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Challenging climate apartheid

Nnimmo Bassey

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78372

cc OxfamThe climate conference in Durban has led some observers to conclude that developed countries are engaged in a form of apartheid against the rest of the world. But Nnimmo Bassey hopes negotiators will heed the voices of the people.

In downtown Durban, the climate negotiators have settled into their beachfront hotels, ready for the official UN climate negotiations starting Monday. Already, voices speculate about cracks in the existing negotiating blocs. Will the developing countries hold together all the way? Will the so-called emerging economies flex individual muscles?

But as the technical negotiations begin, I want to focus instead on two events last weekend that moved me deeply. Both communicated the people’s desire for climate justice. The first was a speech by Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s former chief negotiator.

‘We are here to fight genocide; we are here to fight ecocide,’ he said, speaking at the Kwa Zulu Natal University, home to civil society in Durban during the talks. ‘We refused to endorse the Cancún agreement because we would not agree to join those causing genocide.’

He was addressing an animated crowd who had gathered to greet the Caravan of Hope. The caravan – organized by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance – rode through ten African countries from 9 to 25 November. The journey started in Burundi and passed through Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe before entering South Africa with two million signatures demanding climate justice, which were collected along the way.

The second inspiring event of the past week was the ‘We Have Faith’ rally at Durban Kings Stadium. Here Archbishop Desmond Tutu warned those who think they will survive when climate change reaches tipping point and spins out of control, that they were fooling themselves.

Tutu said that although some people may ‘go first’, others will also be sure to be hit. Most of the speakers in the stadium that day expressed their hopes that negotiators and political leaders will step up to the plate and do the right thing.

And what would the right thing be? As Solón told the Caravan, if the Cancún agreement and its non-binding pledge-and-review system stays, then the world can be expected to warm by as much as 4 to 7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If that happens, Africa will be cooked.

A speaker reminded the rally of a saying of St Francis of Assisi who had urged, ‘Let us begin, brothers, for until now we have done nothing.’ Another speaker noted that though the prospects are tough, Mandela had once said, ‘it is impossible until it is done.’

Archbishop Tutu reminded everyone that there is only one human race and that we are designed to live in community, caring about one another. He stressed the truth of the African concept of Ubuntu – that our humanity is wrapped up in the humanity of the next person.

Will those entering the talks today take heed of any of these wise words? Some believe that only loud protests outside will remind representatives that climate change negotiations are not a carbon stock exchange. Right now there are signs that demonstrations will be held throughout the conference. And it is worth remembering that South Africa is seen as the land of possibility. The fact that a determined resistance by the people overcame apartheid keeps echoing in discussions here.

Some go as far as seeing the reluctance of the developed countries – those historically responsible for most of the emissions in the atmosphere today – to take real action on climate change as a form of apartheid. Apartheid against Mother Earth; apartheid against the poor; against farmers, fishermen, women and children.

At the last two UN climate conferences the whiff of cash somehow stimulated poor countries to endorse agreements that were patently not in their interests. Some wonder if the Durban conference will see again Africa and Small Island States being sold for thirty pieces of silver.

There was singing and dancing for the Caravan of Hope and the ‘We Have Faith’ rally. In Durban dancing and singing can signify or ignite anything. Whatever that is, I have my dancing shoes at the ready.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Nnimmo Bassey is chair of Friends of the Friends of the Earth International.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa

Media release from Pambazuka Press

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78365

© Pambazuka PressNnimmo Bassey's new book 'To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’, published by Pambazuka Press, shows that exploiting Africa’s resources has delivered huge profits to the North and huge damage to Africa. Overcoming the environment and climate change crises means also addressing corporate profiteering and resource extraction.

Monday 28 November 2011

CONTACT

Rachel Wiggans
Pambazuka Press
2nd floor 51 Cornmarket Street Oxford OX1 3HA, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 727006 x205
rachel@fahamu.org / www.pambazukapress.org

THE CLIMATE TALKS - WILL ANYONE LISTEN?

As thousands assemble in Durban for this year's climate talks, the countries of the global South hope for some listening as well as all the talking, says international climate campaigner, Nnimmo Bassey.

Bassey's new book 'To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ shows that the climate crisis confronting the world is mainly rooted in the wealthy economies’ exploitation and abuse of fossil fuels. Unless the connection is made between resource extraction, profiteering and climate change, the talks can not resolve the crises we all face.

Bassey is the director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action, which he founded nearly 20 years ago. He has worked tirelessly to combat the enormous damage caused to Nigerian communities by the extraction of oil, and now works with other sub-Saharan countries blessed – or is it cursed? – with new oil finds.

It is the countries of the South that stand to lose most from catastrophic climate change; they have already suffered increases in floods, drought and famine, and the deserts are expanding. The signs are there to see in developed countries too, as 'once-in-a century’ storms arrive more and more often and the seasons become less and less predictable. But in the climate talks last year in Cancun and the year before in Copenhagen, the developed countries dug in to defend their monstrous levels of energy consumption and their profiteering at the expense of everyone else.

Climate change that is already taking place will greatly compromise agricultural production in Africa. Bassey alerts us in his illuminating and sobering book to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warning that, in some countries, yield from systems that are rain-fed may decline by as much as 50 per cent by 2020. He points out that climate change has the most direct impact on people whose lives are most closely intertwined with their environment, threatening their livelihoods, health and access to food.

Bassey’s work is rooted in the reality of what is happening now in Africa, and his knowledge and vision are increasingly recognised. In 2008 he was elected Chair of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), the world’s largest grassroots environmental network. In 2009 he was named by TIME magazine as a Hero of the Environment. In 2010 he was a winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Prize). In 2011, along with other climate campaigners from the South, he is in Durban.

The UN and government officials’ task is to make progress towards the UN goal of ‘preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system’. Will the powerful once again shout down the informed and articulate voices from the South? Or will they listen, this time, to the lived experience of climate change?

………………………………………………….

Published by Pambazuka Press, ‘To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ is available from www.pambazukapress.org and all good bookshops.

Pambazuka Press is published by Fahamu

Fahamu Trust • Registered charity 1141162 • Company limited by guarantee 7467718 • Registered Address: 2nd Floor, 51 Cornmarket Street, Oxford, OX1 3HA
Fahamu Ltd is registered in Kenya as F15/2006 • Fahamu SA is registered as a trust in South Africa IT 372/01

What is at stake in Durban

A civil society analysis of mitigation issues in the climate talks

Civil society organisations

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78373

cc US N ACivil society groups say the Durban conference is shaping up as a clash of paradigms between those who believe that the world needs a science- and rules-based multilateral climate system and those who are seeking to dismantle the existing one.

IT’S A PLANETARY AND HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY…

The world is already reeling from major humanitarian emergencies exacerbated by climate change: floods in Thailand and Pakistan, landslides from extreme rains in many Latin American countries and the multi-year drought in the Horn of Africa that threatens the lives of millions.

Current levels of warming have already begun triggering major ‘tipping points’ in the Earth’s system – such as Arctic methane releases, Amazon dieback and the loss of icesheets. 2°C of warming, as proposed by some governments, threatens to tip a cascade of events that will cause warming to spin out of control. We have known since 1986 that warming ‘beyond 1°C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage’, the effects of which we’re seeing already.

…BUT RICH COUNTRIES RISK CLIMATE ANARCHY

To address this crisis many countries – particularly developing countries – seek an agreement in Durban based on science, on the existing legally binding and multilateral system reflected in the Climate Convention and its Kyoto Protocol, and on the deal agreed by all countries in the Bali Roadmap.

A handful of wealthy countries – including notably the United States – are now seeking to move the goalposts. They want to dismantle the rules for developed countries’ emissions reductions, shift the burden to developing countries and renege on the Bali Roadmap. In the process, they are trying to end the Kyoto Protocol, and even the Convention, and replace it with a weak, ineffective ‘pledge and review’ system that may take years to negotiate.

Durban, then, is shaping up as a clash of paradigms between those who believe that the world deserves and needs a science- and rules-based multilateral climate system to tackle perhaps the greatest challenge to face humanity, and those who are seeking to dismantle the existing one.

DEVELOPED COUNTRIES MUST CLOSE THE MITIGATION GAP

To have a good chance of keeping global warming below 2°C – a goal that is by no means safe – annual climate pollution must be about 12Gt lower globally by 2020, according to UNEP. Around 14Gt is likely required to keep warming below 1.5°C.

In Copenhagen, developing countries pledged more than 5Gt of reductions with the support of finance, technology and capacity. They are willing to do their part, subject to delivery of finance, technology and capacity in accordance with the Convention. So to keep warming below 1.5°C a gap remains of around 9Gt (that is, 14 minus 5) for developed countries to reduce.

However, developed countries have offered less than 4Gt of reductions, an effort considerably less ambitious than that offered by developing countries, and despite their ‘differentiated responsibilities and capabilities’ – that is, their greater role in causing climate change and capacities to address it. Moreover, around 4Gt could be lost in accounting ‘loopholes.’ Carbon markets would make this outcome even worse. Rich countries may, in other words, make ‘no net contribution to reducing emissions by 2020’.

Given how far emission pledges are from what the science requires, negotiations remain dangerously off track. A UNEP report confirms that countries’ pledged emission reductions are too weak to avert dangerous climate change, and could cause warming of a catastrophic 5°C. Warming in Africa and other large land-masses would occur at much higher levels, heralding impacts not experienced in the history of human civilization.

THE BARGAIN OF THE BALI ROADMAP MUST BE KEPT

Under the Bali Roadmap agreed at the December 2007 UN climate conference, governments agreed to an approach under which all countries (covering 100 percent of global emissions) would contribute to the solution of climate change in accordance with equity, historical responsibility and common but differentiated responsibilities.

Governments agreed to two tracks of negotiations under the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol. The agreement was that the current system would be maintained as the foundation of the global climate regime, and that we would build around this foundation in an equitable way.

Under the Bali Roadmap, it was understood that:
• The negotiations to ensure developed countries would adopt a second period of binding emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol commencing 2013;
• The United States, which is the only country to repudiate the Kyoto Protocol, would undertake comparable commitments under the Convention; and
• Developing countries would undertake nationally appropriate mitigation actions, enabled and supported by financing and technology that would be measurable, reportable and verifiable.

The bargain, emphasized consistently by the African Group and many other developing countries, was to maintain the existing rules – including provisions on transparency and compliance under the Kyoto Protocol – and to lift up the standard of other countries (including the United States) through new negotiations under the Convention.

Developed countries were also to honour their long-standing, but largely un-implemented, obligations to enable adaptation and provide substantial financial and technology transfers to developing countries.

INSTEAD: DEREGULATING THE CLIMATE REGIME

Rather than honour this plan, many developed countries have now indicated their clear intention to avoid binding obligations to reduce their climate pollution by killing the Kyoto Protocol and replacing it with a weaker ‘pledge and review’ system. At the same time, they are seeking to retain and expand their favoured elements of the Kyoto Protocol (that is, market mechanisms) into a new agreement, and shift their responsibilities onto developing countries.

A ‘pledge and review’ system would mean that the rich countries most responsible for the problem would only reduce their emissions according to political pressures at home, not according to the increasingly dire scientific realities. There would be no internationally binding commitments, no comparability of efforts among developed countries, and no assurance of adequate efforts. The system of common rules and international compliance in the Kyoto Protocol that give meaning to these commitments would be abandoned.

Such an approach would effectively deregulate the climate regime and if agreed to in a new treaty, would mean that a deregulated approach is enshrined in international law.


A DURBAN MANDATE FOR THE GREAT ESCAPE

Anyone following media reports would be forgiven for thinking that the main issue for the Durban climate conference is to agree on a new legally binding treaty. Rich countries have been actively conveying their message in the media, shaping public expectations that Durban should deliver a new treaty, or at least a mandate for one. At the same time, some developing countries have also been calling for a new treaty.

The fine print, however, is that the rich countries want a new treaty that replaces an existing one – the Kyoto Protocol, whereas the least developed and island nations want a new treaty that complements, and sits alongside the Kyoto Protocol, not replaces it. These positions are incompatible.

Developing countries, in other words, want to implement the Bali Roadmap and ensure legally binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, but the developed countries are seeking to do away with all this, through a new mandate. If a new mandate is agreed, it is unlikely the interests of poor countries would prevail. The United States is unlikely to sign on altogether, risking further delay and inaction.

The reality is that the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol that make up the existing legally binding climate architecture desperately needs implementing, not replacing. Developed countries appear progressive by asking for a legally binding treaty or the mandate for one, when the real truth is that they are violating the current legally binding regime, shifting the goalpost agreed in the Bali Roadmap, and reneging on agreements for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

The call for a new mandate for a new treaty in place of the Kyoto Protocol should be understood for what it really is – rich countries backtracking and reneging on inconvenient obligations, at the expense of the poor and the planet. As it has been throughout history, the rich and powerful are re-writing the rules in their favour.

AN ELITE AND CORPORATE LED AGENDA BY THE 1% FOR THE 1%

Underpinning the shift in the UN climate negotiations towards a ‘deregulatory’ pledge-based system are vested interests represented in Northern industrialized countries, international financial institutions, multinational corporations and elites in both the North and the South.

The position of the United States in international climate negotiations, for instance, is shaped substantially by its failure to secure domestic climate legislation, which in turn is the result of actions by powerful economic lobbies including the coal, oil, automotive, metals, fertilizer, chemical, agri-business and other special interests, and the lobbyists and politicians they fund in Washington.

Vested interests have opposed not merely domestic legislation and international emission reduction pledges, but also any curbs on emissions that would affect their interests. Some are architects of the effort to deny climate change altogether, attacking climate scientists and limiting public understanding of the necessity of climate action. More than undermining the current inadequate pledges – which could lead the world to over 5 °C of global warming – they seek to stop any effective action on climate change at all.

WHAT MUST HAPPEN IN DURBAN

Negotiations on further commitments for Annex I Parties have continued since 2005 with no clear commitment by Annex I countries that they will fulfil their legal obligations.

The time for ensuring there is no ‘gap’ between the first and second periods of the Kyoto Protocol has run out – the moment of truth has arrived. Developed countries must now commit to a legal, not political, second commitment period of the Protocol.

Europe must stand up and be counted as a leader among developed countries, to join with developing countries in calling for an outcome that increases ambition, addresses the hard issues left off the table in Cancun, honours the promises made in Bali, and builds on – rather than dismantles – the climate system built since the Convention was agreed in 1992.

Europe, which has in the past tried to give leadership where other developed countries had been wanting, is now hedging, hoping to benefit from the dishonourable action of Canada, Japan, Russia, US, and others who are seeking to destroy the Kyoto Protocol, while avoiding the blame. It is time for Europe to be a true leader.

All developed countries must recommit to the Bali Roadmap, which covers 100 percent of global emissions through three pillars:
1. Binding cuts for Annex I countries under the Kyoto Protocol;
2. Comparable efforts for the United States under the Convention; and
3. Appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries, supported by finance, technology and capacity.

KEY OUTCOMES FOR MITIGATION FROM DURBAN

• Parties must formally commit to conclude negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol, through an amendment of its Annex B. To ensure there is no gap between the first and second commitment period, as legally required by the Protocol negotiations, provisional application of the second commitment period must be agreed, pending entry into force. African governments have said there is ‘No Plan B’ on the Kyoto Protocol. Durban must not be the burial ground of the Kyoto Protocol.

• Negotiations under the Protocol must close the ‘mitigation gap’ between developed countries’ pledges and what science and equity require. Developed countries must show leadership, put aside the interests of their polluting corporations, and re-commit to an ambitious second commitment period. Europe must lead the developed countries, and not continue to use delaying tactics.

• Developed countries must not shift the burden to developing countries through carbon markets, or through using loopholes such as creative land-use accounting and surplus allowances. Current proposals for mitigation, markets and loopholes threaten not merely the negotiations but the global effort to tackle climate change.

• The United States, as the only developed country non-party to the Kyoto Protocol, must commit to do its fair share and take on comparable efforts under the Convention, including ambitious, legally binding, economy-wide emission reduction commitments.

• Long-term sources and scale of finance commencing in 2013 must be agreed in Durban, for both mitigation and adaptation, and a process for determining how much finance is ‘necessary for implementation of the Convention’ including mitigation actions by developing countries.
• Finance must be provided through a Green Climate Fund that is accountable to all countries under the Conference of Parties that supports developing countries not private corporations. Any ‘private sector facility’ is to be opposed.

These elements must be part of an ambitious package on all issues that strengthens the global climate architecture, serves the interests of people not polluters, and supports the transformational change required for a more just and safe world. The world is watching: Durban must deliver for the 99 percent.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This analysis was jointly prepared by: Asian Indigenous Women’s Network, Friends of the Earth EWNI, Friends of the Earth (FoE) US, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), International Forum on Globalization, Jubilee South - Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, Tebtebba and Third World Network (TWN)
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Kenya's media in bed with the military

Reports on Somalia invasion are mostly propaganda

Henry Makori

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78374

cc A ENational media coverage of Kenya’s invasion of Somalia all comes from a single source – the military, writes Henry Makori. No wonder there seems to be so little opposition to the war.

Pictures of Kenyan military tanks rolling into Somalia. Defence Minister Yusuf Haji flanked by his internal security counterpart George Saitoti and Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere explain the incursion. Unsmiling generals wag fingers at a live press briefing. Pictures of soldiers distributing relief food to starving Somalis. Female soldiers at the ‘frontline’. President Kibaki declares operation will go on until al-Shabaab militia is vanquished. TV reporters in helmets and bullet proof vests report from the ‘frontline’…

These are the daily media images of the Kenyan war in Somalia. A clean war. Not a drop of blood. There have been frequent reports of killings of al-Shabaab militiamen and bombing of their bases. But no one has seen any images of the ‘frontline gains’ as NTV once described the army’s progress.

The headlines on TV and in the newspapers have been entirely celebratory since the fighting began on 16 October 2011 – except on those days when suspected retaliatory grenade attacks rocked Nairobi; the media has played down subsequent grenade attacks in other parts of the country.

Here’s a small selection from the front pages of Kenya’s two leading dailies, Nation and Standard, over the past month: ‘Nine shabaab men killed in fierce clash near border town’ (Nation); Kenya’s fearsome arsenal in offensive’ (Standard); ‘Al-Qaeda camp hit by Kenya’s jets and ships’ (Nation); ‘Kenya enters next phase in operation’ (Standard); ‘Allies hunt shabaab fighters door-to-door (Nation); ‘We will fight on to victory, vows Kibaki’ (Nation); ‘UN to punish al shabaab allies’ (Standard); ‘Spirits high as navy kills 18 shabaab’ (Standard)…

All the information carried in these stories – and many others on TV, radio and on websites – is from a single source: The military. No attempt has been made to verify independently the stories. The army holds frequent news conferences in Nairobi, but most of the time the media relies on emails and tweets from Kenya Defence Forces spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir. There must be no other view of the war.

Very few people have questioned the war – or rather there has been little media coverage of opposing voices. One of these is former chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights, a state agency, Maina Kiai, who described ‘Operation Linda Nchi’ (Swahili for Operation Secure the Nation) as an ‘illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Somalia.’ The normally vocal civil society organisations, faith groups and other movements are unheard.

As Kiai says, the war is illegal because Article 95 (6) of the constitution says that, ‘The National Assembly approves declarations of war.’ Parliament never debated the Somalia invasion. Nor did the president as Commander-in-Chief of Kenya Defence Forces make the announcement. He only spoke about it subsequently as an operation against al-Shabaab terrorists. The invasion is touted as a joint security operation with Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and not a war – although Ethiopian soldiers have already joined in and Kenya is supported by its Western allies, mainly USA and France.

Some observers believe Kenya decided to enter Somalia after a plan to create a new state (Azania) in the south of the country to act as a buffer between Kenya and al-Shabaab-controlled areas failed. The question that has not been openly asked – or answered in the military and political briefings – is why Kenya decided to pursue al-Shabaab inside Somalia and not the other militias inside other neighbouring countries which have for years attacked, killed and robbed Kenyans living near the national borders.

The invasion was said to be in response to the kidnapping of some Western tourists by al-Shabaab. But the militia group never claimed responsibility for those kidnappings, but actually denied the allegations. In recent years, Muslim religious leaders repeatedly claimed that al-Shabaab were recruiting youths in Nairobi and Mombasa to fight in Somalia. The government did nothing about the reports – only for the internal security ministry to tell parliament when the military invasion was launched that al-Shabaab has its ‘head’ in Eastleigh district, Nairobi. How did the Kenyan security forces let that happen?

There are claims of military adventurism as well. Kenya has never gone to war (everyone recalls Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s jibe that Kenya only had a ‘career army’); the invasion of Somalia is seen by politicians and the media here as an opportunity to demonstrate that the country is not only a regional economic power but also a military one. It is also seen as an opportunity to galvanise a country where ethnic divisions and rivalry is endemic. Only days before the inversion, the government had launched a six-month advertising campaign dubbed ‘Nitakuwapo’ (I will be here) to promote patriotism.

On the day the military incursion was launched, the military held an off-the-record briefing for senior editors in Nairobi. Did they hammer out a secret deal about how the coverage should be handled? That appears to be the case. Casper Waithaka, a senior reporter at Nation newspaper, says that announcement of the invasion generated a lot of excitement in the newsroom. Money may have changed hands as well.

‘I remember clearly that day. There was a lot of excitement in the newsroom. Some of my editors have been in the industry for 30 years but they have never had the opportunity [to cover war]. So they were saying, ‘why not?’ They were given a lot of money and they gave their go-ahead.’

The go-ahead was for reporters to be embedded with the soldiers in Somalia. Several journalists from major media houses were flown from Nairobi and are still with the soldiers. They supply daily dispatches about events in what the media here calls the ‘frontline’. Are the reports accurate representations of the reality as the reporters see it? The answer is no.

Nation has been running a disclaimer in its inside pages saying that, although its print and broadcast journalists are with the soldiers, ‘their reports are subject to military conditions.’ It is not clear what those ‘military conditions’ are and the implications for the veracity of the media reports. But other media houses (and indeed Nation’s television, NTV, and radio stations) have not carried any disclaimer.

One could get an idea of what is going on at the ‘frontline’ by speaking to reporters who have been there. Patrick Injendi, a journalist with Citizen TV, spent three weeks with the soldiers. The media has been reporting that the Kenyan army has ‘captured’ or ‘liberated’ town after town in Somalia apparently with little resistance from al shabaab as the soldiers make their way to the militia’s stronghold in the port city of Kismayu. But Injendi says the only ‘towns’ he ever saw were settlements with two or three buildings.

How do the reporters get their ‘frontline’ stories? ‘There is no freedom of movement’, Injendi says. ‘You couldn’t just wake up and decide you were going to look for news in a certain place. You must be accompanied by soldiers for security.’ That means the media reports are merely what the soldiers tell the reporters.

There also was no adequate preparation for the journalists to report the invasion. Like many Kenya journalists used to reporting the antics of politicians at funerals and rallies around the country or their statements read out at press conferences in Nairobi, Injendi says he was not prepared for the distress that came with reporting on a war. ‘We had no helmets or bullet proof jackets on leaving Nairobi.’

Yet the Kenyan media has created the impression that their reports are the truth. But Kate Hold, a British photojournalist who has covered American and British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and was early this year embedded with African Union forces in Somalia (AMISOM), says military restrictions are so bad journalists sometimes report propaganda.

‘Every time I saw a body of a soldier being repatriated I wondered why it was not being reported,’ Kate says of her experience in Somalia. ‘One day 52 Burundian soldiers were killed. I had access and could photograph them but I wasn’t allowed to report it. And it became clear why the AU did not want this reported: they felt that it was a matter of national pride and they didn’t want to make it seem to al-Shabaab that they were losing, or that there was any indication of weakness. It was the same in Afghanistan: the Americans did not want reports about how many deaths there were.’

But the question of casualties is not only in relation to the soldiers. Are those figures highlighted almost daily in the media of al-Shabaab militias killed accurate? What about Somali civilians killed in the bombings? How many are they so far? No numbers have been published, or even the mention of civilian deaths.

Simiyu Werunga, director of the African Centre for Strategic and Security Studies, suggests that civilian casualties could be quite high inside Somalia. ‘I speak from some experience: when you are fighting an organisation that is amorphous, is fluid and mobile and they are using civilians as shields, it becomes a bit difficult for a military to minimise casualties. Secondly, African militaries are not digitised, so they don’t have ‘smart’ weapons. Now, most western countries have ‘smart’ weapons, which have seriously reduced collateral damage. African countries don’t have those kinds of weaponry and because the tactics of al-Shabaab – using people as shields – it makes it difficult for the military to reduce casualties’.

Although Kenyans are being told that everything is going fine, civilian casualties are the reason why there is a lot of anger among Somalis against the Kenyan invasion, although all one sees in the media are happy Somalis welcoming their ‘liberators’. The vice-chair of the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights, Hassan Omar, says the anger may not be reported in the Kenyan media but it is there, boiling in blogs run by Somalis.

‘Because of four tourist abductions, we have killed about a hundred Somalis – that is collateral damage. Because the Kenyan army has five jetfighters that have no night vision or digitisation, it is proper to kill 100 Somalis because we are bringing security to Kenya’, Omar wonders, adding that he has seen Somalis expressing bitterness about the killings in blogs. ‘There is a lot of anger there. Don’t ever underestimate it because of the fact that it is not reaching the Kenyan media.’

Because of civilian casualties, says Omar, the Kenyan army could end up facing charges of war crimes. Some groups, he said, are documenting the atrocities and could bring a suit against the military commanders. Yet there are no media reports in Kenya of Somali civilians killed. Omar poses: ‘Who is going to speak for the hundreds of Somalis who have died so far? And it is independent media that has reported this: Press TV, Al Jazeera. They have confirmed some of these deaths. Who is going to speak for them? Or are we only speaking about four tourists because our commercial interests lie there?’

The frustration is not limited to Somalia. Kenya has a large ethnic Somali population in the north of the country but also in Nairobi and other major towns. Because of the war in Somalia, Kenyan Somalis are now viewed with suspicion. There have been claims of police harassment of the citizens, supposing them to be al-Shabaab sympathisers. This violation of citizen rights has not received much media attention because of support for the war.

Rage Hassan, a radio producer at Nairobi-based Star FM, which broadcasts in Somali, says that, whereas Somalis call in to say they support the war, they also report needless harassment by the police. He has even experienced it himself. ‘Yesterday I went for a driving test and a traffic officer called out to me: ‘Hey, you al-Shabaab, come in.’

Despite such experiences, the impression created by the media is that Kenyans are united in their support for the war. ‘For whatever reasons – some could be about profits – the media since we started this incursion in Somalia has never reported the truth’, says Werunga of ACSSS. ‘If you cannot report what is happening on the ground, how can you expect the Kenyan people to start questioning what is happening?’ he wondered.

Radio journalist Kassim Mohammed who has reported on Somalia echoes that sentiment. ‘The Kenyan media has failed in reporting this war. On the other hand, the Somali media has done very well: they question, they criticise a lot of the things going on. We are in bed with the army; not just the reporters, but even the news anchors. The other day I was really shocked when a well-known TV personality came on air and said: ‘Our men are at war. Can you please send them words of encouragement.’

That pretty much sums up the Kenyan media’s attitude to the war in Somalia. But there is no doubt that the truth about what is exactly happening will eventually come to light. Trouble is, immense damage would already have been done.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Henry Makori is editorial assistant at Pambazuka News.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Democracy and democratisation in Africa

Interrogating paradigms and practices

Issa G. Shivji

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78361

cc P PThe liberal democratic model imperialist-capitalist countries seek to universalise is 'essentially meant to rationalise, justify and protect and defend private capitalist property' in order to 'reproduce the system of class exploitation,' argues Issa G. Shivji.

INTRODUCTION

Democracy is a model. Democratisation is a process. Democracy is a transplant. Democratisation is organic. By democracy I mean the concept of bourgeois liberal democracy imposed by the West on the Rest. By democratisation I mean the struggles of the Rest against the West and its local ‘implants’ to expand the sphere of human freedom and dignity.

Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1492 and blazed the trail for Western invasion of Africa and Asia. Christopher Columbus landed in Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) also in 1492 planting the seeds of first genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, the so-called Red Indians, and the most gruesome trade: The triangular, Atlantic slave trade. Thus began the next five centuries of the development of the world capitalist system and Western civilisation, with accumulation in the centre and dispossession in the periphery. The stories we tell our children and the history we teach them and the values we preach at the altar are spurned by the hegemonic West. This is called civilisation, progress, universal human rights, development, modernisation and now globalisation. The process of resistance against dispossession is called barbarism, cannibalism, nativism, witchcraft, juju, tribalism and terrorism. Thus goes on the story of the West and the Rest to this day as we meet here to discuss the liberal model of democracy, good governance, human rights, transparency, accountability, humanitarianism etc.

This grossly oversimplified introduction is meant to drive home the point that concepts and paradigms in our discourse on democracy cannot and ought not to be taken for granted. The discourse is contentious and that contention cannot be unravelled unless we locate it historically in social struggles. The liberal model of democracy which is the dominant political discourse in Africa today is an abstraction from the particular history of the struggles of the European peoples. That it is presented and accepted as universal is because the hegemony of the West over the Rest. And that hegemony premised on the capitalist system was attained through war and violence and continues to be maintained through the same means.

In this short presentation, I want to paint in broad strokes three themes which run through the discourse on democracy. First, the construction of models of democracy – liberal democracy and its variants like social democracy – in imperial centres and its historical context and socio-economic basis. Second, I will address the post-colonial period in Africa. This period neatly subdivides into two – the first 25 years of the 'nationalist' period and the second 25 years of the neoliberal period. Lastly, I will look at the way forward or 'what is to be done?' And this I would like to do by reviewing the debates among African scholars. Given the limited time available, I will skip the details and elaborate argumentation. Those who are interested may wish to refer to the selected bibliography I append at the end of the paper.

CONSTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY 'MODELS' IN IMPERIAL CENTRES

First, the liberal democracy model which in historical terms is the oldest, was constructed in Europe over a long period of transition from feudalism to capitalism from the end of the 16th to the end of the 19th centuries. Economically, it marked the rise of the bourgeoisie and its eventual triumph following successful industrialisation. Politically, the liberal democratic model was developed in opposition to the absolutist rule of monarchs, including the ideological/cultural hegemony of the Church.

The feudal state was a decentralised parochial state. Rulers derived their legitimacy from religious ideology, that is, the metaphysical instance was dominant. The feudal order was based on status and therefore on inherent inequality since statuses were hierarchically organised. Some of the fundamental building blocks of the bourgeois order and liberal democracy were constructed in opposition to the premises of the feudal order. It is the bourgeoisie that built a centralised state, thus laying the basis of what we today call the 'nation'. Some of the other central concepts of the liberal order were similarly constructed in opposition to feudalism. Thus, for instance, privileging of the individual as opposed to a collectivity; equality of the 'individual being' as opposed to the inherent inequality of status; the dominance of the economic instance as opposed to the dominance of the metaphysical instance, thus bourgeois rule is legitimised in and through law and not religion (notice the notion of the secular state). Equality of individuals translates into equality before law, which in turn translates into equal rights. Thus all human beings are equal because they possess equal rights. Needless to say though that this political and legal equality is superimposed on fundamental social and economic inequality, which is inherent in the capitalist system.

The philosophical bedrock of the liberal democracy model rests on several separations and abstractions. First, the separation of production of commodities and circulation of commodities (the market). On the market all commodity owners, sellers and buyers, are equal. In production, the landlord and the tenant, the factory owner and the worker, the merchant and the machinga [street hawker] are of course unequal. In the famous dictum of Anatole France, bourgeois equality means: ‘The law in its majestic impartiality forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and steal bread.’

Result: Economic and social inequality which is inherent in the capitalist system makes nonsense of political and legal equality. It is this huge contradiction between politics and economics, between the reality and the rhetoric, which gave rise to struggles of the working people and produced the other variant of liberal democracy towards the end of the 19th century, social democracy. Social democracy demanded equity not simply equality. These struggles begun in a concrete fashion by the Paris Commune of 1871, passing through social democracy and concluding in the socialist revolution of Russia in 1917, which paused a systemic challenge to both the liberal and social democratic models as well as the capitalist-imperialist system underlying it. Socialist democracy was thus the third form of democracy based on the class of working people and which sought to transcend – albeit unsuccessfully – the liberal and social democratic models.

To sum up, the liberal democratic model sought to be universalised by imperialist-capitalist countries is essentially meant to rationalise, justify and protect and defend private capitalist property so as to reproduce the system of class exploitation. It has been a contentious process giving rise to its variant, the social democratic model, which itself split into social democracy and socialism. The social democratic model, tries to blunt the harsh edges of the liberal democratic model without challenging the capitalist-imperialist system. When it came to the crunch in the 1970s and 1980s, even the most advanced social democracy of the Scandinavian countries, capitulated to the neoliberal model, which I will discuss later. Meanwhile, the socialist model, distorted as it was, collapsed paving way for the renewal of the liberal model in the neoliberal form.

Second, it is important to note that the liberal democratic model was fully consummated only after industrialisation at the end of the 19th century, which laid the basis of the economic development of the imperial centres. The process of industrialisation itself was marked by savage exploitation of the working people of Europe and America resulting in gruesome poverty, exploitation and oppression of the working people as archived in many novels and writings such as those of Charles Dickens, Frederick Engels, E. P. Thompson, Robert Tressell, John Steinbeck, etc.

Third, the process of the development of capitalism, which underpinned the liberal democratic model, was global right from its beginning in the 15th century. The pillage of the Americas, Asia and its treasures and the devastation of the African continent, including the slave trade, played a crucial role in the development of imperialist centres.

Fourth, thus capitalism, and its concomitant political expression, liberal democracy, and later social democracy, was built on the backs of the working people of Europe and Americas and the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Liberal democracy in the centres went hand in hand with imperialist dictatorship and colonial despotism in the periphery. Democracy and rights were meant for citizens, not natives. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 did not include Africans then because they were 'natives' not human beings.

Fifth, throughout the trajectory of capitalist development, it has been marked by wars and violence. In fact, one author even argues that the cycle of destruction-construction is inherent in the process of capitalist accumulation/development (Jha 2006). The European wars from the 16th to the 19th century culminating in the so-called first and second world wars in the 20th century are notorious. The only period of peace in Europe was about four decades following the Second World War. Even then it was peace in Europe and America but war in the third world. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, war returned to Europe (Balkans) and now with Libya, imperialism has once again shifted the theatre of war to Africa. The destruction-construction cycle of capitalist accumulation is well-illustrated by what happened in Iraq and Libya. After ruthless bombing of those countries, the multinational sharks of imperialist countries have invaded Libya for reconstruction like vultures to feed on corpses.

Sixth, the liberal democratic model did not cross the seas during colonialism. Colonialism was anything but democratic. It was a despotic state meant to control, subjugate and dehumanise the colonised so as to facilitate the exploitation of the natural and human resources of the colonies. This in turn gave rise to the struggles of the colonised for self-determination resulting in the independence of colonies in the global South.

Finally, the golden period of capitalism and the developed North was the four decades following the Second World War. In many ways, the Second World War was a turning point. The leadership of the imperialist camp shifted from Britain to the United States. With the Chinese revolution, almost one third of the world withdrew from the capitalist system. The national liberation movement in the South gathered storm as countries in Asia and Africa began to gain their independence. Imperialism was on the defensive and fought hard to keep its hegemony. The Chinese Communist Party summed up the situation thus:

Countries want independence
Nations want liberation
People want revolution.

***

It was in this context that African countries won their independence on territories which had been carved out into countries by colonial powers. Independent Africa was born in a very contentious world where socialism challenged capitalism, where nationalism challenged imperialism and where emancipation challenged enslavement. Imperialism was on the defensive but not defeated; socialism had made some impressive revolutionary advances but was not hegemonic, still suffering the birth pangs of being born in economically backward countries. Nationalism had brought uhuru but the question was how to defend and nurture it in a hostile environment.

UHURU AND AFTER: FROM NATIONALISM TO NEOLIBERALISM

Fifty years of African independence neatly divide into two periods of 25 years. The first 25 years may be called the nationalist period and the next 25 years of the neoliberal period. Complex confluence of forces and the long struggle of the peoples led to the granting of independence. But the colonial masters would not simply let go their former colonies. Independence leaders with a modicum of nationalism who wanted to create relatively independent states were quickly weeded out through assassinations and military coups. Patrice Lumumba was murdered by Belgium in cahoots with the CIA. So was Felix-Roland Moumié, a progressive leader of Union of the People's of Cameroon (UPC) by the French secret services. Mehdi Ben Barka of the Moroccan National Union of Popular Forces, a great Tricontinental leader, disappeared in France in 1965 at the behest of French and Moroccan agents. Amilcar Cabral was killed by the Portuguese and the young progressive leader of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara was also assassinated. Others like Kwame Nkrumah were overthrown for exposing the neo-colonial designs of American imperialism. In 1966 alone there were eight military coups in Africa. In all these, you could trace the hand of imperialist powers. Thus sheer survival was the first pre-occupation of independence leaders. The result was that many quickly recapitulated to the erstwhile Western powers in perpetuating the colonial arrangement that came to be dubbed 'neocolonialism'. Others of more nationalist and independent bent like Mwalimu Nyerere had to make compromises to survive.

The second challenge was what was called nation-building and development. Given the absence of a bourgeoisie, the agency for both became the state. As Mwalimu said, in the former African colonies, the state had both to build the nation and bring about development. But this was the despotic colonial state that was inherited from the past as was the extraverted colonial economy integrated in the capitalist system. The colonial political economy rested on siphoning off of surplus to the metropole through primitive accumulation, not on internal accumulation. And the state acted as the creator and facilitator of conditions for this. No wonder that the new petty bourgeoisie who took the reins of power continued to preside over the same political economy. Attempts to create internal structures for autocentric, albeit capitalist, accumulation that some nationalist leaders like Nyerere attempted very soon reached their limits given that the overall global economic structures were controlled by imperialist centres.

Politically, the liberal construct of the independence constitutions gave way to authoritarian structures mimicking in many ways the despotism of the colonial state. At the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, as many African economies entered the deep economic crisis, it was abundantly clear that the promises of independence had run sour – there was neither sustainable development nor credible democracy. Nonetheless, ideologically and politically, imperialism was on the defensive. But the crisis now created the conditions for imperialist powers headed by the United States to mount an offensive in the name of neoliberalism. This was further facilitated by the decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and the change of direction in China.

For Africa neoliberalism, economically and philosophically fathered by Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, and politically rammed down our throats by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, knocked on the doors with structural adjustments programmes (SAPs). Though crafted in the language of economics, neoliberalism was foremost an ideological attack on radical nationalism. Imperialism went on the offensive – economically, politically, culturally and intellectually. Within a period of two decades, Africa has undergone three generations of structural adjustment programmes in an orgy of liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation, commodification and financialisation. Pockets of capitalist development based on internal autocentric accumulation have been destroyed as country after country in Africa has been deindustrialised. The few achievements of social services in education, health, water, old age pensions and other public services are commodified under such policies as cost sharing and outsourcing. Fiscal instruments and institutions of policy making, like central banks, have been made autonomous and commercial banks privatised away from the public scrutiny of elected bodies. They make policies on the basis of prescriptions handed down by International Financial Institutions and donors. Policies are thrust down the throats of politicians and parliamentarians using the carrot of loans, aid and budget support whose withdrawal acts as the veritable stick. Meanwhile, voracious imperialist capitals backed by their states and the so-called ‘donor-community’ is grabbing land, minerals, water, flora and fauna. I need not go into details because a few African scholars have amply documented these facts – I say few, because many have succumbed to consultancies in the service of ‘development partners’.

It is part of SAP and its conditionalities that we were also given the package of democracy – the liberal democratic model. This is not to say that there were no internal struggles for democratisation. There were, but these were quickly hijacked and or pre-empted by local ruling power and their imperialist backers.

Let me now turn to the last section to discuss the democracy discourse which also to a certain extent reflects the struggles for democratisation of the African people.

BY WAY OF 'THE WAY FORWARD'

At the current conjuncture the democracy discourse/debate among African scholars revolves around three perspectives: (a) the liberal democratic model; (b) the social democratic model and (c) new democracy.

The liberal democratic model handed down from the Centres is simplified for us around such issues as multi-party elections, accountability, transparency, good governance and human rights. This is the dominant discourse among many mainstream African scholars, academia, NGO-wallas, political parties and erstwhile ‘development practitioners’, a euphemism for observers and monitors from donor countries. This discourse, much of which actually happens in fora funded by the so-called ‘development partners’ and organised by local NGOs revolves around three or four tired themes – free and fair elections or sometimes called clean elections, transparency and accountability and ‘good governance’. Facilitators and paper presenters at these fora are usually academics who churn out the same tired wisdoms (as I am doing now!) about the need for an independent electoral commission, the need to monitor elections, the need to have legal sanctions against those who breach the rules, strict observance of human and gender rights, and a host of other rights depending on the donor flavour of the day, abolishing of capital punishment, etc.

Every five years elections are held with funding from donors; every five years we get election monitors and observers who certify the elections 'free and fair' or 'moderately free and fair' or 'not free and fair' depending on what is the political attitude of their paymasters for that country and on that occasion; every five years the opposition cries foul; every five years we are told that we need to change the constitution to have an independent, or a multi-party electoral commission, that the commissions need to build their capacity, so a readily available academic consultant from the academia is hired to write a project proposal. And this rigmarole applies regardless of which party has won the election, the ruling or the opposition. The belief that the opposition would do better has been dismally shattered in Africa as in country after country from Zambia through Malawi to Senegal the opposition has proved to be even worse then the outgoing ruling parties. Yet the play-acting goes on.

Much of the discourse on transparency, accountability and good governance is actually a discussion on corruption, the usual 'whipping boy' of donors. The play-acting at every ‘consultative group’ and stakeholders workshop is not very different either. Bindra, commenting on a ‘consultative meeting’ in Nairobi in 2005 puts it thus:

‘Donor talks to focus on corruption ... Is no one tired if this charade? Year after year, we troop before the donors like abject mendicants asking for ‘development assistance’ (alms, to you and me). Year after year the donors tick us off and point out our various shortcomings. Year after year large sums are promised and smaller sums are delivered. Year after year we squander most of what we are given ... How much longer do we intend to carry on with this failed model of master and supplicant? When an act of futility is repeated incessantly, it must be because it is in the interest of both parties. So see you here at same time next year when the headline will no doubt repeat itself.’ (quoted in Bujra 2005: 27)

***

The point of course is that we hardly interrogate the very basic premises of the liberal democratic model in its historical, social-economic context. Even on its home turf the model is in crisis as is the capitalist-imperialist system that underpins it. To the credit of a few more committed African scholars, a significant number of them were not taken in by the ‘good governance’ and the liberal democratic package that accompanied the SAP. One of the best and profound African thinkers, the late Archie Mafeje, wrote right at the beginning of the entry of multi-party democracy in the early 1990s:

‘All evidence points to the fact that in the so-called 'wave of democratization' sweeping through Africa a new class of compradors will gain ascendancy. They will be largely technocrats who will try their best to ingratiate themselves with the World Bank and to give its Structural Adjustment Programmes in Africa a longer lease of life. Unlike their predecessors, they will be less nationalistic, more pro-West and will espouse some naive and anachronistic ideas about liberal democracy. In the hope of achieving the long-awaited democracy since independence, the people will vote for them as before. But disillusionment will come fast.’ (Mafeje 1995: 25)

Twenty years down the line, having seen the performance of multi-partyism and the caricatured model of liberal democracy that was handed down to us, we can say with awe: How prophetic?

A small minority of African scholars even toyed with the idea of social democracy Scandinavian-style (Claude Ake, Peter Anyang' Nyongo', for example, see an excellent review in Mafeje 1999). This is to say some kind of welfare state. But a welfare state based on the mode of primitive accumulation imposed by imperialism looks virtually impossible. While there is a lot to be said for this variant, particularly in opposition to liberal democracy, which does not address issues of equity and needs, in African conditions it falls short if it does not address the national question, that is the question of imperialism. This is exactly where African scholars advocating social democracy sounded more platitudinous then political. As a matter of fact, it was not long before Nyongo', a founder member of the Social Democratic Party in Kenya, resigned and joined Raila Odinga's Orange Development Movement (ODM).

The third perspective which has been talked about by a minority of African scholars is new democracy. It is interesting that in his 1995 and 1999 articles Mafeje also saw social democracy as the perspective for African democracy. His understanding of, and argument for social democracy was much more profound.

‘Regarding present conditions in Africa, this can refer only to two things: first, the extent to which the people's will enters decisions which affect their life chances; and, second, the extent to which their means of livelihood are guaranteed. In political terms the first demand ... .... [implies] ascendancy to power by a national democratic alliance in which the popular classes hold the balance of power. The second demand implies equitable (not equal) distribution of resources. Neither liberal democracy, imposed 'multi-partyism' nor 'market forces' can guarantee these two conditions. It transpires, therefore, that the issue is neither liberal nor 'compradorial' democracy but social democracy.’(Mafeje 1995: 26)

In his later article, Mafeje further clarified his concept and perspective on social democracy and brought in the dimension of national liberation and concluded that ‘While social democracy cannot be used as a basis for national liberation, new democracy can.' (Mafeje 2000: 87). He further argued that 'new democracy' provides lines of departure from the notions of liberal democracy: Recognition of the sovereignty of the people; social justice as opposed to juridical justice; social equity as opposed to legal equality. And most important of all social equity implies equitable access to productive resources which does not depend on bourgeois notions of private property.

Taking Mafeje's position on new democracy as a point of departure, I argued in a paper presented on the occasion of the 75th birthday of Mwalimu Nyerere (Shivji 2000), that 'new democracy' in Africa has to be constructed on three fundamental elements – popular livelihoods, popular participation and popular power. By popular I mean anti-imperialist. 'National democracy' cannot be 'national' or 'democratic' if it is not at the same time anti-imperialist because imperialism is the anti-thesis of 'nation' and 'democracy'. The term popular as opposed to 'national' is also meant to transcend the limits of the term 'national' to highlight the limits of the first national independence.

The second meaning of 'popular' is to convey the idea that the agency for the new democracy project are popular classes, that is, a bloc of popular classes. The exact composition will of course vary according to space and time. This is where the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions is called for.

Popular participation is meant to overcome the limits of parliamentary electoral democracy which at best means a musical chairs of changing elites every year. This has proved to be what Samir Amin calls a 'democratic fraud'. Popular participation thus refers to participation of the people in decision-making at their places of production and living which is where politics happen and not simply at the level of the state. This raises the vexed question of the organisational form that the popular agency would take. This is undoubtedly a concrete question and cannot be answered in advance. Nevertheless, one can say with some certainty, that traditional political parties have proved to be utterly inadequate to the task of democratisation in the sense of leading a fight of the popular classes for new democracy. Traditional political parties are essentially electoral machines. They are based on opportunistic electoral alliances to get into power and not principled social alliances to transform power.

In conclusion, although we have indicated a possible alternative form of democracy to address the current needs and African conditions, we cannot posit in advance the social agency and its organisational form. Only the democratisation struggle of the people will be able both to pose these questions more concretely and sharply as well as indicate possible resolution. Meanwhile, we can say with certain amount of confidence that the liberal model constructed on the neoliberal economy has entered into crisis both in imperialist centres as well as in the periphery. Tahrir Square in Egypt and the 'occupy wall street' movement in the financial cities of imperial centres from Washington, New York to London are symptomatic of this crisis. These movements have exposed the democratic fraud of the liberal model and placed on the historical agenda a search and struggle for alternative forms of political and economic organisation of human society.

In Africa, the new wave of the exploitation of natural resources on the one hand, and militarisation of the continent under the aegis of AFRICOM, on the other, poses new challenges to the democratic struggles of the working people. After NATO's invasion of Libya, military occupation of the continent is no longer hypothetical. The question before us is: Are we going to gullibly repeat the models imposed on us by the West and its concomitant double standards, or think creatively of alternative forms of political and economic organisation of our societies?

To sum up my discussion on liberal democracy as an imposed model and democratisation as the struggle of the working people for greater freedom and human dignity against the voracious capitalist-imperialist system, I can do no better then reproduce these protest images from Tahrir square and 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.**














** I am grateful to Natasha Shivji for finding these images for me from the Facebook.

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* Issa G. Shivji is Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.
* This paper was presented to the seminar on Electoral Democracy - ‘What can make Electoral Democracy Effective?’, organised by MS-Training Centre for Development Cooperation (MS-TCDC), 7-9th November, 2011.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Amin, Samir, 1990, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure, London: Zed.
Amin, Samir, 2011, 'The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative', Monthly Review, November 2011, Volume 63, No. 6.
Amin, Samir, 2011, 'Arab Spring?', Monthly Review, November 2011, Volume 63, No. 6.
Amin, Samir, 2011 reprint, Eurocentrism, Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism, Nairobi, Oxford: fahamu books
Bujra, Abdalla, 2005, 'Liberal Democracy and the Emergence of a Constitutionally Failed State in Kenya', in Abdalla Bujra ed., Democratic Transition in Kenya: The Struggle from Liberal to Social Democracy, Nairobi: African Centre for Economic Growth & Development Policy Management Forum.
Davidson, Basil, 1961, The Black Mother: The Years of the African Slave Trade, little Brown.
Fanon, Frantz, 1967, The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin.
Harvey, David, 2003, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, David, 2005, A Brief History of Neo-liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mafeje, Archie, 1995, 'Theory of Democracy and the African Discourse: Breaking Bread with my Fellow-travellers', in Eshetu Chole & Jibrin Ibrahim eds., Democratisation Processes in Africa: Problems and Prospects, Dakar: CODESRIA.
Mafeje, Archie, 1999, Democracy, Civil Society and Governance in Africa, Addis Ababa.
Mafeje, Archie, 2002, 'Democratic governance and new democracy in Africa: Agenda for the future' in Peter Anyang' Nyongo'. Aseghedech Ghirmazion and Davinder Lamba, NEPAD: A New Path?, Nairobi: Heinrich Boll Foundation.
Mkandawire, Thandika & Charles C. Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment, Dakar: CODESRIA.
Pashukanis, E., 1924, 1978, Law & Marxism: A General Theory, London: Ink Links.
Shivji, I. G., 2000, 'Critical elements of a New Democratic Consensus in Africa', in Haroub Othman, ed., Reflections on Leadership: Forty Years after Independence, VUB University Press.
Shivji, I. G., 2006, Let the People Speak: Tanzania Down the Road to Neo-liberalism, Dakar: CODESRIA.
Shivji, I. G., 2009, Where is Uhuru? Reflections on the Struggle for Democracy in Africa, Nairobi & Oxford: fahamu books.
Shivji. I. G., 20009, Accumulation in an African Periphery: A Theoretical Framework, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota.
Toussaint, Eric, 1999, Your Money or Your Life: The tyranny of global finance, London & Dar es Salaam: Pluto Press & Mkuki na Nyota.
Williams, Eric, 1944, Capitalism and Slavery, Richmond, Virginia: University of North Carolina Press.
Zinn, Howard, 1999, A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present, Harper Perennial.

16 days of activism against gender violence

Diary of an activist

Colleen Lowe Morna

2011-11-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78316

cc Khym54On the eve of the global 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, Colleen Lowe Morna is in Lusaka, Zambia, where she reflects on the numbers of victims. But she also hears about moving real-life stories, inspiring initiatives and some humour.

Lusaka, 24 November: It’s 5am on the eve of the International Day of No Violence Against Women that kicks off the Sixteen Days of Activism campaign. My alarm rings barely six hours after I arrive in the Zambian capital and I am in a panic as I will be speaking in a few hours about why we need better ways to measure gender violence. I rummage through my email to find the invitation to the Lusaka seminar from the Irish Embassy and UN agencies and reflect on a few numbers.

In 2010, Zambian police recorded 8,673 cases of gender violence. Yet according to the 2007 Zambian Demographic and Health Survey, 47 percent of women have experienced physical violence in their lifetime and 33 percent in the previous year. Some quick maths. There are six million women in Zambia. So assuming not much has changed since 2007, two million would have experienced violence in 2010: 230 times more than the number reported to the police. The factor of over 200 rings a bell.

We have just put out a press release in South Africa calling on the government to conduct a nationwide gender violence prevalence and attitude survey, after the September 2011 South African Police Services (SAPS) report put the sexual assault rate in the South African province of Gauteng at 0.03 percent compared to the 7.8 percent rate that we found in a survey that involved administering an in-depth questionnaire to a representative sample of the population. That figure is 260 times higher than what was reported to the police. Clearly, police statistics across Southern Africa are not telling the true story.

I refresh my memory on the 2010 Gauteng research: half of all the women surveyed said that they had experienced violence of some kind during their lifetime (uncannily similar to the Zambian health survey) and 18 percent over the last year.

Later in the day at the Lusaka seminar, in front of over one hundred representatives of embassies, government ministries, law enforcement agencies and activists, Superintendent Tresford Kasale brings these kinds of numbers to life with his folder of gruesome images from the Victim Support Unit where he works. A prize winner at the annual Gender Links Gender Justice and Local Government Summit, he is a member of the Men’s Forum – one of many male champions emerging in the fight against gender violence.

But it is the riveting first-hand account by Sophia Mwale, who speaks through an interpreter in Nyanja, that holds the most attention. After her first husband died in 2004 leaving her widowed with five children, she remarried a Mr Mwale who started beating her within two months of their union. Her graphic memory of dates and actions is like a living diary of the holocaust.

She relives the horror of itchy plants spread around her bed and being locked up without hot water to wash off the effects. She fights back tears as she remembers her clothes being burned with acid. She is understandably cynical about the six-month prison sentence he never served. She lives in fear that Mwale will find her at the shelter where she is taking refuge.

One of the reasons we argue for comprehensive indicators on gender violence is that the costs of such experiences do not feature in any data base. I find myself wondering what this is costing Sophia Mwale – in hospital fees; days spent away from work; the opportunity cost of not being able to better her life and that of her children while she lives as a virtual refugee in her own country. I remember that emotional violence features as the largest single category of violence in our survey, yet there is no such category in police statistics.

There are light moments, though. Keynote speaker and Sonke Gender Justice’s Mbuyiselo Botha from South Africa has the audience in stitches when he observes that the only distinction between a man and a woman is the former’s erect penis, yet for men his age even that is not a given! Seriously, he says, the problem in our society is that most men do not talk openly about the things they really feel. They are scared: of losing power, and of empowered women.

I think back to the findings of the opinion section of our Gauteng survey, that shows women increasingly aware of their rights; men starting to say the right things, but then contradicting themselves. So according to our study, titled ‘The War at Home’, 88 percent of the men surveyed agree that women and men are equal, but 86 percent men believe that women should obey their husbands.

At lunch, our Zambian field officer Faides Nsofu and I have an animated discussion with the director of the Zambia Gender in Development Division Christine Kalamwina on our ten Centres of Excellence for Gender Mainstreaming in local government (100 across the region) that we want to cascade to all the 74 councils of Zambia. We agree that the only way we will ever achieve gender equality is to work community by community. We want to prove this through conducting baseline surveys of gender violence in each locality, and then repeating these studies every five years.

Throughout the day I monitor a barrage of emails on my newfound blackberry from our offices across ten countries – marches being planned; technology being sorted for the daily lunch time cyber dialogues that we run during the Sixteen Days; bank accounts opened; transfers made; speakers found; donors met: the list is endless.

At the seminar, one of the panellists, Bishop Paul Mususu reads out an edited rendition of Amos 5:21-24 that helps to put things in perspective: ‘I can't stand your meetings; I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fundraising schemes, your public relations and image making. Do you know what I want? I want justice - oceans of it. I want fairness - rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want.’ Amen!

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* Colleen Lowe Morna is CEO of Gender Links. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service that offers fresh views on every day news. During the Sixteen Days GL will be running daily cyber dialogues on this and the Gender and Climate Change campaign at the UN Conference on Climate Change from 12.30 to 14.00 South African time. Log onto chatservice
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Audacity, more audacity

Samir Amin

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78392

cc B OSamir Amin is proposing a way out of the current situation of capitalism in crisis. Nations should socialise the ownership of monopolies, de-financialise the management of the economy and de-globalise international relations.

INTRODUCTION

The historical circumstances created by the implosion of contemporary capitalism requires the radical left, in the North as well as the South, to be bold in formulating its political alternative to the existing system. The purpose of this paper is to show why audacity is required and what it means.

WHY AUDACITY?

1. Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies. By this I mean that monopolies are now no longer islands (albeit important) in a sea of other still relatively autonomous companies, but are an integrated system. Therefore, these monopolies now tightly control all the systems of production. Small and medium enterprises, and even the large corporations that are not strictly speaking oligopolies are locked in a network of control put in place by the monopolies. Their degree of autonomy has shrunk to the point that they are nothing more than subcontractors of the monopolies.

This system of generalized monopolies is the product of a new phase of centralization of capital in the countries of the Triad (the United States, Western and Central Europe, and Japan) that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.

The generalized monopolies now dominate the world economy. ‘Globalization’ is the name they have given to the set of demands by which they exert their control over the productive systems of the periphery of global capitalism (the world beyond the partners of the triad). It is nothing other than a new stage of imperialism.

2. The capitalism of generalized and globalized monopolies is a system that guarantees these monopolies a monopoly rent levied on the mass of surplus value (transformed into profits) that capital extracts from the exploitation of labour. To the extent that these monopolies are operating in the peripheries of the global system, monopoly rent is imperialist rent. The process of capital accumulation – that defines capitalism in all its successive historical forms – is therefore driven by the maximisation of monopoly/imperialist rent seeking.

This shift in the centre of gravity of the accumulation of capital is the source of the continuous concentration of income and wealth to the benefit of the monopolies, largely monopolised by the oligarchies (‘plutocracies’) that govern oligopolistic groups at the expense of the remuneration of labour and even the remuneration of non-monopolistic capital.

3. This imbalance in continued growth is itself, in turn, the source of the financialisation of the economic system. By this I mean that a growing portion of the surplus cannot be invested in the expansion and deepening of systems of production and therefore the ‘financial investment’ of this excessive surplus becomes the only option for continued accumulation under the control of the monopolies.

The implementation of specific systems by capital permits the financialisation to operate in different ways:

(i) the subjugation of the management of firms to the principle of ‘shareholder value’
(ii) the substitution of pension systems funded by capitalisation (Pension Funds) by systems of pension distribution
(iii) the adoption of the principle of ‘flexible exchange rates’
(iv) the abandonment of the principle of central banks determining the interest rate - the price of ‘liquidity’ – and the transfer of this responsibility to the ‘market’.

Financialisation has transferred the major responsibility for control of the reproduction of the system of accumulation to some 30 giant banks of the triad. What are euphemistically called ‘markets’ are nothing other than the places where the strategies of these actors who dominate the economic scene are deployed.

In turn this financialisation, which is responsible for the growth of inequality in income distribution (and fortunes), generates the growing surplus on which it feeds. The ‘financial investments’ (or rather the investments in financial speculation) continue to grow at dizzying speeds, not commensurate with growth in GDP (which is therefore becoming largely fictitious) or with investment in real production.

The explosive growth of financial investment requires – and fuels – among other things debt in all its forms, especially sovereign debt. When the governments in power claim to be pursuing the goal of ‘debt reduction’, they are deliberately lying. For the strategy of financialised monopolies requires the growth in debt (which they seek, rather than combat) as a way to absorb the surplus profit of monopolies. The austerity policies imposed ‘to reduce debt’ have indeed resulted (as intended) in increasing its volume.

4. It is this system – commonly called ‘neoliberal’, the system of generalized monopoly capitalism, ‘globalized’ (imperialist) and financialised (of necessity for its own reproduction) – that is imploding before our eyes. This system, apparently unable to overcome its growing internal contradictions, is doomed to continue its wild ride.

The ‘crisis’ of the system is due to its own ‘success’. Indeed so far the strategy deployed by monopolies has always produced the desired results: ‘austerity’ plans and the so-called social (in fact antisocial) downsizing plans that are still being imposed, in spite of resistance and struggles. To this day the initiative remains in the hands of the monopolies (‘the markets’) and their political servants (the governments that submit to the demands of the so-called ‘market’).

5. Under these conditions monopoly capital has openly declared war on workers and peoples. This declaration is formulated in the sentence ‘liberalism is not negotiable.’ Monopoly capital will definitely continue its wild ride and not slow down. The criticism of ‘regulation’ that I make below is grounded in this fact.

We are not living in a historical moment in which the search for a ‘social compromise’ is a possible option. There have been such moments in the past, such as the post-war social compromise between capital and labour specific to the social democratic state in the West, the actually existing socialism in the East, and the popular national projects of the South. But our present historical moment is not the same. So the conflict is between monopoly capital and workers and people who are invited to an unconditional surrender. Defensive strategies of resistance under these conditions are ineffective and bound to be eventually defeated. In the face of war declared by monopoly capital, workers and peoples must develop strategies that allow them to take the offensive.

The period of social war is necessarily accompanied by the proliferation of international political conflicts and military interventions of the imperialist powers of the triad. The strategy of ‘military control of the planet’ by the armed forces of the United States and its subordinate NATO allies is ultimately the only means by which the imperialist monopolies of the triad can expect to continue their domination over the peoples, nations and the states of the South.

Faced with this challenge of the war declared by the monopolies, what alternatives are being proposed?

First response: ‘market regulation’ (financial and otherwise).

These are initiatives that monopolies and governments claim they are pursuing. In fact it is only empty rhetoric, designed to mislead public opinion. These initiatives cannot stop the mad rush for financial return that is the result of the logic of accumulation controlled by monopolies. They are therefore a false alternative.

Second response: a return to the post-war models.

These responses feed a triple nostalgia: (i) the rebuilding of a true ‘social democracy’ in the West, (ii) the resurrection of ‘socialisms’ founded on the principles that governed those of the 20th century, (iii) the return to formulas of popular nationalism in the peripheries of the South. These nostalgias imagine it is possible to ‘roll back’ monopoly capitalism, forcing it to regress to what it was in 1945. But history never allows such returns to the past. Capitalism must be confronted as it is today, not as what we would have wished it to be by imagining the blocking of its evolution. However, these longings continue to haunt large segments of the left throughout the world.

Third response: the search for a ‘humanist’ consensus.

I define this pious wish in the following way: the illusion that a consensus among fundamentally conflicting interests would be possible. Naïve ecology movements, among others, share this illusion.

Fourth response: the illusions of the past.

These illusions invoke ‘specificity’ and ‘right to difference’ without bothering to understand their scope and meaning. The past has already answered the questions for the future. These ‘culturalisms’ can take many para-religious or ethnic forms. Theocracies and ethnocracies become convenient substitutes for the democratic social struggles that have been evacuated from their agenda.

Fifth response: priority of ‘personal freedom’.

The range of responses based on this priority, considered the exclusive ‘supreme value’, includes in its ranks the diehards of ‘representative electoral democracy,’ which they equate with democracy itself. The formula separates the democratisation of societies from social progress, and even tolerates a de facto association with social regression in order not to risk to discrediting democracy, now reduced to the status of a tragic farce.

But there are even more dangerous forms of this position. I am referring here to some common ‘post modernist’ currents (such as Toni Negri in particular) who imagine that the individual has already become the subject of history, as if communism, which will allow the individual to be emancipated from alienation and actually become the subject of history, were already here!

It is clear that all of the responses above, including those of the right (such as the ‘regulations’ that do not affect private property monopolies) still find powerful echoes among a majority of the people on the left.

6.The war declared by the generalised monopoly capitalism of contemporary imperialism has nothing to fear from the false alternatives that I have just outlined.

So what is to be done?

This moment offers us the historic opportunity to go much further; it demands as the only effective response a bold and audacious radicalization in the formulation of alternatives capable of moving workers and peoples to take the offensive to defeat their adversary’s strategy of war. These formulations, based on the analysis of actually existing contemporary capitalism, must directly confront the future that is to be built, and turn their back on the nostalgia for the past and illusions of identity or consensus.

AUDACIOUS PROGRAMS FOR THE RADICAL LEFT

I will organise the following general proposals under three headings: (i) socialise the ownership of monopolies, (ii) de-financialise the management of the economy, (iii) de-globalise international relations.

SOCIALIZE THE OWNERSHIP OF MONOPOLIES

The effectiveness of the alternative response necessarily requires the questioning of the very principle of private property of monopoly capital. Proposing to ‘regulate’ financial operations, to return markets to 'transparency' to allow ‘agents' expectations’ to be ‘rational’ and to define the terms of a consensus on these reforms without abolishing the private property of monopolies, is nothing other than throwing dust in the eyes of the naive public. Monopolies are asked to ‘manage’ reforms against their own interests, ignoring the fact that they retain a thousand and one ways to circumvent the objectives of such reforms.

The alternative social project should be to reverse the direction of the current social order (social disorder) produced by the strategies of monopolies, in order to ensure maximum and stabilised employment, and to ensure decent wages growing in parallel with the productivity of social labour. This objective is simply impossible without the expropriation of the power of monopolies.

The ‘software of economic theorists’ must be reconstructed (in the words of François Morin). The absurd and impossible economic theory of ‘expectations’ expels democracy from the management of economic decision-making. Audacity in this instance requires radical reform of education for the training not only of economists, but also of all those called to occupy management positions.

Monopolies are institutional bodies that must be managed according to the principles of democracy, in direct conflict with those who sanctify private property. Although the term ‘commons’, imported from the Anglo-Saxon world, is itself ambiguous because always disconnected from the debate on the meaning of social conflicts (Anglo-Saxon language deliberately ignores the reality of social classes), the term could be invoked here specifically to call monopolies part of the ‘commons’.

The abolition of the private ownership of monopolies takes place through their nationalisation. This first legal action is unavoidable. But audacity here means going beyond that step to propose plans for the socialisation of the management of nationalised monopolies and the promotion of the democratic social struggles that are engaged on this long road.

I will give here a concrete example of what could be involved in plans of socialization.

'Capitalist' farmers (those of developed countries) like 'peasant' farmers (mostly in the South) are all prisoners of both the upstream monopolies that provide inputs and credit, and the downstream ones on which they depend for processing, transportation and marketing of their products. Therefore they have no real autonomy in their ‘decisions’. In addition the productivity gains they make are siphoned off by the monopolies that have reduced producers to the status of ‘subcontractors’. What possible alternative?

Public institutions working within a legal framework that would set the mode of governance must replace the monopolies. These would be constituted of representatives of: (i) farmers (the principle interests), (ii) upstream units (manufacturers of inputs, banks) and downstream (food industry, retail chains ) and (iii) consumers, (iv) local authorities (interested in natural and social environment - schools, hospitals, urban planning and housing, transportation), (v) the State (citizens). Representatives of the components listed above would be self-selected according to procedures consistent with their own mode of socialised management, such as units of production of inputs that are themselves managed by directorates of workers directly employed by the units concerned as well as those who are employed by sub-contracting units and so on. These structures should be designed by formulas that associate management personnel with each of these levels, such as research centres for scientific, independent and appropriate technology. We could even conceive of a representation of capital providers (the ‘small shareholders’) inherited from the nationalisation, if deemed useful.

We are therefore talking about institutional approaches that are more complex than the forms of ‘self-directed’ or ‘cooperative’ that we have known. Ways of working need to be invented that allow the exercise of genuine democracy in the management of the economy, based on open negotiation among all interested parties. A formula is required that systematically links the democratisation of society with social progress, in contrast with the reality of capitalism which dissociates democracy, which is reduced to the formal management of politics, from social conditions abandoned to the ‘market’ dominated by what monopoly capital produces. Then and only then can we talk about true transparency of markets, regulated in institutionalised forms of socialised management.

The example may seem marginal in the developed capitalist countries because farmers there are a very small proportion of workers (3-7 percent). However, this issue is central to the South where the rural population will remain significant for some time. Here access to land, which must be guaranteed for all (with the least possible inequality of access) is fundamental to principles advancing peasant agriculture (I refer here to my previous work on this question). ‘Peasant agriculture’ should not be understood as synonymous with ‘stagnant agriculture’ (or ‘traditional and folklorique’). The necessary progress of peasant agriculture does require some ‘modernization’ (although this term is a misnomer because it immediately suggests to many modernisation through capitalism). More effective inputs, credits, and production and supply chains are necessary to improve the productivity of peasant labor. The formulas proposed here pursue the objective of enabling this modernisation in ways and in a spirit that is ‘non-capitalist’, that is to say grounded in a socialist perspective.

Obviously the specific example chosen here is one that needs to be institutionalised. The nationalisation / socialisation of the management of monopolies in the sectors of industry and transport, banks and other financial institutions should be imagined in the same spirit, while taking into account the specificities of their economic and social functions in the constitution of their directorates. Again these directorates should involve the workers in the company as well as those of subcontractors, representatives of upstream industries, banks, research institutions, consumers, and citizens.

The nationalisation/socialisation of monopolies addresses a fundamental need at the central axis of the challenge confronting workers and peoples under contemporary capitalism of generalised monopolies. It is the only way to stop the accumulation by dispossession that is driving the management of the economy by the monopolies.

The accumulation dominated by monopolies can indeed only reproduce itself if the area subject to ‘market management’ is constantly expanding. This is achieved by excessive privatisation of public services (dispossession of citizens), and access to natural resources (dispossession of peoples). The extraction of profit of ‘independent’ economic units by the monopolies is even a dispossession (of capitalists!) by the financial oligarchy.

DE-FINANCIALIZATION: A WORLD WITHOUT WALL STREET

Nationalisation/socialisation of monopolies would in and of itself abolish the principle of ‘shareholder value’ imposed by the strategy of accumulation in the service of monopoly rents. This objective is essential for any bold agenda to escape the ruts in which the management of today's economy is mired. Its implementation pulls the rug out from under the feet of the financialisation of management of the economy. Are we returning to the famous ‘euthanasia of the rentier’ advocated by Keynes in his time? Not necessarily, and certainly not completely. Savings can be encouraged by financial reward, but on condition that their origin (household savings of workers, businesses, communities) and their conditions of earnings are precisely defined. The discourse on macroeconomic savings in conventional economic theory hides the organization of exclusive access to the capital market of the monopolies. The so-called ‘market driven remuneration’ is then nothing other than the means to guarantee the growth of monopoly rents.

Of course the nationalisation/socialisation of monopolies also applies to banks, at least the major ones. But the socialization of their intervention (‘credit policies’) has specific characteristics that require an appropriate design in the constitution of their directorates. Nationalisation in the classical sense of the term implies only the substitution of the State for the boards of directors formed by private shareholders. This would permit, in principle, implementation of bank credit policies formulated by the State – which is no small thing. But it is certainly not sufficient when we consider that socialisation requires the direct participation in the management of the bank by the relevant social partners. Here the ‘self-management’ of banks by their staff would not be appropriate. The staff concerned should certainly be involved in decisions about their working conditions, but little else, because it is not their place to determine the credit policies to be implemented.

If the directorates must deal with the conflicts of interest of those that provide loans (the banks) and those who receive them (the ‘enterprises’), the formula for the composition of directorates must be designed taking into account what the enterprises are and what they require. A restructuring of the banking system which has become overly centralised since the regulatory frameworks of the past two centuries were abandoned over the past four decades. There is a strong argument to justify the reconstruction of banking specialization according to the requirements of the recipients of their credit as well as their economic function (provision of short-term liquidity, contributing to the financing of investments in the medium and long term). We could then, for example, create an ‘agriculture bank’ (or a coordinated ensemble of agriculture banks) whose clientele is comprised not only of farmers and peasants but also those involved in the ‘upstream and downstream’ of agriculture described above. The bank’s directorate would involve on the one hand the ‘bankers’ (staff officers of the bank – who would have been recruited by the directorate) and other clients (farmers or peasants, and other upstream and downstream entities).

We can imagine other sets of articulated banking systems, appropriate to various industrial sectors, in which the directorates would involve the industrial clients, centers of research and technology and services to ensure control of the ecological impact of the industry, thus ensuring minimal risk (while recognising that no human action is completely without risk), and subject to transparent democratic debate.

The de-financialisation of economic management would also require two sets of legislation. The first concerns the authority of a sovereign state to ban speculative fund (hedge funds) operations in its territory. The second concerns pension funds, which are now major operators in the financialisation of the economic system. These funds were designed - first in the US of course - to transfer to employees the risks normally incurred by capital, and which are the reasons invoked to justify capital’s remuneration! So this is a scandalous arrangement, in clear contradiction even with the ideological defense of capitalism! But this ‘invention’ is an ideal instrument for the strategies of accumulation dominated by monopolies.

The abolition of pension funds is necessary for the benefit of distributive pension systems, which, by their very nature, require and allow democratic debate to determine the amounts and periods of assessment and the relationship between the amounts of pensions and remuneration paid. In a democracy that respects social rights, these pension systems are universally available to all workers. However, at a pinch, and so as not to prohibit what a group of individuals might desire to put in place, supplementary pensions funds could be allowed.

All measures of de-financialisation suggested here lead to an obvious conclusion: A world without Wall Street, to borrow the title of the book by François Morin, is possible and desirable.

In a world without Wall Street, the economy is still largely controlled by the ‘market’. But these markets are for the first time truly transparent, regulated by democratic negotiation among genuine social partners (for the first time also they are no longer adversaries as they are necessarily under capitalism). It is the financial ‘market’ – opaque by nature and subjected to the requirements of management for the benefit of the monopolies – that is abolished. We could even explore whether it would be useful or not to shut down the stock exchanges, given that the rights to property, both in its their private as well as social form, would be conducted ‘differently’. We could even consider whether the stock exchange could be re-established to this new end. The symbol in any case – ‘a world without Wall Street’ – nevertheless retains its power.

De-financialisation certainly does not mean the abolition of macroeconomic policy and in particular the macro management of credit. On the contrary it restores its efficiency by freeing it from its subjugation to the strategies of rent-seeking monopolies. The restoration of the powers of national central banks, no longer ‘independent’ but dependent on both the state and markets regulated by the democratic negotiation of social partners, gives the formulation of macro credit policy its effectiveness in the service of socialized management of the economy.

AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL: DELINKING

I use here the term ‘delinking’ that I proposed half a century ago, a term that contemporary discourse appears to have substituted with the synonym ‘de-globalisation’. I have never conceptualised delinking as an autarkic retreat, but rather as a strategic reversal in the face of both internal and external forces in response to the unavoidable requirements of self-determined development. Delinking promotes the reconstruction of a globalisation based on negotiation, rather than submission to the exclusive interests of the imperialist monopolies. It also makes possible the reduction of international inequalities.

Delinking is necessary because the measures advocated in the two previous sections can never really be implemented at the global scale, or even at a regional level (e.g. Europe). They can only be initiated in the context of states / nations with advanced radical social and political struggles, committed to a process of socialization of the management of their economy.

Imperialism, in the form that it took until just after the Second World War, had created the contrast between industrialised imperialist centers and dominated peripheries where industry was prohibited. The victories of national liberation movements began the process of the industrialization of the peripheries, through the implementation of delinking policies required for the option of self-reliant development. Associated with social reforms that were at times radical, these delinkings created the conditions for the eventual ‘emergence’ of those countries that had gone furthest in this direction – China leading the pack, of course.

But the imperialism of the current era, the imperialism of the Triad, forced to retreat and ‘adjust’ itself to the conditions of this new era, rebuilt itself on new foundations, based on ‘advantage’ by which it sought to hold on to the privilege of exclusivity that I have classified in five categories.The control of:

• technology;
• access to natural resources of the planet
• global integration of the monetary and financial system
• systems of communication and information
• weapons of mass destruction.

The main form of delinking today is thus defined precisely by the challenge to these five privileges of contemporary imperialism. Emerging countries are engaged in delinking from these five privileges, with varying degrees of control and self-determination, of course. While earlier success over the past two decades in delinking enabled them to accelerate their development, in particular through industrial development within the globalized ‘liberal’ system using ‘capitalist’ means, this success has fueled delusions about the possibility of continuing on this path, that is to say, emerging as new ‘equal capitalist partners’. The attempt to ‘co-opt’ the most prestigious of these countries with the creation of the G20 has encouraged these illusions.

But with the current ongoing implosion of the imperialist system (called ‘globalisation’), these illusions are likely to dissipate. The conflict between the imperialist powers of the triad and emerging countries is already visible, and is expected to worsen. If they want to move forward, the societies of emerging countries will be forced to turn more towards self-reliant modes of development through national plans and by strengthening South-South cooperation.

Audacity, under such circumstances, involves engaging vigorously and coherently towards this end, bringing together the required measures of delinking with the desired advances in social progress.

The goal of this radicalization is threefold: the democratisation of society; the consequent social progress achieved; and the taking of anti-imperialist positions. A commitment to this direction is possible, not only for societies in emerging countries, but also in the ‘abandoned’ or the ‘written-off’ of the global South. These countries had been effectively recolonized through the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s. Their peoples are now in open revolt, whether they have already scored victories (South America) or not (in the Arab world).

Audacity here means that the radical left in these societies must have the courage to take measure of the challenges they face and to support the continuation and radicalisation of the necessary struggles that are in progress.

The delinking of the South prepares the way for the deconstruction of the imperialist system itself. This is particularly apparent in areas affected by the management of the global monetary and financial system, since it is the result of the hegemony of the dollar.

But beware: it is an illusion to expect to substitute for this system ‘another world monetary and financial system’ that is better balanced and favorable to the development of the peripheries. As always, the search of a ‘consensus’ over international reconstruction from above is mere wishful thinking akin to waiting for a miracle. What is on the agenda now is the deconstruction of the existing system - its implosion - and reconstruction of national alternative systems (for countries or continents or regions), as some projects in South America have already begun. Audacity here is to have the courage to move forward with the strongest determination possible, without too much worry about the reaction of imperialism.

This same problematique of delinking / dismantling is also of relevance to Europe, which is a subset of globalization dominated by monopolies. The European project was designed from the outset and built systematically to dispossess its peoples of their ability to exercise their democratic power. The European Union was established as a protectorate of the monopolies. With the implosion of the euro zone, its submission to the will of the monopolies has resulted in the abolishment of democracy which has been reduced to the status of farce and takes on extreme forms, namely focused only on the question: how are the "market" (that is to say monopolies) and the "Rating Agencies" (that is to say, again, the monopolies) reacting? That's the only question now posed. How the people might react is no longer given the slightest consideration.

It is thus obvious that here too there is no alternative to audacity: ‘disobeying’ the rules imposed by the "European Constitution" and the imaginary central bank of the euro. In other words, there is no alternative to deconstruct the institutions of Europe and the euro zone. This is the unavoidable prerequisite for the eventual reconstruction of ‘another Europe’ of peoples and nations.

In conclusion: Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.

What I mean by audacity is therefore:

(i) For the radical left in the societies of the imperialist triad, the need for an engagement in the building an alternative anti-monopoly social bloc.
(ii) For the radical left in the societies of the peripheries to engage in the building an alternative anti-comprador social bloc.

It will take time to make progress in building these blocs, but it could well accelerate if the radical left takes on movement with determination and engages in making progress on the long road of socialism. It is therefore necessary to propose strategies not ‘out of the crisis of capitalism’, but ‘out of capitalism in crisis’ to borrow from the title of one of my recent works.

We are in a crucial period in history. The only legitimacy of capitalism is to have created the conditions for passing on to socialism, understood as a higher stage of civilization. Capitalism is now an obsolete system, its continuation leading only to barbarism. No other capitalism is possible. The outcome of a clash of civilizations is, as always, uncertain. Either the radical left will succeed through the audacity of its initiatives to make revolutionary advances, or the counter-revolution will win. There is no effective compromise between these two responses to the challenge.

All the strategies of the non-radical left are in fact non-strategies, they are merely day-to-day adjustments to the vicissitudes of the imploding system. And if the powers that be want, like le Guépard, to ‘change everything so that nothing changes’, the candidates of the left believe it is possible to ‘change life without touching the power of monopolies’! The non-radical left will not stop the triumph of capitalist barbarism. They have already lost the battle for lack of wanting to take it on.

Audacity is what is necessary to bring about the autumn of capitalism that will be announced by the implosion of its system and by the birth of an authentic spring of the people, a spring that is possible.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum. A selection of his books is available from Pambazuka Press.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES

[1] Samir Amin, Sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise ; Le temps des cerises, 2009.
[2] Samir Amin, Ending the crisis of capitalism or ending capitalism. Pambazuka Press 2011
[3] Samir Amin, Du capitalisme à la civilisation ; Syllepse, 2008.
[4] Aurélien Bernier, Désobéissons à l’Union Européenne ; Les mille et une nuits, 2011.
[5] Jacques Nikonoff, Sortir de l’euro ; Mes mille et une nuits, 2011.
[6] François Morin, Un monde sans Wall Street ; Le seuil, 2011.

Angola: Fifty years of continued uprisings

Horace Campbell

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78390

cc A D NThe struggle for democracy and democratisation in Angola involve far more than removing Jose Eduardo dos Santos, argues Horace Campbell.

Angola is reputed to be the third fastest growing country in the world. This is a prime example of a society where growth does not have a positive impact on the quality of the lives of the 99 per cent of Angolans. From the Human Development Indices of the United Nations, the people of Angola are near the bottom of the pile, ranked 148 out of 187. Exploitation and social inequality are apparent in all areas of life of the society, witness the gated communities, high-rise buildings and the latest luxury vehicles in a space where there is little delivery of basic services such as water, electricity, sewage systems and malaria prevention. For international capital, this is success.

All of the major business papers and magazines wax lyrical with news of the possibilities for investment in Angola. It is difficult to get a seat on a flight to Angola because ‘entrepreneurs’ of varying levels are on the path to El Dorado in Angola. Luanda, the capital of Angola is one of the cities of the world where the skyline is rapidly changing with a major construction boom. Plans for the building of a million new houses across Angola have ensnared Chinese, Brazilian, Spanish and Portuguese corporations with companies from every part of the capitalist world from Korea to Germany and from India to the United States jockeying to join the gravy train.

Massive and opulent shopping centres that seek to defy the laws of nature and high-rise residential complexes without water and electricity expose a political leadership who have completely lost any understanding of the society they live in. In the Bay of Luanda, a historic point of embarkation for millions of enslaved Africans, there is a US$2.3 billion dollar project to build offices, houses, and buildings for commerce, hotels, tourism and leisure. This project is dubbed the creation of a New Dubai. Although the project is marketed as a component of the reconstruction of the society involving the ministries of public works, and urbanisation and environment and the provincial government of Luanda, this multibillion project represents infrastructure projects where a few Angolans get rich in alliance with foreign construction companies.

Additionally, this massive construction project is one more effort for the very rich to enter the top league of those making illegitimate or excessively large windfall gains and enter the top league of financial entrepreneurs who are aligned to the ‘financialisation of energy markets.’ Sonangol (Sociedade Nacional de Petróleos de Angola – National Society of Petroleum of Angola), the state oil company, has entered the major league of top energy traders; one component of this trade is to build the financial infrastructure to move resources independent of government oversight. Sonangol shares some of the same characteristics as the massive operations that had been undertaken in Libya by the state-controlled Libyan Investment Authority.

Libya had entered into the opaque world of financing energy markets through the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) before their allies in Wall Street considered the unpredictability of Gaddafi of Libya too threatening. Libya is, like Angola, a top producer of petroleum products and after December 2010, the Central Bank of Libya took the controlling position in the Arab Banking Corporation based in Bahrain. The Arab Banking Corporation was owned by Kuwait Investment Authority, Central Bank of Libya, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and other shareholders with minor shares. At present very few reports have linked the Libyan dominance in the Arab Banking Corporation to the seismic events in Libya since February 2011.

After December 2010, Muhammad Layas of Libya had taken over in this major financial institution. Any move for making independent decisions in the Arab Banking Corporation threatened the web of speculators in the derivatives industry that depended on the recycling of petrodollars from the oil rich nations of Kuwait, Libya and the Emirates. After February 17 when the Libyans started to move to divest their funds from their over-exposure with British and US financial institutions, there was the freezing of the assets of Libya prior to the façade of protecting Libyans by Britain, France and NATO.

Angola is in a delicate situation where the intended players in the world of corporate finance do not fully grasp the interconnections between ‘energy markets,’ new financial institutions and military interventions. Sonangol has entered the global competition with the top western oil companies. Nearly every day the business papers announce new deals of oil and gas exploration and new production sites. From the surfeit of riches in Angola, Sonangol had branched out to the Middle East, successfully bidding for two major oil fields in Iraq.

The Angolan political leaders in the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) have sought to enter into a political/military and financial league where it does not have the support of O Povo (the poor people). The challenges of political consolidation of peace in Angola must be engaged as one component of the opposition to the consolidation of a new oligarchy in Angola.

In my discussion this week, I want to reflect on how peace activists must oppose plunder and exploitation to be able to understand that corruption is only one manifestation of use of state resources to enrich a small group of well-connected families. The leaders of the MPLA have forgotten the roots of the struggles of Angolans and now seek a base with the same plunderers who had exploited and enslaved Angolans.

There had been a massive uprising in Angola in February 1961. This uprising intensified the multiple struggles against colonialism in Angola. I want to celebrate with the people of Angolans as they continue to reflect on 50 years of the launch of the struggles against forced labour. This struggle that erupted in Angola on 4 February 1961 reflected the struggles against forced labour. So central was the organisation of the working people that the dominant political party in Angola, the MPLA had called themselves MPLA-PT or party of labour, with the Angolan Trade Union Association (UNTA) as one of the three main bases of support often MPLA. The other two were Angola Women’s Organization (OMA)and the Angolan Youth Organization (JMPLA).

After 55 years of the existence of this party and 50 years of the fight for the rights of workers, Angolans are now at a new stage of fight for dignity. This fight is against the form of economic organisation that is capitalism. Corruption and capitalism go hand in glove; the mindboggling stories of corruption cannot be separated from liberalisation and the ideas of the leadership that for Angola to develop, a class of millionaires must be created. This is trickle-down economics so when one reads reports of malpractice, fraud and/or corrupt use of state power, it must be understood that these practices are consistent with what I will call in this article, the ‘primitive accumulation of capital.’

The current boom in Angola is a manifestation of a global alliance between the well-connected in Angola and get-rich forces in China, Brazil and Portugal. International business tycoons of every stripe jockey behind these top players. This alliance is itself a threat to the former colonial forces in Europe and the speculators in Wall Street.

FEBRUARY 4 1961 AND THE CHALLENGES TO THE TRADITIONS OF FORCED LABOUR

Organised mass and armed resistance to Portuguese rule began on 4 February 1961, when urban supporters of the MPLA attacked the São Paulo fortress and police headquarters in Luanda. Within six weeks, the national war of liberation had spread throughout the north. This uprising in Angola on 4 February caught fire in the society less than three weeks after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The anger of Africans all across the continent energised liberation forces and gave some spark to another organisation, the Union of Angolan Peoples, which later became the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). Anti-communism was drilled into the society to divide the people, so the historical rendition of Angola society has represented the differences between MPLA, UNITA and as ethnic differences. However, the reality was that Angola shared the distinction with the DRC as one of the sites of the most repressive forms of colonial genocide, forced labour and rape.

As a backward and poor country in Europe, Portugal could not fully develop the rich natural resources in Angola and so Portugal was virtually a semi-colony of Britain. Angola went through 400 years of warfare and nearly 100 years of pacification campaigns:

‘… to pacify meant to conquer militarily and force the African populations to submit to European sovereignty, as required for effective pacification. The campaigns were extremely bloody and involved the wholesale slaughter of entire villages. Success depended both on Portuguese technical superiority in firepower and on African auxiliaries, soldiers from rival tribes who were encouraged in the slaughter by the promise of booty, which was their early form of payment.’

Adam Hochschild has written on the death of over 10 million Congolese under the Belgians. His book ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ is well-known and has been translated into many languages. In the little-known book by Américo Boavida, ‘Angola: Five Centuries of Portuguese Exploitation’, it was estimated that 30 million Angolans perished under the genocidal rule of the Portuguese. Today as the ideas of capitalist growth and development dominate the intellectual spaces in Angola, there is a definite effort to erase the real evidence of ‘Five Centuries of Portuguese Exploitation’. Young persons are taught the virtues of free enterprise and liberalisation of the economy so that the history of Angola does not inform the present efforts to move Angola and Africa beyond the institutions, and organisations that comprised the Portuguese colonial state. This was a state that was built to enforce domination. After years of warfare, the present state in Angola fought against the Portuguese, but did not dismantle the state structures that were put in place. Portuguese is still the language of instruction although there are real opportunities for developing a multilingual structure for a new educational infrastructure in Angola.

Forceful seizure of land, forced labour, segregation, rape and a policy of assimilation formed the core of the heritage bequeathed by Portugal. In 1961, Angola was supposed to be enjoying a coffee boom just as today Angola is enjoying the petroleum boom. But this boom was entrenched within the brutality of coerced labour. The bondage and servitude of chattel slavery had paved the way for the depopulation of the Angolan countryside. Africans did not work on coffee plantations or on European farms willingly because these enterprises did not pay a living wage. Such was the poverty of Portugal that it depended on forced labour in all enterprises up to the middle of the 1960s when such practices were outlawed elsewhere. While capitalism in the Western European states was able to find forms of exploitation compatible with free labour relations (that is free in the double sense, free from subsistence costs and free to sell labour in the market place), these free labour relations did not emerge until after independence. In Portugal itself, the concept of a free market was constrained by fascist governments until 1974. As a semi-feudal state, fascism in Portugal constrained collective bargaining or the other forms of industrial relations that had developed in the social democratic states of Europe.

It is striking that there are so many similarities today with 50 years ago. Then, the forced labour that alienated land from the poor in African countryside provided the conditions for white settlement after 1945. Between 1940 and 1975 the Portuguese population in Angola increased from 40,000 to 340,000. Today, forced removal of the poor from the urban areas of Angola is providing the spaces for the current building boom. There is now a big queue at the Angolan consulate in Lisbon as hundreds of Portuguese seek to escape the depression in Europe by finding employment in Angola. These would-be immigrants do not know the real history of Portugal in Angola. The Portuguese or Portuguese-descended population in Angola increased to 91,900 in 2010 from 21,000 in 2003.

THE POPULAR MOVEMENT FOR THE LIBERATION OF ANGOLA (MPLA) AND 50 YEARS OF STRUGGLE

José Eduardo dos Santos (born 1942) is the current leader of the MPLA and president of the Republic of Angola. Dos Santos became president after Agostinho Neto’s death in 1979. Dos Santos is an example of a leader who was a militant in his youths but who now supports local and international forces of oppression. At 19, dos Santos had been involved with the February uprisings but one would not know this from the activities of the present government of Angola he now presides over.

Report after report follows with tragicomedy succession exposing the depths of primitive accumulation, where the Angolan Presidency is described as the epicentre of corruption. These reports are not even digested before new information surfaces. It was more than two years ago when there was the well-documented information on The Angolan Presidency: the epicentre of corruption circulated in cyberspace.

It is not only in cyberspace where these allegations circulate. Veteran militants of the MPLA such as Agostinho André Mendes de Carvalho and Lucio Lara have been opposing primitive accumulation from within the ranks of the MPLA. Both of these veteran freedom fighters are now over 80 years old and they represent the continuity of the struggle for a new society in Angola. In his book, ‘O Ministro’, Mendes de Carvalho presented fictional accounts of the levels of influence peddling in Angola.

Lucio Lara is one of the founding members of the MPLA. His story is one that should be studied by a new generation because with Mendes De Carvalho, Lara and a score of outstanding Africans were part of one of the most dynamic liberation fronts in Africa. Agostinho Neto had emerged as the leader of the MPLA but this organisation brought together freedom fighters such as America Boavida, Deodlina Rodriquez, Mario Pinto de Andrade, Lucio Lara and hundreds of the toughest revolutionaries in Africa. Amilcar Cabral had been associated with these freedom fighters and his major study on agriculture in Angola still stands as a reference point for transforming the conditions of the peasantry in Angola

When the MPLA is painted with the brush of corruption, it is most important to distinguish between the more than three million ordinary workers and poor peasants of this historic party and the current top technocrats. It is not by chance that the current president, Eduardo Dos Santos found intellectual and political solace with the very same forces that fought the people of Angola in alignment with the forces of apartheid and Portugal. Even while ailing, Lucio Lara has left for African history a testament of commitment to transformation. It was not by chance that when Raul Castro, the president of Cuba visited Angola in 2009 he visited the home of Lucio Lara.

When the full history is being written for the young, Lara will stand in his rightful place. I remember when I visited the home of Lucio Lara in 1996 to discuss Cuito Cuanavale and the war for independence; he retold the story of the mobilisation of the poor in the Maianga neighborhood to defeat the Savimbi putsch in October 1992. He also recounted the same self-organisation and self-defence of the people of Luanda in 1974 and 1975.

These experiences of popular support for the MPLA assisted the MPLA to survive when it was wracked with divisions. One of the most serious of these splits had been the Eastern revolt led by Daniel Chipenda in 1973.

I am recalling these splits and divisions to highlight my argument that Dos Santos does not represent the entire MPLA. Lucio Lara had been passed over for leadership in 1979 because of the dynamics of racial divisions within Angola and the MPLA. Nito Alves, one of the leaders of the MPLA sought to exploit the tensions over the racial divisions with disastrous consequences. Up to today there is no full reckoning of this putsch by Alves in 1977.

Jonas Savimbi had directed his venom against Lucio Lara on the grounds that Lara was a white or Mestico and that he dominated the MPLA. Savimbi who himself was in league with the most rabid racists in apartheid South Africa was not against Lara because he was white, but because Lara believed in the socialist transformation of Angola and Africa. It is this same opposition to real social and economic transformation that binds the epicentre of corruption in Angola with dying and moribund elements from Portugal. The small coterie surrounding the head of Sonangol and the President who have grown rich do not really understand how to engage a real process of transforming the economic relations in Angola.

WILL ANGOLA BAIL OUT PORTUGAL?

Most recently, there was news that this group in Angola was contemplating a bailout of the Portuguese banking system This investment in European assets that are worthless is consistent with the level of knowledge of the group that currently hold strategic control over the Angolan government. The International Herald Tribune of 21 November 2011 described the visit of the Portuguese Prime Minister to Angola with this by-line, ‘For help, Portugal looks to ex-colony; Visit by prime minister to Angola is another reversal in euro crisis’:

‘The world-turned-upside-down of the European debt crisis reached a new extreme last week when Europe came pleading for money where it once only seized it: Africa.

The hands-out visit Thursday of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho of Portugal to its former colony Angola - once a prime source of slaves, then a dumping ground for the mother country's human rejects and now swimming in oil wealth - was a milestone of sorts.’

This same article went on to note that:

‘The Angolan state oil company already owns 12.4 percent of Portugal's biggest private bank, Millennium BCP, and the president's daughter Isabel, said by scholars to be not coincidentally the country's leading businesswoman, bought 10 percent of a dominant Portuguese media company, Zon, in 2009.’

INTERNATIONAL CLASS ALLIANCES WITH THE EPICENTER OF CORRUPTION

The current Prime Minister of Portugal Pedro Passos Coelho lived as a child in Angola and grew up in the conditions of forced labour and racism in Angola. Far from apologising for the historical wrongs done by Portugal, Pedro Passos Coelho is now the front person for struggling Portuguese enterprises. The dos Santos circle has welcomed these Portuguese ‘forces in order to tip the political balance inside of Angola. Portuguese construction companies are doing brisk business in Angola which is now graced with major projects from the building of the Espirito Santo Tower to the commercial complex that is to be located at the sensitive and historic area called Kinaxixi. This complex is being built with underground car and garage services at a site where the water table changes from time to time. The Kinaxixi Complex is only one of the mega projects that reflects the social and class aspirations of the one per cent rulers in Angola. While two thirds of the 18 million Angolans live on less than US$2 per day, the cost of the apartments in many of these buildings range from US$60,000 to US$200,000.

Housing the poor had been one of the major reconstruction promises of the dos Santos administration with the pledge to build one million residential spaces. Kilamba Kiaxi on the outskirts of Luanda is now one of the most impressive housing projects in Africa but when one thinks of the social class that will be able to live in these spaces, it becomes clear that the project of building a class of capitalists is the number one goal of the Luanda leadership.

A sample list of these projects, a new international airport, new luxury retail and office development along with the major infrastructure projects is changing the face of Angola. Angolans can now travel by road across the country and this has been one of the most positive aspects of the reconstruction programme.

SELF CONFIDENCE IN ANGOLA AND THE REHABILITATION OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The Sonangol Group is a multibillion-dollar group of companies that has its origins ion the nationalised oil sector in Angola. Since independence in 1975, this transnational corporation has diversified into banking, investments, telecommunications, maritime petroleum product transport, trucking and shipping, with subsidiary operations as far flung as Congo Brazzaville, Houston, Hong Kong, London, Lisbon, Singapore and Iraq. This extensive international operational base of the state-owned oil company followed the boom that Angola has undergone in the past 20 years.

Angola is rich in cash, thanks to its huge oil reserves and its equally significant underinvestment in its own 18 million people. By the end of 2010 it was Africa's biggest oil exporter, and by the end of June it had US$24 billion in international reserves.

During the war of independence when South African was attempting to sabotage the operations of the Angolan oil production, these facilities were guarded by Cuban military forces. It was in the teeth of war when the Angolan leadership developed the intellectual and technical expertise to run a major international corporation such as Sonangol. After the defeat of the South Africans in 1988, the Angolan government liberalised the economy in 1989 and changed course from centring on the needs of workers to catering to the needs of local and foreign capitalists.

Since 1989, the MPLA government had been aligned to international capital but even more explicitly so after 2002. The brochures sent out to banking and investment firms speak volumes of the ideas of ‘growth’ in Angola:

‘Between 1989 and 2008, a period of 19 years hence, the Angolan economy had an average trend growth of 9 percent per year. In the five years from 2004 to 2008, the average growth rate was approximately 17.4 percent, which means a cumulative increase of 102.2 percent in real terms. In other words, in just 5 years the GDP has more than doubled. In 2006, the growth rate of non-oil sector was 25.9 percent against 13.1 percent of the oil sector, while in 2007 this growth was 25.7 percent for non-oil sector against 20.4 percent for oil sector.

‘In 2008, the rates were 15 percent for the non-oil sector against 12.3 percent for the oil sector. The inflation rate has been decreasing year to year, showing the last three years' rates close to 10 percent, including 11.79 percent in 2007 and 13.2 percent in 2008.’

During the era of political independence, there was clarity that growth does not equal development. With this growth, Angolan society has not been able to move up the value chin, meaning- generating real transformation.

MOVING UP THE VALUE CHAIN PROCESS

The alliance between the epicentre of corruption and foreign capitalists all over the world has basically stifled all of the expectations to transform Angola. When one walks along Avenida Ho Chi Minh in Luanda, one sees the enthusiasm of thousands of young Angolans who are eager to see the society move from a commodity exporting society to one that can provide jobs. Angola has expended millions of dollars on education, but this educational system is itself in need of transformation. The same society that is providing jobs for Portuguese and Chinese workers cannot find new sources of wealth creation for the youth. These youths crave a society that moves beyond the export of diamonds, oil and timber to create a self-generating economy. This is however, not the vision of the leaders of Sonangol and Isabel dos Santos who are now building a billion-dollar project reclaiming part of the sea in the Bay of Luanda to create a new Dubai.

Dubai and the Emirates are now well known as hubs of the financialisation of energy, international money laundering and private military and security companies. In interviews on his book, ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ about money laundering and the movement of trillions of dollars John Le Carré noted that the building of mega projects such as casinos, hotels and other construction schemes are often built specifically to be loss-making enterprises because these enterprises can act as fronts for the movement of large sums of money while avoiding governmental control.

The emergence of numerous banking operations in Angola is consistent with both the building boom and the laundering operations of the top financial gurus who need to move illicit money generated by graft, tax evasion and other under the counter activities. The building of the New Dubai in Luanda carries with it the support of a class of former military Generals who are now integrated into the international money making machine. Many of these ‘entrepreneurs’ have fronts that are called ‘private security ‘firms.

When the MPLA was based in the Angolan Trade Union Association and the Organization of Angolan Women, the party was called MPLA-PT, now the generals and the family around the President have bought into the neoliberal idea that the creation of millionaires is the best way for the society to be transformed. Those international organisations such as the Soros Foundation that seek to oppose ‘corruption’ in Angola do not oppose the creation of new capitalists.

It is possible to go from country to country in Africa identifying corruption but the local sphere of corruption is integrated into a larger international corrupt system with its headquarters in Wall Street and the top one per cent in the United States of America. This corruption is more than simply material goods, it is the attempt to corrupt the spirit of the youth that the only way forward is to be individualistic and get rich regardless of the consequences for other humans or the environment.

A DANGEROUS MOMENT IN ANGOLA

There have been demonstrations in Luanda against the length of rule of Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Cyber activists have been able to bring real time attention to the outrageous schemes of getting rich by the epicentre of corruption. It is from cyberspace that these activists have been calling for mass demonstrations against the dos Santos rule. These demonstrators will now have to reflect on the experiences of the Libyan Investment Authority and NATO manipulation of the demonstrations in Benghazi to remove Libya from the decisive control over the Arab Banking Corporation. Gaddafi may have been erratic and was in power for 42 years but the people of Libya had seen some of the fruits of the oil wealth go to schools, hospitals and the provision of water and electricity.

The Luanda bourgeois are hostile to the working people and are oriented towards Brazil, Portugal and Europe instead of towards the working people of Angola. These working people are opposed to the obscene wealth of the new millionaires in Angola but they are very conscious of the legacies of 27 years of warfare after 400 years of attempted pacification by the Portuguese.

From South Africa to Angola and Mozambique, former freedom fighters have turned their backs on exploitation but gone on to join the ranks of the exploiters. It is in societies such as those of Bolivia and Venezuela where the struggles continue to intensify. Hugo Chavez has mobilised resources from the state-owned oil company build new linkages with a foreign policy based on the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America. This is one of the challenges to the one per cent in Wall Street and for this Hugo Chavez is demonised

Dos Santos and his family are using the resources of Angola to bail out bankrupt Europeans who presided over genocide. One of the features of this Angolan manoeuvring is the alliance with Chinese capitalists. While the Chinese state has become the number one partner of the Angolan bourgeoisie, the operations of private Chinese entities such as China International Fund (CIF) seek to build a new opposition to Goldman Sachs with Shanghai replacing Wall Street in the future. On the skyline of Luanda is one of the grand buildings that were referred to earlier and these building houses the operations of the China International Fund. This is one of the fronts for Chinese capitalists that are integrated into both the Chinese state in Beijing and private capitalists in Hong Kong. These capitalists build schools and hospitals without the kind of care to prevent collapse. In China itself we have been witness to this same kind of collapse of new buildings because infrastructure projects are one of the top fields of primitive accumulation in China.

The massive construction projects in Luanda and the upsurge of banking activities represent an effort by the super rich in Angola to enter the top league of oil traders and be real players among those involved in the ‘financialisation of energy markets.’ What the allied capitalists from Angola, Hong Kong and mainland China and do not grasp is the fact that Goldman Sachs and Anglo-American petroleum interests do not countenance the rise of independent energy markets outside of their orbit, The alliance between the China International Found and the forces in Luanda is a threat to the one per cent in New York. It is this danger which should be upper most in the minds of the traditional and progressive members of the MPLA as this party struggle over who will be a new leader and meet to remember the 50 years of struggle.

The struggles for democracy and democratisation in Angola involve far more than removing Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Angolan poor people want to move up on the global value chain from their current position at the bottom of the Human Development Index to a higher position (one that allows them to capture a greater share of the wealth created or increases their power over other entities) in a global value chain. Angolans poor people want the basic requirements of peace, a good quality of life, a safe environment and health. Colonial capitalism and forced labour robbed them of these rights and they will stand up against the new oligarchs. Cybercativists will have to speak and write in languages that these people understand and ensure that they are not manipulated by external forces.

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* Horace Campbell is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. See horacecampbell.net.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Revisiting history: Presaging the Igbo genocide

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

2011-11-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78317

cc W CHerbert Ekwe-Ekwe looks back at the atrocious massacre of the Igbo people of Nigeria in the 1960s and is convinced that the British government was fully culpable. Britain today, he urges, needs to accept this fact and make the long-overdue restitution.

In his recently published book, ‘Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British’ (London: Viking, 2011), Jeremy Paxman allocates just 12 lines of the total 272-page study to British-occupied Nigeria. But the pithy commentary undoubtedly speaks volumes of the mindset of the occupation regime on the very eve of its presumed departure from Nigeria in October 1960. This is clearly a regime that is not prepared or willing to abandon the bounty harvest or lucre that is its Nigeria. Instead, it is exploring across a spectrum of strategies to subvert the goal of the restoration-of-independence movement for the peoples, which the Igbo had led since the 1940s.

Using archival material, Paxman presents the crux of the panoramic conversation on the subject in Lagos in January 1960 between James Robertson, the outgoing occupation governor, and visiting Prime Minister Harold Macmillan:

Macmillan: ‘Are the people fit for self-government?’
Robertson: ‘No, of course not.’

According to Paxman, James Robertson reckons that it would take ‘another 20 or 25 years’ for Nigeria to be ‘fit for self-government’. Interestingly, this is the same Robertson who had by the time of his Lagos meeting with Macmillan ‘concluded’ the ‘terms’ of the British ‘exit’ from Nigeria in ‘negotiations’ with the country’s restoration-of-independence movement – begun 15 years earlier and had been successively chaired by two previous occupation governors, including sessions scheduled and held in England. This is the same Robertson who had just rigged the December 1959 countrywide elections in Nigeria (part of the restoration-of-independence ‘package’) in favour of the Hausa-Fulani north region, Britain’s local clients, vehemently opposed to African independence – and, therefore, the British exit! (This northern Nigeria region has the unenviable accolade across the entire southern sorld of being home of one of the few peoples who wanted the occupation of their lands indefinitely by one of the pan-European powers of global conquest since the 15th century CE.) Furthermore, this is the same Robertson whose predecessor in Lagos had earlier rigged the countrywide census results – again in favour of Britain’s Hausa-Fulani north regional clients.

Macmillan then asks Robertson for his advice on the way forward for the British continuing occupation of Nigeria: ‘What do you recommend me to do?’ Robertson: ‘I recommend you give it to them at once.’

Really? What? Why? Doesn’t Roberston’s suggestion to his boss sound wholly contradictory to the tract that this conclave had trodden so far? Well, no, not really… Both prime minister and governor have no disagreement, whatsoever, on holding onto British ‘interests’ in Nigeria in perpetuity; they do not believe that they are necessarily bound by the ‘terms’ of the envisaged British ‘exit’ from Nigeria ‘negotiated’ since 1945 even though, ironically, these had largely preserved British ‘interests’, thanks to the veto-power that its Hausa-Fulani north region subalterns would exercise in the ‘new’ dispensation; most crucially, both men do not subscribe to the inalienable rights of Africans to recover their conquered lands.

It is the case, though, that if the British officials were to renege on their ‘exit’ from Nigeria at this 11th hour, they would have to contend with a serious crisis – at least in the short-medium term – right there on the ground in Nigeria: ‘The alternative [is] that most talented people [read: the Igbo and those others elsewhere in south Nigeria who demanded and supported the drive towards unfettered restoration-of-independence for the peoples] would become rebels and the British would spend the next two decades fighting to stave off what [is] inevitable, while incurring the opprobrium of the world’.

As the Lagos deliberations end, nine months before the designated British departure date, both prime minister and governor needn’t agonise too much over the future prospects of their country’s Nigeria stranglehold. After all, despite the ‘talented people’, Britain is aware that it holds the trump card to defend this stranglehold via its Hausa-Fulani clients. Twice in the previous 15 years (significantly, it should be noted, during the very years of British ‘negotiations’ of its ‘exit’ from Nigeria with the ‘talented people’), the clients organised and unleashed pogroms against Igbo people in the north-central town of Jos (1945) and northern city of Kano (1953). Hundreds of Igbo were murdered during these massacres and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property looted or destroyed. No perpetrators of these murders were ever apprehended or punished by the occupation regime.

Six-and-half years hence, from 29 May 1966, these same British clients would unleash the genocide against the Igbo people. During the course of 44 months, 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men are murdered in this foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. The Igbo and the world suddenly realise that those anti-Igbo pogroms carried out during the years of the Anglo-‘talented people’ in Nigeria doubtful restoration-of-independence negotiations were indeed ‘dress rehearsals’ for the 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 Igbo genocide.

REEXAMINATION AND RESTITUTION

Britain plays an instrumental role in the perpetration of the genocide – politically, diplomatically, militarily. A new Harold the prime minister, this time Harold Wilson, has no qualms about the ‘opprobrium of the world’ considered by the other Harold during those January 1960 talks with occupation governor Robertson. Wilson's reasons are obvious: the architecture of control and execution of mass violence in Nigeria have altered, somehow, since January 1960, and the forces on the ground spearheading the Igbo genocide are the trusted Hausa-Fulani subalterns of old and their since locally expanded allies – not Britain, directly; precisely, what Macmillan and Robertson had sought to avoid!

So, as the slaughter of the Igbo intensifies, particularly in those catastrophic months of 1968-1969, Harold Wilson is totally unfazed as he informs Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, ‘would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took’ Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide. Such is the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide. As the final tally of the murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Harold Wilson probably had the perverted satisfaction of having his Nigerian subalterns perform far in excess of the prime minister’s grim target.

Jeremy Paxman, a senior journalist at the British Broadcasting Corporation who anchors the BBC2 ‘Newsnight’ programme, has a three-minute follow-up video where he explains why he has written ‘Empire’. Two reasons are quite striking: ‘Why did the British go out (sic) to conquer the world?’; ‘What did it do to them [the British, that is]?’ For the Igbo of south-west-central Africa, the savagery of that conquest is palpably incalculable. It is now clear that the contemporary British state cannot continue to ignore its responsibilities in embarking on a comprehensive re-examination of the history of its relationship with the Igbo people and make the long-overdue restitution.

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* Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of ‘Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature’. (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011)
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The ICC, the NTC and Saif al Islam Gadhafi

Franklin Lamb

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78364

cc R CWhile NATO and its allies have claimed that Libya is fully capable of handling the trials of former regime loyalists, Franklin Lamb argues that the case of Saif al Islam Gadhafi is too critical to put this to the test.

Despite the claims of the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya that Saif al Islam Gadhafi, the apprehended subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant that ordered his transport to The Hague, is in a secure hidden location near Zintan, Libya, a town approximately 85 miles southwest of Tripoli, this is not the case.

Neither are the assurances by Steven Anderson, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who on 23 November announced that Saif al-Islam’s injuries had been ‘taken care of’, nor his profuse assurances that Saif is in good health. In point of fact, following the ICRC assurances, the Ukrainian-born doctor Andrei Murakhovsky, who lives in Zintan, reported that ‘Saif’s wound is covered with gangrenous tissue and necrotic tissue.’ He added that: ‘This wound is not in good condition and requires amputation. His index finger has been ripped off at the level of the middle phalange (finger bone), the bones are all shattered. It’s the same thing with the thumb of that hand,’ Murakhovsky told the Reuters news service.

The morning of 24 November, Libyan NTC Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib still insisted that ‘Saif al-Islam is receiving the best possible treatment, but for now he is not in the hands of the provisional central government and we don’t know where he is.’

Regarding Saif al Islam’s ‘secure and hidden location’, most people in the village of Zintan know where he is being held, as does this observer who visited a motley group of B-western movie types who are currently guarding and ‘protecting’ Saif.

Although armed with a power of attorney from one of Saif’s family members to visit him, the group refused my request to visit, with the excuse that they had to consult their commander who was not expected to return for a few days since he was now the new NTC Libyan defense minister.

On the question of Saif’s health, there is increasing concern because his guards claim they cannot take him to Zintan’s only hospital because someone would likely kill him in order to collect on the rumoured and substantial Qatar/NATO cash reward for whoever assassinates him - thus presumably helping ‘the new Libya’ and its allies avoid a messy trial.

Meanwhile, after what he claims is a change of heart, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, now professes that Libya, not The Hague, is the best place after all for Saif al Islam and his trial. Since its establishment by the United Nations in 2002, the ICC has had just one prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. To the reported expressed relief of many international defense lawyers, several ICC staff and ICC judges, plus legal commentators familiar with his prosecutorial work, the ICC will have his successor chosen next month in New York. This coming weekend in New York, the legal defense organisation, Avocats Sans Frontiers (ASF, ie Lawyers Without Borders) will meet in order to try to agree on a successor to propose to the 18 ICC judges who will decide.

Prosecutor Ocampo’s visit this week to Libya caused some raised eyebrows among the groups noted above when he suddenly announced that the ICC would not invoke its UN Security Council-granted power and proceed with Case # ICC 01/11. This case was opened at the ICC on 3 March 2011, having been assigned to the ICC by the UN Security Council following the preceding month’s uprising in Benghazi, Libya.

Speculation among some in The Hague, in Libya and from ASF lawyers is that knowing that he would not be re-elected for another term as ICC prosecutor - due to among other reasons that he has not won one case during his nine-year term, has repeatedly incurred the wrath of ICC judges for bringing cases which they ruled lacked sufficient evidence and his penchant for self-aggrandising publicity and making inaccurate claims about cases and defendants that border on judicial misconduct - Ocampo decided to switch horses.

One egregious example of his making false representations is the current ICC case involving Saif al-Islam Gadhafi in which Ocampo made several inaccurate headline-grabbing statements over the past several weeks claiming to be negotiating ‘indirectly’ with Saif al Islam to give himself up to the ICC. Saif has emphatically denied Ocampo’s grandstanding claims and presumably, were Ocampo to attempt to personally prosecute his case, Saif’s legal team would immediately file a motion to replace Ocampo for cause, as provided by ICC rules.

Given these problems, Ocampo, according to someone who accompanied him during his visit this week to Libya, decided to accept a lucrative offer from the NTC to advise the oil-rich country on setting up a legal system to try Saif al Islam and others.

The assurances by Moreno-Ocampo, NATO officials and American UN Ambassador Susan Rice that Libya is currently fully capable of currently handling trials of former regime loyalists are nonsense. Rice exhibited ignorance and surprise here last weekend when she claimed not to know that Libya had the death penalty and would apply the death penalty in the ICC case if given the chance. The Libyan public’s apparent preference is for the death penalty by hanging in the two Libya ICC cases. This was the case with Rwanda, which is one reason the Rwanda Tribunal did not allow the government of Rwanda to conduct certain trials even though that government assured the UN it would not actually carry out a death penalty sentence. Libya has offered no such assurances to the ICC against the use of the death penalty nor has it submitted a legal challenge to ICC jurisdiction over the Saif al Islam or Abdullah Sanussi cases, as the Rome Statute requires.

Despite switching jobs, Ocampo has not lost interest in prosecuting the Saif al Islam case, which he views as his best chance of finally winning at least an ICC related case, but not at The Hague where there is the possibility that Saif would not be convicted, given court rules of procedure and ICC legal staff resources that would actually assist an accused in presenting his defense before the court. Ocampo is said to be betting on gaining a victory in Saif’s high profile case by working with the NATO-created NTC government in Libya and running the prosecution as a behind the scenes ‘consultant’ and helping Libya’s NTC keep the UN and ICC at bay while allowing the NTC to try both Saif’s case and that of Abdullah Sanussi if and when the latter is proven to have been captured. Ocampo is said to relish the job of becoming the ‘father of Libya’s new legal system’. Ocampo is now explaining that it was never his role ‘to tell Libyan officials how to hold a fair trial and the standard of the ICC is that it has to be a judicial process that is not organised to shield the suspect and I respect that it’s important for the cases to be tried in Libya.’ He then added, ‘There are so many different traditions; it is difficult to say what is a fair trial.’

No sooner had the surprising news and Ocampo’s sudden vagueness about what constitutes a fair trial begun to ricochet around the Internet than this observer received an email from an international criminal lawyer whose office is two blocks from the Carl Moultrie Courthouse in Washington, DC. The American lawyer was appalled: ‘Paying Ocampo as a consultant for the new Libyan government on criminal trial procedures is a ridiculous thought/idea. He has no idea of fair trial rights and has not achieved a conviction in his nearly 9 years at the ICC.’

Nor were the ICC judges thrilled at the perceived betrayal. The ICC quickly fired off a reminder to Ocampo, to the new Libyan government and the media that it is the ICC judges, and not the ICC prosecutor, who will decide whether a case will be held in The Hague or in the country where the alleged crimes occurred and only they will decide if Libya has the ability to conduct a fair trial. The ICC is signaling that the Ocampo-generated international headlines to the contrary notwithstanding, the issue of trial venue in Libya has not settled in ICC case # 01/11.

Prosecutor Ocampo knows well that once the ICC decides to open an investigation of a case, national courts may not investigate that case and are relieved from their obligation to do so. In addition, since the ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Libyan defendants, all states -including Libya - are obliged to cooperate fully with the court. Following the public dressing down from The Hague, Ocampo has now retreated a bit and told CNN on 23 November that: ‘The only condition is the new Libyan government has to present their position to the International Criminal Court judges and the judges will decide if the case can be prosecuted in Libya. Libya will present evidence to ICC judges that the country can hold the trial, and the judges will decide if they are satisfied,’ Ocampo explained.

The ICC, if it takes up the question as expected, should rule in the developing Saif al Islam case, precisely as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found in ruling against that country’s request for trial jurisdiction, although like Libya today, Rwanda claimed to have a ‘modern functioning court system.’ The reason is that an initial review of Libya’s criminal judicial system and discussion with Libyan criminal defense lawyers as well as with international criminal defense lawyers with years of experience in international tribunals’ practice, shows that it is very clear that persons accused of serious crimes in Libya currently do not have even the most minimal judicial rights that are required by international norms. Today Libyan defendants do not benefit from adequate legal representation, financial support for indigent accused, travel and investigation support for defense teams, or security for defense teams. Libya’s central and local governments place impediments curtailing defense teams in the discharge of their functions.

An admittedly cursory inquiry in Libya among lawyers here also reveals nonexistent or inadequate accommodation and transport arrangements for witnesses, as well as a lack of arrangements for protection of witnesses before, during and after testifying in court. In addition, the NTC is engaging in a pattern of threatening potential witnesses preparing to testify against NATO in another case.

Similarly the NTC is failing to provide safe and secure travel for Libyan witnesses living abroad, including in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, and Egypt. Interviews with Libyan lawyers and officials as well as visits to detention facilities in Libya reveal that conditions are not in compliance with international standards and that there is widespread torture of prisoners in Libya and threats against the families of prisoners.

One could wish Luis Mareno-Ocampo good luck in his new career as would be ‘father of the New Libya’s legal system,’ but the current ICC case # 01/11 is too critical for all involved to wait to learn whether his project gets completed and meets international standards.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter - December issue

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/78377

Launching 'To Cook a Continent', 'Earth Grab' and 'African Awakening'

New Pambazuka Press titles

2011-12-05

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/560/COP_flyer_a5_3books_v7.pdf

You are cordially invited to the launch of three Pambazuka titles, To Cook a Continent, Earth Grab and African Awakening on Tuesday the 6th of December at Ike's Books in Durban. Authors and activists, Nnimmo Bassey, the ETC Group, Patrick Bond and more will be present at this exciting event happening alongside the COP17 talks in Durban. Visit this Facebook page to find out more or click on the link provided to view a flyer about the event.

Ngaphakathi esiphakathini

CAS Gallery Exhibition, UCT Upper Campus, 8 December

2011-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/78484

Zanele Muholi and Khanyisile Mbongwa put together a collaborative show around the idea of interstices, of spaces in between/in-between spaces - literal, metonymic, metaphorical. 'Ngaphakathi esiphakathini' is directly translated as 'inside the in-between', writes Khanyisile. The artists respond to the economies of violence of the everyday, a reality of bodies marked and inscribed in particular ways.
Press Release
November 29, 2011

We formally invite you to:
CAS Gallery Exhibition
Opening Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:30PM
CAS Gallery
Harry Oppenheimer Institute
Engineering Mall
UCT Upper Campus
For more information contact: Lilian.Jacobs@uct.ac.za
http://www.facebook.com/events/269289633118725/

Khanyisile Mbongwa &
Zanele Muholi
Present:
‘NGAPHAKATHI ESIPHAKATHINI’

Zanele Muholi and Khanyisile Mbongwa put together a collaborative show around the idea of interstices, of spaces in between/in-between spaces – literal, metonymic, metaphorical. “Ngaphakathi esiphakathini” is directly translated as “inside the in-between”, writes Khanyisile. The artists respond to the economies of violence of the everyday, a reality of bodies marked and inscribed in particular ways.

Zanele writes: “At one level, my project deals with my own menstrual blood, with that secretive, feminine time of the month that has been reduced within Western patriarchal culture as dirty.” The work is about two artists/activists who respond to the quiet violence of heteronormative gendering, sexing, as well as to the racialising and naming of bodies and what it means for our lives in the everyday. It is about the conversation that happens among these two individuals and their work when their methods, ways of seeing and creating coincide, share space and collide. It is about the unspoken, the silences in between and how these non-verbal whispers speak. The artists move beyond “bearing witness” and respond to these violent foreclosures and planned obsolescences with alternative imaginaries – plotting new ways of seeing, of being and of articulating interiorities.

The exhibition that opens Thursday, December 8, at 18h30 brings together photography, sculpture and video installation(s) put together by Zanele Muholi and Khanyisile Mbongwa, in collaboration with other artists and students. A performance curated by Khanyisile will take place on the evening of the opening, asking visitors, students, activists, workers, professors to respond, react and engage with the ephemerality of her performance, with its traces and textures.

Finally, the exhibition has been put together as part of the workshop “Thinking Africa and the African Diaspora Differently: Theories, Practices, Imaginaries”, that involves the Centre for African Studies at UCT, ‘the names we give’ at Michaelis, Chimurenga, The University of the West Indies, Brown University Africana Studies and the University of Addis Ababa. Supporters of the exhibition include the abovementioned workshop and the non-profit gallery Blank Projects.

Nicole Sarmiento
CAS Gallery Curator

To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa

New book by Nnimmo Bassey

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/78404

As thousands assemble in Durban for this year’s climate talks, the countries of the global South hope for some listening as well as all the talking, says international climate campaigner, Nnimmo Bassey. Bassey’s new book ‘To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ shows that the climate crisis confronting the world is mainly rooted in the wealthy economies’ exploitation and abuse of fossil fuels. Unless the connection is made between resource extraction, profiteering and climate change, the talks can not resolve the crises we all face.
Media release from Pambazuka Press

Monday 28 November 2011

CONTACT
Rachel Wiggans
Pambazuka Press
2nd floor 51 Cornmarket Street Oxford OX1 3HA, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 727006 x205
rachel@fahamu.org / www.pambazukapress.org

THE CLIMATE TALKS - WILL ANYONE LISTEN?

As thousands assemble in Durban for this year’s climate talks, the countries of the global South hope for some listening as well as all the talking, says international climate campaigner, Nnimmo Bassey.

Bassey’s new book ‘To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ shows that the climate crisis confronting the world is mainly rooted in the wealthy economies’ exploitation and abuse of fossil fuels. Unless the connection is made between resource extraction, profiteering and climate change, the talks can not resolve the crises we all face.

Bassey is the director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action, which he founded nearly 20 years ago. He has worked tirelessly to combat the enormous damage caused to Nigerian communities by the extraction of oil, and now works with other sub-Saharan countries blessed – or is it cursed? – with new oil finds.

It is the countries of the South that stand to lose most from catastrophic climate change; they have already suffered increases in floods, drought and famine, and the deserts are expanding. The signs are there to see in developed countries too, as ‘once-in-a century’ storms arrive more and more often and the seasons become less and less predictable. But in the climate talks last year in Cancun and the year before in Copenhagen, the developed countries dug in to defend their monstrous levels of energy consumption and their profiteering at the expense of everyone else.

Climate change that is already taking place will greatly compromise agricultural production in Africa. Bassey alerts us in his illuminating and sobering book to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warning that, in some countries, yield from systems that are rain-fed may decline by as much as 50 per cent by 2020. He points out that climate change has the most direct impact on people whose lives are most closely intertwined with their environment, threatening their livelihoods, health and access to food.

Bassey’s work is rooted in the reality of what is happening now in Africa, and his knowledge and vision are increasingly recognised. In 2008 he was elected Chair of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), the world’s largest grassroots environmental network. In 2009 he was named by TIME magazine as a Hero of the Environment. In 2010 he was a winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Prize). In 2011, along with other climate campaigners from the South, he is in Durban.

The UN and government officials’ task is to make progress towards the UN goal of ‘preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system’. Will the powerful once again shout down the informed and articulate voices from the South? Or will they listen, this time, to the lived experience of climate change?
………………………………………………….

Published by Pambazuka Press, ‘To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ is available from www.pambazukapress.org and all good bookshops.

COP 17: A few key issues summarised

Trust for Community Outreach and Education

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/78395

cc World BankIn this briefing TCOE, one of the lead organisations in the Rural Women’s Assembly at COP17, sets out some key issues at stake in this week’s climate change conference in Durban.

‘In the world we live in, the bad wolf of climate change has already ransacked the straw house and the house made of sticks, and the inhabitants of both are now knocking on the door of the brick house where the people of the developed world live’. Archbishop Desmond Tutu

1. KYOTO PROTOCOL AND CUTTING EMISSIONS (CARBON DIOXIDE)

The most popular issue in the COP negotiations is: will rich countries sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and cut their emissions enough to save the world? For global warming to stay within safe levels according to science, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the air must be reduced so our planet’s temperature can only go up by an average of 1.5 ºC degrees. At the moment we are on a pathway towards an increase of 5ºC! This would mean many people in Africa will not be able to grow food or survive the weather.

A global agreement is necessary because everyone is impacted but it must be legally binding so that rich countries are bound by international law. BUT rich countries must take action first and most, but cutting their emissions by at least 40% – they are the ones who have historically emitted more CO2 into the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) to feed their industries and their lifestyles. South Africa is the biggest emitter in Africa, and the 13th biggest in the world – more than the Netherlands, Brazil and Australia. So South Africa must also take responsibility to cut emissions whilst it continuing to develop.

The Kyoto Protocol is a legally binding agreement that many rich countries (except the USA and Australia) signed up to, committing to cut their emissions. The Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and the COP has been negotiating a renewal – a second commitment period. But many rich countries object (e.g. Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia, USA) to renewing the Protocol because:
- Some developed countries do not want to sign up at all – e.g. USA
- Some want the big developing countries to sign up (because now they are also polluting more) – e.g. China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico
- Some say it’s too difficult to take action because of the global economic crisis (rich countries would need to spend a lot of money to change it’s practices and reduce emissions) and national politics (particularly in the USA where many people still don’t believe climate change is happening!)

According to an Oxfam study, developing countries are planning to cut more emissions than rich countries even though, the rich countries are responsible for 75% of emissions in the air. If Durban does see rich countries cutting emissions enough, then the impacts of a climate change on South Africa over the next 50 years alone are likely to be severe and it will be the poor, rural communities and women who continue to be hit hardest.

2. FINANCE

Developing countries have said that they need money and support help adapt to climate change and to continue develop sustainably – not using coal, gas and oil. Farmers and fishers all over Africa need financial resources to improve water storage facilities, growing different kinds of crops or keeping different kinds of livestock and many other ways to adapt. In 2009, rich countries agreed in that years COP that they would give $100 billion per year from 2020, and in 2010 it was agreed that a Green Climate Fund would be set up to manage this money. Throughout 2011, countries have been debating how the Fund will be managing answering questions such as who will look after the fund and how money reach people who need it e.g. the poor and women (women suffer the most but are not prioritised for financial support)– this should be agreed in Durban.

BUT where will the $100 billion come from? Rich countries must finance this empty Fund! The money must come both from rich country governments but we know that aid money is not reliable so they must also agree to give money from taxes on industrial shipping and aviation industries. These two industries are heavy polluters – industrial shipping currently emits more than the whole of Germany – by taxing, they could cut raise money for climate change and cut their emissions (e.g. $10bn per year from shipping).

Many rich countries do not want to commit to where the money will come from and how much they will give. They also do not want to commit to a tax on the shipping industry because they know that their industries will need to pay (even though it is very small). In Durban however, we need a breakthrough – it could be the one positive thing that happens – Fill the Climate Fund!

3. CARBON MARKETS

The idea behind carbon trading is a marketplace. Carbon is given a price, allowing people, companies or countries to buy or sell it. If a country bought carbon, it would be buying the rights to emit it (by using coal, gas, oil), and a country selling carbon would be giving up its rights to emit it. Rich countries can use this market to buy the rights to emit from another (e.g. developing) country whose industries do not produce as much of these gases. The developing country then gets money that it can use to invest in renewable energy for example.

But should rich countries be allowed to buy their way out of reducing their own emissions? And does all the money given to developing countries really get invested in the right way? Currently, the Kyoto Protocol allows such trading and is used by many rich countries. COP 17 will discuss how this can continue but with stricter controls on how carbon is bought and how the revenues are used. However, they are also discussing how to bring in markets for protecting forests as well as soil carbon. There have been recent ideas to include a market for carbon that is in the soil. By paying farmers to use techniques that capture carbon in the soil (such as no tilling), polluters can again reduce their own responsibility. Many countries in Africa say that they do not want markets – they should receive money for reducing emissions (from the Green Climate Fund) but other rich countries should not benefit from that – but others who stand to gain financially do support it.

4. FURTHER SUPPORT – TECHNOLOGY AND CAPACITY BUILDING

Every country in the world will have to adapt to climate change to in order to survive. But by far the biggest adaptation challenges will be found in the poorest countries, particularly Africa, and within them rural communities who are already struggling. Adaptation in agriculture is about making farming better able to cope with likely climate impacts. In the COP negotiations, adaptation has been an issue where developing countries are looking for the resources, technology, capacity building and cooperation to help them. A key debate is around a global Adaptation Committee that is being set up to oversee cooperation and support for developing countries adaptation – it sounds like this Committee will be agreed in Durban and countries in Africa are mostly happy about it.

Many developing countries have also created a National Adaptation Plan but there is very little support to implement them – they need finance, technology and the capacity. With regards to technology, a new Technology Centre is being designed to help this sharing. But there also needs to be agreement that rich countries will share technology and skills with developing countries for free. Many countries do not agree.

5. AGRICULTURE MUST SUPPORT SMALL SCALE FARMERS

Small scale farmers across Africa are vital to the continent’s food security. Farmers organizations and other civil society organizations must play a central role in the design, implementation and review of all climate-related agriculture policy. Inadequate consultation has taken place at both the national and international level with farmers and other members of civil society. At the COP, agriculture is covered in adaptation and also a negotiation on how commercial agriculture should reduce its emissions. But small scale farmers must not be forced to carry out certain practices or given false incentives - they need to be supported (through money, technology, skills) to develop appropriate ways of adapting to climate change. Let’s not allow the focus to move away from commercial agriculture cutting emissions and small scale agriculture receiving adequate support.

Not in the negotiations but events to watch out for:

a) 3 December, a workshop on Climate Smart Agriculture – the initiative supported by the World Bank, FAO and South African Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – a scheme of farming practices that promises better resilience to climate change; higher yields; and reduces CO2 – it also promises to pay farmers for adopting certain practices. But who has consulted small scale farmers on this scheme? Is this another false solution?
b) 7 December – President Zuma will join other leaders (e.g. Kofi Anan, President Lula of Brazil) to launch a new climate investment platform which will coordinate all climate funds for agriculture – this platform will be supported by the World Bank but managed by NEPAD and the African Union. But how will this benefit small scale farmers? Will they be able to access?

A FEW KEY DEMANDS FROM COP 17:

- Rich countries must cut their emissions and agree to be bound by international law – they must sign up to Kyoto or another legal deal
- Rich countries have emitted the most so they must cut the most emissions – at least 40% by 2020
- Developing countries must be supported to grow sustainably without relying on dirty energy – to stop using coal, gas and oil, and start using renewable energy like solar and wind
- There must be money available for developing countries to adapt to climate change and grow sustainably – with women prioritised for support
- Rich countries need to put fill the Green Climate Fund to reach the $100bn that they agreed to in 2009
- The COP must agree to other reliable sources of money, not just aid - taxes on internationals shipping fuels could raise $10bn for the Fund every year.
- Carbon markets are not the answer! Rich countries must not be allowed to buy their way out of cutting their own emissions.
- Developing countries must be supported with technology and skills to help adapt to climate change – this must be delivered free and without conditions.
- All decisions to with agriculture must involved small scale farmers and support their crucial role in the worlds food security.

Remember: Climate change is with us. The world’s climate is changing as a consequence of human activity specifically the rich countries who were the first to industrialize and who have long enjoyed the economic and social benefits. The global impacts of, and responsibilities for, climate change are unequally shared. Those with the least responsibility for climate change stand to suffer most from current and future consequences effects of man-made climate change. COP17 must take urgent action to prevent dangerous climate change!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Established by the late Steve Biko in 1983, TCOE is a national organisation that operates mainly in the rural areas of South Africa. The main work and experience of the organisation in the past ten years has been to stimulate the building of local organisations, local leadership and assist these associations to access land and productive assets to improve their livelihoods.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

20 years of 16 days of Activism, how far are we?

Shuvai Nyoni Kagoro

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/78362

cc L WOn the 20th anniversary of the global Sixteen Days of Activism on gender violence campaign, Shuvai Nyoni Kagoro asks whether ‘the millions of dollars spent in cash and human time’ have significantly reduced the violence women and other marginalised groups face ‘because of their gender’.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the global Sixteen Days of Activism on gender violence campaign, and 10 years of the annual commemoration in Southern Africa. Each year during Sixteen Days, we stop and ponder achievements and accomplishments, and assess how much further still to go. As we observe a decade of Sixteen Days in this region and two decades in the world, it is especially important to question, all these years later, if the millions of dollars spent in cash and human time have resulted in significant reductions of the violence facing women and other marginalised groups because of their gender.

One significant achievement in this past decade is the adoption of The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development, signed by most SADC leaders in August 2008 after a long-running multi-national campaign by the Gender Protocol Alliance, comprising gender activists from all corners of the region. The SADC Protocol harmonises existing international and regional instruments for achieving gender equality and sets 28 targets for doing so. Six of these targets concern halving gender violence by 2015.

Using the SADC Protocol as a measuring point, there are specific areas of progress. The Protocol requires signatories to enact and enforce legislation prohibiting all forms of gender based violence by 2015. Several governments have passed various laws to address GBV over the years. Only two SADC countries, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), still need to enact laws on domestic violence. Angola and Zambia are the most recent to do so, with Zambia launching a comprehensive GBV Act in August of this year. Several laws relating to sexual harassment exist throughout the region, although most of these are contained in labour related legislation.

Another accomplishment is the synergy developed between national governments and civil society organisations to provide specialised legal services, facilities, and places of shelter and safety for survivors of GBV. While many countries have legislation guaranteeing these services, lack of resources and capacity often constraint states from meeting the demand, meaning civil society organisations collaborate to help fill the gap.

When it comes to traditional norms, cultural and political practices, as well as the role of men, there has been a definite shift over the years. The spread of men’s networks across the region shows the growing recognition that gender is everyone’s issue. Many of these groups use the SADC Protocol to promote gender equality, and the Protocol Alliance is moving towards including a men’s cluster in their existing network to promote better working hand-in-hand with men to halve GBV by 2015.

There has also been a significant evolution of awareness and sensitisation campaigns. Across the region Sixteen Days of Activism is observed at both local and national levels of government. These campaigns continue to grow in breadth and scope and enjoy the involvement of all sectors of society.

Moreover, some states, recognising that sixteen days a year is not enough, are implementing and supporting yearlong actions, often through National Action Plans (NAPs) on gender violence. Countries such as Lesotho and Seychelles have not only developed these plans, but have gone so far as to calculate the costs of implementation, allocate budgets and implement. Unfortunately, in others, such as Angola and Madagascar, these NAPS do not yet exist. Most SADC states are somewhere in the middle.

Indeed, member states have adopted laws, contributed to service provision for survivors of GBV, participated in and endorsed efforts to raise awareness on the issues, welcomed the input of civil society, faith communities and corporate entities and generally, through NAPs, made attempts to fulfil their regional and international obligations.

In spite of some progress however, the 2015 deadline demands us to ask whether this is sufficient. The answer may be that we are still too far away from the mark.

Take for instance NAPs. These very commendable plans for action won’t see the light of day without necessary resources. This requires serious examination of the relationship between national plans for GBV and national budgets. In countries that can boast significant headway, it important to highlight these procedures as best practises to assist others follow suit.

As well, over the last few years, Southern Africa, as with other parts of our continent, has witnessed new phenomena of gender violations. Examples include violence against people based on sexual orientation, sexual violence during times of conflict and political instability, and most recently, violence linked to new social media. This begs the question of whether the Protocol sufficiently deals with GBV. The new recognition of the link between gender justice and climate change has even prompted the SADC Gender Alliance to begin advocating for an addendum to the Protocol to include gender and climate change.

And how will we know if we have halved GBV? Again, while states have successfully developed NAPs, no baselines studies sufficiently outline the prevalence and extent of GBV at local, national and regional levels. In order to have something to show for all the efforts of the last decade, governments, civil society, regional bodies and international institutions must all prioritise mobilisation of resources for developing a regional baseline against which to measure progress.

We are fast approaching 2015. It is only through a constant cycle of planning, implementation, and measuring to asses progress and devise new strategies, that, during Sixteen Days of Activism 2015, we will be able to boast to boast that yes, we did halve GBV.

To read more on the progress of SADC states in addressing GBV see Chapter 5 of the SADC Gender and Development Protocol.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared on Gender Links.
* Shuvai Nyoni Kagoro is the local government and gender justice manager at Gender Links. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service that offers fresh views on every day news.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Paul Biya’s rogue governance of Cameroon

Peter Wuteh Vakunta

2011-11-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/78318

cc WikimediaPresident Paul Biya’s regime has deeply disillusioned the Cameroonian people, writes Peter Wuteh Vakunta. But Biya will not be president forever, so the challenge for Cameroonians is to look beyond the failed leadership and begin to imagine a new future for themselves.

It's often said that people deserve their leaders. Can anyone in their right frame of mind honestly deny the fact that Cameroonians deserve Mr Paul Barthélemy Biya Bi Mvondo? There is a generation of Cameroonians who have not known another president but Paul Biya. And they will never know another leader because by the time Paul Biya has completed his godly task of messing up Cameroon and is ready to give up the ghost these poor souls would be in the Never Land. Be it as it may, let it be known to these unfortunate souls that Cameroon has known its heydays. Cameroon has not always been this forsaken wasteland that has been transformed into a ‘corrupt club of banditti masquerading as leaders.’[1] The majority of Cameroonians born during this current dispensation of social and moral degeneracy have never known a police force that was not prone to corruption and dereliction of duty. They have never known an armed force that was not half-educated and uncivil.

The vast majority of young adults in Cameroon are unaware of the fact that once upon a time a person went to prison for giving a bounced check. The generality of Cameroonians born under Paul Biya cannot fathom that there was a time when fraudulent acts such as procuring bogus diplomas, fraudulently obtaining a driver’s license, tinkering with marriage and birth certificates, transplanting visas into passports, fabricating counterfeit banknotes, enriching oneself as a conman and more were considered felonies. To this generation, therefore, supposedly the future of this blighted nation, the end justifies the means. As Doh would have it, ‘all they … think they need is a job and some money to keep finding their way through the maze of sleaze and professional ethical squalor that marks social life in Cameroon’. [2]

Another critic of Paul Biya’s lame duck government has the following harsh words to say: ‘In Cameroon, a country that seems to have lost it head and sense of direction, the youths that constitute half of the population, are unable to fathom a future’. [3] Anyone who has had the misfortune of navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth of the public service in Yaoundé and other cities in Cameroon knows exactly what Pigeaud is talking about and need not be lectured on the ethical squalor and mental retardation that have become the hallmarks of Cameroonian ‘civil’ servants.

The idea that propelled me into crafting this article is to let Cameroonians at home and in the Diaspora know that there could be a better Cameroon; that there had been a better Cameroon, and that bribery and corruption, white collar thievery, brazen impunity and the rape of officialdom need not be the modus operandi in our beloved homeland. There is no gainsaying the fact that in a corrupt society, only few — the conniving and the powerful — continue to enrich themselves. [4] On the contrary, in a morally sane, law-abiding nation all who can afford to discipline themselves and work hard can make it to the top. The reason is that everyone benefits from social, economic and political stability, all ingredients that fertilise the environment and occasion blissful existence in lieu of the dire straits in which the majority of Cameroonians now live under Paul Biya’s government; a rogue regime that is fashioned, guided and run by a bunch of unpatriotic morally bankrupt grave-diggers parading as God’s ordained leaders of the nation. The stinking Beti-led oligarchy in Yaoundé is the open sore of our nation.

The ramifications of the governmental hold-up masterminded by a bunch of cocky Betis at the helm in Cameroon are legion. I will limit myself to a discussion of the most salient ones on account of the scope of this write-up. Brain drain, the flight of human capital from the homeland to countries overseas, is real and harmful. Brain drain has deleterious consequences for the growth of the nation’s economy. As a matter of fact, most Cameroonians are faced with two unpleasant choices: resistance or flight to unknown lands.

Pigeaud maintains that, ‘Those who leave often point to the Head of State and his style of government as the major reasons they are leaving.’ [5] She cites the lamentation of a young Cameroonian immigrant she interviewed to buttress her point: ‘If I stay in Cameroon, my life will be fucked up. Nothing has been done to encourage the youths although our country is rich.’ This should sound like a familiar song to most Cameroonians residing abroad.

Institutions of higher learning in the Western world are replete with talented Cameroonian intellectuals who have made their mark in all walks of life but dare not return home for fear of being ‘fucked up’ by a regime that has lost its bearings. Medical institutions the world over are teeming with gifted Cameroonian medics who cannot entertain the thought of returning home on account of the skeletal nature of our impoverished hospitals at home.

The crème de la crème of our legal practitioners are hibernating in nations in the West, torn between the fate of staying put to face incisive racism and the temptation to return home to be subjected to home-bred apartheid. Here is what a literati living abroad told Pigeaud: ‘I grew up in the Essos neighborhood in Yaoundé: not one of the fifty childhood friends that I had is still here in Cameroon. Some are in Bangladesh, in Nepal. That’s where the majority of Cameroonian youths end up.’

Corruption has crippling effects on the national economy. Moses Timah Njei makes heartrending remarks about the impact of corrupt practices on the image of Cameroon, which I am citing at length:

‘Corruption has brought our beloved country to her knees and exposed us to international ridicule. Our country has held the first position as the most corrupt nation on earth and it is on record that those governing us actually lobbied that the country be classified as one of the poorest highly indebted nations on earth! One really needs to be courageous and shame-proof to make a request like this for such an apparently rich nation. This act alone qualifies us to be in the hall of fame of corruption. The issue of corruption in Cameroon has gone past the level that can be described only as a social ill. It has effectively become part of our national culture. Corruption is embedded in every facet of our national life and it has effectively thwarted and dislocated our path to nationhood for generations to come. [8]

This explains the consternation of Cameroonian sociologist, Jean –Marc Ela: ‘It would appear that the case of Cameroon defies all attempts at comprehension. What has happened to this country seems unimaginable, unbelievable and impossible. In sum, it seems as if under Paul Biya Cameroon has plunged into illegality, irrationality, and insanity.’ [8]

In my hometown, it is said that the ‘baby’ cow watches its mother eat and then later it will begin to mimic her mother when its turn to eat comes. The majority of Cameroonians have learned to ape their corrupt leaders. Why would Cameroonians not be terribly corrupt when their Head of State and his ministers are all corrupt to the marrow? Nurses in hospitals and clinics have learned to misappropriate medicines, injections and other medical supplies. Some doctors have learned to charge illegal fees. Policemen have learned to take various sums of money in the form of bribes from taxi drivers, ‘bendskin’ drivers [10], ‘sauveteurs’ [11] and bayam sellam [12] in broad daylight!

Corruption is so endemic in Cameroon that the few decent citizens who refuse to engage in it are either ridiculed or coerced into the practice. On this note, Pigeaud maintains: ‘We could refer to this practice as the re-institutionalization of corruption with the blessing of the state. In Cameroon, the notion of corruption itself has been corrupted.’ [13] In Cameroon, if you are not corruptible, people think you are stupid. They will mock you and try to inveigle you into the rotten game. Cameroon’s brand of corruption is contagious.

It is not just corruption that has become the stock in trade of all Cameroonian leaders; impunity is another canker that has eaten deeply into the fabric of the government. That is why Pigeaud can afford to say: ‘The Cameroonian society, having lost its bearings, continues to commit multiple incongruities and seems to walk on its head.’ [14] Impunity knows no bounds in Cameroon. Informed Cameroonians would remember that in 2007, a member of the presidential guard shot and killed a young man who had tried to cross the street a little too early in the wake of a motorcade escorting the first lady. No one batted an eyelid after this incident occurred. Paranoia or apathy? Your guess is as good as mine.

Outspoken Cameroonian Cardinal, Christian Tumi, has wondered aloud whether or not he should be held accountable for flouting laws voted by deputies who have fraudulently made their way into the National Assembly: ‘Sometimes, I ask myself whether I should be held accountable for not obeying laws in this country, when I know that the deputies who voted these bills into law did not win the elections that brought them into the House. Who do they represent?’ [15] He further reiterates that in Cameroon ‘justice is bought and sold.’ [16]

As the foregoing discourse clearly indicates, the death knell of the republic of Cameroon has been sounded under Paul Biya’s cavalier regime. His government is, indeed, an open sore that defies all treatments; it is the shame of the nation. Adulated in the past for its talented soccer players, well-mannered citizens, robust economy, and enviable status as Africa in miniature; Cameroon has ended up in the trashcan of history! The misdeeds of our leaders have transformed our beloved fatherland into the laughing stock of Africa.

Ndifor’s narrative says it all: “Ah! “Your country recently held a presidential election. How did it go this time?’ the officer from Botswana, with a smirk on his face, asked. Even before I could answer, these men, all from African countries that have experienced smooth transitions of one government after another since their respective independence, jointly said that Cameroonians have lost their ‘dignity’ as a people and should consider the consequences.” [17] Ponder that!

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* Dr Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the US Department Defense Language Institute in California. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa’(2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) ,Martyrdom (2010)Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon’ (2011 and more). He blogs at vakunta
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

END NOTES
[1] Emmanuel Doh, Africa’s Political Wastelands: The Bastardization of Cameroon, Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, Bamenda, 2008, p.vii.
[2] Ibid, vii.
[3] Fanny Pigeaud, Au Cameroun de Paul Biya, Editions Karthala, Paris, 2011, p.7.
[4] Ibid,vii
[5] Ibid, 224.
[6] Ibid, 224.
[7] Ibid, 225.
[8] Moses Timah Njei, 'Cameroon and Corruption', culled from here
[9] Jean-Marc Ela, Innovations socials et renaissance de l’Afrique noire, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1998
[10] Motorcycle commuters
[11] Hawkers
[12] Retail traders
[13] Pigeaud,202
[14] Ibid, 208.
[15] Ibid, 207
[16] Ibid, 193.
[17] Joseph, M. Ndifor, 'Our Collective Shame', originally published at postnewsline.com

16 Days Campaign on Violence against Women

FEMNET

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/78394

PRESS STATEMENT

For Immediate Release
24th November, 2011

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) joins the world in observing the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign which start on November 25th – December 10th, 2011. This year’s 16 Days Campaign runs under the theme: From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence against Women.

The theme could not have come at better time than now when the world is experiencing various threats to peace and security which have severe impact on women and children. According the United Nations factsheet of 2008, up to 70 % of women have experienced Gender-based violence in their lifetime. It is estimated that worldwide, one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape. Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war, and malaria. The Africa Women’s Regional Shadow Report on Beijing +15 (2009)1, identifies the general acceptance of violence against women in many African communities and the costly and cumbersome legal process as the major factors that make it difficult to eliminate the vice.

FEMNET acknowledges the importance of the 16 days of heightened attention and activism on upholding women’s human rights and progressing gender equality in Africa, in line with the global commitments such as the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Declaration and Goals. FEMNET together with its member organizations, development partners, civil society organizations, women’s human right activists and human rights defenders, movements and networks, concerned by the levels and severity of violence against women in Africa, are calling for elimination of all forms of violence against women.

FEMNET is joining the 16 days of activism to: raise awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue; strengthen national work around violence against women; establish a clear link between local and international work to end violence against women; provide a forum in which organizers can develop and share new and effective strategies; demonstrate the solidarity of women around the world organizing to eliminate violence against women; and create tools to pressure governments to implement promises made to eliminate violence against women.

We appeal to all African leaders to ensure that they uphold all international and regional instruments that protect women which they have ratified. We further urge the leaders to domesticate the international instruments and also take advantage of the African Women’s Decade (2010-2020) to accelerate their actions aimed at promoting women’s rights.

For more information, please contact: Roselynn Musa, Acting Executive Director FEMNET
Tel +254 20 2712971/2
Email: admin[AT]femnet.or.ke

Activists to unite against climate gangsters

Sharon Pillay

groundWork

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/78363

Last week Friday saw the ending of the Dirty Energy Week strategy conference, organised by the South African based environmental justice NGO, groundWork together with 14 national and international NGO’s, and community organisations.[1]

The conference was successful in creating a synergy among all the community people, NGOs and unions who are determined to expose the false energy solutions and carbon trading at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties 17 (COP17). It was emphasised that organisations and governments should be held accountable for their actions. Dirty energy projects including fracking, tar sands, big dams, shale oil, crude oil, coal to liquids, mining, oil refining and cleaner development mechanisms projects.[2]

Pablo Solón, the former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, had delivered the closing address at the Dirty Energy Week. Solón, representing the Bolivian government, was the sole voice of conscience at COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, and was the only delegation to vote against the outcomes of the Cancun negotiations which failed to make progress on the steep, binding emission cuts for developed countries that the planet needs for survival, according to all reputable scientists.[3].

Solón commented that the focus should be on the key issue which is the reduction of green house gas emissions and what the exact emission reduction numbers will be. He was concerned that the present rate of reductions is not happening fast enough. The KP should be amended so that solid commitment s can be made.

“If COP17, ends up with those emissions reductions will be minimal and temperature increase more than 4 degrees Celsius, we will burn our world and cook Africa. Finance, transfer of technology, binding agreement is important and also the numbers. If GHG emissions are low, we will lose this decade and will be unable to cover the next decade. Reports say exactly that, even Price Waterhouse Coopers says last year for first time greenhouse gas emissions grew more than GDPs,” he said.

Solón added that the situation can be changed if there is enough pressure from social movements. “We are all part of same battle against the one percent of the population who controls fifty percent of the resources. The real cause of climate change is capitalist system and way most developing companies work. We need a planet where we can all live. Our futures should not depend on just once percent of the population.”

The Dirty Energy Week campaign was brought to a final close with a march to the Durban World Cup Stadium, where the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board meeting was taking place. They have spoken up against the systematic disregard of the wastepickers communities in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules, which are impacting their livelihoods and increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is the first of several actions planned by the Global Alliance of Wastepickers and allies at COP17, which is starting next week in Durban.

Simon Mbata, a wastepicker from Sasolburg, and the coordinator of the South African Wastepickers Association (SAWPA) is one of an estimated 30,000 wastepickers in South Africa. These wastepickers sort, collect and resell plastic, paper, steel, and scraps, earning a livelihood while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“The CDM is supporting landfill gas systems and incinerators that are taking away our livelihoods. Why do they keep registering projects that are burning or burying what we recycle? In the process of revision of the CDM methodologies for waste projects, are they going to take us into account and stop giving carbon credits to incinerators and landfill gas systems?”

“Meeting with so many community people from the frontline of fossil fuel struggles was amazing and strengthening to all our struggles. I believe that this unity started here has a great potential to grow and be at the forefront of moving beyond fossil fuels”, says Bobby Peek, Director of groundWork.

ENDS

For more information contact:
Sharon Pillay
Media and Communications Manager, groundWork
Cell: 072 257 7317
Email: media[AT]groundwork.org.za

Footnotes:
[1] Alternative Information Development Centre; Centre for Civil Society, UKZN; Earthlife Africa Jhb; Federation for Sustainable Environment; Friends of the Earth International; Global Anti Incineration Alliance; Greenpeace, Africa; groundWork; Oilchange; Oilwatch; Sierra Club; South Durban Community Environmental Alliance; Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance; Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)
[2] http://www.groundwork.org.za/Press%20Releases/DirtyEnergyWeek/DEWDay2.html
[3] http://pablosolon.wordpress.com/pablo-solon/

Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) activities at COP17

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/78379

Please share with others...

ECOSOCIALISM CONFERENCE
THURS 1 DEC
10h00 – 18h00
@ Shepstone 1, Howard Campus, UKZN

RURAL WOMAN’S ASSEMBLY
THUR 1 – FRI 2 DEC
10h00 – 18h00
@ Peoples Tent, Howard Campus, UKZN

LAUNCH OF AIDC’s ALTERNATIVE VOICES (MEDIA SOURCE BOOK)
THURS 1 DEC
15h00

@ ICC Media Centre

CLIMATE JUSTICE HEARINGS
FRI 2 DEC
9h00 – 18h00
@ Peoples Tent, Howard Campus, UKZN

GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION MARCH
SAT 3 DEC
9h00 – 14h00
From Curries Fountain

INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE JOBS CONFERENCE
SUN 4 DEC
9h00 – 16h00
@ Shepstone 1, Howard Campus, UKZN

LAUNCH OF AMANDLA! MAGAZINE
MON 5 DEC
17h00
@ Peoples Tent, Howard Campus, UKZN

MILLION CLIMATE JOBS (SA) BOOKLET LAUNCH
TUES 6 DEC
10h00 – 15h00
MILLION CLIMATE JOBS (SA) BOOKLET LAUNCH
@ T B Davis L5, Howard Campus, UKZN

FOR MORE INFORMATION…
www.climatejobs.co.za
www.amandla.org.za
www.communitymedia.org.za

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu: ‘Focused, selfless, stellar’

1933-2011

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

2011-11-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/78366

General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who passed away earlier on Saturday 26 November 2011 after a long illness, is one of the greatest Igbo of all time... Okaa Omee. He was 78.

In May 1966, at the age of 32, General Odumegwu-Ojukwu was thrust, centrally, in the politics of his people as the leader of the Biafran resistance to the Nigeria state’s premeditated genocide against the Igbo people.

During the course of 44 harrowing months, Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo, or one-quarter of this nation’s population, in this foundational genocide of post(European)conquest Africa. General Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s leadership, throughout this catastrophe, was focused, selfless, stellar.

Three urgent goals that Igbo intellectuals will effectuate, in his memory, are: (1) contribute, robustly, to continue to inform the entire world of the nature and extent of the genocide (2) ensure that all those who planned/ordered/murdered the Igbo during the genocide are brought to justice (thankfully, the crime of genocide has no statute of limitations in international law) and (3) the restoration of Igbo sovereignty.

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* Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of ‘Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature’ (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011).
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Final Declaration of filmmakers

Meeting of filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/78375

In the identity of the Caribbean and their diasporas is a deep, transcendent and vital cultural footprint of the peoples of the African continent. Film, as a mosaic of all the arts, is the meeting point par excellence between the cultural values and aesthetic referents of the Caribbean and Africa. Given that Africa is developing one of the most significant film movements of our day, while in the Caribbean comes renewed vigour to carry out works of the filmmakers with the aim of promoting the development of regional cinematography. Considering the importance of achieving greater visibility of African, Caribbean and Brazilian cinema in the diasporas in our respective regions and other areas of the world, the Office of the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase celebrated the first Encounter of Filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas in Havana from the 12 to the 16 September 2011.

The participants of the first Encounter of Filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas, spanning nine African countries and 18 countries in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean considering:

1. That African cinema, from its founding years and currently, contributes to the formation of the national culture of their countries and has made a fundamental contribution to cultural independence, at the same time it has had central importance in building a common pan-African identity among the peoples of the continent and the world;

2. That the cinema of the Caribbean is an important means for the affirmation and defense of national cultures and identities of the countries of the region

Declare and agree that:

1. The work of the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase in its organisation has allowed a rich exchange between the filmmakers of our regions. At the same time acknowledges the support the showcase has received from the Regional Office for Culture of UNESCO for Latin America and the Caribbean and the UNICEF representative in Cuba, and urges those institutions to maintain this support to ensure its sustainability and development.

2. We need greater participation of Brazil and its filmmakers in these meetings and their actions, taking into account the importance of African heritage in Brazilian identity. We recognise the contribution of Meeting of the Black Cinema of Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean, organised annually by the Afro-Carioca Film Centre , in an effort to make visible the work of these film industries, while valuing its experience as inspiration for the Meeting of Filmmakers of Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas.

3. Given the importance of their contribution to cultural development in both regions and their contribution to the exchange between filmmakers, the Meeting of Filmmakers of Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas must become a permanent space for reflection and construction of strategies for collaboration among regions.

4. The Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (FUNGLODE) on behalf of the Dominican people and the President of the Republic, in coordination with the Office of the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase is committed to making the second meeting of filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas in 2012 in the Dominican Republic. The same will be accompanied by a cycle of films from Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean and their diasporas, which will be carried throughout the whole country.

5. Telesur is committed to support from the information point of view to promote this second meeting to be held in the Dominican Republic.

6. To ensure the consolidation of cinematography from Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean and their diasporas, we urge governments to guarantee their support through the articulation of cultural policies that promote and support production, distribution and exhibition.

7. The mechanisms of co-production between the countries of our region are a tool to enhance the development of film in our countries.

8. It is necessary to disseminate the information to permit the filmmakers of our countries access to the various forms of financing for the development of their cinematography and address financing funds available from international organisations like UNESCO, ACP and others, such as support programs for the development and promotion of the film industries of our region as IBERMEDIA.

9. It is essential to build forms of inter-regional collaboration for development and training of filmmakers from Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean and their diasporas.

10. It is essential to create effective alternatives for the exhibition of film of our regions in the different countries of the same. It proposes the creation of an alternative similar to the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase on the African continent.

11. It is also necessary to ensure the display of African cinema in the Caribbean and Brazil, and Brazilian and Caribbean cinema in the countries of the African continent. It is recommended to utilise the space for film festivals that exist in both regions.

12. With the aim of favouring the formation of audiences receptive to the aesthetics and narratives of our film, it is necessary to promote the inclusion of educational mechanisms and alternative film exhibition that transcend traditional circuits. In this sense, commitment is needed from critics, experts, media and other opinion formers.

Telesur, utilising its reporting structure, agrees to cooperate in the promotion of film in the Caribbean Brazili, Africa and their Diasporas.

13. It is necessary to develop mechanisms for breaking down language barriers that sometimes hinder the free flow of films between the countries of our region. In this sense, we can benefit from the infrastructure created by the Office of the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase in the field of subtitling. At the same time doubling capacity must be developed.

14. It is necessary to defend the right of children and young people to have access to a film that validates their culture. At the same time, the meeting recognises the need to create mechanisms to make use of audio-visual for creative expression.

15. Affirms the relevance of the project ‘Cameras of Diversity’ developed by UNESCO and suggests the implementation of the same in all countries in Africa and its strengthening in Brazil and the Caribbean.

16. Proposes to contribute to the strengthening and significance of Paul Robeson Award with a wider participation of the Diaspora in the Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou (FESPACO).

17. Proposes to organise a film festival of Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas to be held alternately in the Caribbean and Brazil, in even years, alternating with the years during which FESPACO is held. This Festival will be organised by the Office of the Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase and the Afro-Carioca Film Centre in Brazil, in coordination with relevant institutions of the countries of the region.

18. It is proposed to manage, with support from UNICEF, the Cuban Book Institute and other editorial institutions of the region, the publication of a book of Anancy stories, the mythical spider of Ghana.

19. In the course of this meeting a call was made for the convocation of the International Meeting ‘The Sciences and Arts Against Racism’.

20. The Gathering of Filmmakers of Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas celebrates the success of the African Film Week in Havana and 10 Cuban cities.

The Gathering of Filmmakers of Africa, the Caribbean and their diasporas would like to thank for their contribution to the success of this meeting the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cuba; the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC); Cultural Program of the Alba Countries; Telesur; Republic Bank; UltraSmart and the Colombiafrica Foundation.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Somewhere to aim for

Hannah Gibson

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/78376

As a gift to the world View from somewhere speaks from a place of passion with songs that sound neither like a labour of love nor a hard day’s work. ‘I’m just lucky to be able to get up every day and do what I love’, says Amira Kheir. And the reality is that you don’t need to meet her and ask her about her album to know that.

Each song on the album has its own life and it’s own distinct sound. A song sung in Arabic gives way to one sung in English. Flute blends with oud in ‘Allaleya’ whilst the double bass in ‘Disposable world’ is contagious. Guitar joins kora which heralds the arrival of the saxophone. And so it is easy to see why the reviews have been full of terms like ‘fusion’ and other hyphenated attempts to define the identity of the singer and her songs. But songs replete with references to different musical traditions transcend the imposition of superficial boundaries. The range of instruments and indeed the songs themselves should not surprise us. They reflect the musicians who have collaborated on this album and what comes to life at the meeting of their music. The instruments may come from around the world, but View from somewhere comes direct from London.

And what does this album tell us? That an independent artist can, with her first album, release songs into the world that are complex both in their own right and in their combination. That we should stop guessing and start listening. That this is what people can say too. And more simply, I challenge anyone to listen to the album without getting the mesmerising tune from ‘Kullu Wahid’ or the hypnotic tones of ‘Alhel Allel’ stuck in their head.

The album says as much about us, the listeners, as it does about the world. If we’re prepared to be quiet, the message is one worth listening to. From the first track to the last, and all of the spaces in between, this music comes from a place of gritty determination and commitment by the artist to her art. And it may be that we can all learn something from that determination.

The new year sees Amira head to the world-renown Festival du Desert in Mali and it’s hard to believe that such a stage will do anything but further fuel her dedication to her craft and her voice. If the view is from somewhere, then surely that’s somewhere we should all try and escape to every now and then. Somewhere where passion and creativity rain down. A distant cry from the percussion of the desert and yet, at by the same token, right next door.

And whatever other plans the world has for Amira, her plan for us is quite clear – ‘Just more. More music, more songs, just more of this’. So we can sit back confidently and wait for the next album. It’s bound to come, and its bound to be better. Whether it will have a more singular voice and whether the world will have succeeded to more successfully pigeon-hole Amira, remains to be seen. But I know what I’m hoping for.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Hannah Gibson is a writer and researcher, with much of her work focusing on Africa. She is currently pursuing a PhD in linguistics at the School of Oriental and African studies in London. She is a co-founder of on:africa, a web-based thematic journal dedicated to high-quality research and creative responses to Africa.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Toronto is ready for its artistic renaissance

Kemba King

2011-11-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/78315

mostly, they gather at places that are free.

they gather at places where they may have to buy a cup of coffee or a piece of cake, but then they might bring out some fruits picked from a garden. someone has potpourri.

t-dot renaissance, the brainchild of amanda parris, is being raised in the nooks and crannies of toronto and the proud aunties and uncles - using these terms interchangeably at times - are raising it urgently, politically and with integrity. t-dot is a nickname for the popular canadian city of toronto and renaissance is a focused, political, artistic resurgence.

more specifically, it is a coming together of voices of people of colour – people of colour who are working on a multi-disciplinary arts installation talking about diasporic journeys. when they speak of diasporic they talk about the layers of what it means to move here, have moved here, moving back here. here metaphorically and actually means the desire to find and form ‘home’.

the journeys are deliberate and furious. common themes of home, hybridised identities, generational security, lost and found spirituality move through visual art, dance, spoken word and film. the installation is interactive. visitors will be invited to travel through the stories of those who are a part of the t-dot renaissance artistes.

they prepared for the final installation piece by having artistic play dates. at these gatherings, one artist leads a workshop where everyone can explore a new art form. the benefit of these play dates not only produced art, ideas and discussion, it created the necessary bonds that artists need when exploring the journeys of the diaspora. they also created sacred space by inviting community elders to share their experiences of home, identity and the transnational in an elders dinner.

they have used their reverence for culture and ancestors to eke out their collective purpose:

• to make purposeful time for play
• to collaborate and build collective multi-arts installations
• to learn from collective mentors
• to mobilize resources for artistic opportunities for us all
• to create healing spaces for artists to push limits
• to redefine ritual and community and build solidarity between our villages

each point in t-dot renaissance’s collective purpose is important, but the last point being more unique in action and in merit around integrating varied cultural indigenous rituals to form community solidarity. it is a careful balancing act where the artistes come together not only from various cultures, but genders, races, spiritualities, sexualities and languages.

the show will feature work of artistes:

amanda parris
colanthony humphrey
natasha daniel
neil ‘logik’ donaldson
quentin ‘vercetty’ lindsay
nayani thiyagarajah
kim crosby
myk miranda
ciel lauren
keisha-monique simpson
david delisca
alana lowe
kayla carter
jamiena shah
alix muyoti

every thought manifested in action has been put through a rigorous process of collectivism. the final installation of this t-dot renaissance will be at Loft404, 263 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Canada - December 3, 2011 and December 4, 2011. For more information on the installation and the artistes please visit tdotrenaissance.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

thoughts on freedom

devorah major

2011-11-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/78319

to not want some say
that is where freedom lies
to be always in the moment
some say that is where freedom lies

there is no freedom some say

some say our world is defined
by one creator who has
determined the rules and
regulations that confine our fate
and only inside those boundaries
and under those laws
can the skeleton of freedom be found

some say freedom has no borders
some say freedom has no form
to be fully alive is freedom some say
only in death lies freedom some say

death is an eternal reward or punishment
there is no freedom some say
only a choice of good or evil

freedom some say is the wind
some say freedom is a dream

only those who have never
known freedom
doubt its existence
all others keep trying to know
it again and again
to not want some say
that is where freedom lies
to be always in the moment
some say that is where freedom lies

there is no freedom some say

some say our world is defined
by one creator who has
determined the rules and
regulations that confine our fate
and only inside those boundaries
and under those laws
can the skeleton of freedom be found

some say freedom has no borders
some say freedom has no form
to be fully alive is freedom some say
only in death lies freedom some say

death is an eternal reward or punishment
there is no freedom some say
only a choice of good or evil

freedom some say is the wind
some say freedom is a dream

only those who have never
known freedom
doubt its existence
all others keep trying to know
it again and again

Uganda: The plight of refugees living with HIV/AIDS

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/ugEzFP

Every year on 1 December, the world unites to commemorate the World AIDS day. This year's global theme, 'Getting to Zero' is aimed at reducing the global prevalence to the lowest rate possible. Based on Uganda's theme, 'Re-engaging leadership for effective HIV prevention', the Refugee Law Project brings you a five-minute video aimed at raising awareness about the plight of refugee communities living with HIV/AIDS. The lack of a coherent strategy for engaging refugee communities renders them invisible to caregivers and undermines efforts to reduce the prevalence of HIV in the country and indeed Getting to Zero. The corresponding lack of attention is a challenge affecting all areas of refugee protection and assistance, whether they live in camps or in urban areas.

Life after Mubarak

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/78381

President Assad and the opposition

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/78382

The EU crisis and Africa

Gado

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/78380

Africa: New study reveals women not benefiting from trade agreements

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/78414

A recent study conducted by the African Women’s Development and communication Network (FEMNET) with support from Trust Africa has reviewed that a majority of African women still have relatively limited access to material assets, low incomes and very limited opportunities to engage in regional and foreign trade. The study was commissioned in five African countries (Egypt, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia) to assess the gender effects of the economic partnership agreements that the European Union is currently negotiating with different economic blocs in Africa, specifically how African women have benefitted from these new trade arrangements and their impact on women’s economic rights. Findings of the country studies indicates that trade arrangements in Africa and with its partners in other regions of the world has had different impacts on women and men and most often than not it affects women more negatively in their position as entrepreneurs, workers, consumers, producers, and care givers within the public and domestic spheres. Full report is available on request: admin@femnet.or.ke

Egypt: 'Virginity tests' case against military adjourned

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/tdGVfU

The State Council on Tuesday (29 November) adjourned till 27 December a case against the military institution to end the practice of virginity tests.The case was filed by a women who was subjected to a virginity test in military prison last March. The victim, Samira Ibrahim, was arrested by military police during a sit-in in Tahrir Square and was subject to a forced virginity test inside the military prison by unidentified military personnel.

Global: For big financial institutions, profit trumps women's rights

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/vM9P9i

This year, for the first time, the World Bank dedicated its 2012 annual flagship World Development Report to women as indispensable players in the global economy and launched a media campaign to 'think equal'. But while bold statements and glossy reports paint the picture of benevolent financial institutions throwing money behind the gender justice struggle, the paper trail of IFI investments leads elsewhere - down into mines and barren fields, where big business is reaping private profit at the expense of women's safety, equality and dignity.

South Africa: Rural farmers protest 'Climate Apartheid' in Durban

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/rzFiIF

Protesting outside the Durban climate talks, members of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly are expressing their frustration with international inaction on climate: 'We’ve come to join other rural women farmers from the southern African region,' said Thandiure Chidararume, a member of ActionAid, an international organisation that helped bring together this meeting of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly. The assembly unites women’s farming and agricultural unions and movements from around the world. The protesters, who also have the support of women’s movements in Latin America, do not believe that government negotiators represent their interests.

Africa: Human rights defenders more than ever at risk

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/tDQHcY

A series of interviews of human rights defenders from Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa has been released by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in a context of increasing harassment and obstacles to civil society activities on the African continent. Human rights defenders from Algeria, The Gambia and Guinea, interviewed on the occasion of the publication of the 2011 Annual Report of the Observatory in the framework of the 50th ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), report the main restrictions on the freedom of action of human rights non-governmental organisations in their respective countries.

Côte d'Ivoire: Gbagbo transferred to The Hague

2011-11-29

http://tgr.ph/uMOG5O

Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of the Ivory Coast has left the country for The Hague, where the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged crimes committed during post-election violence, an official has said. Gbagbo will become the first former head of state to be surrendered to the ICC.

Global: The age of internet censorship

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/sRLVjs

This Al Jazeera article and video looks at the issue of internet censorship. 'Google said that in the first half of 2011, governments requested private data on about 25,440 people from the internet search and advertising company. Eleven thousand of those requests came from the US government...The Electronic Frontier Foundation accuses US and European technology companies of selling surveillance equipment and software to countries including Thailand, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and China.'

Kenya: Security forces arbitrarily detaining people

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/uf129j

The Kenyan police and military should stop using illegal mass-round-ups and beatings as a substitute for proper police investigative work, Human Rights Watch said. Attacks by suspected al-Shabaab sympathizers on the military and civilians inside Kenya do not justify violating the rights of civilians.

South Sudan: Sweden runs into South Sudanese oilgate

2011-11-30

http://www.ips.org/africa/2011/11/sweden-runs-into-south-sudanese-oilgate/

Civil society leaders in South Sudan are closely watching a legal battle unfolding in Sweden, as prosecutors investigate an oil company accused of involvement in massive human rights abuses here. James Ninrew vividly remembers the day Sudan’s military attacked his community, which had the misfortune of living above vast oil reserves consigned to a consortium led by the Swedish oil giant, Lundin Oil. 'They used helicopter gunships to bomb houses,' he said. Such accusations form part of the basis of a report that has recently prompted Sweden’s public prosecutor, Magnus Elving, to launch an investigation that could lead to a criminal case against Lundin Oil.

Sudan: Five youth activists arrested in Sudan town

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/u6dwoC

At least five activists affiliated with the youth group Girifna were arrested Tuesday (29 November) afternoon in Omdurman, a city in Khartoum State. A member of the group, identified only by initials ME for fear of victimisation, said that among the arrested were leaders and founders of the group.

Sudan: Kenya’s ambassador expelled

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/ujCJV1

Sudan has ordered the expulsion of the Kenyan ambassador after a Kenyan judge issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's foreign ministry has said. The Kenyan ambassador to Sudan now has 72 hours to leave that country and subsequently the Sudanese ambassador in Kenya has also been ordered to return to Khartoum.

Zambia: Zambia ignores arrest call for Bush

2011-12-05

http://bit.ly/szi2PB

We will consider arresting George Bush when Amnesty International 'give us the facts', said Zambia President Michael Sata on Sunday shortly before he saw off the visiting US former president. The Zambian president also said 'it’s a coincidence' that Mr Bush and Zimbabwe long-time ruler Robert Mugabe were in Zambia at the same time. Sata was responding to questions from journalists at KK International Airport in the capital Lusaka about Amnesty International’s calls on Zambia to arrest Mr Bush for human rights violations during his 2001-2009 Presidency.

Eritrea: Eritreans flee From dictatorship to detention in Israel

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/rtYI9Y

Standing across the street from the American embassy in Tel Aviv, more than 200 Eritrean asylum seekers chanted 'Yes to justice! Yes to humanity!', and demanded international intervention to stop torture camps in the Egyptian Sinai. Protests by African asylum seekers in Israel are growing, in the face of increasingly tough policies by the Israelis. 'We’re here to stop this torture and to call the world to be aware of this,' said Habtom Mehari, a 30-year- old Eritrean asylum seeker, at the rally on 25 November.

Global: Remittance flows to developing countries exceed $350 billion in 2011

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tcLYCR

Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries are estimated to have reached $351 billion in 2011, up 8 per cent over 2010. For the first time since the global financial crisis, remittance flows to all six developing regions rose in 2011. Growth of remittances in 2011 exceeded our earlier expectations in four regions, especially in Europe and Central Asia (due to higher outward flows from Russia that benefited from high oil prices) and Sub-Saharan Africa (due to strong south-south flows and weaker currencies in some countries that attracted larger remittances).

Kenya: City demolitions highlight urban-rural aid gap

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/tX3HKo

Several demolitions of housing near airports in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have not only displaced hundreds of families but challenged the humanitarian response in urban emergencies. Amid criticism of the way the demolitions were carried out, humanitarian workers say relief aid for urban crises was often not pre-positioned, unlike in rural-based emergencies.

South Africa: 'Harsher regime' for asylum seekers

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/vGOGCU

Nearly half a million asylum seekers in South Africa may lose their right to earn a living or study while their refugee status is being determined after indications that the government plans to amend legislation governing those rights. An announcement on 23 November that Cabinet is 'reviewing' the minimum rights of immigrants, including the right to work and study, was followed by a media briefing two days later at which Mkuseli Apleni, Director General of the Department of Home Affairs, suggested that the asylum seeker system was being abused.

South Africa: Eritrean gets urgent order to process travel forms

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/uSzoz2

A refugee from Eritrea has obtained an urgent North Gauteng High Court order to force Home Affairs to supply him with application forms and to immediately process his application for travel documents so that he can attend a peace conference in Djibouti next month. Tsehaye Yoel Alem applied for a court order with the help of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) after being told Home Affairs no longer issued refugee travel documents as the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees no longer provided such documents. He said there was no certainty as to what Home Affairs was doing to reinstate the issuing of refugee travel documents and it in effect meant it was almost impossible for refugees like himself to travel outside SA.

Tanzania: No place called home

Urban Refugees in Tanzania

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/rNxXhp

To gain greater insight on the daily challenges faced by urban refugees, Asylum Access conducted a survey of 122 urban refugees in Dar es Salaam. The results are published in a report, 'No Place Called Home', which unveils a stark reality for this population. For example, only 3 per cent of those surveyed have a permit to live outside refugee camps. The remaining participants live in constant fear of deportation back to countries where they face persecution.

Latest edition: emerging powers news roundup

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/78411

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...
1. General

At South Africa climate meet, India fights for right to grow
For India, the battle on Kyoto Protocol at the Durban climate talks beginning on Monday boils down to ensuring the global community does not impose an unjust tax on its energy and growth. At the two-week long talks between 195 countries, the fate of Kyoto Protocol - already on a lifeline - will decide if India's citizens end up paying an unfairly higher price for energy, oil, gas, coal and renewables in the near future. It will also decide how much longer it might take for 4 million Indians living without power to see bulbs light up their villages
Read More

India, China urged to change stand at climate summit
A group of analysts and activists are urging emerging nations like India and China to change their stance at the U.N. climate summit that begins in Durban on Monday and be willing to consider binding commitments under a future climate regime. They also accused the Indian elite of “hiding behind the low carbon emissions of the poor.”
Read More

China calls for second commitment of Kyoto Protocol
The UN climate conference currently under way in Durban, South Africa, should clearly establish the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, the Chinese delegation said here on Monday. The second commitment should ensure that developed country parties to the Kyoto Protocol "should undertake quantified emission reduction commitments," said Wei Su, deputy head of the Chinese delegation attending the COP 17, formally the 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Read More

EU terms for Kyoto extension unfair: Chinese negotiator
The European Union's conditions to sign up for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol are "not fair" for developing countries, but China is open to negotiation, Su Wei, the nation's leading climate negotiator, said on Wednesday.
Read More

Brazil says BRICS offer conditional help to Europe
Major emerging economies will offer cash to help resolve Europe's debt crisis so long as they gain influence at the IMF and Europe does more to address its own problems, Brazil's economy chief said on Thursday. European leaders are scrambling for a definitive end to a spreading debt crisis that is dragging down global growth and could even spell the end of the 17-nation euro zone.
Read More

2. China in Africa

China-Africa trade volume reaches $122.2b first three quarters of 2011
The volume of trade between China and Africa has reached $122.2 billion during the first three quarters of 2011, the China Daily reports citing officials of China’s Ministry of Commerce. Shen Danyang, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press conference that the trade between the country and the continent rose 30% year-on-year to reach $122.2 billion during the first three quarters of 2011 as compared with the $126.9 billion recorded last year (2010).
Read More

China, EAC in new $500m trade, investment deal
China has entered into an agreement with the East African Community on economy, trade, investment and technical co-operation. Officials said the parties, led by EAC Secretary General Richard Sezibera and China Vice Minister for Commerce Jiang Yaoping, discussed priority projects in infrastructure worth over $500 million.
Read More

China expected to have investments in Africa private equity funds
China is seen as a latecomer in investing in Africa through the private equity funds, a strategy successfully used by sovereign wealth funds of countries like France and Germany that enables them to benefit from diversified investment returns in the continent. Managing Director of Institutional Fundraising at the Citadel Capital Stephen Murphy said it is time Chinese investors dipped their money in private equity funds in Africa to give them additional investment leverage in private sector in addition to the public sector contracts. "Investing in regional private equity funds will help the Chinese have a wider coverage of opportunities in the continent and generate more profits from the continent's high returns," said Murphy in Nairobi on Monday.
Read More

Industrial sector is main target of Chinese investment in Mozambique
China’s presence in the Mozambican economy has been on the increase and the Mozambican industrial sector is the main target of investments according to an analysis by Mozambique’s institute for Social and Economic Studies (IESE).
Read More

Ethiopia benefits from China's tariff policy
China-Africa Overseas Leather Factory in Ethiopia said on Sunday it is significantly benefited from the tariff-free policy of China for least developed countries (LDCs) that are exporting to China. "This policy helps us a lot because all of our products are for exporting. So it helps us to enter the international market and be competitive. Not only for us, it also encourages other investors to come to Ethiopia and invest here because they will be benefited a lot from this policy," said Yaecob Tadesse, the administrative manager of the company, which is situated in Sululta town, some 30 km north of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.
Read More

30 Journalists Leave for China
Thirty journalists from different local media houses will tomorrow leave for China to attend a 20-day training seminar organised under the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation. Addressing the journalists at the Chinese Embassy in Harare yesterday, Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Xin Shunkang said the seminar would present them with an opportunity to understand the political, economic, cultural and social development processes of China.
Read More

Help rebuild Africa China relationship, urges KK
FIRST Republican president Kenneth Kaunda has urged African diplomats accredited to China to help rebuild Africa-China relations. Dr Kaunda said here that China was an important partner in the development of the African continent. He said this at Diayutai State Guest House yesterday when he met Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other African diplomats accredited to China. Dr Kaunda said it was important for African diplomats to understand the role China could play in national development.
Read More

Donors need cooperative ties with China on Africa: Blair
The world's major donor nations and organizations need to build a cooperative relationship with China to promote development aid in Africa, the continent most dependent on global assistance, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday. "It's important that we are trying to get the right cooperation partnership with China in Africa," Blair told reporters on the sidelines of a global forum on ways to make aid work better and more transparent.
Read More

Botswana, China vow deeper cooperation in education, science, culture
Botswana Vice President Mompati Merafhe met with visiting Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong here on Thursday, with both sides vowing to expand exchanges in the fields of education, science and culture. In their meeting at the Office of the President, Liu said the past 36 years have witnessed the healthy development in political and economic relations between the two countries, and that Botswana has already become one of China's important economic partner in Africa.
Read More

New AU headquarters passes initial inspection
Construction of the new headquarters of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia, was recently completed and the structure has passed an internal quality inspection, said Zeng Huacheng, a special councilor to the AU headquarters project from China's Ministry of Commerce.
Read More

3. India in Africa

India Inc looks to invest overseas
What started as a buzz in corporate boardrooms is gathering momentum as India Inc, seized of policy and operational bottlenecks in setting up projects in India, is now looking to invest abroad in a big way. The investments are no longer chasing just stressed assets in the US and Europe or for that matter mining resources in Australia but is now focused on greenfield plants around a larger geography encompassing the middle east, Africa, and south east Asia.
Read More

50 million Africans dial Airtel
The implementation of India’s low-cost telecom model in the African market seems to have paid dividends for the country’s largest company in the sector, Bharti Airtel, with the company crossing 50 million subscribers in mobile operations. Bharti acquired Zain’s assets in 16 African countries in June 2010, with a subscriber base of 42 million, brought down to an active user base of 36 mn. In these 17 months, it has got 14 million users, on the back of low and innovative rate plans, it said. It has 173 million subscribers in the Indian market.
Read More

4. In Other Emerging Powers News

China and India to join aid partnership on new terms
China and India have agreed to join a global partnership on aid effectiveness but on vague terms that cast doubt on their willingness to stick by principles set by traditional donors. After negotiations that went late into Thursday night, the key parties signed off on a final outcome document that bridged what seemed to be irreconcilable approaches between emerging donors and traditional aid givers from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Read More

Brazil wants to consolidate development partnership with Angola
Brazil’s minister for Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Fernando Pimentel said Wednesday in Luanda that his country wanted to remain an active partner in Angola’s development in particular and Africa in general.
Read More

SA, Brazil discuss reduced dollar role in bilateral trade
A delegation from South Africa’s State-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa has arrived in Brasília to hold talks with the Brazilian National Bank for Social and Economic Development about the possibility of financing trade between the two countries using their respective local currencies, the rand and real, instead of the dollar or euro.
Read More

BRICS forum opens in S. China to promote city-to-city ties
The first BRICS Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum opened Friday in the beach-side resort of Sanya, focusing on deepening cooperation between the world's five major emerging economies. Politicians, scholars and business people from the five BRICS countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- will meet at the two-day forum to foster communication and discuss shared concerns amid global uncertainties.
Read More

DRC: Congo votes

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/uLRq0e

Over the past week, it's been hard to find articles not looking at the DRC elections through the lens of fear and/of violence. This is in contrast to how Congolese citizen journalists have reported on the elections on their blogs, in their local papers, or on their facebook pages, says blog Africa is a Country. For reports by local journalists outside Kinshasa, read Now AfriCAN (North Kivu), Local Voices (Bunyakiri, South Kivu), Mutaani FM (also in Kivu), Radio Okapi (MONUSCO’s website and radio channel) and Le Congo.

DRC: Opposition rejects early results

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vlqJE7

Opposition parties in Democratic Republic of Congo have rejected partial results released by the electoral commission giving incumbent President Joseph Kabila an early lead in the vote count from the November 28 presidential election. In a joint statement signed by major parties, including that of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, the opposition on Saturday cited irregularities and said the electoral commission was 'psychologically preparing the population for fraud'.

Egypt: Islamists seek to extend gains in run-off vote

2011-12-05

http://bit.ly/snHBSP

Egyptians voted on Monday in run-off contests for parliamentary seats, with the Muslim Brotherhood's party trying to extend its lead over hardline Islamists and liberal parties in a political landscape redrawn by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) is set to take the most seats in Egypt's first free election in six decades, bolstering its hand in any struggle with the ruling army council for influence over the most populous Arab nation.

Egypt: Problems with vote counts, ballots threaten integrity of the results, says activist

2011-12-05

http://bit.ly/vtyzNc

With stamped ballots piled on the desk in front of her, rights activist Ghada Shahbandar, said: 'As long as I have these obtained in my hands, I cannot trust the final declared results.' Speaking at a press conference held Saturday by the Egyptian Coalition for Election Observation, Shahbandar of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights highlighted several incidents that demonstrated incompetence by the judicial committee supervising the elections. The stamped ballots, for instance, should only be found inside polling stations and vote counting centers and heavily guarded throughout the process.

Global: Stop Land-Grabbing Now!

Statement of Mali meeting

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/viFViS

'We, women and men peasants, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and their allies, who gathered together in Nyeleni from 17-19 November 2011, have come from across the world for the first time to share with each other our experiences and struggles against land-grabbing. One year ago we supported the Kolongo Appeal from peasant organizations in Mali, who have taken the lead in organising local resistance to the take-over of peasants' lands in Africa. Now we came to Nyeleni in response to the Dakar Appeal, which calls for a global alliance against land-grabbing. For we are determined to defend food sovereignty, the commons and the rights of small scale food providers to natural resources.'

Kenya: Enforce constitution or resign, CJ tells Kenya leaders

2011-12-05

http://bit.ly/udXbmp

State officers must enforce the Constitution fully or honourably resign, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga told the Kofi Annan meeting on Kenya progress Monday. Speaking when he gave a key note address at the two-day meeting, Dr Mutunga said complying with Kenya's new Constitution was not an option, however unpalatable some officers may find its provisions.

South Africa: COP17 civil society statement on conflict during the Global Day of Action

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/78427

'On Saturday 3 December, the mid-point of COP 17, about 12,000 people from across the continent and the world gathered in Durban to demand climate justice and unite against climate change. The march was largely peaceful, with divergent activist groups uniting to demand action from governments around the world. There was, however, disruption during the course of the march in which a group of about 300 protesters, dressed in official COP17 volunteer uniforms tore up placards, physically threatened and attacked activists participating in the march.'
COP17 civil society statement on conflict during the Global Day of Action

Durban 4 December 2011 – On Saturday 3 December, the mid-point of COP
17, about 12,000 people from across the continent and the world
gathered in Durban to demand climate justice and unite against climate
change.

The march was largely peaceful, with divergent activist groups uniting
to demand action from governments around the world. The march
culminated in the handing over of memoranda of understanding to UNFCCC
COP17 President Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko and UNFCCC Executive Secretary
Christian Figueres.

There was, however, disruption during the course of the march in which
a group of about 300 protesters, dressed in official COP17 volunteer
uniforms tore up placards, physically threatened and attacked
activists participating in the march. In spite of heavy police
presence throughout the march, including mounted police, riot police,
air-patrol and snipers, and requests to address this disruption,
police did not take any action. This was a major failure of the police
to act to prevent this group from destabilising the march and injuring
other activists.

The disruptive group persistently attempted to take up positions at
the head of the march, but agreed to retreat to the back following
negotiations between march organisers and the professed leader of this
group. However they found their way back to the middle of the march
where they continued to cause disruption.

The disruptive group wore uniforms distinguishing them as city
volunteers for COP 17, in green eThekwini tracksuits with city
branding and emblems, but acknowledged themselves to be ANC Youth
League supporters, displaying pro-Zuma and anti-Malema placards.

As volunteers paid daily by the municipality of eThekwini, it is of
grave concern that their intimidation of peaceful marchers was left
unchallenged by those in authority. As such, the city manager and
mayor, together with the UNFCCC must answer to the involvement of this
group and the failure of authorities to address this unnecessary
violence.

The need for action on climate change is urgent, and civil society
stands united against climate change. But we also stand against
violence and intimidation of any kind, which impacts on our right to
assembly. Organisations were invited to attend the march on the
understanding that it would be a peaceful protest. Every individual is
welcome to civil society marches, but we are deeply concerned about
whether this group will return to other peaceful assemblies, and the
city needs to take urgent action to make sure that such
destabilisation does not re-occur.

The threatening behaviour during the march yesterday constitutes an
attack on democracy and cannot be tolerated.

Civil society groups are calling a press conference today regarding
the infringement of democratic rights of activists to protest.

Time: 5:30pm
Venue: UKZN, Howard College Campus, The People’s Space, Memorial Tower
Building, L1

Contact Information

C17 Global Day of Action Enquiries:
Desmond D’Sa
GDA subcommittee convenor
031 461 1991
083 982 6939
sdcea3@mail.ngo.za

C17 Media Enquiries:
Laura Tyrer
Media and Communications subcommittee convenor
laura@c17.org.za

General Enquiries:
Siziwe Khanyile
Coordination subcommittee convenor
siziwe@groundwork.org.za

South Africa: Tensions run high as climate change march is disrupted

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tDFh5b

ANC supporters dressed in the COP17 volunteers' tracksuits tossed stones and water bottles at members of civil society organisations that were marching in protest against climate change, the corporate-funded lack of progress at COP17 and other green issues in Durban on Saturday. At around 11am, as the protesters were still congregating at Botha's Park near Warwick Triangle in Durban, a phalanx of volunteers joined the march, in 'support of COP17' and 'in defence of President Zuma', according to some of the 200 or so volunteers who spoke to the Mail & Guardian.

Tunisia: Islamists and secularists face off

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/sCEnvc

Thousands of Tunisian Islamists and secularists staged parallel protests outside the interim parliament in a dispute over how big a role Islam should play in society after the country's 'Arab Spring' uprising, and subsequent election. Tensions have been running high between the two camps since the revolt in January scrapped a ban on parties that advocate political Islam, paving the way for a moderate Islamist party to come to power at the head of a coalition government.

Kenya: Mutunga exposes fraud in courts

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/v2BdkK

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has revealed corruption at the heart of the judiciary and ordered a stop to construction of court buildings until an audit is done. He took journalists on a tour of the Milimani courts, opened only in February, but which have in some instances degenerated with collapsed ceiling and malfunctioning locks. The cost of refurbishing the former income tax department building shot from Sh600 million to Sh1 billion and it took eight years to be completed - after a three-year delay.

Tanzania: Tanzania urged to take action over BAE bribery claim

2011-11-30

http://bbc.in/t0e65S

A cross-party parliamentary group is urging the Tanzanian government to prosecute those guilty of corruption or bribery over the sale of a BAE Systems air traffic control package. The company, despite not being found guilty of corruption, has agreed to pay nearly £30m compensation to Tanzania. The International Development Committee also wants any others involved in the deal to face prosecution.

Africa: Bankers don't see CFA currency devaluation

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/surFZ7

Cameroon's finance minister and Central Africa's top central banker both said on Monday there would be no devaluation of the CFA franc currency used by 14 states in Africa, denying market rumours. The CFA franc is currently tied to the euro at a fixed exchange rate of one euro to 655.957 CFA francs, with the peg guaranteed by the French treasury.

Africa: EU banks refuse loans to firms doing business with Africa

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/upmwSo

Some European banks are now refusing to lend to firms trading with Africa, threatening growth in the world's poorest continent, a senior official of the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Tuesday. The reluctance of some banks to make Africa-related loans as Europe's own debt crisis turns them increasingly risk-averse is an ominous sign as it repeats one aspect of the 2008 credit crisis.

Global: Aid dependency on the decline

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/uuy8Ei

Poor countries have depended on rich nations to supplement their sector budget without which millions of people would have continued to live in abject poverty. Have the years of funding made these countries any less dependent? Sector budget is aid that is allocated to developing a country’s particular development priorities, which could be in the areas of health, education or even sanitation and housing.

Global: Civil society tells World Bank to clean up

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/uplw6Q

Civil society organisations from around the world released a report at the Durban climate talks that highlights the contradictions inherent in the World Bank Group’s presence at the talks. While the Bank seeks a leading role in climate finance, it has been unable to finalize an energy strategy and continues to finance dirty energy projects. The report titled, 'Unclear on the Concept: How Can the World Bank Group Lead on Climate Finance without an Energy Strategy?' finds that 'in spite of its climate-friendly rhetoric, the WBG continues to disproportionately fund dirty energy projects. In fact, nearly half of energy lending - more than US$15 billion - went to fossil fuels over the past four years.'

Global: Forum strives to make aid effective

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/tO0Znz

Despite broad agreement that international development cooperation must become effective in order to achieve its objective of closing the rich-poor gap, the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), which kicked off on 29 November in Busan, South Korea, may fall short of marking a genuine 'turning point' for the effectiveness agenda. Some 3,000 delegates including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, high-level government officials from around the world and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are attending the Forum.

Global: Worldwide rebellion and global chaos

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tuFPHX

The global revolt underway has shifted the whole political landscape and the terms of the discourse, writes William I. Robinson, a professor of sociology, global studies, and Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. 'Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into the quagmire of their own making. It is noteworthy that those struggling around the world have been shown a strong sense of solidarity and are in communications across whole continents. Just as the Egyptian uprising inspired the US Occupy movement, the latter has been an inspiration for a new round of mass struggle in Egypt. What remains is to extend transnational coordination and move towards transnationally-coordinated programs.'

Malawi: IMF experts in Malawi to help revive economy

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/sVFxlN

Technical experts from global lenders the International Monetary Fund arrived in Malawi recently for a mission to offer technical assistance that seeks to revive a stalled programme meant to cushion foreign exchange shortages. Ruby Randall, an IMF resident representative told reporters the team, co-led by Etibar Jafarow and Nadia Rendak, comprises monetary capital markets and legal experts whose findings will be 'expected to help authorities implement key extended credit facility (ECF) programme commitments'.

South Africa: The ANC's resource nationalism

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vRATro

The ANC will push for a new interventionist economic nationalism, rather than a simplistic nationalisation of the country's $2.5-trillion in resources not yet mined, which was what ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema had wanted. The Mail & Guardian has learned from various sources that central to this plan is to force competitive input prices through taxes and other penalties and for state institutions to take bigger stakes in companies that hold key strategic infrastructure minerals.

Sudan: Southern oil shipments halted

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/rDsqR6

The Sudanese Ministry of Petroleum has suspended the exportation of the South Sudanese oil through north Sudan till an agreement is reached between the two governments on transit fees, the acting Petroleum Minister in Sudan, Ali Ahmed Osman, has said.

West Africa: EU acting 'aggressively and divisively' on EPAs

Joint statement by The West African Civil Society Platform on the Cotonou Agreement

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/uTvLzm

'There is nothing new in this aggressive and bullying stance of the EU in the EPA process. The last Conference of African Ministers of Trade held in Kigali once again officially registered its condemnation of the EU’s approach and methods in the EPA negotiations. It is in this context that we welcome the statements by Ghana’s Minister of Trade as well as the ECOWAS Director of Trade to the effect that member-states will continue to work to reverse the multiple conflicting trade regimes that the EU is imposing in West Africa through the EPA process, and that genuine developmental outcomes rather than arbitrary deadlines are the appropriate and legitimate reference point for ECOWAS in the EPA negotiations.'

Africa: On the gutting of the Global Fund

Remarks by Stephen Lewis, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/uO3elG

'Just think of these figures: The third quarter profits for Morgan Stanley $2.2 billion; for Wells Fargo $4.1 billion; for J.P. Morgan Chase $4.6 billion; Bank of America $6.2 billion...these were the banking outfits that helped to fashion the near-depression. Remember all these figures are this year, well after the fiscal calamity of three years ago. Or take the oil companies in the third quarter of 2011: BP, despite paying out billions in compensation for the oil spill, made $5.1 billion; Shell made $7 billion; Mobil Exxon came in at $10.3 billion. And we can’t find money for the Global Fund? Is there any better definition of the 1%? And I haven’t even enumerated the restoration of corporate bonuses. Do you see what’s at work here? In the reckless haste to coddle the multinationals, global public health has taken a merciless hit. And here’s something else to think about. Not a one of these companies has given a direct nickel to the coffers of the Global Fund, despite endless requests that they do so. And BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil are all members of the Global Business Coalition Health (GBCHealth), successor to the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS.'

Africa: ‘Nothing at Busan for African Women, Children’

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/vQWUj6

Although there has been considerable progress towards reducing maternal and infant mortality, millions of women and children in Africa are still in need of better health services, food and sanitation. Some 250,000 mothers are estimated to die in Africa every year, leaving behind infants with reduced chances of making it beyond five years of age. Statistics by Save the Children, an international non-government organisation, reveal that African countries claim nine out of ten bottom places in a worldwide maternal health ranking that involves 164 countries.

Egypt: A brief history of field hospitals in Tahrir Square

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/v01dwi

Since Saturday, 19 November, more than 12 makeshift hospitals have been established in Tahrir Square and floods of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals have swarmed in to offer their services, writes Amani Massoud in relation to the voluntary medical effort to treat those injured in clashes against military rule. 'The swiftness and efficiency with which the hospitals are established and managed bears little resemblance to the make-shift hospitals characteristic of the initial uprising in January. Nine months of experience that followed the beginning of the revolution has made hard-core emergency medics out of young doctors.'

Global: Health co-benefits of climate change mitigation

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/uz6eL1

Evaluation of the health impacts of climate mitigation strategies is critical to informed decisions that will attain the greatest combined gain for health, well-being and sustainable development.
This report from the World Health Organisation considers the scientific evidence regarding possible health gains and, where relevant, health risks of climate change mitigation measures in the residential housing sector. The report is one in a Health in the Green Economy series led by WHO’s Department of Public Health and Environment. Other reports in the series focus on transport, household energy in developing countries, agriculture and health care facilities.

Kenya: Crisis as doctors plan strike

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/vR84Y1

Kenyan doctors are set to go on strike from December 5, saying talks with the government over their terms of service had stalled. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union accused the government of dragging its feet in starting negotiations. The 2,300 doctors in public hospitals issued a 19-day strike notice. They are demanding a 300 per cent salary increase and hardship allowances.

Kenya: Men’s group fights stigma through farming

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/uw2jpL

In 2007, Robert Amakobe went public and declared that he was HIV positive. He formed the Elwesero Men’s Support Group with other men who were public about their HIV status. Theirs was probably the first men’s HIV support group in Kenya. It has become an important force in diffusing the stigma around HIV and AIDS in their community, reports Farm Radio Weekly.

South Africa: Seeking healthcare complex for transgenders

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/rDct63

'I am a woman trapped in a man’s body. People ask me whether I am a woman and I answer, no. I have no feelings to women, I prefer relationships with men.' Gulam Peterson sighs and takes a long drag from his cigarette: 'Transgender sex workers have a tough time. They often get beaten up and raped by so-called clients insisting on a full house. Going to the police is not even an option. Going to a clinic or a hospital even more so,' says the tall, lanky man, dressed today in khaki slacks and a body-hugging denim jacket.

Ethiopia: Gay gathering sparks row between church and state

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/u6c3se

A meeting organised by an African gay lobby group ahead of an AIDS conference in Ethiopia has sparked a rare spat between the government and religious groups. Religious leaders demand the cancellation of the gathering scheduled for Saturday, organised by African Men for Sexual Health and Rights, saying it would violate the country's conservative culture. State officials, however, are unwilling to budge having lobbied hard to win hosting rights for the influential 16th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa due to start a day later.

Nigeria: Senate outlaws same-sex marriage

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/s52cJC

The Nigerian senate on 29 November passed a bill prohibiting same-sex marriage. Termed Same-Sex Prohibition Bill, it stipulates a 10-year jail term for offenders. Announcing the passage of the bill, Senate president David Mark said that marriage between same sexes is alien to the Nigerian tradition and against all religious morals.

Uganda: Call for materials on David Kato

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/um8aEe

This is a call for materials for a biographical book on the life, work and legacy of David Kisule Kato – the deceased Ugandan human rights defender for sexual (and other) minorities. The biography is being developed and written by researchers in the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Project of the Faculty of Law at Makerere University – Kampala. We are interested in a range of materials including essays, fiction, poetry, web blogs, art, crafts, photographs, film, documentaries, speeches, diaries, letters and other correspondence, music, academic publications, etc. that reflect any aspect of the life and work of David Kato.

Africa: Carbon trading in Africa

A critical review

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tudgWL

This critical review of carbon trading in Africa includes analyses of the context and trends in the carbon market in Africa; offset projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa; and carbon finance and regulation. It shows how carbon trading provides new and different ways of profiting at the expense of a deteriorating climate.

Africa: The trans-African caravan of hope

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tSxp2I

Brandishing a plea for developed countries to make good their promises to reduce carbon emissions, 300 farmers, youths and activists took the scenic route to the COP17 conference in Durban, travelling more than 7,000km from Burundi in 17 days, through 10 eastern and southern African countries, aboard a convoy of buses draped in various national flags. The aim of the Trans-African Caravan of Hope, organized by the Pan African Climate Change Justice Alliance, was to gather information about and raise awareness of the impact of climate change on those least responsible for causing it.

Global: Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

New panacea or a really bad idea?

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vnwVkt

BECCS, or biomass with CCS, has recently gained attention in national as well as international
high level discussions on climate, as a supposedly viable means to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. But the underlying premises for these claims are unfounded and dangerous, says this briefing paper from Biofuelwatch. 'Capturing carbon and pumping it underground itself requires considerable energy consuming from 10-40% of the power generated at the power station where it is applied, and hence increasing energy demand and cost of construction and operation.'

Global: Developing country mitigation greater than developed countries

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/tMVUKb

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has recently issued a report that examines four recent detailed studies of countries’ mitigation pledges under the Cancun Agreements, for the purpose of comparing developed (Annex 1) country pledges to developing (non-Annex 1) country pledges. It finds that there is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges.

Global: Financialization, commodification and carbon

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vzyIFI

The carbon markets operating today under the aegis of the UN, the EU, and a variety of state and non-state actors are the default international approach to the climate crisis. Reflecting, extending and deepening neoliberalism, these markets grew rapidly until 2008, when they began to stumble, following the financial crash, the 2010 failure of the US Congress to pass proposed carbon trading legislation, uncertainty about the future of UN climate treaties, and a recent spate of criminal and other scandals. This article explains how carbon commodities work through a process of radical disembedding - in particular, through disembedding the climate issue from the historical question of how to organise for structural, long-term change aimed at keeping remaining fossil fuels in the ground.

Global: Forest-dependent communities lobby for end of REDD+

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/tg9Qh9

Organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits. REDD+ has been touted as a global scheme to conserve forests, enhance carbon stocks and support sustainable forest management. 'It is a system where you pour a lot of money into forests that will attract powerful international investors who will make big profits,' warned Simone Lovera, managing director of the Global Forest Coalition.

Global: The people's struggle and the struggle for the environment:

An interview with Fred Magdoff

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/u3lw8I

Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University. As climate crisis threatens millions of people around the world, the latest round of climate talks, COP 17, began in Durban on 28 November. Farooque Chowdhury interviewed Fred Magdoff for http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org about what strategies and tactics people can employ to tackle climate crisis at COP 17 and beyond.

South Africa: Financing battle emerges at climate change talks

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/uRD0K3

International climate negotiators were at odds Tuesday 29 November on how to raise billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with global warming. Details of the tussle over the funding emerged as the UN's weather agency reported that 2011 was tied as the 10th hottest year since records began in 1850. Putting the final touches on what's known as the Green Climate Fund is a top issue at the 192-party UN climate conference.

South Africa: The global day on climate justice in pictures and words

2011-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/78478

The blog Climate Connections has a photo gallery of the Global Day of Action Against UN Conference of Polluters (COP) in Durban, while the Durban Climate Justice blog has a commentary from Patrick Bond about how the protest turned out.

South Africa: The Kyoto protocol is in grave danger

2011-12-05

http://bit.ly/u6VMhc

The opening statements in the Durban climate talks sounded more like conclusions, writes Nnimmo Bassey on the New Internationalist blog. Negotiators will be grappling with two key issues - the first is whether to have a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol or whether to bury it and raise a Durban Mandate in its place. 'A whole lot of the foot dragging here is about money. Avoiding responsibility means holding tight to one’s money bag. And the rich countries, reeling from the financial crisis, do not want to take any step in the direction of doing the right thing.'

South Africa: Wanted! A climate deal with meaningful steps

Memorandum from the Rural Women's Assembly to the UNFCCC, the government of the Republic of South Africa and the Governments of Africa

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/78428

'We demand that climate change solutions put indigenous knowledge systems at the centre of policies to promote biodiversity, rehabilitate our ecosystems and rebuild the livlihoods destroyed by colonialism, apartheid and economic imperialism. Rural women are the holders of indigenous knowledge - our marginalisation from economic production, scientific knowledge generation and social systems has resulted in the steady loss of such knowledge to Africa, thereby making us more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.'
Memorandum from the Rural Women's Assembly to the UNFCCC, the government
of the Republic of South Africa and the Governments of Africa

We the Rural Women's Assembly of Southern Africa, meeting in Durban on the event of the 17th Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC in Durban from 30 November to 5 December 2011 demand that governments take the following immediate steps to address the clear and present danger posed to rural communities by the climate crisis.

1. A climate deal that will take meaningful steps to halt the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions. Historical emitters who are responsible for 75% of GHGs must face trade and investment sanctions if they refuse to cut emissions, particularly from African governments, as Africa has contributed least to climate change, but is the worst affected.

2. We demand proper recognition of women's critical role in fighting climate change and protecting livelihoods and the environment despite widespread violation of their equal right to land. Equal rights to land and natural resources is critical to fight climate change. As the Rural Women's Assembly we demand that governments implement the principle of 50/50 land to women through a radical programme of land redisribution and agrarian reform.

3. Women produce 80 per cent of the food consumed by households in Africa. Seventy per cent of Africa's 600 million people are rural. Financial support for women farmers must be commensurate to their numbers and crucial role. We stress that adaptation strategies and building resilience starts at the household level. Governments must address the crisis in the care economy in order to build resilence to climate change. As women we demand that 50 per cent of funding training and other support to agriculture must go to women farmers secured by a special allocation within the Green Climate Fund and public budgets.

4. We demand that climate change solutions put indigenous knowledge systems at the centre of policies to promote biodiversity, rehabilitate our ecosystems and rebuild the livlihoods destroyed by colonialism, apartheid and economic imperialism. Rural women are the holders of indigenous knowledge--our marginalisation from economic production, scientific knowledge generation and social systems has resulted in the steady loss of such knowledge to Africa, thereby making us more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

5. We demand an end to false climate solutions which are resulting in a deterioration of our environments, the destruction of marine life as well as land and resource grabs and the take over of food systems by corporations and speculators. We reject the participation of Africa in carbon markets, GMO projects and biofuels farming. Climate change can only be addressed by a change in our current economic system which encourages unsustainable resource extraction and consumption.

We commit ourselves to continue forward with the struggle against the injustices of climate change and build our movement to end the shameful marginalisation of rural women. We will continue to strive for the recreation of equitable vibrant, prosperous and healthy rural communities.

Signed on this day of 4 November 2011
Rural Womens Assembly

Contact details
Constance Mogale, Land Access Movement of South Africa
Tel: +27825590632
Mercia Andrews, Trust for Community Outreach and Education
Tel: +27823683429

Further contact details available from www.lamosa.org.za

Africa: China to look to Africa for food, says study

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/w4eRwe

China will increasingly look to Africa over the next decade as the world's most populous nation seeks to ensure it has sufficient food supplies, according to a study. While China has is recent years turned to Africa to secure energy and raw material resources to fuel its rapidly-growing economy, it will soon be for food commodities, according to Standard Bank research analysts Simon Freemantle and Jeremy Stevens.

Africa: No agriculture, no deal

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vtmgkI

Fears of what climate change will do for African agriculture are real and in southern Africa farmers are taking action to ensure that negotiators at 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) in Durban get the message. The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) – granted observer status at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) session – wants the global negotiations to put agriculture firmly on the climate change agenda and establish a work programme that will outline and coordinate necessary responses such as a specific allocation to the sector under the Green Climate Fund.

Africa: Safeguards failing to protect customary rights during large-scale land acquisitions

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/unktaa

Legislation and practices aiming to safeguard customary land rights are largely failing to give real decision-making authority to communities affected by large-scale land acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa, says a recent report by the Center for International Forestry Research. This has seriously undermined the widely anticipated benefits from the recent surge in land-based investments for food, fuel and fiber on the continent.

Mali: A global alliance emerges in West Africa

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/vfdgiR

Early morning on day one of the first peasant-organised international conference to stop land grabbing held in Nyéléni, Mali, delegates from more than 30 countries took their seats for the opening ceremony. Delegates strategized late into the nights, resolving to make land rights a reality. On the final day, both exhausted and energized, they read the fruition of their work - the Final Declaration to Stop Land Grabbing.

Mozambique: Land grabs expose hypocrisy of large scale land transfers to private investors

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/t8Em3M

Civil society in Mozambique has been actively engaging among themselves, with the state, and with investors to improve large scale land transfer governance. The initiatives underway range from: a land forum that brings together the various stakeholders to discuss land governance issues; community land delimitation initiatives by the Rural Mutual Support Organisation (ORAM); more extreme actions where communities have uprooted investors’ eucalyptus plantations and successfully renegotiated the return of their subsistence production land from an investor.

Tanzania: Land deal opposed by US environment group

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/texrlL

A leading US environmental group is opposing the planned purchase of 325,000 hectares of land in Tanzania by an American company. Tanzania’s parliament is debating the government’s willingness to lease the land in the Rukwa and Kigoma regions to Agrisol Energy Tanzania Ltd, which is backed by a consortium of US investors. Opponents charge that the deal amounts to a 'land grab' that would result in the displacement of 160,000 refugees from Burundi, some of whom have lived on the land for 40 years.

Burundi: Muzzling the media over the Gatumba massacre

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/tjDCfj

The Burundi Security Council has recommended that the president impose sanctions against media and civil society groups who made comments over September’s massacre in a Gatumban bar that claimed the lives of more than 39 people. 'We recommend the empowered authorities take remedial measures or sanctions against the media and civil society groups who violated the law,' said Major General Pontien Gaciyubwenge, the Burundian minister of defence.

Côte d'Ivoire: Justice pins Gbagbo, but not yet Ouattara's forces

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vs12gp

This week, former Ivory Coast ruler Laurent Gbagbo was extradited to the Hague to account for alleged human rights violations before the International Criminal Court. Justice appears to be slower in coming to rival fighters loyal to current President Alassane Ouattara. According to Committee to Protect Journalism research, Ouattara's forces have been involved in the deaths of two journalists, most recently Gilles Tutsi Murris Dabé.

Côte d'Ivoire: Opposition journalists detained for insulting President Ouattara

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/t9SK9f

Two journalists and an administrator for the opposition newspaper 'Notre Voie' have been held by police since they were arrested on 24 November for allegedly publishing false information on President Alassane Ouattara. A Media Foundation for West Africa correspondent reported that publisher César Etou and political desk chief Boga Sivori were arrested in connection with a 21 November article that claimed President Ouattara had acquired luxury Mercedes Benz cars for himself and members of his cabinet.

Cote d’Ivoire: Three journos arrested

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/uZ5Nnp

Three journalists have been arrested and detained in Abidjan prison on charges of 'incitement to theft, pillaging and destruction of public properties through the media'.

Eritrea: Solomon Abera, who voiced end of Eritrean free press, dies

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/v2jykr

The name Solomon Abera will forever be etched in the collective memory of Eritrea's press corps. On 18 September 2001, as the world focused its attention on the terrorist attacks on the United States, the government of Eritrea borrowed Abera's voice to sound the death knell, on state-controlled airwaves, of the Red Sea nation's independent press. Shortly after Abera read the announcement, the government rounded up leading independent newspaper editors and a dozen ruling-party dissidents calling for democratic reform - all of whom have disappeared in custody. On 2 December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said they learned that Solomon Abera, who lived in exile in Germany after fleeing government censorship and intimidation in 2005, was no more.

Rwanda: Draft penal code flawed

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/skUFhk

ARTICLE 19 says it has analysed the provisions of the Draft Penal Code for Rwanda (Draft Penal Code) that engage the rights to freedom of expression and information, to assess their compatibility with international standards. 'With this focus, ARTICLE 19 finds the reviewed provisions to be fundamentally flawed and incompatible with Rwanda’s obligations under international law. The bill represents a significant regression in protections for the right to freedom of expression and information in Rwanda.'

Somalia: Campaign of intimidation against journalists' union leaders condemned

2011-12-01

http://bit.ly/rGJPGR

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has asked the authorities in the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia to end the campaign of intimidation and harassment of leaders of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), an IFJ affiliate. The Federation was reacting to news that NUSOJ organising Secretary in Mogadishu was summoned by police for questioning over the union's activities in the country.

South Africa: ConCourt passes the buck on Zimbabwe report

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/v1hEDO

The Constitutional Court has directed a Mail & Guardian application to have a South African government report on the 2002 Zimbabwe general elections made public, back to the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for further consideration. This decision, says the blog Writing Rights, shows the fragility of legality and the rule of law should the Constitutional Court become pro-executive or pro-wealth rather than stand fearlessly on the side of the Constitution and the people’s right to know.

DRC: Arms embargo, sanctions renewed

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/sizXdf

The Security Council has agreed to extend by another year the arms embargo and other sanctions it has imposed against armed rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for nearly a decade. In a resolution adopted unanimously, the 15-member Council extended the sanctions through 30 November 2012 and asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to renew the mandate of the group of experts monitoring these measures and to appoint a sixth expert – on natural resources – to the team.

East Africa: Kenya, Eritrea take their Somalia quarrel to the UN

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/vHu2v8

Just days after Asmara called for reprimand against Kenya for associating her with Somali rebel group Al-Shabaab, Kenya has filed a case before the UN Security Council's sanctions committee calling for investigations into Eritrea's alleged support to the insurgents. Kenya's UN Permanent Representative Macharia Kamau filed the case days after the Eritrean Foreign minister Osman Saleh wrote to the Council, calling for independent investigations into Kenya's accusations that it was arming the Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Egypt: Officials refuse to sign for teargas imports

2011-11-29

http://bit.ly/rzfCJV

The arrival of seven and a half tons of tear gas to Egypt’s Suez port created conflict after the responsible officials at the port refused to sign and accept it for fear it would be used to crackdown on Egyptian protesters. Local news sites published documents regarding the shipment showing that the cargo that arrived in 479 barrels from the United States was scheduled to be delivered to the ministry of interior.

Global: Anti-terrorism legislation, impediments to conflict transformation

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/rsGr93

This Berghof Conflict Research paper, ‘Anti-terrorism Legislation: Impediments to Conflict Transformation’, reviews the ambivalent impact of terrorist ‘blacklisting’ regimes on peace processes with non-state armed groups, and argues that when applied unwisely, they might interfere with efforts to find a political solution to asymmetric intra-state conflicts. Indeed, the political nature and inconsistent application of terrorist proscription tends to blur the distinction between legal and unlawful political activism, encourage state repression of unarmed dissidents, and fuel radicalism.

Libya: Overthrow new Libyan government, says Qaddafi's daughter

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/w1Trwl

Muammar Qaddafi's daughter has urged Libyans to overthrow their new rulers, possibly violating the terms of her exile in Algeria. In an audio message broadcast on Syria's al-Rai television station, Aisha Qaddafi called for a revolt against the men who overthrew her father, the government she said 'arrived with the planes of NATO'.

Sudan: Fighting flares in disputed Sudan region

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/vTmofK

Fighting has erupted in a disputed border region between Sudan and South Sudan, with the Sudanese army claiming a strategic victory in its offensive against rebels in the state of South Kordofan. The army said on Saturday it had captured camps on a key supply route after deadly clashes. South Kordofan and Blue Nile states served as the ninth and tenth divisions of the southern rebel forces during the decades-long civil war between south and north, but the peace pact that ended the conflict placed the areas they fought for in the north.

Swaziland: Opposition to military spending grows

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/syBqZT

Swaziland spends 4.7 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on paying, equipping and barracking the 3,000 soldiers in its army, and now parliament has passed a US$8 million supplementary budget for the force, provoking a rare public reaction in questioning the role or even the need for an army in view of the deepening economic crisis.

Uganda: Fresh plunder claims of Congo minerals

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/sW7w0K

The Central African Republic and DR Congo have accused the UPDF hunting down LRA rebels in the two countries of allegedly involving in illegal extraction of timber, gold, diamond and other gems. This is contained in a report by the Brussels based International Crisis Group. The Ugandan military reacted angrily to the accusations, describing the report as a 'hogwash' writing tinged with accounts by 'racist armchair' researchers.

Mozambique: News reports and clippings

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/rT7hNA

The latest edition of the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin has articles on corruption in Mozambique, the inability of coal mines to reduce poverty, the need for more jobs in Mozambique and much more. Visit the web address provided to subscribe to the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin and Joseph Hanlon's Mozambique News Reports and Clippings.

Africa: 2011 Africa and Middle East STARS Impact Awards announced

2011-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/78403

The STARS Foundation has selected three African organisations working with children for this year’s 2011 Africa & Middle East STARS Impact Awards and one organisation for the Rising Star Award. The STARS Foundation supports frontline, impactful initiatives improving children’s health, education and protection needs across the continent.
2011 Africa & Middle East STARS Impact Awards Announced
The STARS Foundation Press Release
African Organisations Receive Award

London 24.11.11: The STARS Foundation has selected three African organisations working with children for this year’s 2011 Africa & Middle East STARS Impact Awards and one organisation for the Rising Star Award. The STARS Foundation supports frontline, impactful initiatives improving children’s health, education and protection needs across the continent. Through the Impact Awards, the STARS Foundation helps already effective organisations become even stronger by enhancing their capacity to deliver vital services on the ground. The annual award - now in its 5th year - carries $100,000 of unrestrictive funding and consultancy support, giving recipient organisations the flexibility to respond more effectively to the challenges they face and to the needs of the children they serve. The organisations will receive the respected accolade at a ceremony in London on 24 November 2011.

EDUCATION AWARD:
South African organisation arepp:Theatre for Life was selected for this year’s Education award for its unique life skills education through theatre method. The organisation stood out for harnessing the ability of drama to act as a powerful medium when used to engage young people to confront complex subjects, whilst challenging mindsets through peer facilitated debate. Its’ theatre shows travel the country targeting the most vulnerable children in the most economically deprived schools (townships), with the highest rates of drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, bullying and suicide cases.

Launched in 1987 in South Africa, arepp:Theatre for Life now directly engages approximately 120,000 five to eighteen year-olds in approximately 350 schools annually. As a result, the schools that arepp:Theatre for Life worked in, reported a drop of 50% in physical and sexual abuse cases from the previous year, and pregnancies in those schools dropped from nine to just below four per cent.

PROTECTION AWARD:
Mombassa-based Wema Centre Trust was selected as this year’s recipient of the Protection award. Wema (Well Being Centre in Kiswahili) was selected for its holistic approach to removing children from vulnerable and risky conditions -such as street life– and integrating them into mainstream society by ensuring a smooth transition into adulthood through its tailored treatment plans. The organisation’s psycho social approach to reintegration and family re-unification, coupled with its engagement of the local population in giving a haven of hope to underprivileged children, puts Wema at the forefront of child protection in Kenya.

Through sports and music, WEMA has developed a program, which deals specifically with behavioural issues in relation to HIV/ AIDS prevention, drug abuse, commercial sex, rape and reproductive health. With a long term vision which encourages children to become economically independent, the organisation runs income generating training programmes with access to livestock, poultry and computer training facilities.

HEALTH AWARD:
Forest-based Bwindi Community Hospital is this year’s recipient of the Health award. The organisation was selected for its pioneering work in reducing the prevalence of illnesses within communities residing in this inaccessible region. The hospital provides preventative health care to some of the most marginalised communities in East Africa, including Batwa pygmies.

Set at the edge of Bwindi impenetrable forest National Park in South Western Uganda bordering DR Congo, it is the only hospital in a radius of 40 km situated in an area covered by hills and forests. As the only hospital in the region, it provides care principally to women and children and is entirely run by Ugandans. Members of staff are encouraged to collaborate with registered village chiefs and Bataka Burial Leaders to build trust within the community and to identify the most excluded and vulnerable families.


RISING STAR AWARD:
In addition to the Impact Awards, a smaller Award may be made at the discretion of the STARS Board of Trustees to recognise the work of an organisation whose application demonstrates potential as a ‘rising star.’ The STARS Foundation has selected Eket-based Stepping Stone Nigeria Child Empowerment Foundation as this year’s Rising Star. The organisation was selected for its work in defending child rights in the Delta Niger, a region where trafficking, child abuse and belief in child ‘witches’ is rife. The organisation provides drop-in and outreach psycho-social and welfare services and support to vulnerable children who have fallen foul to a form of extreme violence which is symptomatic of a more serious problem at the community level, deeply linked to a phenomenon of generalised violence against children

An increasing number of children in the Niger Delta – as in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa - are being accused of being child ‘witches.’ The consequence of the peddling of these beliefs is devastating for the children affected, as the fate of suspected child witches results in being abandoned and ostracised from the community, taken to the forest and slaughtered, disgraced publicly and murdered, bathed in acid, poisoned to death, buried alive and/or chained and tortured in churches in order to extract a confession.

ENDS
Notes to Editors:
· The STARS Foundation was founded by Amr Dabbagh and the Dabbagh Group in 2001, in the belief that local organisations are best-placed to respond to the needs of their communities and the children in their care. All too often these organisations are constrained by a rigid approach to funding, which can limit their effectiveness. For more information visit http://www.starsfoundation.org.uk/

· Case studies and photography are available.

· The STARS Impact Awards programme, launched in Africa in 2007, and now open to organisations in 80 countries, is committed to helping already effective charities become even stronger by enhancing their capacity to deliver vital services on the ground. By supporting these outstanding organisations, and recognising the deep and lasting impact they are having on entire communities, the Impact Awards also inspire others to reach similar standards of excellence.

· The STARS Foundation’s partnership approach is reflected in the nature of the innovative package offered. The package combines US$100,000 of unrestricted funding with tailored consultancy support – offering organisations the flexibility they need to respond to local challenges and plan for the future.

· The awards approach is underpinned by a rigorous selection process, which has been developed with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Awards recipients are selected using eight criteria that reflect the hallmarks of effective practice and all applicants receive feedback on their application. In addition, a smaller Award may be made at the discretion of the STARS Board of Trustees to recognise the work of an organisation whose application demonstrates potential as a ‘rising star.’

· Thanks to a partnership with the Ashmore Foundation, STARS is able to increase the number of Awards it intends to offer in 2012 to 14. Of these, 6 Awards are made up of US$100,000 of unrestricted funding and additional consultancy support and the other 8 Awards will range in value from US$15,000 to US$60,000.
Applicants must enter by 7 November 2011 http://www.starsfoundation.org.uk/apply/

· The STARS Foundation is governed by an international board of trustees chaired by its founder, His Excellency Amr A. Al Dabbagh

Global: Public images of resistance

2011-11-30

http://bit.ly/vrHXT3

Meet You At The Crossroads is a library of public images of resistance, rebellion, revolt and rebuilding occurring in cities right across the globe, often on the streets; in the public realm. You are invited to send in your images and sign up to receive a weekly public image.

International Water Law Scholarship Programme

2011-12-04

http://bit.ly/tuscWw

The Global Water Partnership together with IHP-HELP Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, under the auspices of UNESCO, at the University of Dundee, is looking to build on their successful 2011 International Water Law Programme (www.dundee.ac.uk/water/workshop), and offer scholarships for 30 participants to undertake a module in International Water Law, in Dundee 11-29 June 2012. Scholarship recipients are responsible for all travel (to/from Dundee) and subsistence (food/accommodation) costs. GWP is aiming at providing funding for travel and subsistence for a limited number of successful Scholarship applicants. Even though final funding is pending, GWP and the University of Dundee now invite applications from suitable candidates. Applications will be accepted from 24 November 2011 to 3 February 2012. Successful candidates will be notified at the beginning of March 2012 to allow as much time as possible to obtain visas, additional funding, etc.

University of Oxford: Part-time Masters in International Human Rights Law

Admissions open for five scholarships for candidates from African Commonwealth countries

2011-11-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/77659

The Department for Continuing Education and the Faculty of Law at Oxford University are very pleased to announce that admissions are now open for five scholarships for candidates from African Commonwealth countries to study for the part-time Masters in International Human Rights Law at the
University of Oxford, starting September 2012. The course website can be found at http://bit.ly/s37dHr and details about the scholarships, including eligibility criteria and how to apply, can be found on the Fees and Funding pages at http://bit.ly/ugKcPf

London: Senior Director – Global Operations

Amnesty International (AI)

2011-12-01

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/78396

For fifty years, we’ve been campaigning for human rights wherever justice, freedom and truth are denied. We’ve reshaped policies, challenged governments and taken corporations to task. And in doing so, we’ve changed thousands of lives for the better. Forging ahead, we’re looking for an exceptional facilitator and leader to support and coordinate Amnesty International’s global operations.

£Competitive package

About the role

In this high profile role as part of the International Secretariat’s Senior Leadership team, you’ll take overall responsibility for the operations of our regional offices. That means overseeing the initial recruitment of, and offering ongoing support to, the regional hub directors, as well as directing and coordinating all regional operations – supporting the planning and execution of regional work, motivating staff and management and making sure stakeholders are engaged and delivering to objectives throughout the regions. It also means creating, implementing and enforcing policies and strategies – setting out a clear and cohesive direction to promote effective communication across the regions and ensure our Regional Management Teams take a consistent global approach to their work across all offices. Put simply, you’ll make sure the entire Amnesty International operation is pulling in the same direction.

About you

The scope of this role can’t be underestimated. Which is why we’re seeking a Senior Director with extensive experience of managing cross-functional delivery in a multi-site global organisation; preferably in the area of global justice and human rights. You will have an exceptional record of managing organisational change, integrating activity and influencing business direction; challenging conflict and taking an innovative approach to delivering solutions. Your leadership skills will be second to none – inspiring, motivating and guiding your teams, generating the trust and confidence of managers and staff, and representing the organisation on a global scale. But just as importantly, you’ll have a solid knowledge of the challenges faced by an organisation dedicated to the promotion of an ethical and just civil society, social change and public advocacy. And, of course, you’ll be genuinely passionate about making a difference.

About us

Our aim is simple: an end to human rights abuses. Independent, international and influential, we campaign for justice, freedom and truth wherever they’re denied. Already our network of
over three million members and supporters is making a difference in 150 countries. And whether we’re applying pressure through powerful research or direct lobbying, mass demonstrations, human rights education, or online campaigning, we’re all inspired by hope for a better world. One where human rights are respected and protected by everyone, everywhere.

To find out more about this role and to apply online, please visit www.ai-isleadership.com

Closing date: Monday 2nd January 2012

Fahamu