposed a complex system of permits, which the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT. According to the Palestinian NGO LifeSource even when on the rare occasion a permit was received to build the Salfit Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Israeli military vetoed the project.

In the face of this and many other egregious instances it is not surprising that, on 5 August last year, the UN Human Rights Committee found Israel guilty of directly violating Palestinian human rights to water and sanitation.

More specific to BGU, researchers have found that BGU’s water research and biotechnology institutes and laboratories have clear links with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private military contractor, and the Jewish National Fund, which has expropriated vast properties belonging to millions of Palestinians. (see www.ujpetition.com)

Despite the hubris, patronisation and spin of the pro-Israeli lobby, which makes the absurd claim that South Africa’s water problems would have been solved by Israeli expertise, the truth is that our water woes have less to do with technology and expertise than with the historic and ongoing negative role of the mining industry, privatisation and the maintenance and provision of water infrastructure to name just a few key areas. The proposed and small-scale UJ-BGU partnership in water research was far removed from these contextual issues.

The decision to sever links with BGU was not an impulsive one. It was reached, by secret ballot and supported by the overwhelming majority of UJ’s senate members, after an 18-month-long debate involving committees, task teams, fact-finding missions and lengthy council and senate deliberations. It has the support of the vast majority of students and staff members, and has been supported by leading intellectuals in South Africa and beyond.

In an age of the neoliberal ‘knowledge economy’, where there is mere rhetorical support for social justice, where research and teaching related to this purpose are seen as ‘ornamental’, and where lucre trumps solidarity, this is a significant victory. The UJ community must be congratulated.

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* Salim Vally is based at the faculty of education, University of Johannesburg. This article appeared in the Mail and Guardian supplement, ‘Getting Ahead’.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Côte d’Ivoire: The importance of 11 November 2011

Maurice Fahe

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73166

cc MateusWhile months of political stand-off between two self-proclaimed Ivorian presidents may have come to an end, genuine political and economic liberation for the country’s people is far from being achieved, writes Maurice Fahe.

When the first round of Ivorian presidential elections left a tie between the outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo, a candidate to his own succession, and Alassane Ouattara, who for a long time had had doubts surrounding his nationality, to the delight of many, an air of profound tension or even fear could be felt.

Gbagbo had to win, if only to confirm once and for all ‘who is who’ in Côte d'Ivoire. In other words, he clearly had the intention to undo the illegitimacy associated with his reign. After all, hadn't he offered his critics, and the most vocal amongst them, Alassane Ouattara, the unique opportunity to run for elections, the only elections in 2005 that would eventually take place in October–November 2010? In any case, Ouattara's defeat at the polls appeared inevitable to him. Was it then necessary to amend Article 35 of the constitution, as had been suggested to him during the Marcoussis Agreement? Would he also prefer the exception to reforms? He could only but win! Wasn't the slogan of his political party, the Front Populaire, ‘win or win’, evocative enough? Didn't he control one of the keys to paradise, the Constitutional Council, which he had constitutionally stuffed with his allies, had appointed a close confidant as its president, Yao N'dre, a professor in international relations, who joined politics without any socialist conviction, save for the fact that he had once been in the opposition and was a former internal affairs minister?

Comforted by several opinion polls which depicted him victorious, the support from patriots, the militia and the army, Gbagbo was determined to assemble all means necessary to disarm the rebellion by force once his electoral victory had been announced. As 100 per cent president and 100 per cent presidential candidate, Gbagbo had at his disposal the state machinery. However, since the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) remained out of his reach in Pretoria, he would thus attack it despicably.[1] Faced with the impossible task of altering the composition of the CEI, would he then be able to at least change its president? His only point of honour was to ‘deworm the electoral register’ which had been reduced to 5,727,000 voters in a country that counts 22 million inhabitants. Having finished top in the first round of elections, Gbagbo decided to compensate his mediocre performance in the media between the two electoral rounds, with an aggressive campaign marked with a return to the drawing board. ‘A 100% candidate for Côte d’Ivoire,’ he rallied himself behind national-ethnicism, a concept which had long been forgotten. He would also push the electorate to tension. On the eve of the election day, and with the executive power in place, Gbagbo went ahead to declare a curfew and then decided to send his army to requisition the north in a bid to ‘safeguard’ the elections.

Since the demise of Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the opening to elections of the coveted position he held for 36 years, Ouattara's attempts to succeed him had at every effort been thwarted by all manner of strategies. His political interest compelled him to win, if only to give sense to the endless chorus that Gbagbo would never have been president if the efforts of the main opposition candidates, among whose helm Ouattara had of course placed himself, had not been frustrated. For over a decade, Ouattara had prepared himself as presidential candidate, and now that the course of events offered him the opportunity, he had no intention of wasting the moment! To be a candidate, a unique opportunity in the only elections in 2010, meant little to him, given that he too believed in his unquestionable victory. This absolute certainty was so obvious to him that it seemed a belief. A former assistant director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ouattara had the backing of several magnas of international finance and business mediums of the triad.

In addition, and this was not the least of his advantages, Ouattara had priceless support from the armed rebellion. The latter did not have, at least not officially, a candidate in the run for elections, but it was obvious that Ouattara had earned their favour. If the massive presence of the rebels within the CEI aimed at ensuring transparency in the electoral process, it would be foolhardy not to think that they would not use this opportunity for other purposes. A partisan to the ‘live together’ mantra and a liberal, Ouattara seemed to fight for the triumph of the republic, where Gbagbo and proclaimed defenders of public institutions were attacking one of the fundamental principles of the republic, the equality of all citizens. Ouattara’s strength transformed itself everywhere into weakness for his adversaries and, more so, the strongest amongst them all. The disarming exercise was carefully dodged by both parties. If Gbagbo could count on security forces, the militia and patriots, Ouattara had on his side the rebels of 19 September, millions of determined followers and the Dozos.[2]

Moreover, the old political class, which had split into several rival factions in 2005, had resolved their differences and had since reunited. It rallied behind the national-ethnicism concept of the middle-class faction, whose interests it represented, thus worsening the contradictions within the old political class. Bédié, from the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDC) would for his part dedicate himself to linking the ties he once helped undo. It is certain that having him (Bédié) as a presidential candidate, the PDC had no future. Given that he had failed miserably in his entrance into the political scene, he could only but excel his exit by opening up prospects of a reformed political life to the masses, who, in the absence of a new candidate to regenerate the PDC, had devoted themselves to restoring a fallen president.

Faced with the combined forces of ethnic and class interests, there was only the ghostly National Congress of Democratic Resistance (CNRD) left – a heteroclite assembly of opportunists and proletariat xenophobes without vision, a grouping of trade unionists without sincere followers. Where Gbagbo seemed to count on eclectic and single backing, Ouattara portrayed ideological and class support. On 28 November, that backing collapsed.

On Monday 11 April 2011, after trying in a vain and murderous attempt to exploit the supposed contradictions of the ‘international community’ as he had done in 2000, Laurent Gbagbo, a man of several attributes, was defeated militarily having been defeated, prior to this, electorally. He fell into the arms of Ouattara’s men, who were helped by the armed decisive intervention of the French–UN coalition, the unwavering support of the USA, and, truth be told, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, who armed the ex-rebel troops, renamed ‘the Republican forces of Côte d’Ivoire’ to suit their cause. This arrest officially closed the drama that ensued the post-electoral crisis of 28 November 2010. Having had two presidents and two governments for four months, Côte d’Ivoire finally finds normalcy in one president and one government.

But on 11 April 2011, President Ouattara devoted not only the end of (at least temporarily), a long period of national-ethnic reign, veiled occasionally under the hideous cover of Ivoirité, and other times under the guise of distorted patriotism, the bankruptcy of opportunism, but Ouattara also portrayed the triumph of partisans patented with neoliberalism and shameless semi-colonialism over those of shameless neoliberalism concealed under a facade of anti-colonialism and hypocritical pan-Africanism.

For the new neoliberal imperialist rule to reign without a jolt, it was imperative that all the conditions of the domination of the oligarchic factions be met, in other words, the possibility of a change at the helm of the state. For this to happen, the will of the people and not the blessings of God[3] was what was needed. On 11 April 2011, the pseudo-democratic, semi-colonial republic, through the will of the people and by means of iron and fire, prevailed over national-ethnicism. However, for Côte d’Ivoire to move forward without the possibility of retracing its footsteps, it has to translate this electoral and military swing into its constitutional and legal form.

In 1958, Côte d’Ivoire received republic status as a gift from its forced marriage with the French republic. Since 11 April 2011, it must incorporate this status as a sign of victory over national-ethnicism. But alas, the triumph of the republic, at least the symbol of bankruptcy of the national-ethnicism concept, instead of devoting the total emancipation of a people under the yoke of international imperialism, portrays to the contrary, Côte d’Ivoire as it has always been, a semi-colony outrageously dominated by imperialism. On 11 July 1960, through the signing of a particular agreement with France, Côte d’Ivoire had in an amicable manner liberated itself from the yoke of French imperialism. On 7 August, Houphouët-Boigny gave a solemn resonance to this mutual stamping by declaring Côte d’Ivoire’s independence. But on 21 April 1961, as if to clearly show that the previous events were but a simulation, Houphouët-Boigny signed a cooperative agreement with the French, thus returning to the latter, the privileges it had transferred barely a year before. The sequel was but a succession of mirages and fantasies. Just when the Ivorians had started believing that they had accomplished a miracle,[4] they were faced with the obvious. Now when they believed that they had finally found themselves, they lose themselves once again – real issues, false solutions. It is unquestionable that Ivorians seek democracy, justice and social equality. Some day, it will be necessary to give satisfaction to this atavistic aspiration, even at the risk of having a repeat of the same comedy and tragedy. It is up to the people to decide.

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* Translated from the French by Caroline Sipalla.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

[1] On 12 February 2010, Gbagbo, under the pretext of presumed fraud of the then CEI President Robert Beugre Mambe, dissolved the government and the Independent Electoral Commission, despite the fact that the presidential elections, which had been deferred on several occasions had been scheduled to take place at the end of February/beginning of March. He would later succeed in replacing Beugre with Youssouf Bakayoko, who until then was foreign affairs minister.
[2] Traditional hunters.
[3] The fallen president was convinced that it was God and not the people who gave power. He always ended his speeches with ‘God bless Côte d’Ivoire’.
[4] During the first two decades of its independence, Côte d’Ivoire witnessed great economic growth, which was termed ‘the Ivorian miracle’. With the current crisis, the Ivorian miracle appears to be a mirage.

Revisiting Ethiopiawinet!

Mammo Muchie

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73167

‘This is my plea to the new generation of African leaders and African peoples: work for unity with firm conviction that without unity there is no future for Africa…I reject the glorification of the nation-state, which we have inherited from colonialism, and the artificial nations we are trying to forge from that inheritance. We are all Africans trying to be Ghanaians or Tanzanians. Fortunately for Africa we have not been completely successful…Unity will not make us rich, but it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated. And it will therefore increase the effectiveness of the decisions we make and try to implement for our development. My generation led Africa to political freedom. The current generation of leaders and peoples of Africa must pick up the flickering torch of African freedom, refuel it with their enthusiasm and determination, and carry it forward.’ – Julius Nyerere, First president of Tanzania

‘The present consolidation of African states within the former colonial frontiers runs counter to much of what had been both predicted and desired during the colonial era. It was widely assumed that as soon as Africans came to freedom they would sweep aside the arbitrary boundaries imposed by the imperialists which cut across tribes and overrode the dictates of geography and economics. The continent had been partitioned to meet colonial convenience, but it would now be reshaped to realize its natural contours and return to its natural essence.’ – Rupert Emerson,1962)

‘...Constructing a nation from scratch: We know we don’t have the knowledge. We know we do not have the resources. We know we do not have the experience. Our conclusion is: let’s face it.’ – Isaias Afewerki, current president of Eritrea (quoted from National Geographic, June 1996, p.87)

SUMMARY


Failure to defend Ethiopia’s history, is also a failure to live up to the worthy expectations of all those who derive so much spiritual energy from the idea of Ethiopia as a free provider to the world of the ‘resistance-liberation logocentric imagination’ that is much needed as a tangible resource still in vulnerable and penetrable Africa. Ethiopia is synonymous with the very idea of a de-colonising imagination. Its history of successful resistance is the timeless bearer of this alternative decolonising logo for the spread of the African world’s liberation imagination. Ethiopia- as an anti-colonial symbol- is very relevant today, as it was yesterday and will be too in the future. The significance of Ethiopia’s history now, at a time when Africa is being re-threatened with war needs to be appreciated. Its importance during this time when the former colonial powers are returning to Africa with military aggression cannot be lost to both those willing to resist the new aggression and those who commit this latest aggression. At the core of Africawinet is this Ethiopiawinet that is a bearer of dignity and resistance to the repeated humiliation Africa is confronted with by external aggression.

Ethiopiawinet is at the core of the African renaissance. It is also at the core for ending Africa’s repeated humiliation. This is because African unity can be anchored with a value and dignity that Ethiopiawinet attained over 500 years of resistance. This achievement by the Ethiopian-Africans that resisted all forms of humiliation is a positive data for building Africa’s united future and to bring back the African unity first agenda to the fore today. It is for these reasons we respect our ancestors, whatever their shortcomings, and problems they were unable to solve in their life times and left behind for future generations to settle. They left the timeless inspiring resources to build Africa’s united future. The positive data they left us in the Ethiopian history remains to this day a relevant asset to build Africa’s much united future. Ethiopians now and in the future must always value and treasure this great historical achievement and not play the current ugly, divisive and cynical ethnic games that the selfish ruling elite play by dividing and degrading this core provider of Africa’s overall liberation imagination into vernacular-ethnic enclaves. Ethiopians as Africans and not as degraded ethnie must unite and strive to make ethnicism as a past by coming together with foresight and sense of history. They should do it now and not tomorrow to restore the historical imagination that will make a difference to the African world as a whole!



1. WHAT IS ETHIOPIAWINET?

Ethiopiawinet should be built and developed from the following characteristics Ethiopia has to this day:


a) Long history-perhaps as long as Persia’s and China’s
b) An internally generated civilisation (written, art, architecture, music, religion and so on)
c) A history of resisting and scoring victories against economically and politico- militarily superior forces
d) A unique psychological make up where the notion of the divine and the sacred graces every activity that the people engage in.



The individual, the state and the nation use for their lives divine presence whether they are Christians, Muslims, Judaic and even Pagans. The state had its own ethos and had its own ‘Fetah Negist’ and ‘Kibre Negist.’ In war we note how the idea of the divine is invoked to give courage to the troops when they charge (e.g. Giorgis’s participation in Adwa!) and in victory the people show humility by referring that all their power is due to God.



Whether we like it or not religion is a way of life to the rural majority of the population. And the change we want, the modernisation we seek is to make life better for the majority of the rural areas. We do not go and preach Jeffersonian democracy or Marxism to them. If we are serious we go and learn from them and build on their beliefs and make modernisation sensible by translating it into the language and way of life they are used to. This is how Japan, Korea and others did it by appreciating their context but not rejecting it like the strange ruling elites that replaced the traditional system are doing now!



Even China with its Marxism did not reject Menicusian, Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist values which the population had. They tried to Sinnify their modernist weapon Marxism so that the people can embrace it. Like everything else which came into contact with China, Marxism became absorbed rather than the other way round! They call it Marxism which Chinese characteristics and in reality in China Marxism was not used like in Ethiopia. Mao Tse Tung started by investigating first the peasant movement in Hunan where he was born, not by throwing half-baked and non-comprehended phrases from Lenin and Stalin. He did not select phrases that insult to persecute and even kill his comrades as it happened in Ethiopia. Never forget in Ethiopia after people were killed, the strangest things also have taken place where apparently along with the dead body was placed 'I was a dog' and I deserve to be killed -- or some strange ani-Ethiopian and anti-humane things were done! When a person dies in Ethiopian culture, one always tries to remember the good the person did by trying to forget the bad the person did. This is the noble culture that was inherited from Ethiopia’s past that was abused by doing these strange things to dead bodies!



There is an Ethiopian value system from our tradition that we need to bring back and blend with modernisation. The core ideas are the four key principles of Ethiopiawinet. We need to treasure them, not fight Ethiopiawinet! What makes the person from the South to those in the North connect mysteriously is this shared experience which was passed on from the wider Ethiopian culture confluence and communication.


2. THE MISTAKES OF OUR GENERATION

Our generation was engaged in intellectual copying. We ignored both
history and reality and embarked on a journey that has cost Ethiopia
dearly. Basically we said because Marx, Engels and Lenin are right,
Emperor Twedros, Yohannes, Menelik and Haile Selassie are wrong. This was a very dogmatic logic, ignoring both historical evidence and reality. Did we not pay a price badly for this. We still do. We better ground ourselves from our own history, our own challenges and how to change society by a process of grounded appreciative theorising. We did not do this. We need to bring back the anti- colonial and anti- imperialist and
nationalist imagination coming naturally from Ethiopia’s history that continues to be treasured by Africans the world over.



Our generation rejected this by mounting two major myths: a) the Dergue employing Jacobin-Stalinist terror tried to force its hackneyed “Marxism” down the throat of the bewildered population, b) the various ethnic based fractional movements echoing rhetorics from China, Albania, Vietnam and so on tried to create ideologies of Tigreanism, Eritreanism, Oromoism and recently Amharism and anything and everything but Ethiopianism. They even have ethnic flags. We have many flags in Ethiopia now, not one flag that I see every day also in much of Africa and the rest of the world. Others are proud to use the Ethiopian flag, whilst the ruling ethnic elite diversify the number of flags to entrench ethnicism and undermine Ethiopian history. 


Ethiopia is in a strange paradox: Ethiopia reminds me of Wittgenstein’s prescient remark of a nation being run by elites who are trying to disrupt its future by climbing through the chimney and the window of ethnic fragmentation, when all along the Ethiopiawinet as Africawinet door to build its glorious future has been wide open.



What is wrong with holding on and inheriting our Ethiopia and add modernisation, renewal and democratisation without breaking the framework and subtracting the nation and parcelling the state? Do we need to regress by relying on the politicisation of culture, language and blood to blackmail our way into power with Ethiopia as it is or by breaking it up altogether?



I believe the best and most possible cultural rights and expression for all the ethnic communities without subjecting them to ethnic cleansing and other violence is feasible with a healthy Ethiopiawinet. I do not see why we should not organise by affirming Ethiopawinet and maintain active local engagement wherever we come from. The key is to democratise the state, individual and the nation by affirming and not being condescending 
to the past.

The theory of the nation which decomposes Ethiopia by weaving the myths of Tigreanism, Eritreanism, Oromoism and so on goes counter to the core experience of the people, their long history, tradition, character and above all their historically evolved nationhood and state formation.


The Lenin-Stalin notion of the nation which the fractionalisers have imported their divisive politics from to Ethiopia is too scholastic, mechanistic, and deterministic. Itemising factors of language, territory, psychological make up and unleashing every petty nationalist bigot to search how his ethnic group might fulfil one or the other factor in full or in part is one of the most unattractive ventures which corrupts science and social practice at the same time.

Neither the ethnicism of Tigreans, Oromos and so on and nor Stalin’s shopping list definition of a nation are relevant to the Ethiopian situation. They cannot be a higher reality to the experience of our people. An experience where there was injustice along with civilisation, a history of epic resistance and a unique psychological make up involving the concept of the sacred in the every day living of all Ethiopians. The attack on this divinely graced Ethiopianet ” wukabi gefafi new” (is de-spiritualising/demeaning!)!

It has been said that the longer we look back in the history of a nation, the further we can look forward or forge ahead in building a collective future. It has also been claimed that history is to a nation as a memory is to an individual. For an individual to lose memory is to lose a grip of reality. It has been a maxim held by African sages: ’They lost their history, so they lost everything.’ A nation, if it wishes to remain a nation must not be denied its right and indeed privilege to make a conception of history that 
yields direction and a future and insulates it from falling into a directionless and chaotic path like present day Somalia.

Arguably, contemporary challenges and demands must be taken into account into a nation’s history-making processes, but they must also be confronted to avoid the mindless rejection of Ethiopia’s historical achievements and the intelligent learning from the innumerable failures that is necessary to do individually and collectively as a people. Anything made at the expense of making a nation lose its historical identity, which is not, incidentally constituted from more than the sum of the arithmetic additions of a sum of languages, religions, territory, number of people in an ethnic group, and other variables is to undermine the ontological foundation of Ethiopia as an idea, a dream, project and nation.

Those who wish to opt out make not only themselves suffer, but also those who wish to remain with a positive and constructive rather than destructive and negative appreciation of Ethiopia’s long history. We have seen what came of Eritrea after leaving Ethiopia? We were told Eritrea would be 
the South East Asian tiger, but is it that now? Is that what has become of Eritrea by the EPLF’s and TPLF’s gratuitous saying good bye to Eritrea’s core history which is tied with an umbilical chord with Ethiopia’s long social-economic history. History provides self-knowledge to a nation and that self-understanding is a necessary condition to undertake any meaningful development. Lack of consciousness of a nation’s history is not simply an intellectual failure. It can be a moral failure as it can expose unnecessarily a nation to unpredictable danger and suffering. We owe it to our ancestors who bequeathed a nation with history to avoid extremism, negotiate out of our conflicts, and find mechanisms to make social peace amongst individuals, communities and personalities.

It is with a larger purpose and depth of thinking, commitment and dedication that we should cherish both the long memory and current meaning to us of being Ethiopian. There is intrinsic merit to preserve this ancient nation, and not give in to the degrading mantra of ethnic enclosures that has degraded civic Ethiopian citizenship to a particularly virulent and limiting concept of the ethnically defined and vernacularly fenced off citizen. This primordially and biologically condemned citizen must be fully liberated to emerge as the Ethiopian citizen par excellence. There can be no compromise on the Ethiopian and African framework for citizen expression and engagement. Everything is negotiable once the framework is accepted. There can be no negotiation with those who arrogantly and impudently call Ethiopia a fiction and an invention. Without the idea of Ethiopia, there is no idea of a future. Let us not forget that Ethiopia was the first non-European country that defeated a European power. The Japanese sent delegations to learn how Ethiopians organised to defeat a European imperial power. Many Africans in the Diaspora from America to the West Indies were inspired to continue the struggle for liberation owing to this historic achievement. Ethiopia can achieve even more by doing away with tyranny and poverty for good provided it overcomes the pettiness of its politics and reach out to the grand vision of historical presence.



I ask all of you to memorise!


The world fears time

Time fears history

History fears Ethiopia!




BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was first published in NES COMMENTARY. No.36, Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES), April 24, 2011.
* Mammo Muchie is DST/NRF research professor of Innovation Studies, Professor DIR, Aalborg University and senior research associate, SLPTMD, Oxford University, UK.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Nigeria: Dealing with Boko Haram's violence

Cameron Duodu

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73169

cc J WIn the wake of President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in Nigeria, the government is faced with the tricky task of how to diffuse the violent northern Boko Haram sect, writes Cameron Duodu.

Even though President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are congratulating themselves on their victory in both the presidential, legislative and governorship elections held in April, the elections results give some cause for concern.

President Jonathan was able to obtain a simple majority (57 to 31 per cent) over his nearest rival, the former military head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari. [url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-18/nigeria-s-jonathan-nears-requirement-to-win-presidential-vote.html
]Jonathan also scored enough votes[/url] in Nigeria’s 36 states to enable him scale the tricky mathematical provision which obliges the winning presidential candidate to win 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds of the states. (In 1979, a hugely controversial court case arose over the mathematical requirement, which was then to get the sum of ‘2/3 of 19 states’.)

So this year, President Jonathan was not forced to go into a bitter second round, as it had been feared he might have to do.

Equally important, many of the international observers who watched the election declared it ‘free and fair’. In the light of the body blow delivered to the election process, by a one-week postponement, decreed at the last minute by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) – because it was unable to provide all the printed material needed for the election – the judgement of the international observers was quite helpful in setting Nigerians’ minds at rest.

But alas, President Jonathan’s main opponent, General Buhari, thought otherwise and declared that he believed the election had been rigged. This was enough to serve as a signal for some of his followers, especially young unemployed people, to engage in acts of brutal violence. At least 500 people were reported killed in northern Nigeria, where Buhari obtained his greatest support. Many others were injured. Internally displaced persons were estimated to number about 70,000.

The violence was particularly ferocious in Kaduna and Bauchi states, where it took on the depressingly familiar forms of Muslim versus Christian and northerner versus southerner internecine bloodletting.

But worrying as this was, even more ominous were signs that the notorious Boko Haram sect, whose attacks on Christians claimed the lives of 700 people in July 2009, was taking advantage of the post-election mayhem to renew its campaign of wantonly slaughtering people in the cause of religion. (‘Boko Haram’ means, more or less, ‘Western education and lifestyle must be eschewed.’)

Two explosions which killed three people in Maiduguri, Borno state, on 24 April 2011, were attributed by the police to Boko Haram.

After the explosions, a statement from Boko Haram itself was received by some media houses, which warned that Boko Haram would ‘never accept any system of governance, apart from the one described by Islam, because that is the only way Muslims can be liberated’.

Boko Haram also said: ‘We are calling on Muslims all over the world, and precisely those in Nigeria, to understand that we need fairness from everybody, especially in the areas of explaining our mission, because God has commanded us in the Holy Quran to be just.

‘We want to reiterate that we are warriors who are carrying out Jihad [Holy War] in Nigeria, and our cause is based on the traditions of the Holy Prophet. We would never believe in any system of government apart from the one agreed by Islam, because we believe that it is the only way that can liberate the Muslims.

‘We do not believe in any system of government, be it traditional or orthodox. That is why we are fighting against democracy, capitalism, socialism and the rest.

‘We would not allow the Nigerian Constitution to replace the provisions of the Holy Quran; we would not allow adulterated conventional education (Boko) to replace Islamic teachings.’

Boko Haram added: ‘We do not respect the Nigerian government, because it is illegal. We will continue to fight its military and police because they are not protecting Islam.’

‘We will never accept any system of governance apart from the one described by Islam because that is the only way Muslims can be liberated,’ Boko Haram said. ‘We do not respect the Nigerian government because it is illegal. We will continue to fight its military and police because they are not protecting Islam,’ the sect concluded.

It looks, therefore, as if the Nigerian government will have to decide pretty soon whether it will attack Boko Haram on an ad hoc basis – when Boko Haram causes public harm – or go for the sect’s jugular and attempt to uproot it before its declared disrespect for the Nigerian constitution spreads and infects other disgruntled groups. There are quite a few unemployed youths – including university graduates –whose frustration could drive them into desperate actions, such as are embarked upon every now and then, by Boko Haram.

Yet if it seriously goes after Boko Haram, the Nigerian government may find itself being accused of infringing provisions of the very constitution Boko Haram says it does not respect – and thus give respectability to Boko Haram's campaign of violence.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

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

Perspectives on emerging powers in Africa: April newsletter available

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/73281

The edition highlights the recent BRICS Summit, held in China. An article by Mr John Bailey provides commentary on the event following his media coverage of the proceedings. A second article by Peter Konijn then provides a review of the second international roundtable on health collaboration between China and Africa that took place in Beijing. Mandarin translations of original articles published through the newsletter are also to be incorporated into future newsletters. Three translated articles on China-Africa civil society cooperation within FOCAC, South Africa’s inclusion into BRICS and the recent World Social Forum are available in this month's edition. The April edition is available here.

The Egyptian Socialist Party Inauguration

4 June 2011

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/73280

'In response to the woes of our dispossessed masses and the aspirations of our popular classes and in the name of the Great Revolution of the Egyptian People on January 25th, 2011, we are founding The Egyptian Socialist Party, the Party that aims to be the flag of the Egyptian popular classes. We invite you to join us for the inauguration of our party on Saturday, 4 June, 2011. There will be a good chance to meet and interact with all Left and progressive political forces and unions of Egypt and the Arab World as well as many other countries of the World. Our comrades will be glad to help you booking the suitable room and to manage the logistics. For organisational purposes we appreciate your timely confirmation or response to our invitation positively or negatively.' Contact: mamdouh@alhabashi.com

Event: No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way

Picket by Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers and Blikkiesdorp residents, 16 May, Cape Town, South Africa

2011-05-09

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=202056359830382

What: Picket by Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers and Blikkiesdorp residents.

Where: Parliament (Cnr Roeland St & Plein St)

When: 12h00 - 13h00 on the 16th of May

Why: We will be protesting against the horrible conditions in Tin Town and the government's failure to honour their agreement to engage with us on our struggle for housing.

From there, Authors will walk over to the Book Lounge to present to the public our new anthology No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way.

Venue: Book Lounge, 71 Roeland St, Cape Town
Date: 16 May 2011
Time: 5:30 for 6

Essay competition: Why the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa is important to youth

SOAWR coalition

2011-05-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/72976

In October 2010, the African Women’s Decade (2010-2020) was officially launched in Nairobi, Kenya. The decade is a critical moment for the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality on the continent. The Solidarity for African Women’s Rights coalition (SOAWR), a coalition of 37 organizations based throughout the continent, is committed to ensuring that African Union (AU) member states ratify and implement the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa as an instrument that will play an important role in the realization of the Decade’s objectives. Yet, unfortunately, not all Africans are aware of the Protocol and its significance.

In Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, this June, African heads of state and government will gather at a summit with the theme, “Youth empowerment for sustainable development”. Youth action is critical to the continent’s development, and more specifically, in ensuring that girls and women can make equally valued contributions to this development. As such, the SOAWR coalition would like to invite youth to reflect on the importance of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Contestants are asked to respond to the question, “Why is the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa important to you?” in an essay of a maximum of 2000 words.

The four best essays will receive a copy of African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho, and Anne Serafin. The winning essays will also be published on the Pambazuka News website (www.pambazuka.org). In addition, the writer of the essay awarded first place will be given the opportunity to attend the AU Summit in Malabo with her or his basic expenses (ticket, accommodation, etc.) covered.

The competition is open to citizens of all African countries aged between 18 and 25.

Entries can be submitted in English or French. The deadline for submission is May 25th, 2011, at 12 noon, GMT. Essays should be typed (1.5 line spacing and 12 point font) and sent in Word or PDF format to the SOAWR Secretariat through bkombo@equalitynow.org with the subject “SOAWR Essay Competition”. Along with the essays, contestants should indicate the email address where they can be reached and provide their age, nationality and country of residence.

SOAWR COALITION MEMBERS

African Centre for Democracy And Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMWA), Alliances for Africa, Association des Juristes Maliennes (AJM), BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, Cellule de Coordination sur les Pratiques Traditionelle Affectant la Sante des Femmes et des Enfants (CPTAFE), , Centre for Justice Studies and Innovations (CJSI), Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW), Collectif des Associations et ONGS Féminines de Burundi (CAFOB), Eastern Africa Sub-regional Support Initiative (EASSI), Equality Now, FAHAMU, FAMEDEV, Federation of Women Lawyers Kenya (FIDA-Kenya), Forum Mulher, Girl Child Network (GCN), Human Rights Law Service (HURILAWS), Inter- African Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices (IAC), Inter-African Network For Women, Media, Gender and Development (FAMEDEV), Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), NGO Gender Coordination Network (NGOGCN), Oxfam GB, People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), Sister Namibia, Strategic Initiative for the Horn of Africa (SIHA), Tomorrow’s Child Initiative (TCI), Uganda Women's Network (UWONET),Union Nationale des Femmes de Djibouti (UNFD), University of Pretoria Center for Human Rights, Women Direct, Voix de Femmes, Women of Liberia Peace Network (WOLPNET), Women and Law Southern Africa (WLSA), Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA), Women NGO’s Secretariat of Liberia (WONGOSOL)

The hype versus the reality of carbon markets

Shefali Sharma

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/73132

cc T N IThe launch of an Africa Carbon Exchange is unlikely to meet the goals of curbing carbon emissions and financing adaptation needs, writes Shefali Sharma.

The Africa Carbon Exchange (ACX) was launched in Nairobi on March 24; yet only two days before, Bloomberg headlines announced: ‘Global Carbon Credits Die as Smart Money Backs Indian RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates).’[1]

While the ACX is positioning itself to be the hub of ‘climate change business and sustainable development in the African continent,’ existing and attempted carbon emissions exchanges in Europe and the United States have suffered one blow after another - fraud, carbon credit theft, poor legislative design, even profits for some major polluters - all at the expense of ordinary citizens and the environment.

Moreover, these exchanges have not led to a decrease in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Rather, they threaten to directly increase emissions by diverting capital to the carbon-market casino that could have otherwise gone toward reducing pollution at its source.

The Bloomberg article contends:

‘Today, carbon trading remains a backwater of the global commodities market, and it’s not even included in the benchmark Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index. Without demand from institutional investors spurred by global limits on emissions, the price of carbon has languished compared with the fossil fuels that policy makers are aiming to marginalize.’

There has been a 16 per cent decline in the membership of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Associations (IETA) since the climate talks reached deadlock in Copenhagen in 2009 and carbon-trading platforms such as Intercontinental Exchange Inc. folded up when the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) itself collapsed at the end of 2010.

What happened and what lessons can be learned from these debacles?

Carbon ‘offsets’ - the backbone of the Kenyan ACX - are supposed to work like this: a series of projects are implemented to take planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere, which are then subjected to a complex set of measurement, reporting and verifying (MRV) procedures. These projects would receive ‘carbon credits’ that would be sold to polluters who could neutralise or ‘offset’ their own pollution by buying these credits.

The creation of carbon-offset projects can include a large number of players. The project can be ‘owned’ by an organisation, company or individuals. Local communities will be impacted if the project depends on utilising their time, resources or land. Several other entities will also be involved, such as project design consultants who ensure that the project follows an acceptable MRV methodology, project validators who ensure that the MRV is valid and meets a certain accepted standard, and project verifiers to ensure that the MRV methodology is being followed properly. The project then either receives ‘certified emissions reduction’ credits (CERs) or ‘voluntary emissions reduction’ credits (VERs), depending on whether the project is meant to meet mandatory ‘compliance’ targets of the UN climate treaty or feed into the voluntary carbon market. The cost of setting up such projects can therefore be substantial.

A polluter in an industrialised country can buy these CER credits to offset emissions, and hence continue polluting. In reality, however, these credits can be bought and resold in poorly regulated carbon exchanges as much as a hundred times through complex financial instruments called ‘derivatives’. A buyer without any obligations to reduce emissions can buy these offset credits, package them with credits from other projects and trade them as a carbon emissions derivative for purely speculative purposes. The credits are sold even before there is any proof that such projects have actually resulted in reducing greenhouse gases.

Such trade involves numerous middlemen in the form of traders and various forms of investment firms. Similar derivatives in still-unregulated over-the-counter markets (OTC) led to the infamous Wall Street collapse in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis, and regulators still have not developed adequate rules to govern these markets.

EUROPEAN AND US EXPERIENCE WITH CARBON EXCHANGES

In order to put the ‘promise’ of the ACX as an agent for development and environmental good in perspective, let’s examine first the largest climate exchange in the world: The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

The ETS was intended to help Europe meet its binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce GHGs. Launched in 2005, the ETS resulted in increased, rather than decreased, greenhouse gas emissions, while the price of carbon itself crashed to as low as one euro per tonne from a high of about 30 euros. Several complex reasons can be cited for this, but a very simple reason was the over-allocation of pollution permits that were given, at no cost, to major polluters, which were then traded and re-traded in financial markets. In other words, there was no demand for permits from polluters who faced no strict requirement to reduce emissions.

The ETS has shown through its six-year history how susceptible it is to fraud, malpractice and Internet hacking. Just this February, the ETS had to shut down its trading because cyber criminals had hacked into the system, stealing 40 million USD worth of pollution permits and reselling them. The European Law Enforcement Agency (Europol) estimates that up to five billion euros of European tax revenue (approximately 7.1 billion USD) has been lost due to fraud in value-added tax evasion through carbon trading.[2]

The two major ventures related to carbon exchanges in the United States have also suffered major blows. Just the week before the ACX was launched, the San Francisco Superior Court ordered the state of California to suspend its proposed cap-and-trade system, which includes offsets, because it was in violation of environmental laws in California. The judge ruled that the California Air Resource Board had not sufficiently considered alternatives to the cap-and-trade system and needed to do so.

Just months prior, the United States’ only national climate exchange - the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) - shut down its operations at great cost to farmers who invested in it in anticipation of offset credits. The Chicago Climate Exchange shut down because large investors were not interested in a voluntary market and had counted on US legislation to enact a mandatory market. When the climate bill in the US Congress failed, there was little incentive for companies to continue to buy and sell credits in the market.

Emerging controversies in Australia are also relevant for the ACX. The Australian ‘Carbon Farming Initiative’ is being proposed as a major offset scheme for Australian polluters and those abroad to meet Kyoto targets. Market analysts doubt whether there would be an adequate supply of credits for sufficient trading in the initial years.

Concerns are also being raised regarding the environmental integrity of such an offset scheme that could lead to pressure on water and land, given that the CFI is supposed to derive reduction in GHGs through activities such as fertiliser management, reduced livestock emissions, soil carbon and reforestation.[3]

LESSONS FOR THE ASX: WITHER DEVELOPMENT AND REDUCED RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE?

The ACX would sell pollution ‘credits’ generated on African soil through individual projects, thereby enabling companies in the industrialised world to continue polluting and yet comply with their governments’ commitments to meet international and national targets for emissions reductions. ACX registered projects would also aim to generate a sufficient supply of projects to be made available for carbon trading on voluntary markets.

It is now common knowledge that the Cancún climate pledges could lead to the warming of the planet by four degrees Celsius or more. The latest science shows that even a global average warming of two degrees will be devastating for life on Earth. For much of sub-Saharan Africa, a two-degree global average temperature rise would mean even higher temperatures on the ground.

This spells disaster for food security in Africa - with devastated cropping cycles, water scarcity and widespread famine. Carbon offsets are a major exit strategy for polluters to continue polluting while shifting the burden of GHG reductions to African nations that have the lowest carbon footprint on the planet. In the end, the impacts of the failure of this UNFCCC approved ‘market mechanism’ will be acutely felt by the African people who stand to suffer greatly from a warming planet.

In addition, the types of offset projects envisioned for Africa primarily entail ‘land-based carbon’ projects, either through avoiding deforestation, reforesting or reducing emissions from agriculture. This means that projects are banking on receiving credit for changing land-use practices in forests and soils to store carbon relative to what would have happened in a business-as-usual (baseline) scenario.

However, trading carbon from land-based offsets is met with major scepticism by real financial investors because of serious scientific challenges in measuring carbon in soils and forests and understanding previous and future land-use changes.

Moreover, because the bulk of forest and agriculture land is used by local communities, significant risks are associated with land tenure issues and social conflicts, with research showing an increase in land grabs of large areas of customary land in Africa by agribusiness and government agencies.[4]

A recent study[5] by experts in derivatives trading platforms also shows that land-based offsets will meet significant barriers to investment. This is because the land-based asset itself is difficult to define and therefore trade because of the high degree of uncertainty in measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) land-based carbon.

The costs and controversies associated with land-based offsets are also likely to make them a risky venture. It will therefore lead to control of the trade by very few companies given the monopolistic nature of commodity markets (carbon is a commodity) and because very few companies will be able to finance the risk associated with this trade.

The experts therefore conclude that the market for land-based offsets will either fail because of the numerous difficulties inherent in land based carbon accounting or lead to ‘the creation of a substandard, risky and ultimately destructive forest carbon market.’[6] The same applies to agricultural soil carbon where the underlying ‘tradable’ asset is even more varied and uncertain.

Finally, given that energy markets have a high degree of price correlation with carbon, excessive speculation in carbon is likely to adversely affect food and commodity prices.[7]

Bundling carbon derivatives into index funds with other commodities would also tend to destabilise prices, as would trading carbon derivatives without position limits (limits on the number of contracts held). Highly volatile oil and food commodity prices not only have a significant impact on the economic stability of net oil and food-importing countries but also on the agriculture sector as a whole, given the high dependence on fossil fuels for synthetic fertilisers, transport, distribution and storage. Expanding carbon markets that are structurally highly susceptible to fraud and speculation and part of commodity markets, particularly through index funds, thus has serious implications for food production and food security in Africa.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

The most often quoted World Bank figure for the global carbon market is 144 billion USD. However this figure largely includes derivatives trading. Out of this, only around 3,370 million USD goes to offset project developers as total revenue (not profit) with a much more uncertain fraction of that going to local communities who may host the project.[8] The FAO estimates that close to 17 billion euros (approximately 24.3 billion USD) could be required in transaction costs alone to set up soil carbon sequestration projects from 2010 - 2030, diverting scarce resources away from critical adaptation needs.

According to the World Bank’s own estimates adaptation costs to developing countries will range between 2.5 and 2.6 billion USD per year from 2010 -2050.[9] Experts monitoring Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) schemes also find that important institutional and public resources are being diverted to create the technical capacity and infrastructure required to create offset credits to trade on potential forest carbon markets. Rather than diverting scarce resources, this money could be invested directly into institutions and communities to build resilience against climate change and directly address deforestation.

CALCULATING THE COSTS

The Africa Carbon Exchange is being publicised as the next big ticket that will help solve the development gap in Africa, with plans to replicate the exchange in other regional blocs such as the East African Community (EAC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS).

However, before that happens, governments and their parliaments should examine:

- ongoing challenges and investment trends in climate exchanges in industrialised countries,
- investor aversion to land-based offsets,
- environmental and food security risks to Africans by allowing industrialised countries to continue polluting, and
- resources needed for African countries to adapt to climate change.

There is a real danger that carbon offsets will become a major policy distraction and capital diversion from the real climate change challenges that Africa faces: the urgent task of climate change adaptation and ensuring resilience of communities.

ALTERNATIVES EXIST

A financial transaction tax[11] on financial trading, feed-in tariff policies through which clean solar and wind energies are incentivised, and the use of International Monetary Fund (IMF) special drawing rights[12] by developing countries are just some of many alternatives being proposed to both finance the reversal of climate change and to help developing countries adapt to it. Industrialised countries have a legal, historical and moral responsibility to curb their domestic emissions at home and help finance adaptation in Africa and elsewhere. Let’s not let carbon trading and the promises of a speculative derivatives market distract us from these critical goals.

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* Sharma's work focuses on international trade and financial institutions, and international food and agriculture policies, with a particular interest and focus on India and South Asia. This article is sourced from The Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES:

[1]. B. Sills, Global Carbon Credits Die as Smart Money Backs Indian RECs, Bloomberg Markets Magazine, March 22, 2011. Available at [url=http://bloom.bg/igjsR9[/url]
[2]. World Watch Institute, A Brief History of Fraudulent Activity on the EU ETS, 2011.
[3]. Point Carbon, Australian Greens Challenge Offset Mechanism, March 24, 2011.
[4]. L. Cotula, Land deals in Africa: What is in the contracts?, IIED, London. Available at http://pubs.iied.org/12568IIED.html
[5]. Munden Project, REDD and Forest Carbon: Market-based Critique and Recommendations, 2011. Available at [url=http://bit.ly/kibEbS[/url]
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. In an orderly market, carbon prices should rise with energy prices but haven’t due to the aforementioned crimes, poor legislative design and MRV controversies, and costs.
[8]. FERN, Designed to fail? The Concepts, Practices and Controversies Behind Carbon Trading, 2010.
[9]. FAO, Climate Smart Agriculture: Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security, Adaptation and Mitigation, 2010, 22.
[10]. FERN and Forest Peoples Programme, Smoke and Mirrors: A Critical Assessment of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, February 2011.
[11]. See European Parliament, Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, DRAFT REPORT on Innovative Financing at Global and European Level, also known as the ‘Podimata Report,’ October 2010. Accessed at:http://bit.ly/joj3cs.
[12]. See ActionAid, Using Special Drawing Rights for Climate Finance, Discussion Paper, February 2010.

Western Sahara: Winning the ‘war on words’ and avoiding actual war

Peter Kenworthy

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/73138

cc SaharauiakProfiling the words of Senia Bachir Abderahman, a Saharawi activist from occupied Western Sahara, Peter Kenworthy writes of the need for genuine international support for Saharawi self-determination.

‘People will easily be able to sympathise with our issues, but they need the information first.’ Senia Bachir Abderahman is talking about the situation in the refugee camp that she grew up in and the frustration that her family and most of her fellow Saharawis (Western Sahara’s indigenous population) cannot escape from this refugee camp because their country is colonised by Morocco.

The Saharawis in occupied Western Sahara are brutally repressed and the youth there are increasingly disillusioned at the lack of progress. They are therefore turning away from peaceful means to solve the conflict.

Senia is in Denmark, invited by Danish NGO Africa Contact, to tell about the little-known predicament of the refugees in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, and their struggle for independence for their country, Western Sahara, from Moroccan colonisation so that they can return to their native land after 35 years of involuntary exile.

Senia has clearly told her story many times. Her perseverance and dedication to the Saharawi cause has seen her appear before the UN Fourth Committee on several occasions and before the United States Congress, and she has met with politicians and NGOs in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. This dedication is clearly the result of Senia’s and her family’s experiences.

Senia’s mother fled from her hometown in 1975 as Moroccan troops invaded Western Sahara, until then a Spanish colony. Her mother travelled on foot across the desert together with her family, eventually ending up in Smara refugee camp in Algeria near the border with Western Sahara. Here her mother gave birth to Senia in a tent, and Senia’s family has lived here ever since together with 165,000 of their compatriots.

The refugees in the camps live in tents and huts in one of the most inhospitable and arid areas in the world, the so-called ‘devil’s garden’, where temperatures reach 50 degrees in the summer and fall below freezing in the night during winter, where malnutrition is commonplace, where water has to be driven in by truck, and where people totally rely on the foreign aid that is distributed by the World Food Programme. And according to Senia, the situation for the refugees is not improving. ‘The humanitarian situation is really getting worse in the last couple of years, for instance the food aid have decreased.’

The situation is not much better for the Saharawis that live in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. ‘Since 2005 it has been very bad. Hundreds have been tortured and imprisoned. I have friends who have experienced such abuse on a daily basis,’ Senia says.

Even though the Saharawis have created a whole state apparatus – the Saharawi Arab Democratic Rebublic (SADR), which is a member of the African Union and recognised by over 80 countries – with a constitution, parliament, a legal system and an education system in the refugee camps, the situation in the camps is still agonising for Saharawis living there. For instance, they still have to go abroad for their secondary and tertiary education.

A successful student herself, Senia soon won a scholarship to United World College in Norway, and has studied biology at Mount Holyoke College in the USA. This is a testament to the SADR’s having made education a priority from the onset, and subsequently seeing the literacy level in the camps improve from below 10 per cent when the refugees arrived to over 90 per cent today, way above the regional average. This is important because a well-educated Saharawi youth is a virtual pre-condition for both the winning of independence and a successful Western Saharan society after independence has been won.

But like many other young Saharawis, Senia is unhappy with the lack of action taken by the international community. ‘It is really disappointing that all the international players, who on the one hand advocate democracy and human rights, on the other hand put their economic interests above these things in regard to Western Sahara.’ She is particularly disappointed with the UN. ‘The UN, which we refer to as the United Nothing, has been very silent. The reason for this is that Morocco is protected by its strong allies, the USA and France, who use their veto in the Security Council to stop any progress in Western Sahara.’

This disappointment might prove explosive if the Western Sahara conflict continues to be unsolved and the Saharawis continue to remain subjugated to Moroccan rule and abuse. ‘People, especially in the occupied territories in Western Sahara, are becoming increasingly frustrated. This frustration was clearly seen in the [October 2010] Gdeim Izik protest camp [in occupied Western Sahara],’ Senia says. ‘No one really knows how many were killed or injured in Gdeim Izik, as no one properly investigated it, although Amnesty International did report that three were killed and many others injured and killed.’

‘People became very frustrated after Gdeim Izik,’ says Senia. ‘Their peaceful protests were met with violence. Many young people therefore demanded that [the Western Saharan liberation movement] Polisario went back to war after this. Even my younger brother wants to go to war. My mother, on the other hand, has experienced war first-hand and really hopes for a more peaceful solution. I can understand both sides. I understand the frustration that the international community hasn’t acted more, but I believe that war is definitely not the solution.’

But even though Senia does not believe in restarting the war with Morocco, which ended in a negotiated ceasefire in 1991, she in uncompromising in regard to the status on Western Sahara. ‘The solution is a referendum on independence of Western Sahara. Anything else is a violation of international law. The negotiations between Polisario and Morocco are therefore somewhat pointless because the right to a referendum is, and should be, non-negotionable. Minurso [the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara] even has a list of eligible voters who would vote in such a referendum,’ she says.

According to Senia, one of the problems in getting the world to become interested in the Western Sahara conflict and the desperate situation of the Saharawis is that Morocco is winning the ‘war of words’ in the media. ‘Polisario has been trying very hard to find a solution through diplomatic means. They have not succeeded so far, also because the Moroccans are using many resources on lobbying. It is now a war on words fought through the media, and the Moroccans are winning it.’

For Senia, one of the ways of winning this ‘war on words’ is for civil society in the West and elsewhere to rally behind the Saharawis in their fight for self-determination and human rights, and thereby hopefully pressurise their respective governments into acting to ensure independence for Africa’s last colony. ‘I strongly believe in the power of civil society. We need such organisations to pressurise their governments. There is a lot of awareness work to be done,’ she insists.

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* Peter Kenworthy is an activist with Africa Contact.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Sudan: Messy divorce or amicable split?

Yohannes Woldemariam

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/73178

cc M L‘The history of Sudan is a complex one which can’t be reduced to a linear narrative of south versus north,’ writes Yohannes Woldemariam. Can South Sudan resolve the sticking points standing in the way of successful secession?

Most western countries tacitly supported the creation of a divided Sudan even before the referendum took place. However, separation is not necessarily the ideal solution. Professor Mahmood Mamdani’s article, ‘South Sudan: Rethinking citizenship, sovereignty and self-determination’ is excellent for understanding the variety of issues involved in the separation of south and north Sudan. If certain outstanding issues are not ironed out, the divorce can be messy. I also like that Mamdani unsettles the casual essentialist dichotomy that frames the conflict in a simple South versus North categories. The history of Sudan is a complex one which can’t be reduced to a linear narrative of south versus north.

Mamdani is right in his assertion that the external factor/pressure was crucial in Omer Al Bashir’s ‘acceptance’ of the outcome of the referendum. Al Bashir hoped to diffuse the negative publicity from Darfur and his trouble with the ICJ by accepting the secession of south Sudan. The possible intervention of the United States was of serious concern to Al Bashir.

While most writing on Sudan is focused on the potential conflict between the north and the South, Mamdani’s look into internal southern Sudanese issues is another perceptive insight. With 92 per cent illiteracy rate and several ethnic groupings, the perceived national cohesiveness of southern Sudan is fragile at best.

Will South Sudan learn from the 50 to 60 years of experience of post-independence Africa, where the nation state model is under assault in significant part of the continent? The factional violence that is already evident is a worrying sign. This potential issue of further fragmentation in the south may have been behind the late John Garang's conviction of a new Sudan within the context of unity. The role of regional actors (Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda and Israel), to try to use Southern Sudan as a proxy by supporting different factions is another potential destabilising factor.

For a successful divorce between north and south Sudan to occur, there are still many sticking points:

– Division of oil revenues: Where will the oil-rich Abyei region end up--in the north or the south? Or can some formula be found where both south and north can share revenue and ownership? This is crucial to resolve because the southern Sudan constitution has included Abyei as part of Sudan to which Al Bashir is reacting by threatening to withdraw his recognition of the referendum results. Perhaps, Al Bashir is recalculating his position in light of new developments in the region with the Arab Spring. The reconfiguration of alliances is still to be determined and the dictators in the region are very worried for their survival.
– What currency will an independent south Sudan adopt? How will this affect partitioned Sudan?
– Water security (the issue of Jonglei canal and the Nile has regional dimensions). Upstream countries Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda recently signed an agreement to try to reverse Nile water sharing, currently regulated by two 1929 and 1959 deals. The emergence of south Sudan as a potential ally for this group is of concern for Egypt.
– The demarcation of the border.

These are among the issues which require urgent attention for an amicable divorce.

Another important issue is the rights of citizens across the border of the two countries and the migrants. Here, the vulnerability of Ethiopians of Eritrean ancestry during the 1998-2000 war between the two countries provides a useful lesson. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Eritreans who lived in Ethiopia for over half a century and others who were born and raised in Ethiopia and never set foot in Eritrea were maltreated and deported after being stripped of all their possessions. To avoid tragic consequences, they should be granted citizenship in both states as Mamdani suggests. Internally, South Sudan should strive for ‘territorial federalism’ with genuine democratic power sharing in order to avoid the possible degeneration to personal rule and authoritarianism.

The disarmament of rival militias in south Sudan giving way to a national army is of utmost importance if we are to prevent a UNITA versus MPLA or a Renamo versus FRELIMO type debilitating civil war.

Professor Mamdani, thank you for your enlightening and timely article!

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Cameroonian man sentenced to 36 months in prison for homosexuality

African Activist

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/73136

Cameroonian human rights organisations Association for the Defense of Homosexuals (ADEFHO) and Teenagers Against HIV/AIDS (SID’ADO) are reporting that Mbede Roger Jean-Claude has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for homosexuality. He was entrapped and then arrested by police.

On April 28 2011, a young man named MBEDE Roger Jean-Claude was sentenced to 36 months in prison for homosexuality by the Court of First Instance of Yaounde administrative center. According to informations we have so far everything has gone from a text message sent to a third party, in which Roger told his flame and requested an appointment. The appointment fixed on March 2nd 2011 in a famous spot in the city of Yaounde has proven to be an ambush as he arrived at the meeting place Roger was arrested by elements of the SED (Secretary of State for defense).

Having confessed his homosexuality, Roger said he had not been tortured, he spent 07 days in the gendarmerie of the lake (Yaoundé). On March 09 2011 Roger has been place under provisional mandate of custody and taken to the Yaoundé Central Prison. He appeared before the court of first instance of Yaoundé administrative center on March 10 and March 24 and April 14 and was finally sentenced in April 28, 2011 to 36 months in prison for homosexuality by the Court of First Instance of Yaounde administrative center.

Roger is currently receiving antibiotics prescribed by the prison infirmary although he had no information about his real state of health. He faces problems of nutrition, and is the victim of threats and homophobia. He spends his nights on the floor because he did not pay the cell. He is in a lamentable psychological state.

We will be back soon with more details on the case.

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* This entry is from African Activist, available at http://www.africanactivist.org/2011/05/cameroonian-man-sentenced-to-36-months.html
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Leave Cutting Edge alone

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/73137

On the 28th April 2011 the SABC television programme Cutting Edge screened a programme on life in Grahamstown. The title of the story was ‘bucket of shame’. In Grahamstown there are vast areas that continue to use the bucket system to shit seventeen years after democracy.

People are shitting in buckets and plastic bags in Ndancama, a township that was erected in 1972. The few RDP houses that have been built are crumbling down. The sewerage is not working.

People are also shitting in buckets and plastic bags in eLuxolweni. RDP houses were supposed to be built here in 2010 but the project was never completed and the contractors have abandoned the site even thought thirty houses remain unbuilt. The quality of the work on the houses that were built is shocking and the sewerage is not working.

In the Sun City shack settlement, founded in 1982, and the Transit Camp, RDP houses are supposed to be being built but the emerging contractors are struggling to complete the project due to government delaying the payments.

My brother Sizakele Maxhegwana (his number is 046 – 637 0587) used to work as a casual worker, collecting the buckets full of shit. When we witnessed the unpleasant working conditions we advised him to stop working. No medical support was given. We felt that the work was hazardous to his health.

The Cutting Edge show on Grahamstown was carefully researched and it told the truth. Workers were interviewed and they narrated their unpleasant working conditions. Residents were interviewed as well and they told their stories about the indignities and dangers that come from not having access to proper toilets.

All these devastating ills are emerging from a Municipality that is rotten at the base. The Mayor is personally indebted to the Municipality for an amount of not less than R60 000.

In the 2010/2011 Financial year the Makana Municipality could not account for an amount of R19 million.

In the 2009/2010 Financial year the very same Makana Municipality could not account for R24 million.

Old ladies are shitting in plastic bags while millions of rand cannot be accounted for! This is disgraceful.

Since the Cutting Edge show on Grahamstown was screened we have witnessed a lot of anxiety from both the municipality and the ruling party. Some senior members of the ruling party accused us of paying SABC, Cutting Edge in particular, for screening what they called “a right wing agenda that seeks to destabilise ANC ahead of the local government elections”. An employee of the municipality publicly accused us of being drunk with wine that we get from reactionary white academics. The local ANC said the Luthuli house is looking at the video and that both UPM and SABC “shall shit bricks”. Zandie Mahlahla, a senior member of the ANC, publicly threatened me on the campus of Rhodes University. She said that I am “going to be killed and be buried in the township”. She closed the way of our Publicity Secretary Xola Mali. She just stood like a zombie.

We have now learnt that the Makana Municipality has taken South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA). This is another signal of the death of democracy in South Africa. It is another signal that corruption is entrenched in our society and that who ever seeks to expose it we be met by all kinds of hostilities and intimidations. It is another signal that the party that once aimed to be a national liberation movement is now a means to private accumulation and top down social control.

After what happened to Abahlali baseMjondolo in Kennedy Road and Pemary Ridge in Durban in 2009 and the Landless People’s Movement in eTwatwa on the East Rand in 2010 no autonomous poor people’s organisation can afford to ignore public death threats from the ANC.

Now that the ANC has openly declared its tensions to be able to censor the media we should not see this attempt to intimidate journalists as an isolated instance.

It is clear that the Municipality can not prove

· Distortion: Nothing is being exaggerated in this programme. It is a fact that our people use the bucket system to shit. It is a fact that our municipality is corrupt. The workers told the truth when they narrated their unpleasant working conditions
· Material Omission: I wonder what sort of defence of such appalling conditions that our people continue to endure after 17 years of “democracy” could be claimed to be a ‘material omission’?
· Summarisation: The summary presented in the show presented the reality of the lives of our people in a very fair manner.

The real problem here for the ANC is the screening of a programme on the bucket system on the eve of local government elections. The real problem here is that local authorities do not want to be exposed as corrupt. The real problem here is a political party that is so obsessed with power that anything that threatens their government must just be suppressed and vanquished.

The ANC is silent when we suffer day in and day out. The ANC can ignore our people for seventeen years while we shit in plastic bags and buckets. But when we speak up they jump into action and threaten to kill and to make us shit bricks. They are very efficient and effective when they want to be. They do not leave us to suffer because they have a capacity problem. They leave us to suffer because they want to leave us to suffer.

On the day of the hearing against Cutting Edge the people of different areas still using buckets’ will protest outside Makana Municipality Hall. We will dump all the shit in front of the Town Hall because that is where it belongs.

We are sick and tired of being dehumanized by the ruling power elite. We are fed up of giving and giving and not getting anything, but bullshit. We are told that it is our sacred, national and revolutionary duty to put our crosses next to their name in the IEC’s boxes. But they have no interest in allowing us to put our shit in toilets.

If our lives and voices matter, of which they should, the Municipality must drop the case against Cutting Edgeimmediately and focus on eradicating the bucket system, fighting corruption and servicing the people with basic social rights.

Leave Cutting Edge alone!

Yours truly;

Ayanda Kota

UPM – Chairperson
078 6256 462

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Makhaza land invasion

Abahlali baseMjondolo

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/73184

Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape support the initiative of creating
community from below by Makhaza back yard dwellers.



within the city of Cape Town there is a backlog of more than 500, 000
and this number increase by 20, 000 while the city of Cape Town can
only afford to buid 8000 houses per year.



It is clear that people who are in the waiting list and those liiving
within informal settlement will have to wait more than 30 years before
they can access descent houses within the city of Cape Town.



For the pasat few days people of Makhaza at section 36 have been
building their own shacks at an open space of unused land for more
that 17 years, most of these people have been in the waiting for more
than 15 years.



As an organisation we fail to understand as to why the city of Cape
Town is against the notion of people's drven development of building
communities from below, because it is clear that the city is failing
completly to meet it's housing demand.



As abahlali baseMjondolo we call on the City of Cape Town to immediatly:


1. Stop demolitiong peoples structure without order from the court

2. To immediatly return people's material that was confiscated
illegally by it's reactionary anti land invasion unit and law
enforcement

3. Instead of demolitiong people's structure they rather focus on
enclosing the open air toilets that they have build for people of
Makhaza as per court order from the high court.



For more info call Nosiphiwo, (c0mmunity leader) at 073 856 7518 and
for more comment call Mzonke Poni the chairperson of Abahlali
baseMjondolo Western Cape @ 073 2562 036

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Statement on the rise of homophobia

South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU)

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/73170

The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) has welcomed the decision by Parliament to set up a national task team to tackle hate crimes against lesbians and gays. We not only welcome the decision but want to point out that it is long overdue if one looks at the escalating numbers of brutal homophobic attacks with the latest being the cruel killing of Noxolo Nogwaza of KwaThema two weeks ago.

She was allegedly stoned, gang raped and stabbed. She suffered in the hands of people who were probably known to her as she was killed in her community and yet nobody has come forth with information which may lead to the arrest of her killers.

Noxolo’s death, as well as the deaths and harassment of other lesbians, is a slap in the face to South Africa – a country that prides itself for having the best and most far-reaching constitution in the world that guarantees gender equality.

We hope the formation of this task team – to be comprised of six representatives from the judiciary, police and social development, six representatives from the lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual and intersex (LGTBI) community will work towards the formulation of policies and legislation that will ensure that the rights of the LGTBI are not only realized but are also protected.

SADTU would like to urge the churches and community based organizations to begin to talk about the issues of lesbians and gays in their constituencies. We hope this will lead to acceptance and respect of lesbians and gays in our communities. This is a human right issue and deserves to be debated openly by society.

Contact:
Mugwena Maluleke, General Secretary, 082 783 2968
Nkosana Dolopi, Deputy General Secretary, 082 709 5651
Nomusa Cembi, Media Officer, 082 719 5157

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We don’t buy the government cheese

H. Nanjala Nyabola

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/73183

People don’t believe their governments anymore. Not that governments anywhere have a history of doing much to earn the public’s trust. But allowing ourselves for a few minutes to entertain the thought that governments do in fact have our best intentions at heart, isn’t it cause for concern that growing swathes of the global population seem to be disenfranchised with the notion of government? Even excepting the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, for instance the recent death – intentionally ambiguous description – of Osama bin Laden has revealed that even the US, which historically has higher levels of trust in government than many other states is in the midst of some kind of crisis. Of course, demands to see bin Laden’s body may on one hand be an extension of the blatantly racist reactions to the Obama presidency, itself hardly a comforting thought, but they could also indicate that the level of trust in formal political institutions in that country is at an all time low.

I wasn’t around during the 1960s but I’m told it was a much simpler time, in part because governments went to greater and increasingly immoral lengths to tar and feather their opponents. The spectre of the Cold War made defining the enemy much easier, even if it raised the level of mutual suspicion to intolerable levels. Yes, governments killed and disappeared thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, around the world in the name of fighting the communist or capitalist ghosts but for the petrified general population at the receiving end of well-executed propaganda, there was at least the cold comfort of predictability, a 1984-like existence that relieved the man of the street of the burden of free thought. In this climate, if the government told you that a book was banned because the author was the enemy, you believed it mostly because no one else was telling you any different.

Today, we know that most of the ghosts that governments fight are of their own imaginations, and that is unambiguously good. ‘No taxation without representation’ has become more than the historical rallying cry of the US war of independence, and come to resonate with the aspirations of the world’s population at large. It means that governments like Museveni’s in Uganda can no longer act with wanton impunity, expecting the people of that country to simply accept it. Nonetheless, if people stop taking governments at their word then doesn’t that throw the very notion of ‘government’ into disarray? If the public question every decision taken by a government, even the most trivial, doesn’t that undercut the governments function to take decisions for the public’s own good in a timely fashion? If we, and by we I mean those who live in relatively free societies, continue to treat our governments with such heightened suspicion then don’t we risk creating an enemy that will spend more time trying to earn our trust or masquerade as doing so, than actually governing?

It seems illogical that to me government should be the enemy. Yes it’s good that we’re all questioning them more but there’s a difference between scrutiny and suspicion, and what we seem to have now is more of the latter than the former.
The modern nation state is premised on a measure of trust from the governed. We elect representatives we trust to go into parliaments or senates or congresses and deliberate on those issues that are most important with us so that we don’t have to.

When this bond of trust is broken, what we’re left with is the threat of chaos that no number of revolutions can resolve. The case of Egypt is a prime example of this. Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by one of the most potent displays of people power in recent history; a reminder to oppressed populations that the power to take back their states was truly in their hands. But what comes after a revolution? If you believe that government is a necessary part of modern social organisation then you will concede that an interim administration is necessary in order to rid the system of the remains of the previous government and maintain some sort of continuity between the old and the new administration, so that the new does not have to build from scratch. But how can an interim administration function when the people won’t even allow the smallest measure of time to elapse before change is implemented? If everyone who works for a government in a country in which the government is the largest employer, who will run the country?

My generation will probably go down in history as the one in which the idea of government was challenged and reinforced with equal gusto. On the positive side, it means that the level of public engagement has rarely been so high. On the other, it means that governments face the threat of being increasingly paralysed by antagonistic populations, and survival will begin to outweigh progress as a measure of a governments’ success. Maybe it’s time for us to take a step back and start to consider more carefully the long-term ramifications of this development.

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

Zim Ngqawana: ‘I sing with a sword in my hand’

(25 December 1959 – 10 May 2011)

Aryan Kaganof

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/73195

Ndicula ndiphethe ikrele esandleni.

An obituary sums up a person’s life in a few hundred words, states their achievements, contextualizes their work in terms of broader currents and, at best, attempts to convey how much they will be missed and how things will never be the same again. But from the moment I heard the voice of Zim Ngqawana’s lifelong companion and sometimes manager Zaide Harneker sobbing on the phone, “My friend has gone, my friend has gone…” I could not help feeling that here was one individual whose life was not going to fit into an obituary.

It’s true that Bra’ Zim recorded ten albums (of which at least 5 are masterpieces), and it’s true that he was mentored by the “greats” of Afro-American improvised music (Archie Shepp and Yusuf Lateef) and it’s also true that he went on to mentor an entire generation of extraordinary young South African talents (most notably piano virtuosos Kyle Shepherd and the bass phenomenon Shane Cooper), but actually his greatest achievements were on the level of the everyday. Zim was a man whose immense quality of spiritual Being simply altered the lives of all those who came into contact with him. He was an alchemist, a transformer of energies, and, most importantly and in the deepest sense of the word, a Spiritual Healer. Music was not an end result for Bra’ Zim, it was the means to provide healing.

Healing was paramount to Zim, a man acutely aware of the wounded condition of his people, of his country, of his times. On a trip to meet the legendary novelist and academic Eskia Mphahlele Bra’ Zim questioned the sage about the naming of not only this country as “South Africa” but indeed the name of the continent itself “Africa”.

“Where does this word Africa come from?” Zim asked the venerable old sage who was forced to admit that it was given to the continent by Roman colonizers. Zim recounted his memory of his grandfather telling him that the continent was called Quntu.

“I reject this thing called African if Africa is a name given by the white man. How is it useful to be African?” Zim retorted. Eskia went silent. There was nothing to say.

Zim’s political acumen was unparalleled, certainly more rigorous and critical than any of the so-called “politicans” that strut the stage in this country. Paradoxically he entirely rejected politics and had no interest in the machinations of the power cliques that run the world, and the world of culture. There will be hypocritical paeans to his genius from all the government departments and from all the jazz promoters but the truth is that Zim could hardly get a gig in this country, his huge reputation notwithstanding. The Department of Arts and Culture did nothing to help restore his Zimology Institute when it was vandalized in 2009 and he was forced to sell the farm that the Institute was built on. Promoters and audiences were shy of the increasingly experimental tendency in Zim’s music and he spent the last few years of his life peering into the abyss of financial ruin. Those same jazz promoters that avoided him will now rush to organize sanitized Zim Memorial Concerts that will capitalize on his death and soothe their venal consciences.

Zim Ngqawana was on a spiritual journey. He had given up his attachment to his physical body many years ago and was living life with only one goal – to experience total freedom. He explained it like this “When you improvise, especially within the avant garde genre, that is when you experience total freedom. Because that is bordering on the unknown, which is based through inspiration and spontaneity. No fear. It comes from that centre of humility, and a willingness to go beyond yourself and to selflessness.”

Bra’ Zim performed on flute, soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax and piano with complete abandonment. He played with the understanding of a man who was already dead. When his life’s work, the Zimology Institute was vandalized he told me “I have learned from this that nothing is permanent in this world.” Then he broke out into song, “Ndicula ndiphethe ikrele esandleni.”

“I sing with a sword in my hand.”

Hamba kahle Bra’ Zim.

* This article first appeared on Mahala.com.
* Aryan Kaganof is a South African film maker, novelist, poet and fine artist.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Dreams for a better world for humanity

Review of ‘Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine’

Yash Tandon

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/73182

The Cheche Reminiscences are wonderful recollections of a group of bright young dedicated youngsters (most of them in their mid-twenties) at the Dar es Salaam University (DSU) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who founded and were inspired by a journal called ‘Cheche’. That name was derived from ‘Iskra’ (spark), the Leninist revolutionary journal that helped spark the Russian revolution in 1917. During the course of my teaching at the DSU I had come to know Karim Hirji as well as the other co-authors (Henry Mapolu, Zakia Hamdani Meghji, George G. Hajivayanis, and Christopher C. Liundi). So I can say with hindsight that this radical student magazine was indeed a brave, I would say audacious, attempt to try and activate students at the DSU and beyond towards their chosen revolutionary goal of socialism.

One young man who went to the DSU during that period was Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, of whom Hirji says, ‘Museveni is a charismatic and inspirational speaker’. In the first chapter of the book, Museveni writes: ‘It is Dar es Salaam’s atmosphere of freedom fighters, socialists, nationalizations, anti-imperialism that attracted me ... while in Uganda, I looked at President Nyerere’s leadership as a source of inspiration to the struggling people of Africa.’ However, he was soon disillusioned. ‘I was, almost immediately, disappointed. I found the students lacking in militancy.’ Of all the chapters this is perhaps, politically, the most significant, not only because Museveni is currently the president of Uganda, but also this chapter really gets into the heart of what inspired the group of young radical students at the DSU during those years, and, more significantly the strengths and weaknesses of their dreams and foibles.

In November 1967, Museveni and other radical students formed the University Students African Revolutionary Front (USARF). Their journal ‘Cheche’ appeared in November 1969 as an organ that was to transform the University into a ‘hotbed of revolutionary cadres’. In the first issue of ‘Cheche’ Museveni wrote on: ‘Why We Should Take up Rifles’. Looking back it is tempting to ask the question: How much of what Museveni says and does today was influenced by the USARF and ‘Cheche’ in his student days? Alternatively, how has Museveni changed from those early heady days, and if so, why?

One thing that held the group together was their revolutionary zeal. I will let Hirji explain: ‘We were impelled by love for humanity... Humanity for us was a single family.’ It is beautiful to read this; for the young not to have visions or dreams for a better world for humanity would be really sad. For this alone the book is worth reading. Once this is understood, it is then easy to appreciate both the dream and the disillusionment that one reads in the book.

There is a short paper (5 pages) by Zakia Hamdani Meghji on ‘Sisterly Activism’. She narrates a lovely, touching, story of her visit to a village in Dodoma. Having come from Zanzibar`s ‘Stone Town’, rural Dodoma was an awakening for her. The radical students organised shamba work and visits to Ujamma villages on a regular basis. ‘We wanted to change the system, to make poverty history.’ But she was soon to be disillusioned. Her sisters were not that encouraging. ‘In the wide variety of radical activities on the campus I participated in,’ she writes, ‘one thing often bothered me –too few female members were present ... Often I was alone.’ This must be heartbreaking, and not a very flattering picture of USARF’s activism on the campus. Later, she joined the Tanzania Parliament, and held several Ministerial portfolios including on health, natural resources and tourism, and finance. There is another essay by Henry Mapolu titled, ‘On Producing a Student Magazine’, which gives an interesting account of how the magazine was physically produced (on stencils and cyclostyled), and self-financed. After leaving DSU, Mapolu worked as a Worker Education Officer at the Friendship Textile Mill. Now he runs a private management consulting company called REDMA.

The best essay in the book, in my view, is by George G. Hajivayanis on ‘Night- Shift Comrades’. ‘Our motivation to produce Cheche,’ he says, ‘was to serve the working people of the world, disseminate ideas that promoted class-based understanding of society, and social change, speak truth to powers that be, and educate our fellow students.’ How does he assess this endeavour? ‘The process helped us clarify our own ideas, debate the different interpretations of history, society and development, and engage the broader group of apathetic students ...’ he says. George is chastened by his experience, but he is not bitter. ‘Life is a poem’, he says, ‘a long winding poem filled with mystery and wonder... We are all poets. Sometimes we write our own verses.’ George is also a realist. ‘Often,’ he says, ‘external forces and the conditions in which we get caught up modify or dictate what we put down.’ How true! So what happened? ‘Over time, the zeal waned’, he says. ‘Instead of committing class suicide, as we had dreamt about during student days, my friends and I became petty-bourgeoisified. ... and away from the lives and conditions of the masses.’

Overall, it is wonderful to read these essays by people, now no longer young and presumably mellowed down by age and experience, who went through an experiment that was, in my view, simply magnificent. Later Hirji says that he and his comrades had ‘grave deficiencies’ and that ‘(w)e progressively became less organised and disciplined, and more immersed into a petty bourgeois mode of life. In our personal lives, many among us strove to attain the best of both worlds.’ These words make a sad reading. Here, I think, the older Hirji is a bit too hard on the youthful Hirji and his equally young comrades. In my view, even if they had sacrificed their lives for ‘the masses’, socialism, or whatever they had in mind, might still have eluded them. Socialism is a monumental long term, almost an epochal, challenge; it is not a one day’s wonder.

Dreams do not make revolutions, but the young must dream nonetheless. We are living through times of possibly revolutionary changes. ‘Cheche: Reminiscences’ should be read by the younger generation of pan-Africanists from Cape to Cairo, so that they may dream, and also so that they may learn. As Hajivayanis says: ‘... it has not been in vain. Human progress does not follow a straight line. We are not angels. ...The youth of today have to pick up, not drop, that baton. But not in a mechanical way. They need to examine our efforts, weigh the good and the bad, and work out their own analysis, directions and strategies.’

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* Yash Tandon is the author of ‘Ending Aid Dependence’ and ‘Development and Globalisation: Daring to Think Differently’.
* ‘Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine’, edited by Karim F. Hirji, is published by Dar es Salaam Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2010.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

View from Somewhere

Amira Kheir

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/73196

Dear Friends,

It is with the greatest joy that I announce to you the arrival of my debut album 'View From Somewhere'! Following the wonderful album launch at the Forge at the end of March which you helped to make possible - 'View From Somewhere' is now available for purchase through my website (www.amirakheir.com) as well as at Brill/Clerkenwell Music (27 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QD, London).

It will soon be officially released & available for digital download on itunes, amazon etc. and I will keep you posted as to when that happens.

I would also like to remind you of my upcoming performance alongside my Quartet this Sunday 15th of May at the Green Note (106 Parkway NW1 7AN, London). This will be an intimate evening with a warm line up of oud, double bass, flute and percussions. For more info & tickets:
http://www.greennote.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1127&Itemid=6

As always thank you so much for your support - it is the most indispensable part of the equation! I hope you will continue to come to our gigs and help to spread the word to your friends & family.

ABOUT AMIRA KHEIR

Sudanese-Italian singer/songwriter Amira Kheir is creating a sound that is inspired by traditional Sudanese singing and instrumentation, and blended with elements of Jazz, Soul, East and West African as well as Middle Eastern music. The result is a unique amalgamation of arrangements that give tasters of Sudan’s rich musical and cultural heritage whilst being reflective of our ever-merging world.

Originally from Sudan but having lived in Italy for many years and now residing in London, Amira draws from her own multicultural background to create music that explores themes of home, belonging and transcendental spirituality. Her music is evocative of Northern Sudan’s desert landscape and celebrative of its ancient culture and multitude realities, but rooted in a compelling call to come together irrespectively of our backgrounds to share our single human journey.

Visibly Invisible

Amira Ali

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/73185

Man dreams
of far away lands
unknown,
thoughts yearnin'
of unconcealed gems
to fetch and be fetch'd,

to reach the field
of the unknown
but to be desecrat'd
by projects
of food stamps and sorts
yet unknown,

mist'd in that
which lingers on swamps
he prays behind moonlight
that falls onto
naked mountains
in the fall,

He, labelled impossibility
on both sides
paints on foreign walls
poetically imprisoned
ethnographical murals and imprints
of slave ships carryin' decades
of colored fights,

seduced by otherness
he's kicked in the belly
by isms,
but he fights back
in colors of colorless
fights,

makin' statements
findin' reasons
for existence
to be an image
in the visible
of worlds of invisible men,

deceived by man himself
he wages on impossibilities
obliteratin' to build
a love bridge between
the visible
and invisible of men.

* afro'disiatic expressions © (2011)
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Won’t forgive you, Mama

For Moturi

Dennis Dancan Mosiere

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/73186

Mama, was it a mistake
That I existed without your consent
Something you could not avoid
Where is the root of the matter
It is something my brain can't tell
From my head's weak cartilage
Did you just look at the horizon
Trying to reach the yellow light
Of the sinking sun to the East
Until you abandoned me
Almost claiming my life
Won't forgive you, mama.

Mama, is it my weak grip of thy breast
As I sucked
That embarrassed you completely
Was it my cry
Clinging to your back
Or was it my shitting on your laps
As you spoon-fed me
What triggered your arrogance
Abandoning me in this lone world
Leaving me at the mercy of nobody
Subjecting me to a different diet
From the usual breast milk and porridge
To course Ugali and vegetables
Won't forgive you, mama.

I was three months when you left me
Now am six months old
Still going strong
But I can't regret missing you
(the world is my Samaritan)
Tell me mama,
Why should I bother you?
When am pondering over the next move
May when I shall turn twenty
(a wish of course)
May be I harassed your femininity
But wasn't it your wish
That you should have a son
Won't forgive you, mama

It is a criminal offence
I can't manage to file
May you can deny it
But the world has seen
Naked evidence before your eyes
Like river water running away
From the source
Never to return
Mama, I have chosen to forget you
Whether you come back
That is another leaf to be turned over
But as for now
Won't forgive you mama.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Dennis Dancan Mosiere aka Grandmaster Masese is a Nairobi-based performance poet/writer and musician. He is also a Fahamu Pan African Fellow for Social Justice.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Pambazuka News 188: Et Cesaire finit par mettre la France à genoux...

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/73133

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

Museveni and Amin

Gado

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/73191

Seeking Osama's successor

Gado

2011-05-11

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/73134

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

Zimbabwe: Bulawayo riot police crush peaceful WOZA protest

2011-05-11

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news100511/bulawayo100511.htm

Baton-wielding riot police waged a brutal crackdown recently on peaceful Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) demonstrators in Bulawayo, with witnesses saying dozens of people were injured. WOZA said thousands of protesters gathered in central Bulawayo to express their frustration at the persistent daily ‘18 hour power cuts,’ when riot police arrived and began to indiscriminately beat the peaceful activists. The protest was aimed at the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) for what WOZA termed was daylight robbery by the utility company.

Zimbabwe: MDC-T must urgently curb violence within

2011-05-10

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/demgg/110420ciz.asp?sector=DEMGG

Beatings, assaults, torture, manipulation of the party structures, tribalism, nepotism, cooked up voters’ rolls, intolerance, vote buying, elections taking place under the cover of darkness, the use of long incumbency to remain in power and the imposition of candidates by the party’s top leadership. The above describes how the leadership of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) is managing its provincial congresses ahead of the party’s national congress in Bulawayo at the end of April, says the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

Zimbabwe: Report on Zimbabwe CSO consultative meeting on aid effectiveness

2011-05-10

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/econ/110420zimcodd.asp?sector=ECON

The Zimbabwe Coalition of Debt and Development (ZIMCODD), Poverty Reduction Forum (PRF) and Women's Action Group (WAG) with the support of Reality of Aid (RoA) convened a CSO Consultative Meeting on the Implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PD) and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) in Zimbabwe on 23 February 2011. The objective of the meeting was to identify Zimbabwean CSOs which are interested in Aid Effectiveness (hereafter AE) and the AAA and provide a platform for information sharing among them. Visit the Kubatana website for a report of the meeting.

Africa: African Union adopts decision on organic farming

2011-05-16

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/susagri/2011/susagri156.htm

The Executive Council of the African Union (AU), at its Eighteenth Ordinary Session in January 2011, adopted a decision on organic farming. In particular, the decision requests the AU Commission and its New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) to initiate and provide guidance for an AU-led coalition of international partners on the establishment of an African organic farming platform based on available best practices; and to provide guidance in support of the development of sustainable organic farming systems and improve seed quality.

Egypt: Women march against sectarian strife

Egyptian Centre For Women's Rights press release

2011-05-16

http://bit.ly/isM9PD

A large number of Egyptian women participated in a march entitled 'No to sectarian strife' which appeared with its ugly face in the district of Imbaba. They participated in this march to stress the values of citizenship and tolerance and to prevent the strife that has been witnessed in the district and in many different places in Egypt after the revolution. The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights affirms that the incidents that happened between Muslims and Christians are a clear attempt to abort the 25th of January revolution.

Global: Ten facts on gender and tobacco

2011-05-16

http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/gender_tobacco/facts/en/index.html

This World Health Organisation fact file contains 10 facts on how smoking impacts on women. 'Women who smoke are more likely than those who do not to experience infertility and delays in conceiving,' it says, 'Smoking during pregnancy increases risks of premature delivery, stillbirth and newborn death, and may cause a reduction in breast milk. Smoking increases women's risk for cancer of the cervix.'

Nigeria: Challenges to changing the feminine face of poverty in Nigeria

2011-05-16

http://www.learningpartnership.org/blog/2011/05/poverty-women-nigeria/

Seventy per cent of those living in absolute poverty in our world – starving or on the edge of starvation – are female. All over the world, women and children are the mass of the poor and the poorest of the poor. In Nigeria, as in many other developing countries, the new face of poverty is woman. This has become an economic phenomenon as the gap between women and men caught in the cycle of poverty has continued to widen in the past decade, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘the feminisation of poverty’. This underscores the fact that where an issue affects (negatively) both men and women, in most cases women suffer more than men. In the situation of single parenting for instance, families headed by women are poorer compared with those headed by men.

South Africa: Do more women politicians mean better politics?

2011-05-11

http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=55579

The Democratic Alliance (DA) election posters, which feature party leader Helen Zille, Cape Town mayoral candidate Patricia de Lille and party spokeswoman Lindiwe Mazibuko, do not necessarily mean that a vote for the party is a vote for women, analysts say. Amanda Gouws, a political analyst from Stellenbosch University, says a vote for the DA, the country’s official opposition, would not be a feminist vote or victory for women. 'The DA is not a feminist party and many of their women members in government are not either. De Lille and Zille do not have a feminist rhetoric - and let’s not forget that she appointed 10 men to her cabinet,' she said.

South Africa: Politicians need to help sisters do it for themselves

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/73278

Employment wise, in sub-Saharan Africa women occupy just one in three paid jobs outside agriculture, and it comes as no surprise that women are typically paid less than their male counterparts and have less secure employment. Despite this, there is an increase in women entering the labour force throughout their child-bearing years, finding ways to juggle the pressures of their unpaid family work and paid employment.
South Africa: Politicians need to help sisters do it for themselves

Doreen Gaura

CAPE TOWN: Riding a taxi home the other day I was somewhat in awe of the woman driving it. She appeared to be the owner of the vehicle, in her mid forties, dignified and commanding respect simply by the look of pride on her face.

I am also proud when I see examples like this of ‘sisters doin’ it for themselves’, to borrow from the famous Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin song.

However, when, as part of my job, I go through the recent Global Millennium Development Goals Report, I cannot help but feel dismayed. These South Africa ‘sisters’ are doing it for themselves but many are still missing out on job security, decent employment and education.

Worse, these are not yet prominent issues in the upcoming local government elections, where the main debate seems to be around infrastructure, not job creation or education.

Two MDG goals in particular – Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education and Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women – are especially relevant.

Given that gender equality and the empowerment of women are at the core of the MDGs, along with the fact they are paramount if we are to overcome poverty, hunger and disease by 2015, these are definitely pressing issues for all our country’s elected and aspiring politicians.

When it comes to schooling, disparities in tertiary education do not end at enrolment but are also seen in the area of study. Women are overrepresented in the humanities and social sciences and underrepresented in science and technology. This illustrates a reinforcement of socio-biological stereotypes which ensure women do not stray too far from their feminine household role, where they are supposed to be nurturing and non-competitive.

We see this in the labour sector as well. One example is the 2009 Gender Links Glass Ceilings: Women and Men in Southern African Media study, which found that stereotyping is common in media houses across the region. Women journalists are given softer reporting beats such as lifestyle, gender and health while male journalists work hard investigative beats such as politics or economics.

Employment wise, in sub-Saharan Africa women occupy just one in three paid jobs outside agriculture, and it comes as no surprise that women are typically paid less than their male counterparts and have less secure employment.

Despite this, there is an increase in women entering the labour force throughout their child-bearing years, finding ways to juggle the pressures of their unpaid family work and paid employment. Time will only tell what impact this has on the regional economy and male-female relations.

Women perform more unpaid work than men, leaving them ‘time poor’ with less sleep and leisure time. The burden of combining the ‘traditional’ work of a mother and wife and the paid work of the labour market inevitably impacts the level of participation possible for women, as well as their access to decent work.

The 2009 research report Global Trends in Women’s Access to ‘Decent Work’ notes that job security and occupational safety and pay do not automatically improve for women as employment increases. In fact, it may get worse as women are more vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers.

Limited men’s participation in unpaid care work and child care is another hindrance to women’s access to good employment opportunities. In addition, high levels of gender-based violence persist in South Africa, which is both a cause and consequence of poverty.

As we approach Election Day it is clear much more needs to be said and done if we are to achieve the MDG goals and facilitate women’s access to education, training and full employment and decent work by 2015. The question now is which party, if any, will take up these important issues? Sisters need some help so they can do it for themselves.

* Doreen Gaura is a gender activist and writer based in Cape Town. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary series on South Africa’s local government elections.

Africa: Police protest brutality condemned

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) statement

2011-05-16

http://chriafrica.blogspot.com/2011/05/chri-statement.html

As the world focuses its attention on oil rich North Africa and the Middle East, a wave of police brutality within sub-Saharan African states of the Commonwealth has gone largely unnoticed and unpunished. Uganda, Swaziland and Mozambique have seen a wave of protests. But little attention has been paid to the uniformly brutal way in which they are being dealt with. These are all Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) strongly condemns the routine use of intimidation, beatings, illegal detention, torture and excessive use of force being used within these countries to curb legitimate expressions of dissent and the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.

Côte d'Ivoire: Mass grave found on soccer pitch

2011-05-10

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-10-mass-grave-found-on-cte-divoire-soccer-pitch

UN investigators in Côte d'Ivoire have determined there were at least 68 bodies spread out across 10 burial mounds in a mass grave recently discovered on a soccer field in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital. Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy director of the human rights division of the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire, said on Monday (09 May) the victims were probably killed by pro-Laurent Gbagbo militias on 12 April, the day after the strongman was arrested.

Egypt: Jury out on promise to open Rafah

2011-05-16

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92718

Egypt’s new leadership has promised to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza permanently after more than five years of partial and occasionally full closure, but observers wonder how far this will go to ease the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). 'Our intention is to alleviate the human problems and living conditions for the people in Gaza,' Ambassador Mahna Bakhoum, spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIN. 'It is under study now - how, when and what [the opening of Rafah crossing will involve]. This is all being discussed by the government and by the whole country, not just the Foreign Ministry.'

Equatorial Guinea: Obiang prize rejected a second time

2011-05-12

http://www.egjustice.org/?q=unesco-obiang-prize-rejected-second-time

EG Justice and other civil society organisations have credited UNESCO’s Executive Board for soundly rejecting a petition by the government of Equatorial Guinea to reinstate a prize funded by and named after its president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. In a decision on 9 May 2011, the Executive Board declined to consider a 4 May request by the Obiang government to reverse its prior decision and award the prize without delay. UNESCO indefinitely suspended the $3 million UNESCO Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences in October 2010 after an unprecedented global outcry seeking its cancellation.

Kenya: Mau Mau torture files were 'guilty secret'

2011-05-16

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/mau-mau-torture-files-were-guilty-secret-2281456.html

Highly sensitive documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans at the hands of the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret' for the UK Government, a report has found. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the documents, which detail how detainees were castrated, beaten and sexually abused while in British camps, should now be made public. His announcement comes as a High Court judge is set to decide whether the UK Government, which sanctioned 'systematic violence' in the detention camps, is liable for the torture of the Mau Mau people between 1952 and 1961.

Libya: Death squads reportedly assassinating Libyan regime figures

2011-05-12

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/liby-m12.shtml

The New York Times has reported on a wave of execution-style murders of former Libyan government internal security personnel in Benghazi. The bodies of two men, Nasser al-Sirmany and Hussein Ghaith, were found within days of each other. Both men had reportedly worked as interrogators for Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal internal security agencies. At least four similar attacks are now under investigation by authorities in Benghazi, while it is unclear how many more killings have gone unreported. The so-called Transitional National Council (TNC) has denied that its security forces are responsible.

South Africa: Apartheid victims to get TRC payouts

2011-05-16

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Apartheid-victims-to-get-TRC-payouts-20110514

Government will pay out millions of rands to compensate victims of apartheid era atrocities, the Sunday Times reported. Those who qualify for financial assistance include victims and their children, even if they were born in or out of wedlock or were adopted. People with parental responsibilities over victims and their children will also be eligible for compensation.

Sudan: Rights group calls for release of activist

2011-05-12

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/11/sudan-free-female-activist

Sudanese authorities should immediately release Hawa Abdallah or formally charge her with a credible, recognized offense, Human Rights Watch has said. Abdallah, who was arrested on 6 May, is a community activist from the Abu Shouk displaced persons camp in North Darfur and a staff member of the United Nations/African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID). On 8 May, Sudan's state news service published an article accusing Abdallah of 'christianising' children in displaced persons camps and of links to a rebel group.

Uganda: Human Rights Watch pins government over killings

2011-05-12

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1159390/-/c216evz/-/index.html

At least nine unarmed Ugandans were shot dead - many of them in the back – by government security agents in the recent walk-to-work protests despite not being involved in rioting, a new report says. In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a 'prompt, independent, and thorough investigation' into the use of lethal force by security forces to counter the protests against the rising cost of living.

Africa: Britain declines to 'share the burden' of refugees

2011-05-16

http://ind.pn/lqwGWX

UK Home Secretary Theresa May has stressed that Britain would not accept migrants fleeing Libya and Tunisia as divisions opened within the European Union over how to respond to the crisis of refugees from North Africa. May is resisting calls from Italy for other EU countries to 'share the burden' of accommodating the new arrivals. Britain is offering to help the Italian government cope with the refugees, but insisting none will be given shelter in the UK.

East Africa: Refugee numbers rise as internal displacement declines slightly

2011-05-16

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38378&Cr=Africa&Cr1=refugees

The number of refugees in 10 countries in Eastern Africa has risen to nearly 1.4 million, an eight per cent increase since September, the United Nations humanitarian office said 13 May in an update that shows that the majority of the new asylum-seekers travelled to Kenya and Ethiopia. Kenya received more than 50,000 of the total number of 103,874 new refugees, while some 19,000 entered Ethiopia. The majority of the refugees going to the two countries were Somalis fleeing drought and conflict in their homeland, according to the report prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Libya: Close to 600 may be dead on Libyan migrant ship

2011-05-11

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-11-close-to-600-may-be-dead-on-libyan-migrant-ship

Almost everyone on an overcrowded ship carrying about 600 African migrants to Europe is believed to have died when the vessel broke apart within sight of the Libyan capital, the United Nations said. The UN accused the Libyan government of complicity in a rising number of deadly smuggling incidents, many involving workers from sub-Saharan Africa who had moved to Libya to find work before war broke out there in March.

Libya: Hundreds of boat people killed by the international coalition’s inaction

Migreurop press release

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/73273

Since January 2011, over 1,000 migrants have drowned while attempting to reach the fortified coasts of the southern shores of the European Union. These figures must be added to the 15,000 victims of the 'war against migrants' which reaches these days new peaks of inhumanity. According to informations, a boat carrying over 600 people is lost in the high seas off the Libyan coast, amidst general indifference.
Hundreds of boat people killed by the international coalition’s inaction
Migreurop press release
11 May 2011

Since January 2011, over 1,000 migrants have drowned while attempting to reach the fortified coasts of the southern shores of the European Union. These figures must be added to the 15,000 victims of the 'war against migrants' which reaches these days new peaks of inhumanity. According to informations, a boat carrying over 600 people is lost in the high seas off the Libyan coast [1], amidst general indifference.

In its issue of 8 May 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian reports that, at the beginning of April, around 60 boat people died of starvation and thirst after having been adrift for days. Threatened by the patrols entrusted with preventing their arrival on the italian and maltese coasts, they were also under the watch of the vessels of the international coalition deployed in Libya.

An impartial inquiry must quickly establish the responsibilities of the combination of actors which have failed in their duty to assist the vessels and people in distress, violating the most basic rules of international maritime law.

Beyond these events, which are symptomatic of the contradictions of a coalition that is a guarantor of the 'responsibility to protect' defended by the international community, this matter that questions the European immigration and border control policy as a whole.

Since the turn of the century, countries in Northern Africa have been playing a role as the EU border guards by pursuing and detaining people who wish to enact their right to emigrate (art. 13 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights). The subcontracting of migration controls to dictatorial regimes is at the core of the EU neighbourhood policy. Faced by the historic events that are stirring the Arab world, the reaction of the European countries has been to exert pressure on the political forces arising from popular uprisings (the Tunisian provisional government, the Libyan national transition council) in order to have them to fully assume the heritage of repression and denial of freedom of the EU dictators-partners.

To stop a few thousand people who, seizing the opportunity offered by the weakening of the policing apparatuses, sought to reach Europe, Frontex agency deployed its military means (ships, aeroplanes, helicopters...) around the island of Lampedusa and opposite the Tunisian and Libyan coasts. The objective of Operation Hermes is to dissuade people from departing northwards, contravening the 1951 Geneva Convention and the principle of non-refoulement of asylum seekers.

At present, the migrants who set off from North Africa and seek protection in Europe are caught in a deadly grip. On one hand, there is the Libyan regime of colonel Gaddafi which pushes them off aboard sea relics; on the other hand, ships under the flags of the states in the international coalition refuse to assist these boat people who are in danger.

European states and Frontex agency cannot continue to violate with impunity international conventions on sea rescue and on the protection of refugees. An intervention based on solidarity by the EU in the Mediterranean is possible [2] and must put an end to the European countries’ inhumane attitude towards migrants who have left North Africa. As long as these hostilities will not have ceased, the coalition engaged in the name of the 'responsibility to protect' will continue to kill while disregarding the international law that it supposedly embodies.

Contact:

contact@migreurop.org
0033153278781

Morocco: Challenges and opportunities beyond encampment for Sahrawi displacement

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/kf2XMQ

This brief available from the website of the Refugee Studies Centre analyses the challenges and opportunities - after 35 years of protracted displacement and encampment - for the Sahrawi refugees, their political representatives and international actors. It calls for a careful analysis of the diverse alternative solutions to encampment in Algeria that have been adopted or proposed and of the relevant protection concerns which may arise.

Mozambique: North overwhelmed by asylum seekers

2011-05-16

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92690

Thousands of frustrated Ethiopian and Somali asylum seekers trying to make their way to South Africa have been marooned in overcrowded camps in northern Mozambique since the government introduced measures limiting their movements. The Maratane Refugee Camp in Nampula Province, which normally accommodates around 5,500 long-term residents from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, now has a population of over 10,000, while an additional 1,000 asylum seekers are staying at a temporary site in the coastal town of Palma, near the border with Tanzania.

Zimbabwe: Malaria hits Somali refugees in Zimbabwe

2011-05-16

http://bit.ly/kWrZgl

Over 100 Somali refugees stranded at Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa have been hit by a malaria outbreak, authorities have said. They have warned of a worse disease outbreak if the situation was not addressed urgently. The Somalis were denied entry into South Africa where they wanted to apply for asylum and were now stranded at Zimbabwe’s border town of Beitbridge.

South Africa: Bricks, bullets fly in land grab

2011-05-16

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/bricks-bullets-fly-in-land-grab-1.1069542

An open field in Tafelsig turned into a war zone at the weekend as a group of land invaders pelted police and city law enforcers with rocks and bottles. The officers retaliated by firing rubber bullets and blasting the invaders with a water cannon to bring them under control. The group, who call themselves the Mitchell’s Plain Backyarders’ Association, moved on to the Swartklip Sports Field on Saturday.

Egypt: Workers occupy factory, demand rights

2011-05-10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlUctTA-Svo&feature=player_embedded#at=11

Inspired by the January revolution, Egyptian workers are occupying a closed factory and demanding that they be compensated. The workers say the factory was profitable, but was privatised, sold at below market rates and stripped of its assets. This video from The Real News Network reports on the plight of the workers.

Global: Myths and realities about domestic workers

2011-05-16

http://en.domesticworkerrights.org/

In preparation for the upcoming 2011 International Labour Conference (ILC), the International Domestic Workers' Network (IDWN) has prepared a pamphlet to rebut common arguments against passing the ILO Convention enabling rights and protections for domestic workers. Visit their website to read the full document.

South Africa: Reject Walmart deal, says Cosatu

2011-05-09

http://www.iol.co.za:80/business/companies/reject-walmart-deal-says-cosatu-1.1066495

Cosatu has called on the Competition Tribunal to reject Walmart's planned acquisition of Massmart, spokesman Patrick Craven said. The Anti-Walmart Coalition - consisting of various trade unions, including the SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union (Saccawu), SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (Sactwu), labour federation Cosatu and civil society organisations - opposes the deal because of the negative consequences it sees for Massmart workers, the wholesale and retail sector and its supply chains.

Latest Edition: Emerging Powers News Roundup

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/73274

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. China in Africa

China ‘ready to fight counterfeit products’
China says it is prepared to cooperate with other countries in order to stem the increase of counterfeit products.The country's envoy to Tanzania, Mr Liu Xinsheng, said in Arusha on Friday that his government was aware of complaints that substandard goods from his country had flooded markets in various parts of the world. He made the remarks after presenting his credentials to the newly appointed East African Community (EAC) secretary general, Dr Richard Sezibera. He said China has taken measures on the proliferation of substandard goods in the East African region, adding that measures have been taken to ensure that Chinese exports into the region were of high quality.
Read More

Zimbabwe program would give farmland to Chinese investors
While white farmers in Zimbabwe have had their land violently seized, the government will be giving away farmland to Chinese investors under a proposed program aimed at helping new black farmers. The “twinning” program, reported by Zimbabwe state media on Wednesday, would pair new black farmers in Mashonaland East province, one of the country’s most fertile areas, with investors from China’s Hubei province. The farmers will give part of their land to the Chinese, and in return will get funding and the Chinese will buy their produce.
Read More

Congo Republic launches Chinese-funded hydro power plant
The oil-producing central African state of Congo Republic inaugurated a 120-MW Chinese-funded hydroelectric power station late on Saturday aimed at bridging the gap in its energy needs. The $377-million Imboulou plant, 150 km (90 miles) north of the capital Brazzaville is 85 percent-funded with soft loans by China and was built by China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corporation. Terms of the financing have not been released.
Read More

China, World Bank launch Congo rail revamp
China and the World Bank launched a $600 million plan with Congo on Thursday to revamp hundreds of kilometres (miles) of dilapidated rail network, including within the central African country's mining belt. The World Bank said it was the first time it had tried such a joint financing deal with China in Africa, with Beijing set to provide $200 million as part of a broader $6 billion "minerals for infrastructure" agreement it struck with Congo in 2009.
Read More

Sundance May Sell Half of $4.7 Billion Ore Project to China
Sundance Resources Ltd., seeking to develop a $4.7 billion iron ore mine, port and railroad in West Africa, may sell as much as half of the project to a Chinese partner to help fund construction. "We are targeting to have a strategic partner selected by the end of June, so we can then move towards a final investment decision towards the end of September," Giulio Casello, chief executive officer of the Perth-based company, said in an interview. "We are getting very strongly focused towards China."
Read More

China auto firm to establish an assembly plant in Zambia
A Chinese auto mobile manufacturing company is set to establish an assembly plant in Zambia to service the Southern African region. Higer China’s top Bus manufacturing company which has an annual production of twenty two thousand buses wants to set up the plant to ease import pressure for the local firms.
Read More

SA-China trade will change says Davies
The trade gap between SA and China is narrowing as the pattern of trade shifts slowly from commodities to value-added products, says Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies . He was participating in a panel discussion on China’s relationship with Africa at the World Economic Forum on Africa last week. This is characterised by the import of African minerals such as copper, platinum and oil to feed its high economic growth rate and the export to the continent of manufactured products.
Read More

Large Chinese business delegation expected to attend trade forum
MORE than 100 Chinese business delegates from 45 companies will be in SA next week to participate in a three-day trade and investment forum in Johannesburg. The event takes place three weeks after SA joined the Brazil, Russia, India and China (Brics) bloc of emerging economies.
Read More

2. India in Africa

Indian venture to empower unemployed youth of Africa
In a step that will strengthen the growing India-Africa partnership, the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) of India will build vocational training institutes in 10 African countries to help empower unemployed youth in the continent. The NSIC will also construct three other institutes on the lines of its Rapid Incubation Centres to prepare youth to set up their own small enterprises, a senior official has said. The NSIC, which facilitates the growth of small enterprises, has made a name for itself in Africa for its expertise in small and micro industries.
Read More

Not competing with China for Africa, says India
With China making deep inroads through business and investment in Africa, India has said it was not in competition with Beijing in furthering economic interests there, but would play a complementary role. "India is not in competition with China and I do believe the description is accurate. In many cases, India and china complement each other," Vivek Katju, secretary (west) in the external affairs ministry, said.
Read More

Kenya Affected by Somalian Piracy, Wants Indian Cooperation
Kenya, which is suffering due to piracy emanating in Somalia with which it shares a 680-km long, porous border in east Africa, is keen on greater regional cooperation with India, says a senior strategic affairs expert. "Kenya recognises the advantages of a common approach to the Indian Ocean region. The security aspect has made it a more immediate and important issue for us," said Muiruri Kimani, senior researcher at the Nairobi-based Institute of Security Studies.
Read More

India's outsourcing firm to venture into Africa
Intense competition in India's business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has forced technology firm Spanco Ltd to expand to Africa where it expects to earn nearly half of its profits within two years. Pravin Kumar, chief executive officer of Spanco BPO Services, told Reuters on Tuesday his company sees Africa as a solid opportunity for the firm due to its proximity and almost similar time difference to the firm's major source markets -- Europe and the United States -- compared with India.
Read More

Nigeria-India Trade Value Hits $12bn
Foreign Minister Odien Ajumogobia said the value of trade between Nigeria and India is now $12 billion, with the two countries seeking to grow the value. He disclosed this Tuesday in his office during a visit by the Indian envoy in Nigeria. The minister said, "Nigeria relationship with India is good and is improving because it is the second largest trading partner of Nigeria and their economy is a shining one which developing countries can learn from. "I believe we have a lot of lessons to learn from India with trade volume of $12 billion and still believe we can improve because the dominant part of the trade is in oil because Nigeria has much more than oil and hope that by working together. we could attain that"
Read More

Malawians Keen to Build Trade Ties with India
Building on historical relationships, Malawians have set their sights on strengthening trade and investment relations with India in sectors as diverse as agriculture, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals. Malawi’s interest in investment from India comes at a time when Africa’s regional economic giant, South Africa, is also strengthening its relations with the Asian country through the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) dialogue forum. IBSA is a trilateral development initiative aimed at promoting South-South cooperation and exchange.
Read More

3. In Other Emerging Powers News

China helps least developed countries with concrete actions
China said here on Wednesday that the least developed countries have become its priority in providing foreign aid, while providing them with assistance without political preconditions. The statement was made by Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying at the 5-day UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which started in Istanbul from Monday till Friday. Fu said that the share of China's aid to LDCs in its total foreign aid stood at 40 percent in 2009 and exceeded 50 percent in 2010.
Read More

4. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Brazil's Social Grants System and Its Relevance for South Africa
The social grant is a wager with time. Its aim is to catch the indigent - those who have no chance of ever finding a job - within a social welfare net to soften the blow of poverty. For others, it’s a respite during hard times. It lifts the spirits of those waiting for their fortunes to change. Well planned and executed social grants should also help break inter-generational cycles of poverty. The thought that social grants create “dependency” is largely dictated by what happens in an economy. As the Brazilian example shows, the urge for social upliftment is far greater than the desire to be dependent. However, conditions for entry into the mainstream economy as well as general economic growth are key factors that drive rates of employment both formally and informally.
Read More

Africa Makes Its India Pitch
Although the first summit, which took place in New Delhi in 2008, wasn’t groundbreaking, it was the first step toward establishing a framework for cooperation between India and African countries on areas ranging from business, to humanitarian assistance to security. One of the things that came out of it was India’s pledge to grant preferential market access to least developed countries, of which many are African. This year’s summit is likely to look at what has been achieved so far, follow through on those steps and place an even greater emphasis on commercial ties.
Read More

Angola: Assessing the key political risks

2011-05-10

http://af.reuters.com/article/angolaNews/idAFRISKAO20110503?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Tension between the ruling MPLA party and the main opposition UNITA party and questions over policy-making are worrying investors in the major African oil-producing nation of Angola, states this risk assessment article from Reuters. Campaigning for 2012 elections got off to a shaky start, with UNITA saying food price riots in Mozambique in September could lead poverty-stricken Angolans to do the same.

Botswana: Strike threatens ruling party power

2011-05-10

http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article1059892.ece/Botswana-strike-threatens-ruling-party-power

An indefinite strike by public-sector workers in diamond-rich Botswana is threatening the ruling party’s 45-year grip on power and denting its image as the steward of one of Africa’s success stories. The main public employees’ union said more than 90,000 workers have joined the strike, which has ground public services to a near halt and forced schools, clinics and government offices to operate on skeleton staff. The country’s three largest opposition parties have moved to capitalise on the unrest.
Duma Boko, head of the opposition Botswana National Front, called on Botswana to replicate the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Egypt: New hope on the Nile?

2011-05-12

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1556/new-hope-on-the-nile

A new, post-Mubarak Egypt has given both Egyptians and other Arabs alike, hope that Egypt can once again reclaim its role as the focal point from which Arab culture and politics emanate, says this article on Jadaliyya, an independent ezine. 'The opening up of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza and the active promotion of a unity government in the Palestinian Territories are both indications that this is slowly happening. However, Egypt’s regional affiliation is not only with the Middle East, but extends towards its riparian partners along the Nile as well. And on that front, events in the immediate months after the fall of Mubarak indicated that an Egypt in transition, unable to take firm political positions, could be taken advantage of by upstream Nile riparian countries that have for years tried to gain the rights to greater use of the Nile’s water flows.'

Gabon: Opposition chief faces treason case

2011-05-10

http://www.afrol.com/articles/37699

André Mba Obame, Gabon's main opposition leader, has been stripped of parliamentary immunity as government prepares a treason case against him. The Gabonese opposition leader in January created international headlines as he declared himself winner of the elections held 17 months earlier. The failed attempt to gain power and upcoming treason trial against Obame represent a major setback for Gabon's opposition, which has been denied access to power ever since independence.

Ghana: Rawlings facing big test in Ghana poll

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/lOK4yg

For the first time since former President Jerry Rawlings burst onto the Ghanaian political scene in 1979, his much talked about charisma and hold over the ordinary people in the country is to be put to the test on 8 July when his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings stands against President John Atta Mills for the right to lead the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in next year’s election. Already signs that the Rawlings myth has been broken has emerged, reports the Daily Nation.

Senegal: Opposition cries foul over voter listing

2011-05-11

http://bit.ly/jk7w4x

Senegalese opposition leaders are protesting a delay in issuing identification cards to youth, a move they say was calculated to deny them votes in the forthcoming elections. In the election to be held in February next year, President Abdoulaye Wade will face three former prime ministers and other veteran politicians in what promises to be the hottest political contest in Senegal since independence. On Tuesday, the opposition accused the ruling party of instituting technical delays in issuing the new identification cards, saying it was intended to sideline thousands of youths from registering.

South Africa: Politicians kick into high gear ahead of poll

2011-05-16

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-15-politicians-kick-into-high-gear-ahead-of-poll

Political parties have ratcheted up the rhetoric ahead of the local government elections on Wednesday. Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille told a crowd in Lebogang, Mpumalanga, that they could choose five more years of poor service delivery and toyi-toying, or they could choose five years of steadily increasing access to housing and basic services by choosing the DA. ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was on the warpath taking swipes at Zille and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) president Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He referred to Zille as the 'madam' who 'moves around doing a monkey dance looking for votes'.

Swaziland: Civil servants may not be paid next month

2011-05-10

http://www.times.co.sz/News/28400.html

Cash strapped government will find itself failing to pay salaries in June if its coffers fail to get immediate injection. It also states it will be difficult for May. What had been feared and allayed for months seemingly looms. Since openly acknowledging that it is faced with a fiscal crisis, government has, for months, said civil servants’ salaries are a priority and would be guaranteed. Now it has conceded that beyond this month there will be no money to pay them.

Swaziland: Sports and cultural boycott gains ground

2011-05-10

http://www.sundayworld.co.za/Home/Article.aspx?id=1199059

South African artists are bowing to the pressure from the ANC Youth League to cut all ties with the Kingdom of Swaziland. After the youth league urged all South Africans invited to Swaziland for the celebrations of King Mswati III’s birthday and his sons’ concert, moves to boycott the tyrannic state have escalated. The boycott is aimed at the Swazi king, his family and friends.

Tanzania: Salary delay raises speculation about financial crisis

2011-05-10

http://bit.ly/jl7lgG

The Tanzanian government has denied that it is broke even, as analysts view the current situation as giving hints that the country is going through a financial crisis. Finance and economic affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo was refuting claims by Kigoma North MP Mr Zitto Kabwe who is also Finance shadow minister, who was quoted in the media at the weekend as saying the government was in 'dire financial straits' that has forced it to resort to borrowing to pay salaries. Kabwe had said the government delayed the April salaries to most of its workers. The Citizen established that a number of state employees had their April salaries delayed.

Uganda: Besigye 'under house arrest'

2011-05-16

http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Ugandas-Besigye-under-house-arrest-20110516

Uganda's main opposition leader, who has been leading anti-government protests for more than a month, is under effective house arrest after police surrounded his home on Monday, his party said. Kizza Besigye has been the face of 'walk to work' protests that urge people to leave their cars at home on Monday and Thursday to highlight soaring fuel and food prices. The protests in the east African country have been crushed by police.

Uganda: Police and opposition supporters clash

2011-05-16

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/05/201151354659712242.html

Up to five people were killed when Ugandan police clashed with opposition supporters who attacked cars carrying African leaders at the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni. A government spokesman confirmed at least one death in the capital, Kampala, on Thursday. But local independent TV station WBS reported that five had died when police opened fire on opposition supporters who threw stones at the cars. At the same time as the inauguration, a crowd of thousands supporting Besigye had gathered in the capital to welcome him back to Uganda from Kenya.

Egypt: Ex-Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah 'jailed'

2011-05-11

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13345416

Egypt's former Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah has been jailed for five years on charges of corruption, an Egyptian judicial source has said. Garranah had handed out tourism licences illegally, the source said. Last week, ex-Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was jailed for 12 years for money-laundering and profiteering.

Niger: Court drops charges against ex-President Tandja

2011-05-11

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13348823

Niger's appeals court has dropped all corruption charges against ousted President Mamadou Tandja and ordered his release from jail. It said that under the country's law it was not possible to try a head of state after he had left office. Soldiers led the coup in February 2010 - angered that after 10 years in power, he was seeking a third term in office. Tandja was accused of embezzling state funds worth $1m (£670,000). He was also linked to a corrupt fertilizer deal worth between $9m and $10m.

Zambia: President denies role in suspect arms deal

2011-05-10

http://bit.ly/lYwit5

President Rupiah Banda had no role in the alleged illegal $100 million arms procurement deal and does not owe people an explanation on the transaction, says Zambia's Defence minister. An ex-minister of defence in the Banda Cabinet, Mr George Mpombo, a fortnight ago claimed he quit his position in 2009 after he resisted pressure from the head of state to approve an arms deal with a South African firm, in which President Banda's son was the middleman. Mpombo, now aligned to main opposition leader Michael Sata and a fierce critic of President Banda, insisted the head of state constantly phoned him at the time to influence the signing of the deal and when he refused, he was scorned in Cabinet meetings, hence his resignation.

Africa: SABMiller to face tax audit in five African countries

2011-05-10

http://bit.ly/lpE5MA

Tax authorities in five African countries are to investigate giant brewer SAB Miller following an ActionAid report which found that the multinational avoided millions of pounds of taxes in Africa every year. The African Tax Administration Forum will coordinate the groundbreaking investigation of the company's transfer pricing strategies in South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius. Martin Hearson, one of the report's authors, said: 'This unprecedented initiative marks a new era in which rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in developing countries will come under much closer scrutiny, both from tax authorities and from campaigners. Tax avoidance by multinationals costs billions in lost revenues, which could transform healthcare and education services for millions of people.'

Global: illicit financial flows form LDC's on the up

2011-05-11

http://zunia.org/uploads/media/knowledge/IFFs_from_LDCs_web1305102057.pdf

This UNDP paper explores the scale and composition of illicit financial flows from the 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Illicit financial flows involve the cross-border transfer of the proceeds of corruption, trade in contraband goods, criminal activities and tax evasion. In recent years, considerable interest has arisen over the extent to which such flows may have a detrimental impact on development and governance in both developed and developing countries alike. The study’s indicative results find that illicit financial flows from the LDCs have increased from US$9.7 billion in 1990 to US$26.3 billion in 2008 implying an inflation-adjusted rate of increase of 6.2 per cent per annum.

Global: Investment, not charity for LDCs

2011-05-10

http://www.trademarksa.org/news/investment-not-charity-ldcs

Least Developed Countries do not need charity; they want more and smarter investments. This was the point of departure for the Fourth UN Conference for the world's poor countries (LDC-IV) begins in Istanbul, Turkey. Up to 8,000 delegates, including the leaders of the world's 48 least developed countries (LDCs), international aid agencies and development partners discussed solutions to abject poverty. Up to 900 million people are citizens of LDCs, half of them living on less than two dollars a day. Over the last decade, 60 per cent of the world’s refugees originated from the LDCs, according to the United Nations.

Global: Lamy continues to push for Doha round conclusion

2011-05-11

http://www.tralac.org/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=103262&cause_id=1694

World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Pascal Lamy has once again urged WTO members not to weaken the organisation, as members continue to stall on the final hurdles challenging the Doha development round of negotiations. South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has continually stated that South Africa would not make agreements under the round, which does not have a developmental agenda at the forefront. Other developing country member States have agreed that the Doha round has lost much of its developmental focus, with industrialised countries not willing to concede much to developing nations.

Global: Programme of Action Adopted for World's Poorest Nations

2011-05-16

http://bit.ly/k9ZUO1

'The future for least developed countries lies in trade, productive capacity and governance more than in aid,' said Cheick Sidi Diarra, United Nations High representative for the Least Developed Countries, responding to criticism of the plan of action put forward as the UN conference on the world’s poorest nations drew to a close in Istanbul. Representatives of governments said they were optimistic that the Istanbul Programme of Action for the decade 2011 to 2020 will prove instrumental in seeing at least half of the 48 countries now classed as least developed leave that category in the next ten years. The civil society forum swiftly rejected the plan of action as inadequate. The NGO group said donors and development partners had avoided committing themselves to delivering on long-standing pledges to provide substantial financial support for LDCs.

Global: Statement by the South Centre at high-level panel on trade

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/lmMhFj

In this statement, the South Centre provides a counter argument to the idea that lower developed countries (LDCs) are not integrated in the world economy as the reason for their marginalisation. 'This is not true. Many LDCs have higher exports to GNP ratio than some developed countries. It is the way in which the LDCs are integrated in trade that has been a disadvantage. LDCs are too dependent on raw materials export, and prices of commodities have had a long-term trend decline, thus causing major revenue and income losses for LDCs.'

Malawi: Development crisis detailed at Turkey conference

2011-05-11

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55574

Escalating fuel prices, climate change and the impact of the global financial crisis are the challenges currently compromising development in Malawi. The Southern African country wants to see a bold plan of action addressing these problems agreed upon at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. In recent months, Malawi has been experiencing a fuel crisis so severe fuel has been rationed at the pump. People have taken to parking their vehicles at service stations overnight to get a place near the head of the queue. The country is facing severe shortages of foreign exchange, leading to strict controls on the export of hard currency and causing problems for businesses that need forex to pay for imports.

Nigeria: Tear up WTO rules, says bank governor

2011-05-11

http://bit.ly/izbxBs

Nigeria should tear up World Trade Organisation free trade agreements and protect its domestic industries from foreign competition, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria has said. 'We have to tear up WTO agreements and ask ourselves whether we were right to sign up to everything that's there,' Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi told an audience at Chatham House in London.

Zimbabwe: Harare opts for hybrid debt solution

2011-05-10

http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=6692

Zimbabwe has adopted a two-pronged approach to tackling the country’s foreign debt that will see the African country use its rich natural resources while also embracing the HIPC debt relief initiative to pay back the more than US$7 billion owed to foreigners. The move to adopt a hybrid solution to the debt crisis comes after more than a year of strong disagreements within the Harare unity government over how to handle a burgeoning debt that Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said is the biggest obstacle to efforts to resuscitate the country’s economy ravaged by a decade-long recession.

Africa: Fragile progress as several countries upgrade to better AIDS treatment, says MSF

2011-05-11

http://bit.ly/mBCqgH

A report released by the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has revealed that several countries hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic are improving HIV treatment to reduce deaths and illness – but a lack of support from donors prevents many from making vital changes. This fragile progress needs sustained support, but the two biggest AIDS donors, the US and UK, are opposing a critical HIV treatment target ahead of next month’s AIDS Summit in New York at a time when mounting evidence shows that HIV treatment can also prevent HIV infections.

Angola: 26 children die from measles in Cabinda Province

2011-05-10

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/health/2011-05/09/c_13866446.htm

Twenty-six children died from measles out of 445 cases recorded in Angola's northern enclave province of Cabinda since the start of the outbreak in 2010, the official news agency Angop reported. Particularly in malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications, including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea, ear infection and pneumonia or even deaths.

Global: ARVs as prevention must move quickly 'from science to action'

2011-05-16

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=92710

A landmark study showing major reductions in HIV transmission among discordant couples due to early treatment may fail to have a significant impact on HIV prevention unless governments and donors are willing to turn the science into action, HIV advocates say. 'These are very exciting results that we hope will begin to change the debate and the discourse over the issues around HIV treatment and prevention,' Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), told IRIN/PlusNews. 'Coming right before the UN High Level Meeting on HIV in New York next month, we hope that the results will take the discussion from rhetoric to reality.'

Kenya: Outrage over 'cash for contraception' offer to HIV-positive women

2011-05-16

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=92696

The Kenyan government and rights groups have expressed outrage at a project in western Kenya that is paying HIV-positive women to undergo long-term contraception. Project Prevention, a US-based NGO, offers cash to drug addicts in the US and the UK to undergo long-term contraception or permanent sterilisation. In 2010, the project started offering HIV-positive women in western Kenya US$40 to be fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs), which can prevent pregnancy for over a decade. The project uses a medical practitioner in the western Kenyan town of Kakamega to insert the IUDs for $7 per woman; so far, 22 women have undergone the procedure.

South Africa: Aids council tackles TB

2011-05-11

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20033146

The extent of tuberculosis and HIV co-infection rates in South Africa has firmly placed tuberculosis on the agenda of the South African National AIDS Council. This, after studies have shown that in some parts of the country, like in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape for example, about 73 per cent of HIV-infected people also have TB. The South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) took a decision to include tuberculosis as part of its mandate after a World Health Organisation (WHO) review in 2009 of South Africa’s national TB Control programme. The review found that the levels of TB and HIV co-infection in South Africa were enormously high.

Uganda: Sex workers pay the price of HIV prevention gaps

2011-05-12

http://www.afronline.org/?p=15554

Uganda is short on data on HIV among the country’s sex workers, but a new study shows that in the capital, Kampala, HIV prevalence among female sex workers could be more than four times the city’s average prevalence. The study, published in April in the Journal of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STI) Association, recruited 1,027 women from the city’s red-light areas, and found 37 per cent to be HIV-positive, while 13 per cent had gonorrhoea and 10 percent had syphilis.

Zimbabwe: Critical shortage of midwives

2011-05-16

http://www.IRINnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=92698

A recent report on Zimbabwe’s progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals, complied by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), said about 80 per cent of the posts for midwives were vacant in the public sector. 'The shortage of skilled and competent midwives can avert 80 to 90 per cent of maternal deaths. The shortage of skilled and competent midwives can result in women and their newborns dying from the complications that could be prevented by a health worker with the right skills, the right equipment and the right support,' the report pointed out.

Namibia: Fixing Namibia's creaking education model

2011-05-11

http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/-/979182/1160156/-/10sxbfqz/-/index.html

On the surface, Namibia's education sector would appear to be doing just well, with about 19,000 teachers teaching some 550,000 children in 1,550 schools. About 80 per cent of the country's two million people are literate, and 90 per cent of children of school-going age are enrolled in primary schools. But scratch below the surface and one discovers there is more than meets the eye to these figures. In fact, critics have been insisting on a complete overhaul of the current education system, which they blame for having failed to produce quality graduates that can compete with the rest of Africa.

Africa: LGBTI asylum seekers face rejection in Europe

2011-05-11

http://www.mask.org.za/majority-of-lgbti-asylum-seekers-in-western-countries-still-face-rejection/

A vast majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people seeking asylum in the European Union on the basis of their sexual orientation, have been met by a severe blow as most of their applications have been rejected due to failure of giving accurate account or valid proof of persecutions they claim to have experienced or might incur if they were sent back to their country of origin. This has prompted the call from ARDHIS (Association pour la Reconnaissance des Droits des Personnes Homosexuelles et Transsexuelles à l’Immigration et au Séjour), a French based organisation that advocates for the rights for LGBTI people to be granted asylum in France, urging African based LGBTI organisations to document homophobic persecutions occurring in their respective countries.

Malawi: Queer Malawi lifts the gay curtain

2011-05-16

http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?Reportid=92681

Africa is generally not a safe place to have a same-sex relationship - you can be shunned by society, beaten up, thrown in jail, or worse. In Malawi you can get 14 years in prison with hard labour. In a bold move, Malawi’s Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP) and South Africa’s Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) have collected the stories of 12 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) women and men and published them in a book, Queer Malawi.

South Africa: Teenage lesbian latest victim of 'corrective rape'

2011-05-11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/09/lesbian-corrective-rape-south-africa

A 13-year-old lesbian has become the latest victim of 'corrective rape' in South Africa, prompting activists to call for direct retaliatory action. The girl, who is said to be open about her sexuality, was raped in Pretoria, a government spokesman said. Campaigners say so-called corrective rape, in which men rape lesbians to 'cure' them of their sexual orientation, is on the increase in South Africa. Last month, a 24-year-old woman who belonged to a gay and lesbian rights group was stoned to death after an apparent gang rape.

Uganda: Anti-gay bill fails to get through

2011-05-16

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gcDwYIV_pk

A controversial anti-homosexuality bill that could've seen the death penalty imposed for certain homosexual acts has failed to make it through the Ugandan parliament before it broke for recess. But the MP who tabled the bill in the first place says he will table it again in the next parliamentary session.

DRC: The Belgian Colour Bar

2011-05-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/racism/73157

The blog Africa is a Country features a new documentary called Colour Bar. It is the story of Roland Gust, who was born to a Congolese mother and a Belgian father. He grew up in Congo, believing he was white until his family decided to return to Belgium when he was twelve. The documentary follows him as he attempts to describe his past. The blog post also has a Q&A with Gust.

Niger: Caring for the river, reaping the benefits

2011-05-11

http://www.ips.org/africa/2011/05/niger-caring-for-the-river-reaping-the-benefits/

The Niger River, which runs for 550 kilometres through the southwest part of Niger, has for decades been faced with the phenomenon of siltation of its bed, accelerated by the severe desertification of the catchment areas, according to environmental experts. A programme is focused on slowing this phenomenon, which is seriously compromising socio-economic activity around the river. The measures taken include building berms, stabilising sand dunes, and planting trees.

Nigeria: Biosafety bill may fail, say scientists

2011-05-10

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/nigerian-biosafety-bill-may-fail-say-scientists.html

Supporters of genetically modified (GM) crop technology fear that their four-year effort to get a biosafety bill enacted in Nigeria may have been in vain if the country's upper house fails to pass it before its tenure ends at the end of May. The 2007 bill, passed by the country's lower chamber last July, is with the Senate. It is one of more than 400 bills introduced to the National Assembly between 2007 and 2010 that were highlighted by the Nigerian Bar Association last December as needing passage before 29 May. But Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy group, said the urgency to pass the bill may stem from other motives. 'Nigerians are yet to understand and adequately contribute to the bill,' an ERA spokesperson said. 'We suggest it is stopped in its tracks.'

Africa: When others are grabbing their land

2011-05-12

http://www.economist.com/node/18648855

The farmers of Makeni, in central Sierra Leone, signed the contract with their thumbs. In exchange for promises of 2,000 jobs, and reassurances that the bolis (swamps where rice is grown) would not be drained, they approved a deal granting a Swiss company a 50-year lease on 40,000 hectares of land to grow biofuels for Europe. Three years later 50 new jobs exist, irrigation has damaged the bolis and such development as there has been has come 'at the social, environmental and economic expense of local communities', says Elisa Da Vià of Cornell University in this article from The Economist about land grabbing.

Southern Sudan: Demystifying the ‘global land grab’

2011-05-10

http://www.plaas.org.za/pubs/wp/LDPI04Deng.pdf

'Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in the South as well in recent years. Now that Southern Sudanese have opted for independence in the 2011 referendum on self-determination, investment activity will likely increase further. This paper presents preliminary data concerning large-scale land acquisitions in two of the Green Belt states of Southern Sudan: Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. It explores the concept land belongs to the community, a statement that has been taken up by communities in their demand for greater involvement in decision-making regarding community lands.'

Sudan: Hundreds of farmers stage demonstrations

2011-05-11

http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/18583

Hundreds of farmers in El-Gezira state in central Sudan staged demonstrations to reject what they described as injustice inflicted upon them by the government in evaluating rental price of land plots they own. The protestors marched in Barakat town and set up tents in front of the headquarters of the El-Gezira agricultural project and threatened an extended sit-in until their demands are met. They chanted slogans including 'No for sale, Yes for rental' and 'Your land is your honour'.

Ivory Coast: Rains arrive but farmers afraid to return to their land

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/kGVmDZ

The rainy season is just beginning in Ivory Coast. But in many places, the rain will fall on unplanted ground. Although the post-election fighting is mostly over, many farmers, especially in western regions, have not yet returned to their land. The UN refugee agency estimates that one million people have been displaced in and around Abidjan, with at least 200,000 displaced in the west. Few people remain on their farms to cultivate the land.

Botswana: News blackout on major civil service strike

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/lAn7fB

The ongoing public servants' strike in Botswana has seen that country's state-owned media cover only one side of the story, writes Thapelo Ndlovu on Free African Media. 'Despite being denied the opportunity to air their views in the state media, the striking Botswana public service workers have not effectively used the new media, especially social network sites. The Internet is largely available in Botswana, but workers and the public in general don’t yet fully use it. Facebook is the most popular, but largely among the savvy youth, most of whom are not interested in labour or political issues.'

Cote d’ Ivoire: Two journalists flee after receiving death threats

2011-05-12

http://www.mediafound.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=672&Itemid=1

Zogbo Blé Denis of the state-owned Ivorian Broadcasting Service (RTI) and Claude Kipré of Top Visages, a weekly magazine, have gone into hiding after reportedly receiving death threats from unknown persons. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Zogbo Blé, a producer and presenter of 'Excellence' a popular programme on RTI, received two calls on 8 May from a caller who only identified himself as 'Commandant F' and threatened to storm his home.

Egypt: Concern over reservations to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHRS) statement

2011-05-16

http://bit.ly/joUnMO

'Egypt is one of only two states to have entered reservations on ratification of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The three reservations concern the guarantee of freedom of conscience, non-discrimination of women and children and the right to receive information...The African Commission has been resolute in rejecting the subjugation of continental human rights standards to restrictive national laws that nullify the human rights guaranteed. This is particularly critical in the context of the current transition in Egypt. It is important that the people access information on the decades of injustice and find the truth about corruption, torture, missing persons.'

Morocco: Dissident reporter stands trial

2011-05-11

http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2011/05/08/feature-01

In a move that casts doubts over the legitimacy of Morocco's national press dialogue, the government put prominent opposition journalist Rachid Nini on trial. Nini, whose trial began on Monday (2 May) in Casablanca, was indicted in late April for Al Massae articles 'in which he criticised the administration of law enforcement institutions and accused some public figures of breaking the law', lead prosecutor Abdellah Belghiti said.

Rwanda: Prosecutors request 10-year jail sentence for exiled newspaper editor

2011-05-11

http://en.rsf.org/rwanda-prosecutors-request-10-year-jail-29-04-2011,40180.html

Reporters Without Borders says it is appalled by the Rwandan government’s determination to keep hounding one of its media bugbears, Jean Bosco Gasasira, editor of the bimonthly newspaper Umuvugizi and one of the country’s most outspoken journalists. Prosecutors have asked Rwanda’s supreme court to sentence him to ten years in prison on charges on which the Kigali high court acquitted him last September. Gasasira is charged with spreading rumours that incited civil disobedience, insulting the president and deliberately violating Rwanda’s media law. The supreme court, whose decisions cannot be appealed, is due to announce its verdict on 27 May.

Southern Africa: Media freedom 'under serious threat'

MISA statement to African Commission for Human and Peoples' Rights

2011-05-10

http://www.ifex.org/africa/2011/05/09/achpr_session/

'The enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression in Southern Africa remains under serious threat, particularly due to repressive legal regimes which are being used as a tool to justify the persecution of journalists and citizens under the guise of due process. Lack of political will to put in place effective measures that enhance the protection and enjoyment of this right, is a common problem particularly in Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.'

Uganda: TV journalist detained after filming MP's arrest

2011-05-10

http://www.ifex.org/uganda/2011/05/09/ntege_detained/

Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS) TV journalist Williams Ntege was arrested by anti-riot police on 2 May after he was caught filming the arrest of Kampala female Member of Parliament (MP) Nabirah Ssempala. Ntege says that during his arrest, one armed, plainclothes officer threatened to shoot him on accusations that he was inciting violence.

Africa: Fourth Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child

2011-05-11

http://www.crin.org/docs/4_CSO_Forum_Report.pdf

The 4th Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) was held between 18 and 20 March 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As is customary, the Forum was organised ahead of the 17th Ordinary Session of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) also taking place in Ethiopia. Ninety-seven activists from 23 countries (of which 19 were in Africa) attended the Forum, which is a framework for strategic partnership to improve child rights in Africa. The document available through the link provided gives a summary of the meeting.

Malawi: Tobacco poisons Malawi's children

2011-05-10

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-06-tobacco-poisons-malawis-children

Malawi continues to have the highest number of child labourers in Southern Africa, with more than 78,000 children working on tobacco farms, according to child rights NGO Plan. The health risks are high. The handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing and the children absorb up to 54mg of dissolved nicotine through their skin - which is equal to smoking 50 cigarettes. As a result, many suffer from green tobacco sickness (GTS). The symptoms including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

South Africa: ANC says it didn't know about unenclosed toilets

2011-05-09

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-09-mantashe-anc-didnt-know-about-unenclosed-toilets

The ANC 'didn't know' about 1,600 toilets in a Free State municipality which have been left without enclosures for the past eight years, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Monday (09 May). 'We didn't know about open toilets,' he told journalists at as press briefing at Luthuli House in Johannesburg. Earlier, the Human Rights Commission spokesperson, Vincent Moaga, said the body's legal committee would discuss the issue after a complaint had been laid with the commission on the issue.

Africa: The theory and practice of 'humanitarian intervention'

2011-05-11

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=796

'The so-called International community pushes the agenda for intervention in certain countries if they are sure of receiving comfortable dividends in return, usually in the forms of natural resources or the protection of western interests,' states this article. 'But if they stand little to gain in political or economic terms, powerful countries will find themselves lacking in “political will”, never mind how grave the catastrophe maybe. To save face, they will pass powerless resolutions while abuses continue and human dignity is disgraced.' The UN will have to live up to its core values calling for the maintenance of peace and security and call an end to selective intervention if this is to change.

Côte d'Ivoire: New videos detail capture of former president

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/kMcBT9

After the arrest in the city of Abidjan on 11 April 2011, of Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Cote d'Ivoire, and his wife Simone, some confusion remains regarding the process that led to his capture. Website Abidjan.net has published a series of videos entitled, 'The film of Laurent Gbagbo's arrest: New elements', divided into four videos of 10-14 minutes each. The videos, some of them included in this Global Voices post, show the sequence of events of the Gbagbos' arrest, from the bombing of their residence by French Special Forces, to the transfer of the Gbagbo family to the Hotel du Golf.

Egypt: Move to defuse tensions after clashes

2011-05-12

http://www.e-joussour.net/en/node/9325

Egypt's transitional government moved quickly to defuse tensions after Muslim-Christian clashes in Cairo left 12 dead and cast a cloud over hopes for peaceful post-revolutionary change. Angry demonstrations erupted in the capital after a Coptic church in the Imbaba neighbourhood was burned down on Saturday night. Military police separated opposing camps at one protest reminiscent of the dramatic events that overthrew the regime in February.

Egypt: Security forces fire on Cairo 'Nakba' rally

2011-05-16

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/20115165445325517.html

At least 120 people were injured, one of them critically, when Egyptian security forces attacked a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Sunday night, according to witnesses. Activists told Al Jazeera that army and internal security troops used tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition to disperse thousands of protesters who had gathered to mark the 63rd anniversary of the 'Nakba' or 'catastrophe' - the day in 1948 that Israel declared its independence and thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled form their homes.

Libya: Global peace civilians visit Libya

Press release

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/73275

Global Civilians for Peace in Libya is embarking on its second fact-finding mission into the war-torn country. The delegation is comprised of academics, professionals, journalists and ex-military personnel from Europe, North America, England, Middle East and Africa. The delegates are independent and not allied to any government or official body. An Italian camera crew will be embedded with the group, a TV producer from Britain and a French journalist.
Global Civilians for Peace in Libya
For immediate release

World peace delegation heads to Libya on a further fact-finding mission on 14 May 2011.

Global Civilians for Peace in Libya is embarking on its second fact-finding mission into the war-torn country. The delegation is comprised of academics, professionals, journalists and ex-military personnel from Europe, North America, England, Middle East and Africa. The delegates are independent and not allied to any government or official body. An Italian camera crew will be embedded with the group, a TV producer from Britain and a French journalist.

Whilst in Libya they aim to add their voices to the calls for an immediate ceasefire and an end to hostilities on all sides including the air attacks by NATO, the UN and now the recently introduced drone bombings. The delegation has the following objectives:

- to discover the truth about the causes for the conflict
- to document the real damage that has been suffered by all the non-combatant Libyan people
- to discern the prospects of a lasting and equitable peace.

The delegation has scheduled meetings with refugees from all parts of Libya; the Prelate of the Catholic Church in Libya (Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the apostolic vicar of Tripoli); and Libyan tribal Leaders. The delegation plans to deliver sincere condolences from the world community to all the Libya people who have suffered so much because of this war. The delegation will travel to a number of war-torn cities and communities, in order to document not only the physical damage but also to meet with the people in those areas to hear their stories without any political or media interference. The delegation will look into the humanitarian needs of the Libyan people with regard to any shortages of medicines, fuel, food and so on.

Global Civilians for Peace continues to call upon the African Union to take a lead role in the implementation of an immediate ceasefire. Global Civilians for Peace is the international successor of British Civilians for Peace who broadened their membership after other nationalities joined them on their first fact-finding mission in April. The first fact finding mission was able to corroborate reports of civilian deaths and injuries due to NATO bombing. However despite detailed investigations they were not able to substantiate the allegation the three areas of Tajora, Soqjoma and RasHsen of Tripoli cited in the UN resolution 1973 had been subjected to Libyan government bombardment. They have produced an interim report on the situation in Western Libya.

END

For further details:

USA: Jimmy landline 307 222-7533, Mobile 281 253-2040 aitrust@gmail.com In Libya 218 95 440 6969

Italy: Fulvio Grimaldi landline 39 06 99674258, Mobile: 39 3396046487 visionando@virgilio.it In Libya 218 92 726 3988

UK: Viv Ellis mobile 447922375075, vivellis@hotmail.com In Libya 218 92 466 1219

France: Philippe Bebuffon mobile 33680652526, email 0680652526@orange.fr

Security Officer: Moeen Raoof 447813293275, moeenr@gmail.com in Libya 218 92 500 8408

Media contact after the departure of the delegations: Sukant Chandan 447854147868 sukant.chandan@gmail.com

Emergency contact after the departure of the delegations: David Roberts, 447980631255, dave.roberts@westfieldcc.org.uk

Libya: Nato hits oil port of Ras Lanouf

2011-05-16

http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Libya-Nato-hits-oil-port-of-Ras-Lanouf-20110516

Nato aircrafts have blasted an oil terminal in a key eastern city in a nightfall strike, Libyan TV reported, after Britain urged the alliance to widen its assault on areas controlled by ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The reported attack came as the Libyan conflict appeared largely stalemated, with each side claiming gains one day, only to be turned back the next.

Somalia: EU threatens to cut aid to TFG

2011-05-16

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/1153800/-/o38xxlz/-/

The European Union, one of the major financiers of Amisom and the Somali Transitional Federal Government, has threatened to cut further support if the current office holders do not relinquish power when their term of office comes to an end in August. This has not gone down well with the East African Community, whose members Uganda and Burundi are providing the boots on the ground in Mogadishu, and feel that the proposed extension of the TFG’s mandate for another year, would help consolidate achievements in service delivery. Being a major financier, EU’s withdrawal will severely hamper efforts to pacify the war-torn country.

South Sudan: More than 80 killed in south Sudan violence-army

2011-05-11

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/more-than-80-killed-in-south-sudan-violence-army/

More than 80 rebels and civilians were killed when insurgents attacked a camp in south Sudan, the army said on Tuesday (10 May), in the latest violence to mar preparations for the region's independence. In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot and wounded four Zambian UN peacekeepers in the contested Abyei region on Tuesday, another north/south flashpoint, the United Nations said. People from Sudan's oil-producing south overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January, promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.

Sudan: Armies begin Abyei withdrawal under UN monitoring

2011-05-12

http://bit.ly/lpCgg1

Sudanese armies were due to begin the pullout of unauthorised troops Tuesday (09 May) to allow for the deployment of the officially-recognised Joint Integrated Units, the only military force allowed in Abyei under UN monitoring. The Abyei Joint Technical Committee (JTC), under the chairmanship of the UN Mission In Sudan (UNMIS), is monitoring the withdrawal of the troops by both sides involved in the Sudanese conflict for years in line with the 2005 deal on security arrangements.

Libya: How online mapping helped crisis response

2011-05-16

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92686

Soon after the Libyan crisis broke, decision-makers and humanitarian workers faced a critical challenge: lack of information about events inside the country. Within hours, Andrej Verity, information management officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, called a meeting with volunteer-based and/or technically focused groups. OCHA activated the Standby task force, comprising more than 150 volunteers skilled in online crisis mapping. The idea was to map out social and traditional media reports from within Libya. That led to the creation of LibyaCrisisMap.net. There are more than 1,000 articles on the platform with some information extracted and placed on maps.

Fellowship Programme

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

2011-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/73282

In the context of the International Year for People of African Descent, the Anti-Discrimination Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is launching a Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent from 10 October to 4 November 2011.
Fellowship Programme

In the context of the International Year for People of African Descent, the Anti-Discrimination Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is launching a Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent from 10 October to 4 November 2011.

The Fellowship Programme will provide participants with the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the United Nations Human Rights system and its mechanisms, with a focus on issues of particular relevance to people of African descent.

This will allow the fellows to better contribute to the protection and promotion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of Afro-descendants in their respective countries and communities.

Who can apply?

* The candidate must be an African descendant.
* The candidate must have a minimum of 4 years experience dealing with afro-descendant or minority issues.
* The candidate must be fluent in English.
* A letter of support from an afro-descendant organization or community.

Selection Process

In selecting the fellows, gender and ensuring a regional balance will be taken into account. All documents submitted must be in English.

Entitlements

The selected candidate is entitled to a stipend to cover accommodation, basic living expenses in Geneva, basic health insurance as well as a return economy class plane ticket.

Application

Interested candidates are requested to submit their application by email to: africandescent@ohchr.org or by fax to 004122-928 9050 with a cover letter clearly indicating "Application to the 2011 Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent" with the following documents:

* An application form: http://lists.hrea.org/phplist/lt.php?id=Kh5VAwpQCAJTABgFAwUGVk4EB1kM
* A Curriculum Vitae
* A letter of motivation (maximum 1 page) in which the candidate will explain his/her motivation for applying, what he/she hopes to achieve through this fellowship and how he/she will use what they learn to promote the interests and rights of afro-descendants
* A letter of support from an organization/entity they are affiliated with.

The deadline to receive applications is 15 June 2011. Please note that only short-listed applicants will be contacted.

Free Residential Writers and Editors Workshop

2011-05-16

http://www.ngopulse.org/event/free-residential-writers-and-editors-workshop

New Readers Publishers (NRP) is a nonprofit publishing project based in the Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. NRP supplies readers with adult content and simplified language in Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, TshiVenda and Xitsonga. NRP is conducting an intensive residential workshop for writers and editors from 24-27 July 2011 in East London.

Communications Officer

The Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa

2011-05-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/73429

POSITION AVAILABLE: COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Search closes: June 10, 2011

TO APPLY: Send resume and cover letter to jobs@osiea.org

The Open Society Foundations works worldwide to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.

We are seeking a creative and energetic Communications Officer who can promote our work using multimedia, new media, the internet, and publications.

QUALIFICATIONS

• 6 years of experience as a communications professional
• Excellent written, verbal and organizational skills in English as well as editing experience Extensive multimedia skills, including the ability to make short documentaries
• Extensive contacts in the East African and international media
• Knowledge and a passion for governance and human rights issues in East Africa, and for covering these issues from a human rights perspective
• Self-motivation and creativity as well as the ability to work independently when necessary, as well as a member of a team;
• Ability to manage several simultaneous projects in a fast-paced environment;
• Ability to listen and communicate clearly and effectively with diverse array of people;
• Integrity and professional discretion essential.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Advise on media, communications, and publications strategy on issues of concern to OSIEA and its grantees
• Produce OSIEA publications in cooperation with the program staff, including one magazine and two e-newsletters annually
• Update website and intranet and produce short videos showcasing work
• Organize press events, maintain media contacts list, and liaise with key journalists
• Within the framework of OSIEA’s organizational values, promote inter-office communications, though office intranet and regular meetings

For more information: www.soros.org

COMPENSATION: Competitive salary, with good benefits package

No phone calls, please. Only successful candidates will be contacted.

Regional Programme Officer

The Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa

2011-05-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/73430

POSITION AVAILABLE: REGIONAL PROGRAMME OFFICER

Search closes: June 10, 2011

TO APPLY: Send resume and cover letter to jobs@osiea.org

The Open Society Foundations works worldwide to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.

We are seeking a Program Officer to promote state compliance with governance and human rights standards at the East African Community (EAC) and African Union (AU). The position reports to the directors of OSIEA and AfriMAP (OSF’s Africa Governance, Monitoring and Advocacy Project).

QUALIFICATIONS

• A proven commitment to the protection of human rights and knowledge of the EAC and AU mechanisms. Familiarity with civil society networks within Eastern Africa.
• Experience with research and writing for publication.
• Extraordinary initiative, creativity and capacity to think strategically
• Team spirit and respectful working and decision-making style
• Strong organizational skills and close attention to detail
• Integrity, diplomatic manner and professional discretion essential
• Willingness to travel as needed
• Relevant advanced degree and/or extensive experience in human rights work

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve as the focal point for research, monitoring, and advocacy work pertaining to the EAC and AU, especially in relation to NEPAD and the African Peer Review Mechanism. Conduct relevant legal and policy analysis for internal and external audiences.
• Write and/or commission reports and advocacy documents. Oversee AfriMAP research and publications for the region. This will entail identifying and contracting researchers, reviewing and editing drafts, and organizing for publication of AfriMAP reports.
• Develop and support institutions and networks working on these issues through convenings and grant giving.
• Integrate the OSIEA organizational values into the performance of duties and tasks on a daily basis and participate in in-house working groups designed to uphold the values and foster healthy inter-office communication.

OSIEA promotes public participation in democratic governance and respect for human rights by awarding grants, developing programs, and bringing together diverse civil society leaders and groups.

AfrMAP monitors and promotes compliance by African states with AU standards of good governance, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

For more information: www.soros.org

COMPENSATION: Competitive salary, with good benefits package

No phone calls, please.

Only successful candidates will be contacted.

Fahamu