Current Issue

‘This is not the democracy that we fought for’

Jeff Conant, for GJEP, interviews South African member of La Via Campesina

Ricado Jacobs

South African member of La Via Campesina.

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79403

© abahlali.org‘The uprisings in Egypt and everywhere remind us that direct action is an important pillar for the poor and the oppressed all over the world.’

INTRODUCTION

This is the second of three interviews I conducted with members of the Via Campesina delegation during United Nations COP17 in Durban, South Africa recently. The first interview, with Alberto Gomez of UNORCA, Mexico, is here.

Ricado Jacobs is with the Food Sovereignty Campaign of La Via Campesina in South Africa. Ricado was in Durban for the UN Conference of Parties, and for the activities that La Via Campesina organized in and around the COP. I had the chance to speak with him about La Via Campesina and its views on the UN Climate Summit, and the issues of food sovereignty and climate justice more broadly.

THE INTERVIEW

JEFF CONANT: What is the significance of La Via Campesina as a global movement?

RICADO JACOBS: If you look at the impact of the transnational corporations, they are on a global scale, they cross borders. So, we need to respond on a global scale. La Via Campesina is an important vehicle for organizing on a world scale.

But it’s not just that the impacts we’re facing happen at a world scale, it’s that they transcend the power of the nation-state to control. For example: Water-Efficient Maize for Africa is an effort by Monsanto, together with the Gates Foundation and others, that uses state research councils. Monsanto provides the resources and produces the outputs, but uses state research councils, in South Africa and Mozambique, to implement the program. Farmers didn’t know what this was all about, but through support organizations and La Via, we engaged in a process of learning, and the farmers raised an objection to the project. This was the first time that farmers, themselves – not NGOs – had raised an objection to a program like this.

Well, after our objection, we got a response directly from Monsanto; not from the state, but from the corporation. So you can see who has the power. This is why we cannot restrict our struggle to the state.

We see food sovereignty as a means through which to unite diverse issues and to define a field of struggle. In this sense, La Via Campesina is one of the few movements in the world that can unite on a common platform, that resonates in a very similar way across national borders.

JEFF CONANT: What is the importance of La Via specifically here in Africa?

RICADO JACOBS: Historically in Africa, the NGOs have taken a lot of political space. Where you have these big NGOs taking space, this actually inhibits movements from organizing in their own way. So, this is one thing: La Via Campesina, as a movement, is showing how social movements can take back this space, and is showing farmers how to organize, without the intermediaries of NGOs.

Also, now the question of food sovereignty is becoming more important – it’s not just about agrarian reform, or about taking land, but about transforming the whole food system. So, it’s an exciting period of growth for us.

In Zimbabwe, we analyze the situation in two ways. When the so-called land reform happened in Zimbabwe, the poor and landless saw Mugabe as a hero, while the middle class saw him as a villain. We have to ask why that is. We don’t want to make the same mistakes here that have been made in Zimbabwe. There’s no way we can condone the eviction of people from their land in urban areas, for example. But as far as rural land takeovers go, we support it – so our support is limited to that element. The land occupations are a spontaneous movement, but in Zimbabwe, the state used the movement for its own ends. In a sense, this was good, because it prevented bloodshed. By the same token, Mugabe was one of the few national leaders who rejected GMOs. That’s good, and we need to support that. Recent research is emerging about the benefits of land occupations, particularly related to food sovereignty. But it shows, again, that the contradictions are huge.

Peasant movements have taken up the torch of land sovereignty. You cannot talk about climate justice without addressing this kind of redistributive justice. Where are we going to practice agro-ecology if we don’t take land? But we have to do this without making a hero out of the state. Participatory democracy and self-management should be central in our struggle.

Now, the nature of imperialism and land grabbing has taken a different form – it’s no longer one colonial power coming over on ships. Now it’s China, it’s the Arab states, it’s Goldman Sachs. So we need to take a different approach, and a more nuanced approach, to how we address the challenge. So, again, this is the importance of La Via Campesina in Africa – it gives us a basis to struggle against the state, but not only against the state. The struggle is against many things, and we need to articulate these things.

What makes La Via Campesina unique in Africa is that it is completely horizontal in its politics and in its structure – there’s no messiah, no one doing the thinking for you. It’s important for us to learn from this, to break from the past where we always have some big leader. Always, in South Africa, in all of Africa, historically, you have one figure; when the leader speaks, everyone goes crazy, and when the leader sells out or is killed, the movement is over. You look at someone like Gaddafi, who wanted to be King of Africa, and you say, this is crazy. But this is not an anomaly – this is how Africa works. This is what happened with Mandela – he orchestrated the neoliberal entry into South Africa, and this has left South Africa crippled.

With la Via, even the secretariat rotates – every few years, it moves to a new place, with a new team, new leadership. Obviously, we have historic leaders, like Rafael Alegria – but that doesn’t mean that he always has to lead. In this sense the movement growing in Africa has been greatly influenced by other movements, like the Zapatistas.

This doesn’t mean we repeat what’s been done elsewhere – La Via Campesina in Africa has to confront African realities. I think, if there is any key difference between the African movements and the Latin Americans, it is that they are very rooted in their history. So we have to ground our movements in our history of resistance and lessons of other struggles.

JEFF CONANT: How does the United Nations COP process relate, or not, to the process of social movement organizing for climate justice?

RICADO JACOBS: If you look at this Conference of Polluters, none of them have a mandate. It’s a few hundred or a few thousand people who decide on the fate of humanity. Where does this power emanate from? Do we live under democracies, or is this democracy? Or is this something else? As the Egyptians said when their uprising was taken over by the military, no this is not the democracy that we fought for. So they went back to the streets to fight more and complete the task of the revolution.

I call it the North African Spring, not the Arab Spring, to not cut it off from the rest of the African continent. And even the Occupy Movement in the U.S., there’s hope there. We need to build strong movements, to convince large sectors of the population that we need to bring change – but not merely in democratic terms. It’s almost like you can use the language of climate change to talk about movement building – we need resilient movements in order to mitigate and adapt to the evils we are facing.

By resilient I mean, we have to have a clear vision about the different solutions that will respond to the crisis in different places. In Europe they have 17 percent unemployment, and that’s a crisis. In South Africa, we have 40 percent unemployment, but it’s completely normalized here – we don’t even have a discourse about it. Imagine, 40 percent of your population is food insecure. You go to Cape Town, and you see this stark inequality – the super-rich and the super poor. How is this reflected in our discourse about food, about agriculture?

On a global scale, we’re talking about a crisis of civilization. Not in the apocalyptic sense, but that we need a new humanity. For this, we can turn to the Cochabamba Peoples Accord as a sound basis for what people, en masse, have decided.

JEFF CONANT: How does La Via Campesina propose to move beyond the confining logic of the COP?

RICADO JACOBS: On December 5, Food Sovereignty Day, we held a march and an Assembly of the Oppressed. It was a space where peasants and movements could organize their own program – no big names, just ordinary people, ordinary men and women. We had about three hundred people gathered under a big tent at the gate of the University [of Kazulu-Natal], and people came to the assembly with the energy of the march. It was a space for farmers and the landless, for people from the Rural Women’s Assembly.

One of the key messages that came from the Assembly was that the movements need to organize on an autonomous level, like this. There is a lot of exhibitionism in the COP, not just by state parties, but by the NGOs. La Via’s efforts to hold a march and an assembly, these are important because it was our own space. In these spaces there was a clear articulation that food sovereignty and agro-ecology is the solution we propose. This is powerful in part because no one could come with their big flag and appear to take over.

In the COP, even the civil society space was organized by NGOs, not movements. We could have had something more militant – we could have highlighted the US Embassy in relation to the COP, for example. If we pose the question in dramatic terms – the crisis of civilization, not in an apocalyptic sense, again, but in the sense that the crisis we are confronting runs through every aspect of our societies – than this compels us to move beyond ordinary tactics.

Another key message that came out is that we need to look at women’s oppression, and patriarchy. Women’s issues are central, because women, particularly African women, bear the brunt of the impacts from the food system. So, the Assembly of the Oppressed is against all forms of oppression. This is why, our most recent formulation of how we define food sovereignty, we say that food sovereignty is an end to violence against women. This is rarely brought out in its full dimension.

The other dimensions that came out in the themes of the Assembly were seed sovereignty and the crisis of capitalism. We begin from the standpoint of seed sovereignty, because, once they take away seed sovereignty, we’re all, I don’t know how else to say it, fucked. So far, they haven’t been able to successfully replace our seeds with some other technology, like they’ve done in other areas – you get super-weeds, you have no scientific evidence showing that their GMO seeds produce higher yields, you have nothing showing that corporate control of seeds has any advantages whatsoever, to anyone. So, peasant movements continue to hold this vital resource.

And then you have the crisis of capitalism. In Africa, this is expressing itself as a new wave of colonization and land grabbing. This isn’t the old “primitive accumulation” of Marx – this is what the geographer David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession.” The question is, how do we respond. We’re dealing with a different enemy now: not with an enemy that emerges from the centre to the periphery, as they used to say, but with an enemy that comes at us from all sides.

One of capitalism’s key crises is the provision of food. Now you have commodity food prices skyrocketing, you have the finance industry central to the food system, you have land grabs taking different forms, you have all of these threats. How do you respond to them?

The uprisings in Egypt and everywhere remind us that direct action is an important pillar for the poor and the oppressed all over the world. Direct action needs to be combined with a radical emancipatory politics to free humanity and mother earth. Otherwise, this whole thing becomes an exercise in impacting the media, and then we go away and the corporations and the state continue to run the show.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

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

Nigeria: Was it a 14-day dream?

Sokari Ekine

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79406

© Nairaland.comIt may appear like business as usual but people do not experience such an outpouring of solidarity and power and remain unchanged. The apathy barrier has been broken and there has been a shift in consciousness.

Is the Nigerian ‘revolution’ over? Was it just a brief moment in our history when everyone came together believing that this time things would be different? Or has there been a permanent shift in consciousness? Emmanuel Iduma likens Nigeria’s 14-day revolt to a dream from which we awoke and returned to normalcy.

‘The horizon of your dream was of a better life, a different form of existence, a tangible and measurable difference. You saw that the debate about fuel subsidy removal was the opportunity to dream of change, because this was a protest above all protests, because this protest seemed naturally logical. But you forgot that in dreaming one does not feel; the night happens so fast, and very soon you are awake.’

Nigerians may well have woken up and it may appear that it’s business as usual but people do not experience such an outpouring of solidarity and power and remain unchanged. The apathy barrier has been broken and yes there has been a ‘shift in consciousness’ - how deep and how lasting remains to be seen. The momentum was lost when on 13 Friday, when the labour movement called for a two-day weekend break to ‘recuperate’. It would have been better if the NLC had just said we needed time to negotiate than lead people to believe this was only the beginning rather than the end. It was hardly a surprise to learn by Monday that the unions had sold out after a N100 fuel price was agreed with the government. Threats by PENGASSAN to shut down oil production and thereby bring the government to its knees turned out to be merely hot air. On his blog Notes from Atlanta, Farooq A Kperogi speaks for many when he comments on the NLC sellout.

‘Then Nigeria’s thoroughly compromised labour movement hijacked the revolt, lulled the people into a false sense of solidarity and finally extinguished the revolutionary fire that was burning down the foundations of Nigeria’s ruling elite....The Nigerian Labor Congress and the Trade Union Congress didn’t join the mass protests until at least three days after the fact. They were obviously drafted by President Jonathan and his agents to help contain, and if possible snuff out, the conflagration that was going to consume them. From the very start, I privately expressed concerns that the Nigerian Labor Congress would infiltrate and dilute the people’s revolt.’


© Nairaland.comExactly one week after the protests ended, Boko Haram struck once again. This time it was a bombing carnage in Kano which left between 180 and 250 people dead and hundreds injured [exact figures differ and the number of dead continues to rise]. The sheer bloodbath and impunity with which Boko Haram continues to bomb northern Nigeria almost on a daily basis has left the country traumatised. Only 48 hours after the Kano bomb, the group attacked towns in Bauchi state and as I write there is news of yet another bomb blast in Kano.
With nearly 1000 people dead since 2009, Nigerians continue to speculate about who exactly are Boko Haram and how they are able to continue killing so freely. There is consensus that they are a disparate group with many heads; they do have support both in government and in their communities; the bombing campaigns have been in response to the murder of their leader Mohammed Yusuf and other members of the sect in 2009. It must be noted that this was almost two years before Jonathan became president.

Olly Owen expands on these factors in African Arguments but also reminds us that there is, like in the Niger Delta, ‘a persistent trajectory of under development and misgovernance’ in the region. I would add there is a similar danger of reductionism whereby in this case the sect is simply labeled ‘radical Islamists’ without considering their origins or the material context in which they have flourished.

‘Media speculation, which pointed fingers at former Governor Ali Modu Sherrif as the ‘father’ of Boko Haram, seems to have been wide off the mark, (devout Islamists and his brand of politics stayed far apart) but it is fair to say that the administration, and others like it in the region created the conditions for the spread of extremism by fostering thuggish, winner-takes-all corrupt politics at the same time completely neglecting basic services and education...

‘Religious scholars such as sect leader Mohammed Yusuf preached a pro-poor message which was admired even by some Christians in the city, and gave more concrete help, such as micro-credit, to their own followers. Neither is it surprising that the movement exhibits a marked antipathy to the state – it is after all born in a region which has seen previous millennial Islamic risings such as the 1980s Maitatsine movement, and in which evading the state through border-crossing, smuggling and migration around the Lake Chad borderlands is a virtual way of life for many.’


© Nairaland.comPresident Goodluck Jonathan’s failure to act following the Christmas Day bombings left Nigerians feeling he was either cowered by those Boko Haram elements he claims have infiltrated his government or he is just plain incompetent or possibly both. He has finally raised one eye and woken up to the urgency of the situation by ordering the Inspector General of police [IG] and all deputy generals to resign immediately and for an urgent reorganization of the police. The question still remains why it has taken him so long, particularly following the escape of the only suspect in the Christmas Day bombings when over 100 police guarding the prisoner did nothing. The new IG, MD Abubakar [former Plateau state commissioner of police] has a dubious history including being described as a ‘religious fanatic’ by the Niki Tobi panel. Not exactly great start to a ‘new’ police force. Blogger Yomzie explains:

‘This same MD Abubakar was indicted for complicity in the gruesome killing of Dr Shola Omoshola and was recommended for the sack by the Oputa panel. Also, the Justice Niki Tobi panel on the Jos 2001 crisis has recommended the retirement of Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG), Zone 5, Muhammed Abubakar. Abubakar was Plateau State Commissioner of Police during the crisis.’

The Nigerian police force is possibly the most corrupt and violent institution in the country, one which has played a major role in terrorising local communities in the Niger Delta, the north and other parts of the country. They have carried out extra-judicial killings, torture, rape and forced prostitution in the Niger Delta and there is no reason to believe they act differently elsewhere in the country. Owen suggests a ‘quiet revolution’ to create a new model of community policing rather than ‘the anti-terror police, increasing paramilitarism, or increasingly expensive high-tech gadgets. It is these ground-level tactics which can help detect crime and extremism, gather intelligence and build partnership and confidence with the public.’

I would also suggest police drawn from local communities and who might have some vested interest in building a trustworthy relationship with the community.

The sense that the government is fearful is supported by statements by two northern politicians who have called for Boko Haram to be given amnesty. Naija Pundit.

‘The Speaker of the House of Representative, Aminu Tambuwal, has urged the Federal Government to forgive the members of the Boko Haram Islamic Sect and grant them amnesty. ‘Forgive them, bring them to the table and discuss with them to see how to end these problems.’ ’About a month ago, Buba Galadima, the National Secretary of the Muhammadu Buhari-led Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) had told the same BBC that the FG was underestimating the support that Boko Haram had within the population...Buba Galadima had reasoned in that interview thus: ‘Why didn't the president crush the Niger Deltans? That's a questions a lot of people in this part of the country are asking. Instead they are being rewarded for the economic destruction they brought Nigeria. Why can't the same be true for Boko Haram? The people are sympathetic to certain principles and ideas,’ he told the BBC. If people feel they are being denied anything or an injustice is being meted out to them then there is a likelihood that they will take the law into their own hands and help themselves.’

I cannot imagine that the majority of Nigerians would agree to an amnesty for Boko Haram even if it were possible, which I very much doubt. Too much blood has been shed and the repercussions for the country go far beyond the bombings to the whole national project that is ‘One Nigeria’. Nigerian social media crews are at pains to counter the international media’s insistence that the Boko Haram attacks are part of a religious war between Christians and Muslims. I completely support this position. But if we scratch below the surface we find that tensions between religions and ethnic nationalities do exist and cannot be swept under the carpet. Religious fanaticism is becoming endemic in both faiths. The country is drowning in God from all directions but maybe the practice of religion is the one unifying force!

Tensions remain between the Niger Delta and the rest of the country. The region has been largely absent from the protests. On the contrary the loudest voices and by far the most disturbing, have come from some activists and ex-militants who issued a statement on Saturday 14 January calling for all Niger Deltans to protect Goodluck Jonanthan and to return home. The statement by the Niger Delta Occupy the Niger Delta [NDOND] was essentially a preamble to secession. It is not clear what precipitated the statement signed by AnnKio Briggs who in December, and as late as the day before, had expressed doubts about the validity of the fuel subsidy removal. She had also insisted that if it was removed it should be conditional. She described the subsidy as ‘The mother of corruption’, which is pretty accurate.

‘The subsidy itself is the mother of corruption. I’m in support of its removal but there are grounds for taking this position. One of them is that Nigerians will not pay a kobo more than they can afford to pay for petrol. Second, there must be an open investigation into how such fraud was perpetrated in the name of subsidy. It is now very clear that something fraudulent was going on. How is it that Nigeria started paying subsidy in 2006 to three companies but by 2011 there were 77 companies collecting subsidy? So, there has to be a public enquiry and these companies must tell Nigerians how they qualified for the subsidy they received. Third, the government must tell Nigerians the issues about our refineries. Why is it that we have four refineries and none is working? People who were interested in setting up refineries across the geo-political zones in the country were not allowed. What is the problem when people can illegally, as they call it, refine crude in a very crude manner and still bring out petrol to sell? This is my position and that of the organisation I represent, Agape Birthright’. [Sunday Sun December 18, 2011. ‘Reps are anti-people – Annkio Briggs’, By Daniel Alabrah]

So it was with horror and disappointment that I read the NDOND statement which could end up undermining years of struggle in the Niger Delta. Although it appears to be a minority viewpoint it is the voice which is being heard above all else. For example, the article supposedly published by the ex-militant group, MEND [there is no way to verify who is behind the site] ‘Can This Government Do the Job’ has not been reported.

‘Nigeria is literally falling to pieces under the watch and stewardship of President Jonathan. And these are not the words of a detractor or an enemy...it would appear that the Nigerian government under President Jonathan has completely lost control of the situation in the country and can no longer guarantee the security of life and property of innocent and law-abiding Nigerians. For murderers to plan and successfully drop 20 bombs, including grenades, in Nigeria's second largest city, leading to the death of more than 200 people, and the government and its machinery did not pick up any hint of its coming in any way at all to save this country the horror, scandal and embarrassment that befell it last Friday is, to say the least, quite scary. Even during the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war, I cannot remember anywhere 20 bombs and grenades dropped on a single city in one day. Boko Haram continues to get stronger, more sophisticated and more ambitious by the day while the federal government continues to look weaker, smaller and more pusillanimous.’

Back to the mass action, much has been tweeted about the absence of women in the Nigerian protests which runs contrary to the history of women’s resistance in the country. But on Monday this changed as hundreds of Kaduna women came together in an action against the eviction by the Nigerian Air Force from their ancestral home.

‘The women were carrying placards with inscriptions in Hausa such as, ' Bamu da gida sai Titi' (meaning, our only shelter left is the highway). The women were also protesting the physical assault on one of them by soldiers who were drafted to control the women. An incident that nearly broke into a security operation between the youths, the husbands of the women who were standing by and the security men drafted to the area. The incident, which increased anxiety in the town, led to the complete blockage of exit and entrance of traffic to Kaduna town for over three hours. It, however, took the combined efforts of the police, the military, government officials and community leaders to calm the nerves of the protesting women who had insisted on remaining on the highway as the only shelter left for them to occupy. Narrating their grievances, the leader of the women, Mrs. Monica Musa who spoke to newsmen, said several years back the Air Force had evicted them from Ungwan Waziri, a village were the graves of their great grandparents lay, without any compensation. 'We had to move to this present location in 1984. They followed us again in 2008, and destroyed our houses and farmlands.’’


© http://bikyamasr.com
Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the 25 January uprisings in Egypt. The day before, the Egyptian Twittersphere reported that jailed blogger Maikel Nabil had finally been released.

‘Yet 10 months of Maikal’s life have been wasted. He should never have been arrested in the first place. His criminal record must now be expunged and he must be compensated for his ordeal,’ she continued. ‘Throughout his trial the Egyptian authorities have behaved with a total lack of respect for his rights. At times they seemed to toy with his life, allowing his health to deteriorate so badly that many feared for his life.’ Jailed blogger Nabil, considered by most to be Egypt’s first prisoner of conscience after being jailed by the military junta early last year, was freed on Tuesday, his brother Mark wrote on Twitter.’


© A PAll roads lead to Tahrir in ‘Happy Revolutionary Day’, Egyptian Chronicles writes of the hope and courage which has sustained one year of continuous protest.

‘The big achievement of this revolution is that it brought hope back to the Egyptians and reminded them that they have got a voice the whole world will listen to. May Allah bless the souls of the martyrs as well the lives of the injured. May Allah bless the Egyptian people even those who think that the revolution was a bad thing.’


© Pambazuka PressThis was a revolution in which we all participated even if it was just through watching TV reports or following blogs and Twitter - we were all inspired and deep down wished for it to succeed. In this it brought hope to millions of people around the world. As we celebrate a year of African Awakenings inspired by the courageous act of one young man, Mohammed Bouazizi, I can’t help but feel something important is missing. After one year we still have not managed to create a sense of cross border solidarity. It is as if we are all so absorbed in our own uprisings that we are not taking the opportunity to share and support our actions with others. On one level I understand this - revolutions are hard work. Everyone must be physically and mentally exhausted and really even in Egypt and Tunisia the work has only just begun. But I hope at some point during the next 12 months activists are able to reach beyond their borders if only to touch and say hello.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

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

South Africa: People's land, housing and jobs summit

City of Cape Town tries to ban poor people from the commons

Jared Sacks

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79413

© abahlali.orgBy taking back the commons, thousands of poor and working-class people, together with many middle-class allies, are saying that they no longer want to live in a city which remains segregated.

For months, communities from all over Cape Town have been planning a three-day People's Land, Housing and Jobs Summit at one of Cape Town's huge open pieces of unused land. This summit is set to take place this weekend from 27 until the 29 January.

Yet, even though community representatives sent in their notification of intention to gather on the Rondebosch Common and have complied with all legislation governing the right to march, the City of Cape Town is attempting to ban the march and summit altogether.

CLAIMING THE COMMONS

This Common is a symbolic public space with a notable history. The Khoisan indigenous people who lived in the area used the entire Cape Peninsula as a common – an inclusive space not owned by anyone and held in trust by local inhabitants to be used for everyone's benefit symbiotically with nature. Khoisan culture understood the importance of sharing, using only what one needs, and protecting one's environment.

After the space was colonised, it was first used as a military camp and sections of the Common later became a vibrant racially integrated community much like the famed District Six. As more and more of the Common was enclosed for housing and other types of developments, about 40 hectares remained. However, it was no longer an authentic commons as people of colour were removed to comply with the Group Areas Act and were not able to return until after 1994.

The Rondebosch Common, therefore, became a pseudo-commons. It was open and accessible to the wealthy and mostly white population of the area but unapproachable for the black poor who remained in distant and overcrowded townships.

For this reason locating the the summit at Rondebosch Common has special symbolic significance for many of the participants. It represents an immediate assertion of equality within one of the most unequal cities in the world. By taking back the commons, thousands of poor and working-class people, together with many middle-class allies, are saying that they no longer want to live in a city which remains segregated under the shadow of Hoerikwaggo (more recently known as Table Mountain), where some live in huge mansions while others live in 10x10 meter shacks, where some are paid millions and others spend their whole lives underemployed.

If the commons is for all in name only, then it does not exist. Thus, the Take Back the Commons movement aims to liberate public spaces such as Rondebosch Common. It must be for all to use and enjoy, not only for a privileged few to hoard.

THE TRUE PURPOSE OF THE SUMMIT

Despite scaremongering by opponents of the summit, the 'occupation' of Rondebosch Common is not a land invasion by poor and homeless communities set on destroying endangered fynbos. No one is currently planning to build informal dwellings on the Common (although I do believe such an action would be justified given the obscene segregation of Cape Town's neighbourhoods).

Instead, participants are planing on gathering together for a number of general assemblies, group teach-ins, and self-led discussion groups whose aims are to eventually plan further actions with participating communities. All this will be done with the utmost respect to the environmental conditions on the Common.

The goal is to leave the summit with a better idea of how to achieve the redistribution of land, the building of decent and well located housing, the creation of full employment, and the ending of oppression in our society. Through a three-day liberation of the Common, we will make a collective effort to build a space where all are welcome and treated with dignity and respect; a space that mirrors our aspirations for a new world.

A POLITICIAN AND THE COMMONS

When Patricia de Lille was beginning her political career after years as a trade union leader, she supported the famous Freedom Park land occupation in Mitchell's Plain. Since that time, de Lille has migrated from the Pan-Africanist Congress to form the Independent Democrats and now on to the Democratic Alliance.

Ironically, since she assumed the mayorship of the City of Cape Town, she has become just as disparaging of land occupations as her predecessors, aggressively attacking all informal forms of land redistribution and house building.

This week, however, de Lille finally fell fully in line with the DA's authoritarian right-wing agenda: the criminalisation of the poor. It was reported in the People's Post that de Lille supported City officials’ attempts to ban the People's Land, Housing and Jobs Summit from taking place on Rondebosch Common despite repeated invitations by organisers to attend the event.

Patricia de Lille's reasoning was that this public park was the 'private property' of the City. It was also made known that at a City Council meeting, it was resolved that if the symbolic occupation went ahead the City would authorise police to clamp down hard on the occupation of the Rondebosch Commons and that warrants would be issued for the arrest of the event organisers.

ILLEGAL BANNING OF GATHERINGS

Based on Section 17 of our Constitution and the Regulation of Gatherings Act, we can conclude that the City is attempting to illegally ban the three-day event on public land. Their excuse was based on technicalities: organisers arrived ‘between 15 and 30 minutes late’ for their meeting with officials and organisers insisted on having all nine elected representatives present in the meeting as opposed to four.

However, legislation clearly states that it is the responsibility of the City, not the organisers, to ensure that such a meeting takes place. Furthermore, the Gatherings Act says that the gathering cannot be prohibited except as a measure of last resort and only after such a meeting has taken place between the government and the organisers.

Even though there have been repeated requests to reschedule the meeting, the City has refused to engage with the organisers. As such, the City of Cape Town is acting in contravention of South African legislation.

RESISTING THE COMMONS

What is so threatening about communities' plan to Take Back the Commons on 27 January? Why would the City undermine the law, authorise draconian measures against protesters and even issue warrants against organisers?

It seems most likely that the real reason de Lille has weighed into the fray to prevent the march and summit from taking place is that it threatens to put the real issues facing poor communities at the forefront of the socio-political debate.

For the first time in decades, the Occupy Wall Street movement is placing inequality and class at the centre of American politics. Here in South Africa the rebellion of the poor has been raging for the last decade within townships and shack settlements. Yet, for the first time since 1994, the take over of Rondebosch Common threatens to put ongoing racial segregation, the urgent need for land redistribution and the popular opposition to the privatisation of public space right smack in the face of Cape Town's politics.

This is threatening for any DA or ANC politician as it means that they can no longer expect the poor to merely tolerate the politicised delivery of substandard public services within their ghettos. It means that the poor are demanding the radical restructuring of Cape Town's socio-political landscape and taking their demand into the space of elite power.

If I was a politician, I too would also be afraid of what might happen when taking Rondebosch Common morphs into taking back all the commons.

Here is the mayor's statement labelling us violent agents.

Click here for a short video about the summit.

BROGUHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Jared Sacks works at the Children of South Africa and is an activist with the Occupy Cape Town movement. He writes only in his personal capacity.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Africa: The reign of thugs

Pedro Alexis Tabensky

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79404

© abahlali.orgOne way of measuring the quality of a democracy is to assess the behaviour of its police. The recent brutal attack on the Unemployed People’s Movement leader Ayanda Kota reveals the sad state of democracy in South Africa.

There are at least two ways of dealing with the abject problem of poverty: one promising and the other not. One way involves conceiving of poverty as a problem and the other endorses the view that the poor are the problem. One requires ingenuity and care, and the other thirsts for violence. Unfortunately, it is the easy option that demands ever-greater levels of violence against the poor. So there is a bias in favour of State sanctioned brutality (sanctioned, minimally, insofar as very little indeed is being done by the State to combat the trend, but also sanctioned more proactively by the Bheki Celes of our land).

The violence stemming from choosing the easy option is inscribed on the body of the Chairperson of the Grahamstown branch of the Unemployed Peoples’ Movement (UPM) —Ayanda Kota — and on many other disenfranchised bodies across the land as a consequence of our increasingly brutal police force, as reported by Amnesty International and by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). In an open letter addressed to Nathi Mthethwa, the Minister of Police, in response to the brutal murder of Andries Tatane, Frans Cronje, of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), states that: ‘What the South African police are effectively engaged in is no longer a simple matter of law enforcement. Rather, your officers are now at the coal face of the political struggle of poor black South Africans to be liberated from poverty.’

I should mention in passing, for it is not my primary target here, that the DA has little to be proud of; for police brutality and other forms as well, are a common occurrence in the Western Cape. Take, for instance, the police oppression in Hamburg in 2010, where the police systematically shot rubber bullets into protesters’ faces with the consequence of several eyes being lost. And one mustn’t forget Blikkiesdorp and the open toilets debacle. So, one should avoid thinking that the solution to the problem is to vote DA.

It is safe to say that in South Africa today, and Grahamstown is no exception, there is an epidemic of bruises, including deadly ones. Consider the lifeless body of Andries Tatane after being attacked by a pack of bloodthirsty member of the SAPS.

One good way of measuring the quality of a democracy is to assess the behavior of its police, and we are increasingly measuring up very badly indeed. One could speculate that those police who have moved beyond the bounds of human decency are bad apples in a basket of largely good ones, but this sort of move only has a genuine exculpating function if the state shows clear signs of doing something unambiguously decisive to put a stop to the violence meted out against those who are tired of broken promises. If the state doesn’t, then one is entitled to assume that those accused of being bad apples, and who may very well be a minority in the police force, are being used as scapegoats. Added credibility is given to the scapegoat hypothesis if one considers that all politically motivated violence occurring today in South Africa is meted out against those who oppose the current dispensation. I am yet to hear of a case in which the police act with impunity against the ANC Youth League when it acts, as it far too often does, against those who voice their discontent about the state of our democracy.

Given the urgency of the problem of increasing police violence, and given that the violence is directed against those who are tired of being lied to, mere verbal endorsement that there is a problem will not suffice. In fact, verbal endorsement without decisive action should be taken as further evidence in support of the hypothesis that the state actually condones what is happening, as is using the bad apple argument in light of the escalating crisis.

The fact that a hugely disproportionate number of black men live in prisons in the US, and the fact that black men are regularly harassed by the US police, is an expression of the living legacy of Jim Crow. And we shouldn’t be surprised that in the Chile of Pinochet the police became a branch of the oppressive apparatus. In a chameleon-like fashion, as soon as the dictatorship ended, police behavior came to mirror the new democratic ethos. The biggest thugs suddenly became soft teddy bears seemingly working for a new kind of future. And as soon as the façade of quasi-perfect democracy crumbled and student unrest threatened to destabilize the status quo, founded on some kind of not-so-noble lie, the Chilean police rapidly changed its colours once again in accordance with the demands of the state.

Police forces tend to uncritically react to the needs of those in power. And if those in power are brutal, then there will be a strong tendency for at least a significant minority of the police to act like a pack of wolves. This is not to say that all or most police will act in this way, but a significant number will. So, police force behaviour tends to mirror the moral integrity of a democracy and, given that the transgressions of the police are relatively easy to observe, it is an ideal place to look for signs of decay. Police forces across the globe are mirrors against which the true colours of their employers are revealed. Detective Zulu and his gang’s alleged pummeling of Kota, insofar as it exemplifies a trend, helps us see what the ruling coalition is increasingly coming to stand for.

But not only do the police reflect the general ethos of our current dispensation. In 2010 our local ANCYL violently sabotaged a meeting organised by the Unemployed Peoples’ Movement (UPM) aimed at shedding light on why thousands of Grahamstown East residents had no water for months. The municipality did nothing to make things better for local residents until residents themselves started to take matters in their own hands and exercise their democratic rights to protest. The evidence is mounting in favour of the view that our municipality — reflecting the national trend — does not care about the plight of the poor.

The cynical distribution of food parcels during municipal elections is further evidence of lack of care. And lack of care in the face of extreme poverty amounts to a form of violence, which complements SAPS thugery, and lends further evidence to the hypothesis that our democracy is in decay. Typically, the Makana Municipality acts only insofar as it can entrench its power. Neither they nor the police do anything when a citizen such as Kota is threatened by the ANCYL. And the man who led this violent intervention at the water shortage meeting — Mabhuti Matyumza —is now employed by the Makana Municipality and was previously communication officer of the Makana SAPS. He was not penalised for his actions as he should have been despite the fact that information about this reprehensible event was widely circulated. In fact, there are good reasons — relating directly to the politics of co-option that has become the mark of local and national politics — to suspect that he was prized for his behaviour.

Soon after the sabotaged water shortage meeting, and as recently reported in the Mail & Guardian and by myself, Ayanda Kota and others were arrested when peacefully trying to stop the police from discharging ‘sweets’, as one of the police officers who were present referred to rubber bullets, at protesters in Phaphamani who were outraged at the illegal banning by the Makana Municipality of a protest scheduled to take place in town.

In light of what I have argued above, the savage attack against Ayanda Kota seems to be an expression of the sad state of our democracy. His bruised body tells us the story of a democracy in decline. Regular threats directed at Kota by members of the ANCYL and by members of other state aligned organisations and even attempts by ANC operatives to bribe him gives further credence to the story of decay. Strong and reasonable dissenting voices are the bread and butter of true democracies, but working for a true democracy is a much harder task than merely perpetuating a mediocre one that serves the few by crushing the many. It is thanks to social movements that we rid our country of the tyranny of apartheid and it will be significantly thanks to these movements that the highly imperfect democracy we live in today will one day come to flourish.

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* Pedro Alexis Tabensky is a philosopher based at Rhodes University.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Africa: State of emergency 2.0

Christopher McMichael

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79422

© abahlali.orgJoint operations between the police and military are becoming increasingly commonplace. But maintaining a strict demarcation between the police and the military is essential to the protection of democracy.

Last week, a fully armed contingent of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers was enrolled to perform guard duties at the new Khayelitsha district hospital. The reason for the deployment of combat-ready troops in a civilian environment? To patrol a silent protest by 50 members of the Khayelitsha Development Forum. As constitutional law expert Pierre De Vos has pointed out, such an action may violate constitutional restrictions which reserve the internal usage of the SANDF for exceptional circumstances.

Not only does the deployment of the SANDF to quell internal protest bear disturbing continuities with the apartheid government’s practices but it is also paralleled by efforts to re-militarise the SAPS. In a country in which only twenty years ago the police were the internal extension of the then South African Defence Force using unrestricted counter-insurgency operations and the notorious death squads associated with the CCB and Vlakplaas throughout cities and townships, maintaining a clear and strict demarcation between the police service and the military force is essential to the protection of democracy.

However, the Khayelitsha incident is by no means unique. Joint operations between the police and military are becoming increasingly more commonplace. Prior to his suspension, Bheki Cele insisted that the need to ensure mutual respect between members of the South African Police Service and the South African National Defence Force, who are on a regular basis involved in joint operations, was one of the reasons behind the reintroduction of military ranks within the SAPS. In turn, the SANDF lists such ‘interoperable’ dual operations with the SAPS and other government departments as one of its key areas of focus.

While there is growing evidence that ‘interoperable’ missions are being used to quash increasingly heated community protests, the primary site of joint operations are the intensive security measures which accompany major sporting and political events. At the recent COP17 conference in Durban, the military joined the police in creating a ring of steel around the International Convention Centre, while the World Cup was marked by the largest internal deployment of the SANDF since 1994. Preparations for that event included joint training missions between SAPS elite units, SANDF special forces and SOCOM, the US special command, which among its other ‘sensitive’ missions co-ordinated last year’s execution of Osama Bin Laden.

In turn, the SAPS’s much publicised World Cup procurement drive included several items that have been developed and tested in contemporary war zones. These included Israeli-made water cannons, designed for ‘crowd control’ in Gaza, and bomb disposal suits used in Iraq. Fortunately for civilian airspace, complaints from the Civil Aviation Authority prevented efforts to buy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) similar to the drones causing substantive civilian casualties in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. While SAPS management claimed that such equipment is a necessary augmentation of the ‘war on crime’, the origins of much of this technology raise an unsettling question: how far they are willing to pursue this logic of combat?

The public discussion about signs of re-militarisation in South Africa has understandably focused on its disturbing resonances with the dark corners of our recent past. However, this has been accompanied by the importation of international practices and security systems which blur the distinction between civilian policing and urban warfare. For example, SAPS units such as “The Special Task Force” and the new “Tactical Response Team” echo the elite forces used by law enforcement departments throughout the world. These units receive paramilitary training and access to much heavier calibre weaponry and firepower than ordinary police officers.

Such elite units can serve legitimate purposes, such as confronting heavily armed criminals who can and sometimes do endanger members of the general public. But the experience of many foreign countries demonstrates that police elites like these they can quickly become forces of internal repression. As evidenced in last year’s clampdowns on the Occupy movement and current ‘pacifications’ in Rio de Janeiro slums, paramilitary police can rapidly be targeted against the public. Indeed, the Gauteng Tactical Response Team has already been implicated in several instances of torture and brutality.

Since the killing of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg last year, the SAPS has promised to modernise its crowd control techniques. This seems an impressive development but much of its new policy is based on training missions conducted with the French police which has in recent years been associated with serious allegations of brutality, excessive use of force and the systemic harassment of North African minorities. Hardly a progressive model to emulate.

There is a further irony in the adoption of Israeli manufactured crowd dispersal equipment due to the obvious parallels between the present occupation of Palestine and apartheid. Through Israel’s booming homeland security industry, equipment tested in Gaza’s open-air bantustans is being imported into domestic policing throughout the world. At the same time, the SANDF appears committed to an increasing presence within the country. Along with taking over border security from the police it is also currently building a urban warfare training ground outside Johannesburg.

These are only a few examples of the increasingly blurred lines between the military and police. The internal use of the military, whether for big events or to intimidate protesters, is accompanied by the militarisation of the police and the increased usage of combat-ready security technology. This is not an exclusively domestic process, but is sustained through transnational policing connection and the wares on sale throughout global security and arms markets. Indeed, Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa proudly highlighted this influence during the announcement of changes to the ranking system: “Police forces around the world are referred to as the Force and their ranks are accordingly linked to such designations.”

This focus on ‘force’ is part of an international move towards increasingly militarised policing through the perpetration of functionally endless ‘wars’ against crime, drugs or terrorism. The local media and academia often present policy brutality and state violence as a brute hangover from the recent past. The offered solution is often that this can be cured through the application of vaguely defined ‘world class’ practices, which may actually legitimate the state’s fascination with finding security and military solutions to social problems and political dissent. Rolling back militarisation requires a change of the institutional culture of the SAPS and reductions of the SANDF’s domestic entanglements rather than a quick resort to dubious ‘international benchmarks’.

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* Christopher McMichael is currently completing a PhD in Politics at Rhodes University, South Africa. His research focuses on the militarisation and securitisation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
* This article was first published in Thought Leader.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

ICC Kenya ruling: Deep democratic shifts and blow to impunity

Onyango Oloo

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79429

cc O SThe confirmation of charges against four Kenyans, three of them wealthy and powerful elites, is welcome news for the victims of the 2007/8 post-election violence. But there are thousands of other perpetrators who are still walking free.

The 23 January 2012 ruling by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court confirming the two cases against four Kenyans, thereby opening the way for their full trial over the 2007/8 post- election violence, represents a victory for the victims and the survivors of the carnage as well as the democratic forces in the east African country.

To the hundreds of thousands of displaced children, men and women still languishing in the camps ravaged and plummeted by harsh weather conditions and uncertain livelihoods; to those who were violated through rape and other forms of sexual violence; to those are still nursing physical and psychological scars; to a nation traumatised by ethnic hate, partisan chest-thumping and selfish power games, the recent ICC ruling offers a respite, albeit an impartial one to all that they have experienced and borne witness to over the last five years – even though the roots of the conflict goes back two or three decades.

By indicting Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, one of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in Kenya, as well as influential politician William Ruto and civil service head Francis Muthaura — who many argue acts as if he was the de facto Prime Minister – the ICC has sent a clear warning that the prevailing culture of impunity by members of Kenya’s political elite is being shattered.

The chilling, detailed accounts of how the four accused individuals – the fourth is radio presenter Joshua arap Sang – masterminded aspects of the post-election with ruthless precision underscored how high the stakes were in 2007 in terms of determining which faction of the comprador bourgeoisie would supervise and manage the Kenyan neo-colonial state. Being a spillover from colonialism, the contemporary structures of governance and domination were tools of maintaining the patron-client relationships which are at the heart of elections at the presidential, parliamentary and civic levels. Up to the passage and promulgation of the new constitution in Kenya in 2010 it was literally a matter of life and death who became president, minister and member of parliament because these were essentially ‘eating positions’ where members of the country’s elite enriched themselves through corruption and rewarded/awarded their supporters, relatives and associates with sinecures, tenders, contracts and other perks.

The existing political parties were ideologically bereft vehicles meant to take the elite to the citadels of graft-tainted privilege.

Ironically, it turned out that it was those elite forces close to retiring President Mwai Kibaki (who himself had romped to power in 2002 as part of a massive anti-Moi and anti-KANU reform coalition) who were most desperate to cling on to state power to the extent that they conspired a civilian coup to block the ascendancy of Kibaki’s erstwhile ally and fellow elite, Raila Odinga, to the apex of political power following the hotly disputed presidential elections in December 2007.

In fact, the details seeping out of the lengthy judgments in the two Kenyan cases before the ICC buttress the arguments of many (including the present writer) that what happened in 2007 was nothing but a naked, brutal civilian coup perpetrated against the Kenyan populace via live television from the tallying halls and the electoral command headquarters of the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in downtown Nairobi by forces bent on a continuation of the Kibaki regime.

The way in which all sides of the Kenyan political elite harnessed tribal animosities, deep-seated regional grievances and factional party politics serve as a convenient smokescreen to the underlying political reality that the post-election violence had more to do with a vicious cat fight within and across the comprador bourgeois fragments for the spoils of the neo-colonial state. It went beyond the ethnic veneer of Kalenjins resenting Gikuyus or Luos loathing this or that community. At the end of the day, the pin-stripped ethnic chieftains from their suburban lairs in such posh and leafy Nairobi neighbourhoods like Runda, Karen, Muthaiga, Kitisuru, Loresho and Spring Valley have no qualms about doing business or even copulating across ethnic cleavages.

All the chief suspects- Uhuru, Ruto and Muthaura- share a common history in that their foundations of wealth and power were consolidated when they were active participants in the KANU political machine. For instance, Uhuru Kenyatta was KANU’s presidential candidate in 2002 when William Ruto was serving the then ruling party as a very powerful Secretary General while Francis Muthaura was already a powerful insider in the state bureaucracy.

If one were to believe the allegations in the confirmation rulings of the ICC, the chief suspects were effective in executing their violent plans precisely because of their access to the instruments of state terror. In the case of Muthaura and Uhuru they were part of the Kibaki-led power structures. In the case of Ruto it was because of his association with the Moi-KANU regime that he was able to harness the networks, resources and technical expertise of individuals who had been senior members of the country’s security establishment. In this context the post-election violence had a lot to do with state organised systemic terror more than it had to do with individualised acts of random political thuggery. The involvement of the police, the paramilitary and other state security organs in unfolding the Kibaki civilian coup had its corollary in the equally organised plans of those elite forces waiting in the wings to take advantage of the projected ODM victory to displace ‘suspect’ populations from the Rift Valley.

By confirming the crimes against humanity charges against Uhuru and Muthaura the ICC was essentially saying that Mwai Kibaki bears great responsibility for the post-election violence.

How about Raila Odinga? The ICC pointedly hauled William Ruto who was one of the Deputy Leaders of ODM, and Henry Kosgey, who served as the party’s Chairman before it at The Hague. Was this an oblique allusion to the Prime Minister’s pre-knowledge, collusion and involvement in the post-election violence? That has been the argument of the KKK/G7 political alliance, which has been insisting that Raila Odinga is cynically sacrificing his former lieutenants and acolytes for fleeting political expediency.

The ICC process itself is another sign post of a Kenya coming to terms with its ugly past, squalid present and uncertain future. It is a child of the Kenya National Dialogue process which gave rise to the Kriegler Commission delving into the reasons behind the 2007 election debacle and the Waki Commission which collected evidence and testimony about the post-election violence. In fact it was the commission led by Kenya High Court judge Philip Waki which produced a report fingering the leading suspects deemed to have borne the greatest responsibility for organizing and fanning the post-election violence. Waki recommended the setting of a special, made-in-Kenya tribunal to try those suspects. The failure of Kenyan state, especially its parliament, to create an enabling environment to set up this local tribunal triggered the ICC process which has now ensnared the four Kenyans who will face full trial.

At the pan-African level, the ICC has been dubbed by some as a sort of Guantanamo Bay by Europe for Africa and many Kenyan social justice activists and civil society would have preferred an option grounded in Kenya and driven by Kenyans to try the post-election suspects in a manner akin to what was in place in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. But the cynical rejection by the mainstream political elements of this option mooted by progressive legislators like the Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara galvanized Kenyans into seeking other options for ending impunity.

There is no doubt that the ‘international community’, often a convenient nick name for the Western powers, had their own geo-political reasons for pushing The Hague option even if some (like the United States) are not party to the Rome Statute. But to the extent that these self-interested agendas dovetailed with the clamour by Kenyans for public accountability, the ICC process became very much a popular national choice by Kenyans across the political and ideological divide – as evidenced by the successive opinion polls on the subject over the past three or four years.
Even as Kenyans laud the ICC ruling, it is not lost on them that the Hague process leaves out literally thousands of perpetrators and lots of people (like the residents of Kisumu, Kibera and other areas touched by the post election conflict) grumbling that they were ignore by Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and his colleagues in the Dutch city.

Kenyans seek closure to the issues thrown to the fore by events of 2007 and 2008. There is a need to redress historic injustices, regional inequalities, gender-based violence, youth marginalisation, oppression of certain ethnic communities, religious groups and cultural minorities. There is a need to rebuild and retool Kenya.

The constitution passed in 2010 is attempting to do that. As a statement of intent, it is quite commendable and has served to raise social and national awareness about a full gamut of rights and responsibilities.

2012 being an election year has proved be a lightning rod for passionate discussions and deep reflections about all these themes surrounding national identity, collective harmony, inter-communal reconciliation and general conflict transformation. In the wake of the ICC ruling and the public chest-thumping by the two presidential candidates among ‘The Hague Four’ (Uhuru and Ruto) that it would be business as usual in terms of electoral campaign rhetoric, a gaggle of ordinary Kenyans has stampeded to the judiciary and the figurative courts of national opinion demanding the resignation of Uhuru and Muthaura from their public/state offices and harshly critiquing intrigues by members of the Kibaki kitchen cabinet to downplay the importance of adhering to the standards set out in Chapter Six of the Kenyan constitution guiding the conduct of people in public office or seeking leadership positions.

As Kenyans move forward, it is absolutely crucial for those patriotic and democratic-minded citizens to abandon the comfort zones of academic seminars, workshops and retreats in downtown five-star hotels and return to the streets and other sites of popular struggle.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Onyango Oloo is a Kenyan social justice activist, writer and former political prisoner and exile. He blogs at Democrasia Kenya.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Old Sudan and new Sudan

Political crisis and the search for comprehensive peace

Christopher Zambakari

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79401

cc UN PhotoNorth and South Sudan will not find durable peace so long as the marginalised population in the border States continues to die. There must be stability in Abyei, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan and Darfur.

INTRODUCTION

It is close to seven months since the Republic of South Sudan became independent. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 brought an end to the brutal civil war (1955-1972; 1983-2005) that engulfed Sudan before its independence in 1956. An estimated two-and-half million people died and more than five million were uprooted. [1] The trend in the forceful displacement of people due to conflict, and mortality rate resulting from various clashes in the Border States [2] and within the South is on the rise. [3] This essay concerns itself with the political challenge. It attempts to understand the political crisis in the larger context of North-South politics. It begins by analyzing the rise in political violence in South Sudan, the high rate of people killed as a result of armed movements and ethnic clashes. The last section examines the disappointments of the CPA in the border States, Eastern and Western Sudan. The paper argues that North and South Sudan will not find durable peace so long as the marginalised population in the border states continues to die. The sustainability of peace in the North and the South Sudan hinges on the resolution in and stability of Abyei, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan and Darfur.

POLITICAL CHALLENGE IN SOUTH SUDAN

The period between 2009 and 2011 has seen a rise in violence throughout South Sudan and the border states. [3] Conflicts continue in Eastern and Western Sudan. Table 1 summarises incidents recorded over a three-year period in South Sudan and the number of people killed in those incidents. Ms. Lise Grande, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, reported that ‘60,000 people have been affected by recent violence; more than 350,000 people have been displaced during 2011 by rebel militia and inter-communal fighting’. [4] The military invasion and occupation of South Kordofan and Blue Nile States by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has ‘forced 75,000 people to seek refuge in South Sudan's Unity and Upper Nile since June’. [5] As of December 2011, 4,636 people have been killed in South Sudan. [6] The following four states have the largest number of people killed: Jonglei, Unity, Lakes and Upper Nile. Jonglei accounts for 42.6 percent of the total killed, Unity 16 percent, Lakes 10 percent and Upper Nile 8 percent. This prompted the Government of South Sudan to declare Jonglei ‘a disaster zone’. [7] Together, these four states account for 77 percent of the overall total while the remaining six states account for 22.89%. [8] The year 2011 was particularly deadly in the sheer number of people killed and the number of those displaced.





The immediate task for the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) is to address this escalation of ethnic violence and proliferation of armed groups. The increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) [9] from the border states and within South Sudan, the relationship between peasant communities and pastoralists with shared livelihoods need to be effectively managed or else violence is the natural outcome of mismanagement. In the long term, the political challenge will be building a more equitable society that engages in peaceful nation-building that is democratic, law-abiding, transparent and inclusive of the diversity within the country. This challenge was noted by John Garang at the Koka Dam Conference in 1986. [10]

The solution to the national crisis in Sudan was summarised in the concept of the New Sudan. The New Sudan was a conceptual framework for a country that would be inclusive of all its multiple ethnic groups, pluralistic and embracing all nationalities, races, creeds, religions and genders. The socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities characteristic of North and South Sudan generate armed movements that seek and demand redress of historical wrongs. [11] So long as socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities persist, there will continue to be an incentive for armed movements throughout North and South Sudan. While the CPA resolved the armed confrontation between the SPLA and the NCP, it has come short in resolving the fundamental problem of the Sudan.

PROBLEM OF SUDAN: MARGINALIZATION OF PERIPHERIES

The root causes of the conflict in Sudan are a combination of the institutional legacy of colonialism, [12] and deliberate policies by each postcolonial government to marginalize socially, politically and economically peripheral regions in Sudan. [13] Socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities have been the product of this colonial and postcolonial policy. Discontentment with the growing inequality and marginalization of the mass has historically led to uprisings and rebellions as different groups in different regions demand redress of historical injustice. Garang noted this at the Koka Dam conference: ‘under these circumstances the marginal cost of rebellion in the South became very small, zero or negative; that is, in the South it pays to rebel’. [14] The national problem was ‘marginalisation in all its forms, discrimination, injustice and subordination, constituted the root causes of the conflict that could not be addressed in a piecemeal fashion by dishing out handouts and concessions to the disgruntled and rebellious groups whenever a conflict erupted in a particular region’. [15] Once the problem was formulated, Garang proposed a Conceptual Framework that he called the New Sudan. The New Sudan was in fact the raison d’être of the SPLM from its inception. [16] This vision has been adopted by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) in Darfur and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

CPA AND THE DISAPPOINTMENT IN THE BORDER STATES

The realization that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was less comprehensive has been noted by many scholars of Sudan and policy makers alike. [17] This lesson was captured in a letter signed by 62 members of U.S. Congress, demanding a comprehensive U.S. policy on Sudan. The letter asked the President to move away from current strategy of engaging in ‘individual mediation processes-effectively stove-piping each conflict,’ [18] instead of the root causes, treating only the symptoms of the problem.

A look at the letter shows that members of Congress failed to problematise the CPA and situate it in the larger context of Sudanese politics. They noted correctly that the three core principles that held the agreement were ‘fairer distribution of power and wealth between the centre and the peripheries, democratic transformation, and the right of southern Sudanese to determine their own future.’ [19] All three pillars applied to the situation in the South but cannot be said to have applied to the rest of Sudan. The CPA gave 52 and 28 per cent of state power to the NCP and SPLM, respectively. It distributed the remaining 20 per cent among northern (14 percent) and southern (6 percent) political parties. [20] The fact that Eastern, Western and the border states in Sudan have all resorted to armed struggle is the clearest testimony that the CPA did not resolve their historical grievances.

Another startling fact is that the period shortly after the CPA shows that the CPA delivered on its promise to allow South Sudan to decide its fate. The most important provision in the CPA, the Machakos Protocol, [21] which mandated that a referendum on self-determination was to be held to decide the fate of South Sudan in 2011, [22] was preoccupied with settling the conflict between the NCP and the SPLM/A. This was reflected when the agreement itself was being signed and, in 2003, ‘a rebellion led by an alliance of three ethnic groups — the Fur, the Masalit, and the Zaghawa — broke out in Darfur’. [23] Fearing a similar pattern of attack from other peripheral regions, Khartoum responded with a vicious counter-insurgency, followed by an ethnic-cleansing campaign throughout the region in rebel villages. [24] Two months before South Sudan’s declaration of independence, Khartoum attacked Abyei, then followed that with occupation of Southern Kordofan and then finished up by waging a brutal war in Blue Nile State. The demands in each of the cases are indirectly reflected in the lack of clarification in the CPA about the fate of the border states.

In regard to Abyei, the CPA contained a provision to conduct a public referendum to determine its status and fate in the Sudan. In regard to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, the CPA was vague and instead included a stipulation about popular consultation for both states. This vagueness and SPLA’s reluctance to retaliate as it prepared to declare independence in the South gave the NCP the needed room to dismantle the local administration in Abyei and then to militarily occupy South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. In the East and West of Sudan, the problem was even more pronounced because there were separate agreements that individually lacked the muscle and comprehensiveness [25] of the CPA. The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed in May 2005; the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) was signed in October 2006. Only one faction of the divided SLA (SLA-Minni) signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006. [26] The DPA [27] was subsequently rejected by the main faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). [28]

CONCLUSION

From the Addis Ababa agreement to the ESPA, power-sharing arrangements in Sudan have systematically excluded the majority, making their acceptance difficult amongst those who have no stake in safeguarding or seeing a successful implementation of the agreement. South cannot find peace if the North is unstable; and the opposite is true for the North. The greatest threat to peace in the South, however, comes from within. North and South Sudan will not find durable peace so long as violence continues in the marginalised areas. The sustainability of peace in the North and the South Sudan hinges on the resolution in and stability of Abyei, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan and Darfur. These areas constitute the majority of the marginalised population. [29] Without resolving the multiplicity of crises and finding a comprehensive political arrangement for the conflict in the Border States, North and South Sudan will remain in a perpetual state of war.


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* Christopher Zambakari is a candidate for a Law and Policy Doctorate (LPD) at the College of Professional Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. He can be reached at: . He would like to thank Rose Jaji, University of Zimbabwe, Anschaire Aveved, Columbia University, Tijana Gligorevic, Roseman University of Health Sciences, for their insightful comments and constructive feedback on the earlier draft of this article.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES

1. Capuano, Michael E, Michael T McCaul , Frank Wolf, and Donald Payne. "Letter to His Honorable President Barack Obama (Dated November 21, 2011 and Signed by 62 Members of Congress)." Washington, DC: Congress of the United States of America.
2. CPA. "The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Cpa) between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army." Machakos, Kenya: The Government of The Republic of The Sudan and The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army, 2005.
de Waal, Alex. "The Wars of Sudan." Nation 284, no. 11 (2007): 16-20.
3. Deng, Francis Mading, ed. New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
4. Deng, Francis Mading. "Sudan at the Crossroads." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , edited by Francis Mading. Deng. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
5. Deng, Luka Biong. "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?" Civil Wars 7, no. 3 (2005): 244-57.
6. Garang, John. The Call for Democracy in Sudan. Edited by Mansour Khalid. New York Kegan Paul International, 1992.
7. IDMC. "Estimates for the Total Number of Idps for All of Sudan (as of January 2011)." .Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
8. Kameir, Elwathig. "Operationalizing the New Sudan Concept." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , edited by Francis Mading Deng. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press., 2010.
9. Mamdani, Mahmood. Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009.
10. Natsios, Andrew S. "Beyond Darfur." Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (2008): 77-93.
Nyaba, Peter Adwok. "Splm-Ncp Asymmetrical Power Relations Jeopardise the Implementation of the Cpa and the Future of the Sudan." International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 5, no. 1 (2010): 138-47.
11. Tanner, Victor , and Jérôme Tubiana. "Divided They Fall:The Fragmentation of Darfur’s Rebel Groups." Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey, 2007.
12. UNMIS. "The Background to Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement." United Nations: Information and Communications Technology Division/DFS.
13. UNOCHA. "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande." Juba, South Sudan: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan. Accessible from Reliefweb, 2012.
14. Yoh, John G. "The Cpa as an Embodiment of the New Sudan." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself, edited by Francis Deng, 415-38. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
15. Zambakari, Christopher. "In Search for Durable Peace: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Power Sharing in Sudan " International Journal of Human Rights (Fall 2012 Forthcoming). no. Special Issue on Law, Power Sharing and Human Rights (2012).
16. Zambakari, Christopher. "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges." International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 6, no. 2 (2011): 32–56.
17. Zambakari, Christopher. "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges." In Two Decades of Democracy and Governance in Africa: Discourses and Country Experiences (Forthcoming). edited by Said Adejumobi. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

END NOTES

[1] UNMIS, "The Background to Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement," United Nations: Information and Communications Technology Division/DFS,, http://unmis.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=515; IDMC, "Estimates for the Total Number of Idps for All of Sudan (as of January 2011)", Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
[2] The Border States mentioned in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for special status include Abyei, Southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile.
[3] See Table 1
[4] Christopher Zambakari, "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges," International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 6, no. 2 (2011): 43-45.
[5] UNOCHA, "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande," (Juba, South Sudan: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan. Accessible from , 2012).
[6] Ibid.
[7] The three leading factors accounting for the killing are inter-tribal conflicts, various armed incidences, and intra-tribal clashes. Jonglei, Warrap, Unity, Lake and Upper Nile states are the most affected areas.
[8] UNOCHA, "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande."
[9]Christopher Zambakari, "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges," in Two Decades of Democracy and Governance in Africa: Discourses and Country Experiences (Forthcoming). ed. Said Adejumobi (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
[10] Together North and South Sudan have the largest number of IDPs in the world estimated to be over five million.
[11] John Garang, The Call for Democracy in Sudan, ed. Mansour Khalid (New York Kegan Paul International, 1992).
[12] Christopher Zambakari, "In Search for Durable Peace: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Power Sharing in Sudan " International Journal of Human Rights (Fall 2012 Forthcoming). no. Special Issue on Law, Power Sharing and Human Rights (2012); ibid.
[13] Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009).
[14] Luka Biong Deng, "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?," Civil Wars 7, no. 3 (2005).
[15] Garang, The Call for Democracy in Sudan
[16] Francis Mading Deng, ed. New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press,2010), 18-19.
[17] Peter Adwok Nyaba, "Splm-Ncp Asymmetrical Power Relations Jeopardise the Implementation of the Cpa and the Future of the Sudan," International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 5, no. 1 (2010): 142.
[18] Francis Mading Deng, "Sudan at the Crossroads," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , ed. Francis Mading. Deng (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010), 36-38; John G Yoh, "The Cpa as an Embodiment of the New Sudan.," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself, ed. Francis Deng (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010), 415-38; Elwathig Kameir, "Operationalizing the New Sudan Concept," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , ed. Francis Mading Deng. (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press., 2010), 447-51; Alex de Waal, "The Wars of Sudan," Nation 284, no. 11 (2007): 16.
[19] Michael E Capuano et al., "Letter to His Honorable President Barack Obama (Dated November 21, 2011 and Signed by 62 Members of Congress)," (Washington, DC: Congress of the United States of America: Retrieved from , 2011).
[20] Ibid.
[21] CPA, "The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Cpa) between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army," (Machakos, Kenya: The Government of The Republic of The Sudan and The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army, 2005), 16. : Part II, Sec. [2.2.5.]
[22] Ibid., 1-8; Chapter I.
[23] Ibid., 3. : Part A, Sec.[1.3]
[24] Andrew S. Natsios, "Beyond Darfur," Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (2008): 79..
[25] Ibid., 79.
[26] Though the CPA included all four different types of power sharing arrangements: political, economic, territorial and military, it was a prerogative of two parties to a conflict. It thus omitted the majority from the process which led to the signing of the agreement. Later with the signing of the DPA in Darfur and ESPA in Eastern Sudan, both agreement departed from key stipulations of the CPA and were weakened by the undemocratic aspects, similar to the one that plagued the CPA throughout the interim period in Sudan.
[27] Victor Tanner and Jérôme Tubiana, "Divided They Fall:The Fragmentation of Darfur’s Rebel Groups," (Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey, 2007), 11.
[28] DPA was signed between the GOS and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)-Mini Minawi faction.
[29] Deng, "Sudan at the Crossroads," 36-37; de Waal, "The Wars of Sudan," 18.
[30] Deng, "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?," 249.

‘Aid is a dirty word, like colonialism’

Interview by Welt-Sichten (World-Views)

Yash Tandon

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79395

cc FMSCThere are at least a million people in the West who live off the aid industry. They have a vested interest in perpetuating it. But it will disintegrate over time and die slowly.

WELT-SICHTEN: You wrote that the aid effectiveness journey since the Paris Declaration in 2005 was misguided right from the beginning. Why that?

YASH TANDON: Because it was conceptualized by the donors, and not by the people that were supposed to be assisted. It was not a participatory project. When it became clear that aid had failed, instead of looking at the issue in a fundamental manner, the donor countries put the blame of ineffectiveness on the recipient countries.

WELT-SICHTEN: But the Paris Declaration also calls on the donors to harmonize their aid policies, to align them to recipient-country systems, among other things.

YASH TANDON: Those words are deceptive. The five principles of the Paris Declaration are ideological, one-sided and not enforceable on the donors. They looked good in a conceptual sense, but the implementation was enforced only on the recipient countries.

WELT-SICHTEN: You have said that after the High Level Forum in Busan, the aid industry in itself is finally dead. Why?

YASH TANDON: Well, this industry was nurtured by countries that have used aid to serve their own political and economic agendas in the south. In fact, the so-called development aid never did promote development. Since 2005, the OECD countries and the World Bank have tried very hard to sell the idea of “aid effectiveness”. But the Outcome Document of the Busan Forum does not mention the word "aid effectiveness". It's gone. Finally, the architects of the aid industry, namely the OECD countries and the World Bank, have recognized that they cannot use that word anymore. Aid has become a dirty word, like colonialism. The result is that the aid industry has no longer any legitimacy.

WELT-SICHTEN: By contrast, the Minister of Development in Germany sees a new beginning: He said that Busan was a basis to “bundle” old and new actors in development cooperation and to steer them in the same direction.

YASH TANDON: Well, the minister better read the Outcome Document again. It calls on the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness to dissolve by June 2012. The words are clear. There is no “rebundling” of aid.

WELT-SICHTEN: But the Outcome Document says that a new Global Partnership for Development should be established.

YASH TANDON: This new development partnership will not take off the ground because the ruling classes of Europe and the West have a distorted, an upside-down, understanding of “development”. Let Europe first show that their “partnership“ with the people of Greece takes off the ground before they offer the same failed strategies to the poor indebted countries of Africa and the third world.

WELT-SICHTEN: NGOs have said Busan was a compromise: the Outcome Document left much to be desired, but it was a success that civil society was recognized as a development partner.

YASH TANDON: The NGOs that came to Busan were not representative of the global civil society. The overwhelming bulk of them were financed by the OECD. For the last six years, these guys have been saying the same thing, namely, that the OECD has compromised but there is a still a lot to be desired. This is an admission that they have failed to change the “aid effectiveness” agenda. The NGOs have a self-serving delusion about themselves: they live in a fool’s paradise.

WELT-SICHTEN: So in your view the only purpose of the aid effectiveness process was to legitimate the apparently ineffective and self-serving aid industry of the West?

YASH TANDON: That is correct. Of course this industry will not disappear overnight. There are at least a million people in the Western countries that live off the aid industry. They have a vested interest in perpetuating it. It will disintegrate over time and die slowly. When the aid industry started 50 years ago with multilateral and governmental agencies that were providing financial support to countries that were emerging out of the colonial period, it was already corrupted. For example, when the World Bank came to provide the so-called assistance to my country Uganda at its independence in 1962, it came with its own strategy of development. It was not people-oriented, it was top-down, it was aimed at continuing to serve essentially the interests of the former colonial powers – namely to export our primary commodities to them. The whole economic agenda was flawed right from the beginning. And that agenda was bought into later on by the charity organisations and the NGOs.

WELT-SICHTEN: But many development NGOs have been strongly criticising the official aid agenda and the World Bank policy for many years.

YASH TANDON: Yes, but many of them got corrupted over time. For example, Oxfam started out as a well meaning, well intentioned organisation by people who wanted to give money as charity to people who were less fortunate than them. But look at how Oxfam has evolved: it has become a party of the development strategies pushed by the Western countries. Gradually charity organisations like Oxfam got sucked into that strategy. They criticised the effects of it, but at the same time continued pouring money into the same strategy. And when the OECD worked out this thing about “effective aid”, the NGOs jumped on this agenda as well. Instead of examining this question in its fundamentals and looking at the root causes of aid ineffectiveness, the NGOs simply called for even more aid and “better aid”.

WELT-SICHTEN: You say that aid has failed. But what's wrong with, for example, the German development bank KfW financing water supply systems in Kampala?

WELT-SICHTEN: Why do you call it aid? Just call it business, like the Chinese and the Indians do in Africa. The Chinese go to Kampala to do business. They go to the government or the private sector and talk about investments. Aid, by contrast, is humiliating.

WELT-SICHTEN: So it's better to do it like China?

YASH TANDON: Absolutely. Why hide your commercial and political interests? Be transparent, just call it what it is. Call it business.

WELT-SICHTEN: Another example: What's wrong with a German Church-based development organisation working with grassroots partner organisations in rural Uganda to empower women or poor farmers? That's aid, isn't it?

WELT-SICHTEN: There is a particular kind of relationship I accept: that is a relationship based on solidarity. But solidarity is a very difficult concept. If the goal is to help the Ugandan women to empower themselves, by their own projects, then I would call this solidarity. But the people from Germany must not impose their values on the Ugandan women. In other words, if the communities of these women have certain cultural practices, then solidarity organisations from the West should respect that.

WELT-SICHTEN: Even if such practices conflict with universal human rights? Should we not encourage women who raise their voices against practices that violate their human rights?

YASH TANDON: No, this is not your business. The women don't require outside agencies to “encourage” them, as you put it. My experience from 20 years of grassroots work in Africa is that the initiatives of rural women in Africa against oppression are very strong and very strategic. They know what will work and what will not. If in such a situation a foreign organisation comes to provide assistance based on the women's own initiatives, then it will work. By contrast, if an outside agency comes to solve the problem, then you might create conflicts which the outside organisations cannot manage. All development is self-development.

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* Yash Tandon is a political economist and author of several books on development economics and aid. Until his retirement in 2009 he was the Executive Director of the South Centre in Geneva. He was born in Uganda and now lives in Oxford.
* This interview will appear in the original German version in February in Welt-sichten.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa, steer clear of this Ponzi climate scheme

Michael Dorsey and Patrick Bond

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79416

cc OxfamClimate gamblers have been led astray since 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was amended to let corporations buy the right to pollute in exchange for endorsing the treaty. Predictably, Washington has refused to honour this ever since.

In the middle of last year, when carbon prices fell 15 percent in one week, industry analysts termed it ‘carnage’. Then in the fortnight before last month’s Durban climate summit, carbon prices fell more than 30 percent, with front-year European Union Allowance permits dropping below €9/tonne. And they have crashed even further since.

During the Durban talks Deutsche Bank confessed: ‘We do not expect the pricing outlook to improve materially in the foreseeable future.’ A leading UBS analyst predicted a €3/tonne price in coming months, because the EU Emissions Trading Scheme ‘isn't working’ and carbon prices are ‘already too low to have any significant environmental impact.’


PointCarbon, Reuters’ climate trade news service, concluded that, ‘Carbon markets are still on life support after the COP17 put off some big decisions until next year and failed to deliver any hope for a needed boost in carbon permit demand.’

The French bank Societe Generale projects said that, ‘European carbon permits may fall close to zero should regulators fail to set tight enough limits in the market after 2020’ – and without much prospect of that, the bank lowered its 2012 forecasts by 28 percent. A 54 percent crash for December 2012 carbon futures sent the price to a record low, just under €6.4/tonne. Making matters worse, an additional oversupply of 879 million tons was anticipated through 2020, partly as a result of a huge inflow of United Nations offsets: an estimated 1.75 billion tonnes.

Those UN carbon credits include Clean Development Mechanism projects which are notoriously bogus. The UN estimates that 40-70 percent of the projects are fraudulent or ‘non-additional’ — which in lay terms means they do not mitigate climate change. South Africa’s leading pilot in Durban, the Bisasar Road waste-to-energy site, is a case in point. The project is bound up in a corruption controversy surrounding former mayor Obed Mlaba and an official’s false claims to the UN that without foreign funding the project would not have gone ahead.

Many analysts openly admit carbon prices are far too low and may never rise high enough to catalyse the transformative innovations – most costing in excess of €50/tonne (the EU peak was just over €30/tonne five years ago) – necessary in energy, transport, production, agriculture and disposal to achieve a solid post-carbon foothold. By all scientific accounts, by 2020 it is vital to wean the industrialised world economy from dependence upon more than half the currently consumed fossil fuels, so as to avert catastrophic climate change.

Africa hasn’t received this bad news, mainly because even the continent’s finest daily paper, Business Day, doesn’t report the carbon markets with a fraction of the critical vigour given to interrogating African National Congress Youth League grandstanding over the word ‘nationalisation’, for example. Indeed after Durban, Business Day merely (uncritically) cited National Business Initiative CEO Joanne Yawitch’s remark that ‘the most important’ of Durban’s outcomes is securing Kyoto’s ‘second commitment period and the carbon market.’

The lack of awareness of the carbon market’s crash is a travesty because far too often these past two centuries, the continent has been looted by faraway financiers selling snake-oil.

This week at Johannesburg's ultra-luxurious Sandton Sun Hotel, a conference aims to ‘make Africa a major focus for climate finance into the post-Kyoto era’ with keynote speakers from Morgan Stanley, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Carbon Check, CDM Africa Climate Solutions, SouthSouthNorth, similar emissions traders, the Johannesburg and Cape Town municipalities and SA's national Department of Energy.

Caveat emptor to carbon buyers, sellers and speculators. Climate gamblers have been led astray since 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was amended – at US vice president Al Gore’s request – to let corporations buy the right to pollute in exchange for endorsing the treaty. Predictably, Washington has refused to honour this ever since, even though it represents a world-historic broken promise, followed logically by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s 2009 pledge to raise $100 billion per year for the Green Climate Fund, also worthless.

Pulling at straws, that Fund’s design co-chair Trevor Manuel - South Africa's planning minister - has suggested getting half the revenues from carbon markets. It might have been feasible if the emissions trade reached the anticipated $3 trillion mark by 2020. In reality, after a decade, the market seems to have peaked at $140 billion in annual carbon trades.

These trades are mostly in the EU where the Emissions Trading Scheme was meant to generate a cap on emissions and a steady 1.74 percent annual reduction. Unfortunately, the speculative character of carbon markets not only encouraged rampant fraud, Value Added Tax scams, and computer hacking which shut the Scheme for two weeks last year.

The EU’s carbon trading also included perverse incentives to stockpile credits when large corporations as well as Eastern European states – with ‘hot air’ excess emissions capacity subsequent to their 1990s manufacturing collapse – gambled the price would increase.

With the market now collapsing, the current perverse incentive is to flood supply so as to at least achieve some return rather than none at all when eventually the markets are decommissioned, as happened in 2010 to the Chicago climate exchange. Powerful equity backers of the Chicago market – once the lead US carbon exchange – recently sued the high-profile founder, Richard Sandor, for misrepresenting the value of their assets. If they win perhaps other investors can follow suit and squeeze back the vast losses from the investment banks now selling the declining credits.

Africa can and must do better than invest faith and state resources in yet another Ponzi scheme: the ‘privatisation of the air’. The North’s ‘climate debt’ to Africa should be paid not through such gambling, but in genuine income transfers that reach ordinary people who are taking the brunt of worsening climate chaos.

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* Dorsey and Bond are development and environment professors at Dartmouth College and University of Kwa-Zulu Natal respectively. Last year, Bond authored Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press) and edited Durban's Climate Gamble (Unisa Press).
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

‘This is Africa to come’

Mandisi Majavu

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79398

cc S C‘The Mozambique food riots of 2010 and the recent mass protests in Nigeria show that people are capable of forcing governments to back down from enforcing policies that have a negative impact on their lives.’

Frantz Fanon once wrote that the challenge facing civil society and progressive governments in Africa is how to organize African countries around values that promote and encourage participatory democracy, equity and mutual aid. Although most African countries gained independence from European colonial rule in the 1960s and 1970s, that remains the biggest challenge facing the continent today.

It is for this reason that many political commentators expected the Arab Spring in North Africa to spill over to Africa south of the Sahara. When that did not happen it was hastily pointed out that Africans are too technologically disconnected and rural to organize protest movements that would topple dictators on the continent. The weakness of this argument, however, is that it does not take into consideration the political protests that have been taking place on the continent for the past two years.

These political events indicate that people on the continent are increasingly demanding to participate in socio-economic decision-making that affects their lives.

The recent general strike and mass protests against the fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria show that people want to be included in economic decision-making that impact on their lives. Similarly, the Mozambique food riots of 2010 illustrated this point well. The food riots were sparked by a jump in the price of bread which led to a three days of protests in Mozambique, and that in turn forced the government to reverse the increase in the price of bread.

The walk-to-work campaign in Uganda in 2011, which was also a protest against high living costs and rising fuel prices in that country, did not quite achieve the same results that people in Mozambique won. Nevertheless, these protests, as well as other ongoing social conflicts in other parts of the continent, point to the fact that African societies are failing our people. It is a truism to argue that African societies are incapable of meeting people’s economic desires and people’s political aspirations.

A liberatory politics is warranted, and a better way of organizing African economies is long overdue. The starting point would be to recognize that neo-liberal economic policies are not the solution. As Ha-Joon Chang points out in his book ‘Bad Samaritans: The myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism’, even developed countries, which include Britain and the US, did not become rich on the basis of following the neo-liberal economics mantra. “Today’s rich countries used protection and subsidies, while discriminating against foreign investors,” writes Chang.

Further, the self-serving worldview of the African elite that economic development should take priority over democratic demands has proven to be a very effective propaganda trick that keeps the African masses in line. The economic relationship between China and African states is based on this notion. Thus dictators such as Robert Mugabe are able to access financial aid from China for ostensibly economic development while, simultaneously, overseeing one of the most repressive regimes on the continent.

It is also worth noting that although Chinese financial aid comes with no strings attached, economists argue that international borrowing tends to entangle poor countries in debt traps from which it is impossible for them to escape. Additionally, the current global economic system is designed to favour stronger and bigger economies as opposed to weak economies. Naturally, in such a system, the Chinese will always come out the winners in their engagements with African states.

What is to be done? The African Union (AU) has, among other things, been grappling with this question for a long time. Since its establishment in 1999 the AU has ineffectively tried to accelerate the “process of integration in the continent to enable it to play its rightful role in the global economy”. The meetings and summits that the AU holds regularly do not seem to lead to any fundamental political changes in African countries.

I am of the view that fundamental economic and political change in Africa will only come when ordinary people agitate en masse for political changes. The Mozambique food riots of 2010 and the recent mass protests in Nigeria show that people are capable of forcing governments to back down from enforcing policies that have a negative impact on their lives. It is this history that ought to inform our politics, and not the AU summits and meetings.

There are political and economic models that African states could emulate. For instance, research shows that societies that are organized along social democratic policies tend to have low poverty rates, low unemployment rates, and high standards of living. That is one model for those with a liberal bent.

For the rest of us who are for social revolution, we want nothing less than the elimination of social hierarchies, authoritative decision-making, poverty and inequality. We seek to build liberatory and human centred societal institutions for production, consumption and allocation. For a new Africa to function, it is necessary to create societal institutions that complement and support one another across different societal realms. This means that the new economic institutions that we create ought to be consistent with the aims of our political institutions as well as our mental outlook.

This is the Africa that Fanon had in mind when he wrote the essay, “This Africa to come”. As Fanon once wrote, the current oppressive system will not commit suicide for the new Africa to be born. The first step toward building new societies is through events that change history, such as, the mass protests against the removal of the fuel subsidy, which recently took place in Nigeria, as well as the Mozambique food riots of 2010.

The most important step in bringing about a social revolution is to develop a vision for a better society. It is the lack of such a vision that prevents mass protests from becoming full-blown uprisings. Developing a coherent vision that is relevant to the 21st century Africa is the task facing the new generation of activists in Africa.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Mandisi Majavu is the Book Reviews Editor of Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
* This article was first published by the South Africa Civil Society Information Service.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

China and Japan currency swap

A nail in the coffin of the US Dollar

Horace Campbell

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79417

cc MMChina and Japan have taken a decisive step to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar. African peoples have a lot of lessons to learn from both the capitalist crisis in Europe and this new financial arrangement.

INTRODUCTION

On 25 December 2011, the government of Peoples Republic of China and Japan unveiled plans to promote direct exchange of their currencies. This agreement will allow firms to convert the Chinese and Japanese currencies directly into each other, thus negating the need to buy dollars. This deal between China and Japan followed agreements between China and numerous countries to trade outside the sphere of the US dollar. A few weeks earlier, China also announced a 70 billion Yuan ($11 billion) currency swap agreement with Thailand.

After visiting China, the Prime Minister of Japan Yoshihiko Noda went on to India and signed another currency swap agreement with the government of India. These currency agreements in Asia came in a year when the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) were seeking to deepen ways to strengthen their firewall to protect their economies from the continued devaluation of the US dollar. In the year of the ‘Eurozone crisis’ when the future of the EURO as a viable currency was fraught with uncertainty, many states were reconsidering holding their reserves in the US dollar.

Moreover, in the face of the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the Bretton Woods institutions (especially the IMF) swap agreements were proliferating in all parts of the globe. The Latin Americans established the Bank of the South and are slowly laying the groundwork for a new currency, the SUCRE. As in Asia, the Bank of the South will be one of the fundamental institutions of the Union of South American Nations that has been launched in Latin America in order to guarantee the independence of the societies of Latin America. Not to be left as the only region holding dollars, the leaders of the oil rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council have been buying gold while announcing as long ago as 2009 the intention to establish a monetary union with a common currency. In Africa there are plans for the strengthening of the financial basis of the African Union but so far there has not been the same kind coordinated regional plans for financial independence. During the period of the debate on the debt crisis in the USA, the Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi announced that Nigeria plans to invest 5 to 10 percent of its foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese currency - the Yuan also known as the renminbi (RMB).

These accelerated Swap agreements – (agreements between two or several countries (bilateral vs. multilateral) on exchanging currencies in times of crisis) – came a decade after the countries of ASEAN established the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI). In the aftermath of the Asian economic crash and the currency attack by speculators of the financial services industry, the CMI had been established to promote financial cooperation among the ASEAN countries with regional collaboration on currency issues high on the agenda. Initially when the CMI was launched, the government of China had been lukewarm to the goals of the CMI but over decade, especially after the 2007-2008 Wall Street crash, the preliminary partnership that was called ASEAN plus three (Viz ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and Korea) matured to the point where the ASEAN Swap Agreements have now been expanded to the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) agreement, and a set of rules with structured mechanisms for financial regionalism to work for the development of Asian bond markets. These three pillars of the new Asian economic cooperation – CMIM, Asian Bond Markets and bilateral swap agreements - mark a new stage in the international political order.

This week we will examine the implications of the Chinese/ Japan currency swap in the context of the internal discussions in China about the consolidation of socialism. In 2011, China overtook Japan as the second largest economy in the world, and every expansion increases internal and external pressures on the socialist goals of the People’s Republic of China. More importantly, it is crucial to recollect the competitive devaluations and currency wars of the last depression so that the decline of the dollar can be managed in a way that avoids the recourse to open confrontation of the last depression. It is worth remembering that one of the goals of the fascists in the last depression was to roll back socialism.

In our contribution this week we will examine the implications of the swap agreement between China and Japan and the pressures on other regions to delink from the dollar. The conclusion will argue that this swap is one more nail in the coffin of the dollar as the international reserve currency.

'CHINA, JAPAN TO BACK DIRECT TRADE OF CURRENCIES'

This was the headline in the financial press as Bloomberg News and other news sheets of the financial world reported the agreement on settling trade between the two countries in Yen and RMB instead of dollar. With US $340 Billion of transactions in 2010 between the two countries, both being each other’s biggest trading partner, the deal is a clear break away from US financial domination. This Bloomberg Report stated,

‘Japan and China will promote direct trading of the Yen and Yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for companies involved in the exchanges, the Japanese government said. Japan will also apply to buy Chinese bonds next year, allowing the investment of renminbi that leaves China during the transactions, the Japanese government said in a statement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing yesterday. Encouraging direct Yen- Yuan settlement should reduce currency risks and trading costs, the Japanese and Chinese governments said. China is Japan’s biggest trading partner with 26.5 trillion Yen ($340 billion) in two-way transactions last year, from 9.2 trillion Yen a decade earlier. The pacts between the world’s second- and third-largest economies mirror attempts by fund managers to diversify as the two-year-old European debt crisis keeps global financial markets volatile.

‘Given the huge size of the trade volume between Asia’s two biggest economies, this agreement is much more significant than any other pacts China has signed with other nations.’

Less than two weeks later, in the first week of January 2012, the President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak travelled to China to discuss a ‘bilateral strategic partnership.’ This discussion on bilateral partnership between South Korea and China took place in a context where the Republic of South Korea did not want to be left behind. Ostensibly the visit to China was to discuss the recent passing of Kim Jung IL of North Korea but Chinese media reported that China, Japan and South Korea were hammering out the basic framework for a free trade agreement between the three biggest economies in East Asia.

These agreements will have implications for the dollar as the global reserve currency and there will be increased pressures for the Chinese currency to be internationalized as other societies follow the lead of Japan and seek swap agreements outside of the dollar.

SLOW EROSION OF THE POWER OF THE DOLLAR AND MANAGING THIS NEW MULTIPOLAR CURRENCY ENVIRONMENT

Japan is one of closest allies of the United States. There are thousands of US troops stationed in Japan, but the Japanese, like all peoples of the world, have been losing money as the US dollar was devalued over the past three years. This devaluation has taken the form of what the US authorities called quantitative easing. There has been two such quantitative easings since the 2009 as the United States unloaded more fiat currency on the world. Whatever the name (devaluations or quantitative easing) all countries in the world were thinking of finding ways to escape being hostages to the US dollar and Central Bank governors from Brazil to India and beyond are working to protect their societies from these devaluations. Asian central banks together hold some $3,3 Trillion in reserves, amounting to an impressive 46 percent of the world’s total national reserves. The government of China has vowed to reduce its holding of US dollars and in 2011. The China Daily newspaper reported that,

‘According to data from the US Treasury Department, China's holdings of US Treasury bonds stood at $1.1326 trillion by the end of November 2011, $1.5 billion down from the previous month. It was the second successive month that the amount had declined, and the lowest reserve level seen since July 2010. China made six monthly cuts of US debt in 2011, the department's data showed, trimming its holdings by $27.5 billion from the end of 2010. Yet despite the reductions, China remains the top buyer of US Treasury securities.”

What was left unsaid was the plan of the political leadership of China for a deft management of the reductions so that the international political economy is not drastically affected leading to unforeseen circumstances. Over the past decade numerous officials from the National People’s Congress, the Central Bank and the commercial sectors have been stating that China has to reduce its holdings of US bonds and diversify into other currencies. When, over five years ago, Parliamentary vice-chairman Cheng Siwei, called for the diversification of Chinese reserves away from US bonds, the implicit assumption was that China would diversify and buy European bonds. This was before the full hollowness of the European project became manifest to the world.

PRESSURES TO INTERNATIONALIZE CHINESE CURRENCY

The Chinese economy has registered an average of over 10 per cent growth in the past thirty years. This has been the most successful transformation of an economy in the recorded history of political economy, but the pundits do not like to point to the socialist foundations of China and the sacrifices made by the Chinese people to transform their society. Mao Zedong called the currency of China, the Renminbi, and the people’s currency. Renminbi is the official name of the currency introduced by the Communist People's Republic of China at the time of its foundation in 1949. The other name for the currency is the Yuan. Hence the Chinese currency is known by a number of names (including the Kuai).

As a low wage economy, the hard work of the Chinese producers has made the society a force to be reckoned with and the currency attractive to other countries seeking a refuge from the dollar. The political leaders in China have been careful about the pace and nature of the internationalization of the currency. The leaders have slowly allowed Hong Kong to become an offshore renminbi financial centre by allowing authorized institutions in Hong Kong to offer renminbi services such as deposit taking, currency exchange, remittance and trading in RMB denominated bonds. Since 2009 when the Chinese government opened this slight door to the internationalization of its currency, other financial centres such as Macau and Singapore have been hoping to get into the offshore RMB business.

These regional pressures for the internationalization of the RMB came up against the hard reality that for the full internationalization of the currency, for the RMB to become a global currency, the government of China would have to establish capital markets and ensure the full convertibility of capital account. The balance of forces within China would then shift in favour of the one per cent who would then privatise state assets at a faster rate. In the present international system, opening such capital markets beyond the tightly controlled stock exchanges would open up the Chinese currency to the kind of full scale attack and speculation that was witnessed in the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Thus far the Chinese state has held the line against the expansion of capital markets in ways that would undermine the stability of the society.

The economy of China is a mixed economy with the state-owned enterprises dominating the economy. Of the ten largest companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, eight are state owned. With the growth and power of the Chinese economy, the Chinese capitalists have expanded with a large number of billionaires. These billionaires do not control political power and the Chinese state continues to subsidise food, education and transportation services. There are many limitations to the nature of the Chinese political system, especially the hothouse of growth and accumulation that is creating a fundamental environmental hazard for the majority of the citizens. The growing inequalities and the massive push for the reversal of socialist gains since 1949 are now compounded by an alliance between capitalists in Singapore and the US who are calling for speeding the internationalisation of the RMB.
It is in this context where the December 25 agreement to allow Japan to ‘apply to buy Chinese bonds next year’ becomes significant. It is again worth quoting the press reports of the December 25 agreement. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation,

‘The two leaders also agreed to allow the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to issue Yuan-denominated bonds in China, the first time a foreign government body has been allowed to do so. At the same time Japan said it was also looking to buy Chinese government bonds, a move that analysts believe may prove to be mutually beneficial to both nations. ‘By adopting Chinese bonds as a part of official foreign exchange reserves, Japan is labelling Chinese bonds as an investable asset,’ according to Takuji Okubo of Societe Generale Tokyo.

‘This should encourage Japanese private investment into Chinese bonds, as well as into other Asian emerging currencies. Such a development in turn should help develop offshore currency trading in Japan.’

This new collaboration between China and Japan has been underlined by the Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba who on Tuesday said that ‘Japan will seek to take a less inward-looking stance when it comes to diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region.’ In the words of the China daily newspaper the Foreign Minister said that, ‘Japan will look to enhance diplomatic ties with China based on mutually beneficial goals. With China, this year marks the 40th anniversary of normalizing diplomatic ties, we will aim to deepen the mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests,’ Gemba said in his first foreign policy speech in parliament.

He went on to say that Japan plans to proactively make ‘concrete efforts’ to strengthen its ties with China and establish more ‘open and multilayered networks’ in the best interests of both countries
Ever alert to these shifts in the global currency and financial markets, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, travelled to Hong Kong in January and offered London as the western base for the coming internationalization of the RMB. Osborne was vociferously making a plea to make London the leading centre for trading the Chinese currency. This conservative Chancellor was exposing the opportunism of the British and demonstrating the short memory of the British hoping that the Chinese have forgotten the Opium Wars.

UNITED STATES SENATE CURRENCY BILL

While the British were declaring their willingness to embrace the RMB, the US Senate has gone about increasing the war of words against China. In the failure to compete in the so-called ‘marketplace,’ sections of the US political leadership have for years been complaining that China should allow open markets for its currency and for its currency to appreciate more rapidly. There are two sections of the US political establishment pushing against the Chinese currency. The first are those allied to Wall Street and the currency speculators who want to be able to trade in the Chinese currency and to do to China what was done to Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and other Asian economies in 1997. The second pressure is coming from those sections of capital who complain that China is flooding US markets. While these two sections do not agree they support the information war against China, this information war carries the refrain that the renminbi is undervalued by 25-30 percent against the dollar, which means Chinese exports to the US become 25-30 percent cheaper, while US goods exported to China are more expensive.

Even though China has allowed its currency to appreciate a little in the last two years, the two sections of capital in the US hostile to China have said that this is not enough. In October 2011 the US Senate passed S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2011, and a bill to address China’s ongoing currency manipulation, by a vote of 63-35.

One year earlier one commentator for Time Magazine had noted correctly that the real challenge for the United States was to change its consumption patterns.

‘We've seen this movie before. From July 2005 to July 2008, under pressure from the US government, Beijing allowed its currency to rise against the dollar by 21 percent. Despite that hefty increase, China's exports to the US continued to grow mightily. Of course, once the recession hit, China's exports slowed, but not as much as those of countries that had not let their currencies rise. So even with relatively pricier goods, China did better than other exporting nations.

Look elsewhere in the past and you come to the same conclusion. In 1985 the US browbeat Japan at the Plaza Accord meetings into letting the yen rise. But the subsequent 50 percent increase did little to make American goods more competitive. Yale University's Stephen Roach points out that since 2002, the US dollar has fallen in value by 23 percent against all our trading partners, and yet American exports are not booming. The US imports more than it exports from 90 countries around the world. Is this because of currency manipulation by those countries, or is it more likely a result of fundamental choices we have made as a country to favor consumption over investment and manufacturing?’

TRANSITIONS: END OF DOLLAR HEGEMONY AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE

This commentary on the need for the US to transform its economy and live within its means fell short of outlining a more fundamental problem, that of the military management of the international system and the outmoded imperial impulses that stem from the kind of militarism that now reflect US society. While the Japanese and the Chinese were deepening economic relations, the US political leaders were intensifying its bellicose rhetoric about Chinese military buildup in the South China Sea and pushing forward the idea of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. Japan was being wooed to become a key anchor of the US dominated TPP.

The China/Japan currency swap was a bold move on the part of these two economic giants in Asia. There are historic difference between the Chinese and Japanese, especially the experiences of the 1930’s Japanese occupation of China and the Rape of Nanking. Notwithstanding these historic differences the US debt of over US $ 14 trillion along with the inability of the US political leaders to effectively tackle the growing debt has awoken many that the US dollar as the international reserve currency is on its last legs.

In May 2009, Nouriel Roubini in a contribution to the New York Times on the Almighty Renmimbi summed up the decline of the dollar in this way,

‘This decline of the dollar might take more than a decade, but it could happen even sooner if the US did not get its financial house in order. If China and other countries were to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar — and they eventually will — the United States would suffer. It would take a long time for the renminbi to become a reserve currency, but it could happen. The resulting downfall of the dollar may be only a matter of time.’

Nouriel Roubini was writing this warning to alert the US rulers to shift gears because of the rise of China. He called for a strategy of investments to recover the US economy declaring, ‘Now that the dollar’s position is no longer so secure, we need to shift our priorities. This will entail investing in our crumbling infrastructure, alternative and renewable resources and productive human capital — rather than in unnecessary housing and toxic financial innovation. This will be the only way to slow down the decline of the dollar, and sustain our influence in global affairs.’

China and Japan have taken a decisive step to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar. What is more fundamental is the new rush by other states to join in this new regional currency arrangement. Republic of South Korea is knocking to become central to this swap arrangement while other members of ASEAN are watching these developments carefully. The Eurozone crisis has narrowed the ability of the US to respond negatively to the China/Japan currency swap. Importantly, the capitalist crisis in Europe has stiffened the spine of those elements of the Chinese society who proclaim that the principal task of China is to bail out its own people and transform the economy to benefit the 1.3 billion citizens. These left forces in China are calling for the consolidation of socialism and for vigilance to halt the power of those who are calling for a speedy internationalization of the RMB. These social elements understand the realities behind the call for opening capital markets in China.

It is the left and the progressive forces in China who agree with Mao that the RMB is the people’s currency and that the most important currency is the Chinese people. It is not usual for this writer to quote from Time magazine, but in the arguments of [url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024220,00.html#ixzz1kXFiPwKO]
Fareed Zakaria[/url] on the question of overvalued currency, this author would concur, ‘The Real Challenge from China: Its People, Not Its Currency.’

‘China is beginning a move up the value chain into industries and jobs that were until recently considered the prerogative of the Western world. This is the real China challenge. It is not being produced by Beijing's currency manipulation or hidden subsidies but by strategic investment and hard work. The best and most effective response to it is not threats and tariffs but deep, structural reforms and major new investments to make the U.S. economy dynamic and its workers competitive.’

And Zakaria might have added that the US cannot be competitive as long as it imprisons the best of the young people of colour in the prison industrial complex.

The lessons learnt from the last capitalist depression are that competitive devaluations, trade wars, currency disputes and new alliances sow the seeds of hostilities and provide the climate for incidents. Incidents then spin out of control beyond diplomacy. The contagion from the capitalist crisis will spread and the forces of socialist transformation will have to be even more alert and vigilant to balance the formation of a regional currency block while supporting the creation of the multipolar world to end the era of dollar and pound/sterling hegemony. Those regions of the world that have not awoken to the slow demise of the dollar need to pay closer attention. Planned diversification away from the dollar is preferable to rushed monetary unions. The African peoples have a lot of lessons to learn from both the capitalist crisis in Europe and the new financial arrangements between China and Japan.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

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

Tragedy of the new AU headquarters

Chika Ezeanya

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79400

cc ChuffinIt is an insult to the African Union and to every African that in 2012 a building as symbolic as the AU headquarters is designed, built and maintained by a foreign country – it does not matter which.

On the 28 January 2012, African countries will collectively descend to a new low on the global index of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and actual independence of nations. On that day, Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to commission the new $124 million African Union headquarters built and donated to the continent by China. Termed ‘China’s gift to Africa’, the edifice was constructed by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation with over 90 percent Chinese labour.

It is to the discredit of the African Union – and therefore to every individual and country within that regional body – that in 2012 a building as symbolic as the African Union headquarters is designed, built and maintained by a foreign country, it does not matter which.

The ancient and modern history of donation of buildings and structures from one nation to another is filled with intrigues and subterfuges, conquests, diplomatic scheming, espionage and counter-espionage, economic manipulations, political statements and dominations. The construction of the Trojan horse by Odysseus and its ‘donation’ resulted in the Greek conquest of the ancient city of Troy after 10 years of unending skirmish.

In building the Basilica in Rome – termed the ‘greatest of all churches of Christendom’, contributions from the faithful were emphasized rather than donations from friendly nations. Even the gift of the Liberty Statue from France to the United States on the occasion of the latter’s independence was a joint effort, whereby over 120,000 Americans led by Joseph Pulitzer contributed funds for the construction of the pedestal in 1885.

In a rare glimpse into the matter, the book ‘Architecture of Diplomacy’, Jane C. Loeffler reveals the underlying diplomatic maneuverings and political ramifications that define the construction of American embassies all over the world. The author states that building an embassy requires ‘as much diplomacy as design.’ Loeffler enumerates factors seriously considered in the construction of an American embassy building and they include ‘world politics, American agendas, architectural politics, cultural considerations, security’ and several others.

Common sense dictates that in an era of increasing exploitation of Africa’s natural resources by foreign powers including China, the African Union, rather than the apparent submission signified by acceptance of the construction of its headquarters by China, should be an organisation advocating for fairness in the relationship that exists between the continent and the global powers.

Should security considerations be included, then the question arises as to how African heads of state and government could hold confidential meetings in a building they have no idea how it was wired. What guarantee do African governments have that every word uttered in the new headquarters in Addis Ababa is not heard in Beijing? What evidence negates the suspicion that all activities in the just completed building are not replayed on a large screen in Beijing as Chinese secret service agents watch?

Culturally, indigenous Bantu culture abhors dependence on others for sustenance. A favorite Swahili proverb of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s was ‘Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu mpe jembe’, which means: ‘treat your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him a hoe.’ Indigenous African tradition largely abhors dependency of any kind. It is frowned upon for a man not to thatch his rooftops well before the rainy season, or to stay back while others are going to the farm, except when he is bedridden. Add this to the logic espoused in ‘Archtitecture of Diplomacy’ and one reasonably concludes that it is unacceptable for Africans to accept a building from China that will house what should be the landmark of the continent’s achievements and its aspirations for the future.

Clearly, much indiscretion was exercised by African Union officials in accepting the offer of a new headquarters from China. The African Union has since deviated from the ideals of its founding fathers when in the 1960s Kwame Nkrumah and other great African leaders sought to establish an organization that would protect the geographical contiguity and territorial integrity of African nations. Emperor Haile Selassie in his historic 1963 speech stated clearly that the organization was founded because ‘Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men. The blood that was shed and sufferings that were endured are today Africa’s advocates for freedom and unity.’

Contrary to his predecessor’s commitment to the continued freedom of the continent from imperial forces, Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi – currently accused of selling huge swathes of Ethiopian land to foreign countries – on a tour of the facility boasted of how he single handedly lobbied Chinese officials to build the new headquarters and how he exempted taxes on all Chinese imported construction materials.

Gleeful at the opportunity for African heads of state to indulge in their lifestyles of conspicuous consumption during meetings and summits, AU Projects Director Fantahun Hailemikael reports that among the several luxuries of the building is a ‘helicopter landing pad so visiting dignitaries will be flown from the airport.’ Of course the dignitaries will be spared the sight of the slum that much of Addis Ababa is. They will be flown from the airport to the AU building and from there to Sheraton Addis, reportedly the best of its kind around the world.

While the African Union thinks it has gained from China by moving into its new ultra-modern facility, the reality is that the continent has lost tremendously in all matters worthy of reasonable consideration. The move to reverse the derogatory perception of Africa and Africans by all non-Africans has suffered another major setback. The effect will be the continued political and economic manipulation and domination of the region by the West, and now China, and soon the rest of the non-African world.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

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

Liberia: End discrimination against LGBT

Stephanie C. Horton

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79399

cc TedeytanPresident Sirleaf won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and should know that the oppression and exclusion of any group is anathema to Alfred Nobel’s vision of an equal society.

On Friday, 13 January 2012, a University of Liberia gay rights student activist and his supporters were stoned by other students on campus. Among countless other acts of violence against gays, this is one of the most recent based solely on an individual’s sexual orientation and claim to full citizenship.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ‘gay rights are human rights’ speech before the United Nation’s human rights group in Geneva on 6 December 2011 is what seems to have ignited this bitter and sometimes sadistic public debate in Liberia. The impression that the US will use foreign aid to promote gay and lesbian rights has unleashed a vicious torrent of homophobia. Thundering from their pulpits, some Christian ministers have equated homosexuality with immorality. Lawmakers allegedly have aggressively been threatened on the streets for so much as whispering about gay rights.

At the weekly press briefing on Thursday, 19 January 2012, Presidential Press Secretary Jerolinmek Piah told journalists that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would veto any legislation associated with gay rights or same sex marriage. A headline that day in a leading online Liberian newspaper read: ‘No Gay Right’: Ellen Vows to Veto Any Would-Be Legislation, Government Says.

President Sirleaf won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and should know that the oppression and exclusion of any group is anathema to Alfred Nobel’s vision of an equalitarian society. If President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is to truly cut her cloth to the measurement of a King or Mahatma, now is the time for her to take that turn at this crossroads.

The urgency for Liberian lesbians and gays is a liberation movement for equal rights, not special treatment. We should not forget that Liberia has always been in the forefront of liberation movements on the continent. During the apartheid era, anti-racist South African activists found refuge in Liberia. Successive Liberian governments provided financial and legal support for anti-colonial movements including South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) at a time when western governments called Mandela a terrorist. Now with the ANC in power, South Africa’s constitution secures gay rights for her citizens, including same-sex marriage, while Liberians are still stuck in their adoption and internalization of a vitriolic conservative, right-wing hypocritical 16th century interpretation of Christianity that projects a monolithic view of sexual identity, denying human diversity and human complexity. The irony here is, the majority of Liberians are not Christians (nor for that matter Moslem)!

It is ludicrous to say, like a prominent lawyer did recently, echoed and amplified on the listservs, that homosexuality was brought to Africa by Westerners. Non-colonized Africans (who still exist removed from this debate!) are known for rejecting fixed binaries and absolutes of good vs. evil, black vs. white, normal vs. abnormal, crooked vs. straight. Cultural historians have documented fluid gender identities/sexualities in pre-colonial Africa, as well as the differences between African and European notions of normative and normal.

Dagara author Malidoma Somé from Burkina Faso (an initiated Zoe with a PhD from the Sorbonne) writes about the absence of any word in his culture that describes gays in the Western sense: ‘The reason why I’m saying there are no such people is because the gay person is very well integrated into the community, with the functions that delete this whole sexual differentiation of him or her.’ Here we see an African belief system that dynamically embraces difference as an inviolable mystery in human nature. ‘[G]ender,’ Somé says, ‘has very little to do with anatomy [. . .] So to then limit gay people to simple sexual orientation is really the worst harm that can be done to a person. That all he or she is a sexual person’. See more here.

Historians reveal that homophobia in Africa spread with Christian, colonial and imperialist expansion. The Western notion of sexual normativity during this period coincided with the rape and objectification of the African female body (breeder, Venus Hottentot) and the subjugation and desecration of the African male body (lynching, castration). The same jeremiad biblical interpretation used to enslave Africans and demonize African cultures and spirituality (the curse of Ham), is the same rhetoric used today to subordinate and bludgeon people of diverse sexual backgrounds and ‘transgressive’ sexualities.

Men courting men and marriages between women in Africa were documented in writing and corroborated by oral accounts as early as 1591. Vivid pictorial narratives of same-sex couplings appear in the legendary San rock paintings in Zimbabwe dating back more than 30,000 years. And up until today, certain West African peoples consider [url=http://www.bidstrup.com/phobiahistory.htm]homoerotic behavior between boys before marriage perfectly normal and natural[url]. It’s absurd to believe homosexuality existed everywhere else on earth since antiquity but Africa!

Our ignorance of our own histories and cultures fuels our continued exploitation and the ways we turn upon each other with class privilege, bullets, machetes, razor tongues, using even the penis as a weapon to punish, maim and wound. Shouldn’t the statistics on heterosexual rape instead be the subject of a national debate? How is it that we have normalized rape perpetrated by men — merely shrugging at the rapes of female babies and little girls by rabid pedophiles — only venting outrage against a man who freely chooses to love and copulate with another man, or a woman whose choice it is to make love to a woman? How do same-sex relationships between non-violent consenting partners compare to the violent sex crime of rape?

Hillary Clinton’s gay human rights speech last December came on the eve of the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – adopted on 10 December 1948 by the UN General Assembly. That declaration followed what is called World War II, though Africans, under colonial rule, were not included in the definition of ‘universal’ enshrined in those rights, and arguably still aren’t, nor were Africans involved in that war between the world’s military powers except to save their skins when used by the colonizers as human shields on the frontlines.

That savage war was fought by eight countries, not the whole world: Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, the Soviet Union (now Russia), and China, six of them today permanent members of the UN Security Council, and still the world’s biggest arms dealers. How is it that we have normalized wars perpetrated by ‘the global powers,’ wars in which millions of Africans have been and are still being slaughtered, displaced, plunged into poverty, starvation, extreme suffering, and all our outrage is spent against peaceful homosexuals? What about the economic war in Liberia – privatization, land grabbing, corruption scandals, predatory NGOs, multinational monopolies, joblessness? No fury?

It is past time for us to treat each other with tenderness, dignity, gentleness and kindness. For far too long gay and lesbian Liberians have been subjected with impunity to scorn, malice, taunting, ridicule and violence. The physical, psychological, emotional persecution must end! So too must we not allow the fear of being called gay to arrest us from speaking out in the name of oppressed humanity against this inhumane injustice! To further victimize traumatized people already living hand to mouth whose only solace is love, to deny them even that, is heartless! Because of course we know that elite Liberian gays and lesbians live far removed from raw emotions spit in their faces.

Let President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf know that homosexuality is normal and natural for people who are born homosexual or bisexual and does not equal immorality. Tell the Government of Liberia to End Discrimination Against Gay and Lesbian Liberians and Legalize Equality for ALL Liberians!

Sign the petition.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Stephanie C. Horton is a Liberian writer and editor who has worked as a girls’, women’s, men’s and LGBT advocate, counselor, workshop facilitator and staff trainer for survivors of sexual violence.

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

Charles Taylor a CIA Informant?

The need to retool Liberia’s relationship with US

Robtel Neajai Pailey

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79405

cc J TThe shocking news that the former Liberian strongman was indeed a CIA informant in the early years of his rise to notoriety calls into question America’s complicity in Taylor’s destruction of Liberia.

Two very significant and interconnected events happened this week in Liberia – President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated for a second term with a subdued opposition attending the ceremonies, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor was implicated in a Boston Globe article for serving as a CIA informant beginning in the early 1980s and spanning many decades.

Taylor, who currently languishes in a jail cell in The Hague after undergoing trial for 11 counts of crimes against humanity in the Sierra Leonean civil war, has ironically never faced trial for the atrocities that he orchestrated, oversaw and implemented in Liberia. The bombshell news that he was indeed a CIA informant in the early years of his rise to notoriety calls into question America’s complicity in Taylor’s destruction of Liberia.

America’s facilitation of Taylor’s escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985 – while he was facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly stealing $1 million from the General Services Agency, which he headed during President Samuel Kanyon Doe’s regime – was always rumoured but never corroborated. I remember covering the first day of Taylor’s trial in The Hague for Pambazuka News, and interviewing Stephen Rapp, then chief prosecutor, about whether or not his investigations into Taylor’s exploits in Libya and Sierra Leone ever unearthed the real causes of his ‘escape’ from the maximum security prison in Massachusetts. Rapp was tight-lipped, yet appeared confounded by this mystery as well. When Taylor eventually confessed during The Hague trial that he strolled out of prison after a guard conveniently opened his cell one night, we all knew that something was awry: ‘I am calling it my release because I didn’t break out,’’ Taylor testified. ‘I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding [afterwards].’’

The Taylor-CIA connection has re-inscribed for Liberians an age-old dilemma: what to do with our so-called historical relationship with the United States, which has been fraught with betrayal after betrayal. Liberians who have been commenting on various notice boards are justifiably angry, upset and disappointed, but not surprised. This is the validation we’ve been wanting for years, and it comes on the heels of the inauguration for a second term of our head of state, who was ironically pictured dedicating the new U.S. Embassy in Liberia this week, with a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the foreground.

Some Liberians, under anonymity, are arguing that U.S. authorities who courted Taylor for intelligence be brought to justice for crimes against humanity in the Liberian civil war; that the International Criminal Court – whose new chief prosecutor is a female Gambian national – should exhibit blind justice; that instead of hauling African and non-Western leaders to the international body for prosecution, they too should face the full weight of the law. I tend to agree with these arguments, however radical and farfetched they may seem.

INQUIRING LIBERIAN MINDS DESERVE TO KNOW

The Globe article recounts that the CIA has said releasing further information could be a national security threat. A threat to whom, might I ask? Liberians deserve to know the nature, duration, scale, and scope of the CIA-Taylor relationship; it is a part of our national history and must be recounted in the history books for our children and our children’s children to remember that a relationship with the U.S. must be monitored at all times.

Liberians are not gullible, nor are we unsophisticated in realizing that one plus one equals two. We’ve always known that the dubiousness surrounding Taylor’s escape from the Massachusetts maximum-security prison was the beginning of the end for us. And if the implications of The Globe article are true, then the CIA could provide more answers.

It’s no wonder that the U.S. didn’t intervene in the Liberian civil war, though Liberians begged and pleaded for its ‘father/mother’ to stop us from killing each other. One U.S. diplomat at the time even said that, ‘Liberia is of no strategic interest to the United States.’ It begs the question, if Liberia was of ‘no strategic interest’ during the war, when we were killing ourselves and each other in the name of liberation, what is Liberia’s strategic interest to the U.S. now, when U.S. NGOs and development workers abound, and the Peace Corps has reinserted itself?

This should send a strong signal to Liberians and Liberia once and for all that America cannot be trusted. From Noriega, to Osama, to Saddam, to Samuel Doe, authoritarian leaders who end up in the U.S.’s good graces are never there for long.

LIMITS OF RECIPROCITY

What Liberians and the Liberian government should be doing is strategizing, devising our own ‘Liberia Policy for the U.S.’ which factors in seriously our chequered history with unsentimental bias.

We should also rely on a corpus of intellectual and creative work that has already investigated our ‘limits of reciprocity’ with the United States. Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright’s film, ‘Liberia: America’s Stepchild’, explores the torturous relationship between Liberia and the United States, with her thesis being that the U.S. sees Liberia as an ‘outside’ child, one who is illegitimate upon conception and can be used and abused at will without consequence. And Liberian academic Dr. D. Elwood Dunn also interrogates this relationship in his book, ‘Liberia and the United States During the Cold War: Limits of Reciprocity’, showing that the Cold War placed Liberia in a very strategic position to exploit its relationship with the United States, yet with unintended consequences.

In this new political dispensation, it should be clear that Liberia should hold the U.S. at arm’s length, that hosting AFRICOM or any U.S. satellite post is out of the question, that we have to use them just as strategically as they have used us. With the geopolitics of China and other emerging nations, Liberia needs to develop a ‘Look South Policy,’ not because we have become alienated, as in the case of Zimbabwe, but because we have made a conscious decision to explore other options, remembering that the U.S. will act only in its interest and leave those caught in the crossfire to fend for themselves.

We deserve to know the details of Taylor’s relationship with the CIA. It is crucial to our development planning, historical remembrance, healing and nation-building.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This op-ed was written based on a front-page Boston Globe article on January 17, which asserted that Charles Taylor was a CIA informant. However, the Globe on January 25 retracted its statement through an editor's note that said the CIA refused to release 48 documents to the Globe pertaining to Charles Taylor's alleged relationship with American intelligence. The author's position about Liberia retooling its relationship with the United States remains the same.

* Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey is currently pursuing a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation scholar.
* This article was first published in African Arguments.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Rights for Scots, rights for Igbos

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79397

cc S VThe British government, which 46 years ago fully backed the brutal repression of the Igbo secession attempt is now not opposed to the independence of Scotland. For the Scots, Igbos or any other people, the right to self-determination is inalienable.

There is presently a hearty debate in Britain on the timetable for a referendum on Scottish independence or, more correctly, the restoration of Scottish independence. Prime Minister David Cameron prefers an early vote, presumably in the next 18 months, with two ‘straightforward’ questions on whether the Scots want independence or wish to continue to be part of Britain as it has been in the past 300 years. Cameron also wishes that the outcome of the referendum is ‘legally binding’, quite an unprecedented position to take as referendums in Britain in the past have had an ‘advisory’ or ‘consultative’ status. Finally, he wants the minimum age of 18 for participants.

In contrast, Alex Salmond, the leader of the pro-independence Scottish Nationalist Party and Scotland’s first minister, insists that, thanks to SNP’s majority victory in last May’s elections to the Edinburgh Holyrood assembly, his party has the ‘mandate for the Scottish parliament to organise the referendum [on its own]… It must be a referendum built in Scotland and decided by Scottish people…’ Salmond adds that he will schedule the poll in the autumn of 2014 and besides the ‘yes’/‘no’ choices favoured by Cameron, he wouldn’t rule out a third, more nuanced proto-independence choice for voters (the so-called dev-max or ‘devolution-maximum’) which calls for enhanced financial powers for Scotland, derived from existing devolved provisions – that is, just short of total sovereignty as these new powers won’t affect defence and foreign affairs! For poll participation, Salmond prefers an age limit of 16 rather than Cameron’s 18.

Quite clearly, the differences between both leaders on this important subject are merely procedural and not on the substantive issue of the rights of Scots, as a people, to decide their future. Despite the oft-quoted, if irreverent lines from Robert Burns, the Scottish national poet, alluding to the deteriorating Scottish economic situation at the time (caused by the so-called Darién scheme) which contributed to its parliamentarians voting for union with England, formally inaugurated in 1707 (‘We are bought and sold for English gold. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation’), Scotland has not been ‘worse off’ in the United Kingdom enterprise. On the contrary, Scots and their country were enriched exponentially by this union. Some scholars have dubbed the vast lands of the world that Britain conquered during its 350 years march across the globe the ‘Scottish empire’, rather than ‘British empire’, to underscore this Scottish unprecedented triumph.

And they are not so far off the mark in that characterisation! Scottish financiers and merchants, enslavers, enslaved-plantation owners, tobacco, sugar and cotton growers and the like (in the Americas), along with their English counterparts, were already immersed in reaping the gargantuan fortune wreaked from the hegemonic control of African enslavement they now shared with England. This was occasioned by the two states’ previous century’s dramatic displacement of the central role played hitherto in this holocaust by Portugal and Spain. Huge profits from African enslavement were ploughed back into Scottish sociocultural and financial institutions and cities to power the gestating industrial revolution (especially in the Glasgow conurbation) and the Scottish age of enlightenment, that very much revered heritage in the country’s national narrative. Such was the staggering outcome of this Scottish (and English) transformation that Christopher Hill, the distinguished specialist on this epoch of British history, has observed that, prior to the mid-17th century, these states were still ‘cultural and scientific backwater’ but soon, into the following century, they had become ‘centre of world science’.

POUNCING ON OPPORTUNITIES

Buoyed by these phenomenal strides in societal fortunes and outlook, the one million Scots, a sixth of the population of the new merger-state relation, pounced on the opportunities thrown up by union with England with much aplomb: Scottish military forces with their specialised fighting units, who in the past fought for English global expansionism, henceforth had a greater stake to defend and conquer ever new seas and lands in continent after continent for the union; Scottish emigration, especially to north America, soared; Scottish conquest administrators prominently policed the union’s empire – from the east’s Asian frontiers through Africa to the west’s outstretches of the Americas and, lastly, its leading intellectuals (philosophers, scientists, political-economists, writers) simultaneously valorised the thrust and goals of union and conquest. Not a few of the latter would join counterparts in England and elsewhere to particularly offer the ‘requisite’ cultural/scientific/literary rationalisation for African enslavement/holocaust and map out the presumed hermeneutical canvass of the cardinal codifiers of European world racism as an ideology.

When pro-independence ‘colonists’ in north America in the later part of the 18th century revolted against the union crown, significant sectors of Scottish émigrés (including their Ulster-Scot cousins) and institutions strongly supported freedom for the United States – a position that would obviously have appeared paradoxical for obvious reasons. One-third of delegates who signed the US independence document were of Scottish descent and 75 per cent of all US presidents since the founding of the republic are of Scottish ancestry.

STATE IS TRANSIENT; PEOPLE ENDURE

Given the trajectory of what many would feel is an illustrious history sketched above, it could appear that Scots are perhaps the most unlikely people to wish to break from Britain. Interestingly, most opinion polls conducted in Scotland show that majority of Scots do not currently want a restoration of their country’s independence. Ironically, a most recent of these polls shows that more English and Welsh respondents (from two of the four constituent nations in the union) than the Scots themselves want the Scots to ‘go’! So, a principal reason that Alex Salmond is working towards a ‘delayed’ referendum date (last quarter of 2014) is to have more time to campaign to garner a majority vote outcome from across a Scottish population still sceptical of the restoration-of-independence for their country. Salmond wants to appeal to younger Scots (hence his intention to lower the minimum deciding voting age to 16), where disposition for independence is much greater than the older population. 2014 also presents Salmond with three ‘opportunity chords’ to play for in the independence drive: commemorating the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn in which the Scots defeated England, Scottish hosting of the Commonwealth games, and Scottish hosting of the Ryder Cup (golf).

Prime Minister Cameron is very much aware of the Scottish success story in the UK-union and also that a majority of Scots would vote for continuing stay in the union if a referendum on the subject were held presently. The latter particularly explains Cameron’s desire for an early poll. Yet despite being first minister of the union who undoubtedly wishes to preserve the union, Cameron accepts the rights of Scots to decide freely on this subject. It is their right. But this right is not only restricted to the Scots or to the English or to the Welsh or to only peoples in Europe… It is, in fact, a universal right that every people enjoy. Every people.

This right to self-determination for every people is inalienable and is guaranteed by the United Nations. No people is exempt from exercising this right. As everyone expects, Cameron has not come out demonising Scots for ‘daring’ to wish to leave the union; no, Cameron wouldn’t do this because he respects the rights of Scots to exercise their right to self-determination. As everyone expects, surely, Cameron has not come out with the dreadful thoughts of wishing any harm to Scots for wanting to exercise their inalienable rights to self-determination as one James Harold Wilson, who once lived and worked from the same London address that Cameron inhabits today, declared when the Igbo of south-west-central Africa exercised this right between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970.

The Igbo had exercised their right to independence from the Nigeria-union (created by UK-union in 1914!) when this Nigeria-union unleashed the genocide against them with the active participation of key constituent nations (in the union) such as the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Kanuri. 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of their population were murdered. UK-union supported the genocide politically, diplomatically and militarily – London’s calculated ‘punishment’ for the Igbo-lead role (in the 1940s-1960) to terminate the UK-union-occupation of its Nigeria-union lucre. As the slaughtering of the Igbo intensified especially in those catastrophic months of 1968/1969, James Harold Wilson was totally unfazed when he informed Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, James Harold Wilson, ‘would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took’ the Nigeria-union 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, James Harold Wilson probably had the perverted satisfaction of having his Nigeria-union genocidists perform far in excess of his grim target. Unlike the Igbo, the Scots, pointedly, never faced any pogrom or genocide by the UK-union or organised by any of the other constituent nations of the union (English, Welsh, Irish) during these past 300 years. Finally, as everyone expects, unfailingly, Cameron has not dabbled into some nonsense of the assumed ‘inviolability’ or ‘indivisibility’ of the UK-union in respect to the rights of Scots to self-determination, two oft-repeated vulgarities with reference to the Nigeria-union that the same James Harold Wilson trumpeted with much relish as the Nigeria-union genocidists slaughtered and slaughtered the Igbo during those 44 months of certain death.

What the debate on the 5 million Scots and Scotland has clearly demonstrated is that the people, the nation, is deemed superior to the state. This is the case of any people in the world vis-à-vis the state. This position is correct for all peoples and nations irrespective of race, continent, region, religion/belief system, etc. The people, the nation is enduring; the state is transient. The state is therefore not some ‘gift’ from someone else; definitely not from any conquerors, nor even from gods, but relationships painstakingly formulated and constructed by a discernible group of human beings that inhabit an ascertainable geo-historical territorial expanse on Earth to pursue worldviews and interests envisioned and formulated by these same human beings.

In Africa, where the contemporary state was created and imposed by the European conquest over decades/centuries as instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa in perpetuity, the goal of organically articulated African-created and owned states to radically transform depressing African fortunes is imperative. In the aggressively genocidist-states such as the Nigeria-union, the Sudan-union and Democratic Republic of the Congo-union, this task is even more pressing.

EVEN 1000 STATES...

The Igbo, with a population of 50 million and whose homeland has been under occupation by the Nigeria-union since 13 January 1970, are arguably the world’s most brutally targeted and most viciously murdered of peoples presently. Nigeria is now firmly the obligatory haematophagous monster in Africa whose raison d’être appears to be to murder the Igbo most routinely and ritualistically. Since losing 3.1 million during the genocide, tens of thousands of Igbo have been murdered by this monster during the course of the following years, signposted here by the eerie columns that chart the contours of the killing fields: 1980 … 1982 … 1985 … 1991 … 1993 … 1994 … 1999 … 2000 … 2001 … 2002 … 2004 … 2005 … 2006 … 2007 … 2008 … 2009 … 2010 … 2011 … 2012.

According to the recently published research (December 2011) by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule Of Law, a human rights organisation based in Onicha, 90 per cent of the 54,000 people murdered in Nigeria-union by the state/quasi-state operatives and agents since 1999 are Igbo. Since last Christmas Day, the Boko Haram islamist insurgent group spearheads these murders. At least 90 per cent of people murdered by the Boko Haram across swathes of lands in north/northcentral Nigeria in the past 23 days are Igbo.

The Boko Haram now issues its threats to murder Igbo people almost habitually, on a daily basis, and, true to its words, executes its mission most ruthlessly, most remorselessly. After each of its outrages, Boko Haram acknowledges responsibility and does this most dispassionately… The regime in Abuja appears cruelly powerless to protect Igbo people emplaced within the jurisdiction of the supposedly sovereign state it controls with the well-known consequences in international law that this shocking relegation of responsibility entails. Regime-head Goodluck Jonathan says as much in a recent astonishing radio and television broadcast to his country and the world: ‘Boko Haram is everywhere in the executive arm of [my] government, in the legislative arm of [my] government and even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security and in the judiciary. Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house’.

The Nigeria-union has, since 1945, gained considerable notoriety for consistently evolving new levers and institutions and processes within itself to murder the Igbo. Following from Jonathan’s proclamation, it is conceivable that right there closeted in his regime, there are operatives deeply complicit in the ongoing murder of the Igbo. No doubt, Jonathan cannot but elaborate further on this broadcast to a restless, eagerly awaiting world. Not since 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 (Phase-I and Phase-II of the Igbo genocide) has Igbo life in the Nigeria-union Malebogle acquired such a gripping existential emergency…

The right of Africans to form their own state, away from the extant, murderous European-created state, is the corpus of my ‘The Biafra War, Nigeria and the Aftermath’, the second of the two books on the Igbo genocide I published in 1990. In the concluding pages of this book I note the following:

‘Either in peace, or war, the existence of the European post-colonial state is inimical to the interests of African peoples. It is a state that cannot provide the fundamental needs of Africans … The African humanity is presently gripped in a grave crisis for survival. It is now time that it abandoned the contrived post-colonial state in order to survive … African nations, [namely] Igbo, Wolof, Yoruba, Asante, Baganda, Bakongo, Bambara, etc., etc … remain the basis for the regeneration of Africa’s development … [and] the sites of the continent’s intellectual and other cultural creativity … What is being stressed here is that African peoples, themselves, must decide on the … issue of sovereignty … even if the outcome were to lead to 1000 states … For the future survival of the African humanity, let no more Africans have to die for the defence of, or for upholding the territorial frontier of any post-colonial state. No precious life should be wasted for its preservation.’

Twenty-two years on, these words remain crucially pivotal in focusing our minds on the very survival of the Igbo and all other African peoples. The Igbo and all others who have lived through the terror of the post-(European)conquest state must abandon it at once to survive and advance towards the construction of higher levels of civilisation. They have no other choice. Each and every constituent African people or nation can build this civilisation outside the existing genocide state of enthralled and degenerative union. Let Africa’s constituent peoples or nations unleash a dazzling contest of creativity and progress, a continuing mutual bombardment and sharing of ideas and streams of possibilities, akin to what the world has seen in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere in the past 40 years – not mass murdering … mass murdering … mass murdering … pillaging … pillaging … pillaging … nihilism … nihilism … nihilism ... Most surely, now is the time to embark on this beginning.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* 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.

Will the real revolutionaries please stand up?

David Comissiong

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79396

cc Wikimedia1649 is arguably the most revolutionary year in the history of Barbados. The oppressed Barbadian working class – the white indentured servants and the enslaved black Africans – erupted in revolt against the repressive white slave master class.

If there had been a CNN, a Fox News or a BBC 350 years ago – in 1652 – Barbados would have been the leading international news story of the day! All over the world, people would have been talking about the remarkable news of the signing of the Charter of Barbados at Oistins Town by representatives of the Commonwealth or Republic of Great Britain and representatives of the citizens of a self-declared independent Barbados.

Journalists in all of the great centres of civilization in Africa, Europe and Asia would have been marvelling at the fact that a number of the inhabitants of the small British colony of Barbados had exhibited the audacity to unilaterally declare their independence from Great Britain on 18 February 1651; had gone on to fight a war of independence against Britain; and had finally been forced to capitulate to the much greater military might of Great Britain in January 1652, but on terms that did much honour to Barbados.

Freedom loving people all over the world would have been thrilled to read the text of Barbados’ declaration of independence:

"Shall we be bound to the Government and Lordship of a Parliament in which we have no Representatives or persons chosen by us for there to propound and consent to what might be needful to us, as also to oppose and dispute all what should tend to our disadvantage and harm? In truth, this would be a slavery far exceeding all that the English nation hath yet suffered............. So we will not alienate ourselves from those old heroic virtues of true English men, to prostitute our freedom and privileges to which we are born, to the will and opinion of any one; neither do we think our number so contemptible, nor our resolution so weak, to be forced or persuaded to so ignoble a submission, and we cannot think, that there are any amongst us who are so simple, and so unworthily minded, that they would not rather choose a noble death than forsake their old liberties and privileges".

Furthermore, all the political pundits of the day would have noted that the Charter of Barbados had established the fundamental political and economic principle of "no taxation without representation" when it stated: "No taxes, customs, imports, loans or excise shall be laid, nor levy made on any of the inhabitants of this island without their consent in a General Assembly". (Thus, Barbados had dealt with and resolved the fundamental issue around which the American Revolution was fought and won, a full 124 years before George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and the other American revolutionaries took up arms against Great Britain!)

And so, little Barbados would have been the talk of the day, with oppressed people all over the world marvelling at the thrilling words and sentiments of freedom emanating from the bold Barbadians!

But in the midst of all this excitement, the more thoughtful and sober analysts would have noted that underlying the seemingly stirring Barbados story lay some very harsh, dark and ignoble contradictions and realities!

Firstly, they would have been forced to recognise that the Barbadians who spoke and wrote so magnificently about "freedom" were all white men who had reduced tens of thousands African men and women to slavery in Barbados, and a similar number of poor Europeans to indentured servitude!

Secondly, it would not have escaped them that the Barbadians were declaring independence not so much of Britain, but of "Republican Britain"! You see, the Barbadians had declared independence in the midst of the English Civil War, and at a time when the anti-Monarchy forces under Oliver Cromwell had defeated and executed the British King, and had declared Britain to be a Republic. The Barbadians were therefore repudiating the progressive political ideal of republicanism, and were wedding themselves to the backward and obsolete institution of the British monarchy.

Unfortunately therefore, these harsh contradictions and realities take much of the gloss off an episode in our Barbadian history that we would otherwise wish to celebrate! But if we are looking for a true and thrilling story of mid-17th century Barbadian revolutionism to celebrate, we don’t have to look any further than the year 1649 - arguably the most revolutionary year in the history of Barbados.

The year 1649 was the year in which both segments of the oppressed Barbadian working-class - the white indentured servants and the enslaved black Africans - erupted in separate gestures of revolt against the repressive white slave master class - the class of men who, one year later, would go on issue the famous Barbadian version of a declaration of independence.

Several historians of 17th century Barbados record the plotting of a major insurrection by the white indentured servants of Barbados in 1649. Unfortunately the conspiracy was discovered and 18 of the principal poor white revolutionaries were executed. But such horrific ‘exemplary punishment’ did not deter a number of enslaved Africans from also plotting ,in the said year of 1649, to revolt by setting fire to the plantation on which they were incarcerated. Sadly, this plot too was sold out, and the conspirators received what the historian, Richard Ligon, described as "condign punishment".

The fundamental point to be made therefore is that while the revolutionary activism of the wealthy white slave-owning Barbadians of 1652 is of great historical importance, yet it pales in comparison to the thoroughgoing, un-compromised revolutionism of the white indentured servants and enslaved Africans of Barbados who set out to overthrow an evil system of human oppression!

Barbadians need to spend much more time investigating and getting to know their own history - all of it - the good, the bad, the indifferent, the inspiring. For it is only by knowing our history and realistically accepting it for what it is, that we will develop a collective firmly rooted sense of Barbadian identity, and arrive at a place of greater racial understanding and acceptance of each other as fellow Barbadians.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* David A. Commisiong is president of Clement_Payne_Movement in Barbados.
* This article was first published in Norman Girvan’s blog.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Finance and Operations Director – Fahamu

Deadline for applications: February 3, 2012

2012-01-25

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/566/finance-director.doc

Fahamu is seeking an experienced Finance and Operations Director. Reporting to the Executive Director, the Finance and Operations Director will be a hands on and participative manager who will lead a team to manage the organisation’s finance and operations (including human resources and administration).

Ethiopian blogger risks death penalty as judge confirms charges

Committee to Protect Journalists

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79402

New York, January 25, 2012-Jailed Ethiopian dissident blogger Eskinder Nega will stand trial in March for all of the terrorism accusations initially advanced by prosecutors, a federal high court judge ruled yesterday, local sources said. If convicted on all charges, he could face the death penalty.

Judge Endeshaw Adane of the third criminal bench of the Lideta Federal High Court in the capital Addis Ababa reviewed evidence presented by government prosecutors yesterday and confirmed all six charges against Eskinder. His trial will begin March 5.

Five other journalists, all in exile and to be tried in absentia, initially faced the same terrorism charges. At yesterday's hearing, the judge confirmed all six charges for two of those accused and dismissed all but one charge against three others.

"This ruling is an affront to justice and underscores that these are politicized charges used by the government to intimidate journalists and chill news-gathering activities," said CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita. "We call for all terrorism charges to be dropped as they are baseless, and for Eskinder to be released immediately"

The two journalists besides Eskinder who still face all six charges are exiled editors of opposition broadcasters: Abebe Belew of the U.S.-based Internet radio Addis Dimts and Fasil Yenealem of the Netherlands-based ESAT, according to CPJ sources and news reports.

Three other exiled editors -- Abebe Gellawof the U.S.-based Addis Voice and Mesfin Negash and Abiye Teklemariam of U.S.-based Addis Neger Online -- will be tried in absentia under a single terrorism charge each, according to local sources.

Ethiopia's antiterrorism law criminalizes reporting or publication of information the government deems favorable to groups designated as terrorists, which include opposition movements such as Ginbot 7 and the separatists of the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government's application of the law against journalists and dissidents has been criticized by the United Nations and the U.S. State Department.

The charges against the journalists are based on accusations of "disseminating terrorist ideas" to Ethiopians such as through ESAT TV, radio, Internet and Web chat forums such as Paltalk. The Addis Neger Online editors are accused of "lending professional support for terrorism," by "allowing terrorist organizations such as Ginbot 7, Oromo Liberation Front, and Ogaden National Liberation Front to express their terrorist ideas and promote their agendas on their online publication," according to a translation of the original charge sheet.

Other charges are based on accusations of recruiting young people to membership of the groups designated as terrorist, and on treason and spying for Ethiopia's arch foe, Eritrea.

Earlier this month, three other local journalists were convicted of terrorism charges -- one in absentia -- and they could face the death penalty, news reports said. Their sentencing is expected tomorrow. In addition, two Swedish journalists were sentenced in late December to 11-year jail terms after being convicted of supporting terrorism and entering Ethiopia illegally.

In Africa, only Eritrea jails more journalists than Ethiopia, according to CPJ research.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide.
* Contact: Mohamed Keita, Africa Advocacy Coordinator or Tom Rhodes, East Africa Consultant.

Kenya: Drive for one million signatures

Call for the ICC four to step down

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/wytG87

STOP PRESS: Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta has 'stepped aside' as finance minister, as well as head of the civil service Francis Muthaura.

'On the basis of the President's statement that he would act once the charges are confirmed, and not withstanding the said individuals right to appeal and presumption of innocence until proven guilty, we the undersigned people of Kenya exercising our sovereignty as expressed below under Chapter One and Chapter Four (Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of Kenya 2012 call upon the President to move with speed and honour his word and pledge to Kenyans by compelling Amb. Francis Kirimi Muthaura, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and William Samoei Ruto to step down from the public offices they currently occupy.

The President should also state categorically that the said individuals are not fit to hold public office in Kenya unless and if when the very serious charges against them are dismissed. We feel that the three individuals can no longer inspire confidence from the majority of Kenyans in exercise of their official duties and that their personal activities will indeed interfere with the discharge of their duties in service of the people of Kenya.'

View the rest of the statement and sign the petition through the link provided.

US Aid to Ethiopia Supports Forced Relocations for Land Grabs

Sign the Petition to President Barack Obama and USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah

2012-01-25

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/7/stop-forced-relocations-ethiopia/

An Action Alert from the Oakland Institute & Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia

Ethiopia, which is deemed an 'important regional security partner' by the US government and one of the largest recipients of US aid (over $1 billion a year since 2007), is forcibly relocating 70,000 people from Gambella to make land available for investment in agriculture. In doing this they are also aggravating current hunger while laying the groundwork for future famine in Ethiopia, as people are losing their livelihoods and being moved to areas where they cannot readily feed themselves.

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirms and elaborates on what the Oakland Institute (OI) and its partner organization, Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), uncovered in several recent reports on Ethiopia (http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/land-deals-africa-ethiopia) where indigenous people and local communities are being coerced and forcibly moved from their lands to make room for large-scale agricultural plantations.

Incredibly, the US ambassador to Ethiopia Donald E. Booth visited Gambella in January 2012 and said he witnessed 'the people of Gambella benefiting from the fruits of development in the state.' Mr. Booth seems unwilling to acknowledge any of the abuse, violence, or coercion human rights groups and the media have reported.

Through 100 interviews and 16 site visits, HRW documents how the relocation of 70,000 people from Gambella is far from voluntary and that promised improvements of food, farmland, health clinics, and schools are far from realized. Oakland Institute and its partner Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE) confirm the worst details of brutality that HRW puts forth.

While the Ethiopian government is planning to relocate a total of 1.5 million people, its financial backers--especially USAID, one of the largest donors to the Ethiopian regime - need to take a closer look at what they are funding with taxpayer money.

We ask for your help to pressure President Obama and USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah to take a step back from supporting a repressive regime involved in the forced relocation of long-term and nomadic residents of the area of Gambella and to stop aid to Ethiopia until due diligence is taken to ensure that the well-being and livelihoods of local and indigenous people are valued at least as much as foreign investment.

The Oakland Institute's research in Ethiopia shows that not only do large-scale investments disrupt and destroy communities and ecosystems, they do not deliver on promises of job creation, economic development, and food security.

Ethiopia is the largest recipient of US food aid. In FY 2010, the US government provided $932.6 million in assistance, including more than $451 million in food aid. The US should become better-informed as we may well be creating the next famine in Ethiopia by taking valuable food-producing lands from productive small farmers and pastoralists and handing them over to foreign investors to grow flowers, fuels, and other exports.

Let President Obama and USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah know that it is not too late to put the brakes on, change course, and reevaluate US policy in Ethiopia. US support to the repressive Ethiopian regime and the repercussions of forced relocations will have a great impact on Ethiopia's future food security and poverty in the nation.

Learn more by reading the Oakland Institute and SMNE's report Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa: Ethiopia Country Report as well as OI Land Deal Briefs on Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley and the Saudi Star investment deal.

Thank you for taking action!

###

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic and environmental issues.

www.oaklandinstitute.org

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/oak.institute

A tribute to the Hon Dudley J. Thompson, ambassador of Jamaica

P. J. Patterson

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/79393

Ambassador Dudley J Thompson, OJ, QC, the ‘Burning Spear’, was the advocate extraordinaire, an intellectual, Rhode scholar, war hero, statesman and raconteur of the highest order. Dudley Thompson was simply the best, in whatever field he chose to serve.

His contribution to the building of Jamaica as a nation - to its constitution, its jurisprudence, its diplomacy, its political system, global reputation and its international standing - is unparalleled. He served his country at all levels, including as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Mining & Energy and Minister of National Security.

In almost every respect, Dudley Thompson was a unique person. He was born in Panama, but grew up and received his early education in Westmoreland and The Mico. He then served in the British army and studied at the famous Oxford University. From Oxford, he proceeded to practice law in Africa - Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Kenya. He brought together the distinguished international legal team, which successfully defended Jomo Kenyatta in his treason trial. He is still remembered in Tanzania as a Founder of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).

Amazingly, all this before he reached 33 years old.

His contribution to the People’ National Party (PNP) was equally impressive. He also served at all levels of the Party, as a Vice President and Chairman to become a distinguished Life Member.

Dudley Thompson was the quintessential Pan Africanist and a lifetime fighter for reparation for Africans everywhere. He was a member of the Pan African movement from his early days at Oxford where he was a close associate of giants such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, George Padmore of Trinidad and Tobago. Until his passing today, January 20, 2012, he remained a revered leader of the Afro-American diaspora.

Jamaica, the Caribbean, Africa and the world will be the poorer for his passing.

Even as we mourn his loss, we celebrate a life of dedication to the cause of building that edifice which enables us to enhance our shared humanity.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* P. J. Patterson is the former prime minister of Jamaica.

Women and Security Governance in Africa

‘Funmi Olonisakin & Awino Okech, eds.

Kofi Johnson

2012-01-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79371

Women and Security Governance in Africa argues that human security cannot be achieved in Africa without putting women at the centre of public policy.

Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011.
172pp. £16.95 pap. ISBN 9781906387891

'Women and Security Governance in Africa' edited by ‘Funmi Olonisakin and Awino Okech consists of a collection of African writers whose aim is to underscore and to ‘expose the fallacy of the current paradigm’ which relegates women’s issues to the back burner. The book argues that human security cannot be achieved in Africa without putting women at the centre of public policy. In other words, the emancipation of women should be women-focused. The book is about inclusion of women in the daily discourse of security and engaging in the process of public policy.

This is a small book, but it carries a big heart, covering women’s dilemmas in Africa. It is fresh, innovative and fills the vacuum created by not including women in security discourses. The book argues that biases against women emerge from the colonial masters whose ‘core function on security matters is to subjugate the indigenous in order to achieve economic interests for the metropolis’. During the colonial era, security was imposed from above without regard for the African leaders who were to rule their people. Consequently, African leaders became political jugglers who constantly have to balance the balls. After independence, instead of a change of paradigm by those who took power from the colonial masters, the new leaders distanced themselves from addressing governance security and the position of women.

To make matters worse, by the seventies, a new wave of phenomenon engulfed Africa. Military coup becomes the order of the day in many African states. This further alienated any concerted efforts to bring women to the banquet table, to become a part of security discourse. It is not until recently that women begin to participate in security governance. For a long time, it is seen as a preserve of men. Consequently, little or no attention is paid to African women as regards security governance.

The central theme of the book is the politics of inclusion of that part of humanity - African women - whose plight has been neglected. The book‘s objective is to set up dialogues to include women in the security governance of Africa. The book questions: Why should women bear the brunt of vestiges of colonialism?

The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with the ‘Conceptual Approach.’ The narrative here focuses on historical perspective and discusses the questions of the position of women. The controlling question is: has anything changed? The consensus is that nothing has changed. The reason is that current arrangements have not afforded women the protection
which they seek. For example: ‘Issues such as domestic violence, rape, incest, and female genital mutilation rarely make it to the agenda on non-state security and justice (p. 26)’ Similarly, protection of land and property in places where they are not allowed to own or inherit property. To make matters worse, access to justice systems is sometimes impossible because women cannot afford the costs of seeking justice. There are other legal and constitutional obstacles. In addition, there are customary laws and practices which discriminate against women.

The second section proffers specific case studies from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mozambique. This section is the strength of the book because it focuses on techniques used by women to gain acceptance in security governance. The contributors chronicle the war-ridden zones and how women in the countries studied made their voices heard.

A glaring example is Liberia, where international initiatives fail to bring peace. In Liberia, women are the victims of war. They are victims of war and other forms of sexual violence. In some cases, the women are abducted, violated and enlisted into the rebel movements against their will. Under the umbrella of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, they mobilized and joined forces to ‘say never again to violence and war’. The central theme of this section is how women are mobilized from Liberia to Mozambique. The tactics are similar to others and can be recognized as agents of change.

Finally, the authors navigate readers through ‘the approaches and structures’ which have been developed by international organizations such as the Economic Community of West Africa States, the African Union and the United Nations. Notwithstanding the efforts of international initiatives, they have not transformed into fundamental human rights for women in Africa. They have become mere charades.

Their proclamations have not yielded dividends to African.

This book is aimed at policy makers, development agencies, women rights’ advocates, peace and security professionals as well as scholars of Africa, Europe and North America. It is an all embracing book because it criss-crosses all disciplines. The book moves gender security governance in Africa to the front burner. ‘Women and Security Governance in Africa’ is a turn-on book for those itching to get students to understand gender issues in Africa. It engages students. It moves ordinary people to understand women’s struggles across the continent. It is an excellent addition to gender studies. Additionally, it offers a detailed insider perspective of women’s movements on the continent.

This clearly written, well-researched work makes the book a real contribution to women studies. It takes readers to long debates on gender issues. The shortcoming of this book is that attention is paid to sub-Saharan Africa leaving gender issues in North Africa in limbo. The beauty of the collection is that it is Afro-centric and gender focused.

The book is a jewel in the crown. It is highly recommended to upper graduates, graduate students and professional practitioners.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Kofi Johnson, Fayetteville State University.
* This review was first published by African Book Publishing Review.

Reclaiming African History

Jacques Depelchin

Peter Limb

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79391

Reclaiming African History jousts with the ruling ideas in society - or public history - to stimulate a re-think of Africans’ predicament and an understanding of its historical causes, and to encourage positive action to rectify current abuses.

Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011.
94 pp. R220/£12.95 ISBN 9781906387983 (pdf ISBN 9781906387990)

The need to distill complex history into an easily digestible form suitable for policy action has never been more apparent than in today’s confusing global situation with its information overload. Jacques Depelchin, committed and radical Congolese historian and director of the Ota Benga International Alliance for Peace in the Congo in his earlier book, ‘Silences in African History’ (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2004), gave a detailed re-think of African historiography - urging scholars to be guided by social relevance. In this new book of eight short but pithy chapters - ranging from ‘Taking African history seriously as a pre-condition to healing humanity’ and solidarity with Haiti, to possibilities of a ‘South–South subversive globalization’ between Africa and Brazil, and commentaries on South Africa, the DRC, the food crisis, Gaza, and genocide - he makes the mosaic of African events understandable.

Themes of solidarity, especially in the South, and African diaspora connections with Africa are very much to the fore, as in the chapter on Haiti, which over the centuries has suffered and continues to suffer, slavery, coups and invasions. Wider themes such as genocide and the food crisis (co-authored with Diamantino Nhamposa) are also treated. One chapter is in poetic form. Capitalism over the centuries, he argues, has always been based on greed and split human conscience. Gigantic environmental and human security crises now threaten danger to humanity unless we can change; and taking seriously the negative impact on black people of their history is an important way to start.

The essays, previously published online from 2005 to 2008 in Pambazuka News, reconnect the histories of the dispersed, poor and dispossessed. Depelchin uses the metaphor of a deliberately shattered mirror to show (like Fanon and Biko) how Africans (and Haitians, Gazans and Brazilians) have been driven by Western power into a cul de sac in which they are forced to see their own histories in distorted form through the lens of the triumphant, dominant view of history in which the North, might, and the market are always right.

To combat this enfeebling mindset, he presents a new history to smash the intellectual bonds chaining Africans to dominant intellectual frameworks. By making connections between shack-dwellers in South Africa, Palestinian refugees in Gaza and raped women in Congo, he seeks to draw together the historical and politico-economic causes that have led to their plight.

The dominant history with which he jousts is not so much prevailing academic histories, often sensitive to the issues he raises, but rather the ruling ideas in society, or public history. Yet he also urges historians to better link across their narrow fields to see connections between different atrocities. If at times polemical, the tone is also conducive to stimulating thought and indeed the book seeks not just to critique but also to propose solutions - such as greater reliance on solidarity, the commons and resistance to inequality and complacence. A ‘breathing space’ is needed to enable people to think, for capitalism is stripping that capacity (p. 87). To help, this, ‘emancipatory politics must go hand in hand with emancipatory narratives of history (p. 72)’.

The value of this small and affordable book is to stimulate a re-think of Africans’ predicament and an understanding of its historical causes, and to encourage positive action to rectify current abuses. On another level, the arguments are deep and nuanced and if read carefully are a serious challenge for scholars to re-think their paradigms of compartmentalization of black people’s pasts. It is important for all interested in African and diasporan studies, history, and politics, with an additional salience for those such as social activists, NGOs, and journalists concerned to comment and act on African crises.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Peter Limb, Michigan State University
* This review was first published by African Book Publishing Review.

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti

Jeb Sprague

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79392

Paperback, 375 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-58367-300-3
Cloth (ISBN-13: 978-1-58367-301-0)
Forthcoming in August 2012
Price: $23.95

In this path-breaking book, Jeb Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians. Sprague seeks to understand how this occurred, and traces connections between paramilitaries and their elite financial and political backers, in Haiti but also in the United States and the Dominican Republic.

The product of years of original research, this book draws on over fifty interviews - some of which placed the author in severe danger - and more than 11,000 documents secured through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Haiti today, and is a vivid reminder of how democratic struggles in poor countries are often met with extreme violence organized at the behest of capital.

'It is absolutely imperative for Haiti’s history that such a detailed account of the role of paramilitary violence in the country be recorded…The marshalling of facts and events…[and the] meticulous references are phenomenal…an historical narrative - supported by personal testimony, interviews, WikiLeaks, press reports, history and common sense, etc…careful juxtaposing throughout of information from embassy cables side by side with events as they were happening on the ground during this turbulent time. It shows the contradiction with what [the] mainstream press was reporting.'

- Mildred Trouillot-Aristide, former First Lady of Haiti; author, ‘L’enfant en domesticité en Haïti, produit d’un fossé historique’.

'In this crucial work, based on years of interviews, investigative reporting, and analysis of classified U.S. government documents, veteran journalist and scholar Jeb Sprague provides a shocking account of the role of paramilitaries in subverting the aspirations of the Haitian people for democracy, freedom, and development. He shows with great detail and analytical acuity how these paramilitaries are in the service of local and transnational elites whose dual agenda is to repress those popular aspirations and to integrate Haiti as a dependent cog ever deeper into the global capitalist order. What comes through most clear are the lies and deceit of the U.S. government and other Western representatives, for whom ‘democracy’ is but a smokescreen for systematic and far-reaching efforts to prop up a decadent local elite, turn the country over to transnational capital, and repress through paramilitary terror any resistance to its plan for Haiti. This book is must reading for all those concerned with the political and paramilitary machinations of the new global capitalist order. It shows just how far the elites who dominate that order are willing to go to hold down the people of a tiny island nation that face one adversity after another and yet continues to struggle for freedom 200 years after they threw off the shackles of slavery and colonialism.'

- William I. Robinson, professor of sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara; author, ‘Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective’.

'This book offers the most substantial and detailed account yet written of the paramilitary insurgency that contributed to the internationally-sanctioned overthrow of Haiti’s constitutional government in 2004. Based on an impressive range of newly uncovered documents, the book provides a thorough and convincing analysis of this scandalously under-studied sequence, including a careful reconstruction of the struggle for power in the Haitian police force in 2000-2001, the Contra-style subversion campaign of 2003-2004, and the role played by the neighboring Dominican Republic. The result of this campaign more or less destroyed Haiti’s precarious democracy and crippled the country’s capacity to invest in its people or to respond to disaster; an understanding of the coup of 2004 and its consequences should remain central to any discussion of Haiti’s reconstruction today.'

- Peter Hallward, professor of philosophy, Kingston University, London; author, ‘Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment’.

'This book offers a brilliant diagnosis of the history of political violence in Haiti. Jeb Sprague, who is a PhD student in Sociology, having interviewed some of the principal actors behind Haiti’s transitional period, brings to light many political events from 1990 to 2005. The book highlights the contemporary phenomenon of paramilitarism in Haiti and looks closely at the ways in which it was revived in the early 2000s. From the investigation of the role of paramilitarism in connection to the coup d’état occurring in 2004 to the election of Michel Martelly in 2011 and the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the author examines different elements attempting to keep democracy away from the Haitian people. Here’s a book that I will recommend everyone to read.'

- Jean Sénat Fleury, Haitian investigating judge of the Raboteau massacre in Gonaïves, former instructor at Haiti’s National Police Academy (1995) and trainer and director of studies at the School for Magistrates (2002); author, ‘The Challenges of Judicial Reform in Haiti’.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Jeb Sprague is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He received a Project Censored Award in 2008 for an article (coauthored with Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre) from Port-au-Prince, and has written for the Inter Press Service, TeleSUR, Al Jazeera, Z Magazine, NACLA, Haiti Liberté, Haiti Progrès, among numerous journals. This is his first book. For more, visit his blog, twitter page, or university website.
* This article was first published by Monthly Review Press.

A woman, once a girl: Breaking silence

A review of Betty Makoni’s new book.

Trafford publishing

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79427

The time to break silence is right here and now. Womanhood and motherhood is under attack. This book gives a holistic empowerment package to those feeling hopeless, rejected, abused and undermined in any way. The poems are real-life experiences that you can always derive inspiration from.

A mother experienced violence and her daughter, aged six, stood up and urged her to report. She suppressed her voice and silenced her poetically with a ‘Shh, we don’t say domestic things in public.’ A few years later, the mother died in cold blood after heavy beatings by her husband. It led Betty Makoni to be a mother at age nine, and the book takes readers through a journey of inner pain that is unleashed when she becomes a globally acclaimed activist.

The journey Betty Makoni has trod leaves permanent and visible footsteps. Today, her poetry book takes a new approach to self-empowerment by presenting breaking culture of silence — poetic prose verses in short story form. Easy to read and yet very powerful for reflection. The stories are personal experiences, and there is a poem for everyone to easily connect to a situation similar to their own experiences. The poetic prose storybook is a forerunner of Betty Makoni’s official much-awaited biography. Her trials and tribulations as she tried to be a woman, a leader, a wife, and a mother and balance all these roles is an open testimony.

Transitioning from being a girl to becoming a woman is with hurdles and hardships, and ‘A Woman, Once a Girl: Breaking Silence’ takes a sigh of relief that mission is accomplished as one overcomes gender inequality and wars being fought by their bodies and breaks vicious cycles of poverty and gender-based violence. Using simple poetic verse, she has shared everyday stories that may be taken for granted and yet can undermine an individual’s abilities. This book is for anyone defending their rights and those of the most vulnerable. It speaks to you to keep positive energy.

BRPOUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Find out more about this book here.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The power tripper

Rafiq Hajat

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79430

He changed our flag,
With cavalier insouciance,
He stood proudly to brag
While we gaped in stunned trance,
Like a rampant stag,
It was the height of arrogance,

He changes our laws with seeming impunity;
He twists them to suit his ends,
He changes the equation with intractability,
While his puppets amend;
We regress inexorably;
While sycophants defend;

He calls us stupid and drunk,
He's on a power trip,
He’s bitten off a hunk,
His mind has flipped
He's so full of spunk,
He's got a shoulder on his chip;

Absolute power carries great responsibility,
The wielder must beware the craze,
Lest he fall prey to hubristic gravity,
And stumble into an egocentric maze,
Lose touch with reality;
In a narcissistic daze;

He’s the quintessential power tripper,
And it ain’t no joke,
He’s an asset stripper,
A pig in a poke,
He’s an insatiable beak dipper
Never seems to choke,
He’s an illogical skipper,
We’re headed for broke.
He changed our flag,
With cavalier insouciance,
He stood proudly to brag
While we gaped in stunned trance,
Like a rampant stag,
It was the height of arrogance,

He changes our laws with seeming impunity;
He twists them to suit his ends,
He changes the equation with intractability,
While his puppets amend;
We regress inexorably;
While sycophants defend;

He calls us stupid and drunk,
He's on a power trip,
He’s bitten off a hunk,
His mind has flipped
He's so full of spunk,
He's got a shoulder on his chip;

Absolute power carries great responsibility,
The wielder must beware the craze,
Lest he fall prey to hubristic gravity,
And stumble into an egocentric maze,
Lose touch with reality;
In a narcissistic daze;

He’s the quintessential power tripper,
And it ain’t no joke,
He’s an asset stripper,
A pig in a poke,
He’s an insatiable beak dipper
Never seems to choke,
He’s an illogical skipper,
We’re headed for broke.

Is the ANC 100 years or 57 years old?

Motsoko Pheko

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/79394

Allow me to attend to some comments made by some readers while thanking many who have appreciated my point of view.

1. Douglas Scott: Thank you for appreciating that your figure of 1,116,805 colonial settlers in South Africa in 1909 does not take away anything from my article. You simply want to know my source to satisfy your curiosity. When Britain and its colonial settlers established the Union of South Africa and excluded five million Africans, the white population was as follows:
Cape Colony, 167,546; Natal, 34,784; Transvaal, 106,493; Orange Free State, 4O,014. This was a total of 349,837 settlers. Britain gave them 93 per cent of the African land through the Native Land Act 1913 and only 7 per cent of the African land was allocated to five million Africans.
(Article 34 of the Union of South Africa Act 1909, also Monica Wilson and Leonard Thomson, ‘A History of South Africa’ 187O, page 328)

The representation in the colonial parliament, where the qualification of a member of the House of Assembly was to be a British subject of European descent, according to the Union of South Africa Act 1909, was as follows: Cape Colony, 51 members; Natal, 17 members; Transvaal, 36 members; Orange River Colony, 17 members (Article 33 ).

2. Jennet quotes the discredited view that Africans and Europeans arrived in Azania (South Africa) at the same time, therefore Europeans did not colonise Africans. I would have to write an article to reply fully. If she is a victim of the false ‘empty land theory’ she should read the following literature: ‘Apartheid: The Story Of A Dispossessed People’, Marram Books, London, pages 1-35 (Foreword by Prof. C.L.R. James, Professor of History, Harvard University); ‘Black Bolshevik’ by Harry Haywood, pages 237, 271 and 272, Liberator Press Chicago, Illinois 1978; and five authorities on this subject quoted in ‘How Freedom Charter betrayed the dispossessed’, ISBN 978-1-919815-05-3, Tokoloho Development Association, Johannesburg, pages 18 - 21).

3.Ike Moroe, I am aware of President Jacob Zuma’s call for citizens to come forward and say how the country must move forward. I must also point out that as a former member of parliament I have always co-operated with the current ANC where it serves the interests of the African people and also on issues on which my Pan Africanist views converged with those of the ruling party - such as on Iraq and Zimbabwe, probably now on Iran. Developing countries have a right to develop their nuclear technology for developmental purposes. They also have a right to demand that NATO, America and others destroy all their nuclear weapons for the safety, security and peace of the world.

I insist, however, that land dispossession of the African people - that has caused so much poverty, social degradation, short life expectancy and high child mortality - must be addressed. The 1955 ANC cannot resolve the land question in South Africa with the perfidious Freedom Charter preamble and section 25(7) of the ‘New’ South African Constitution.

The Freedom Charter has also facilitated the imprisonment of former freedom fighters such as the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (APLA) of the Pan Africanist Congress and others. This was done through the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC). This TRC ignored that these sons of Africa fought for self-determination in accordance with Articles 1(1), (2), 13(i) (b), 55,56,68,73 and 76 of the United Nations as well that of the Organisation of African Unity Charter article 20(2).

The 1955 ANC must go back to the basics of the 1912 ANC. There must be equitable redistribution of the land and its resources and an end to corruption. There must be release of all former freedom fighters from the prisons of South Africa. Continuous appeasement of the minority whites at the expense of the African majority is not the right way to bring national ‘unity’ as comrade Moroe seems to think. On 19 January 2O12, Sowetan newspaper reported that 12O,OOO white farmers have left the country since 1994. 4,500 schools have been closed since 1994.

Who is going to build this country when there is so much dependence on people who may go to Australia, Canada or Britain anytime they wish? This obsession with appeasement at the expense of the African people and this continent must stop. It is also reflected on how the ANC government voted in the Security Council on Libya over the 1973 Resolution and facilitated the invasion of Libya by NATO and America to access and control Libya’s oil wealth.

A small list of wonders

Emmanuel Iduma

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/79409

I am making a list of small wonders and it is five months long. In my work as Publisher and Managing Editor of an electronic literary magazine based in Nigeria I have learned to listen closely for the sound of things to come. It is evident that the emergent writer is as talented as any established writer. The difference is not merely skill – opportunity plays an equally important role.

My five-month long list of wonders is a series of conversations with writers who do not have a book published. These writers have been published mainly online, in less-respected journals and most of them are not paid for their creative writing. The bias of the series – which I have named ‘Gambit’ – is fiction by writers of African descent. The word ‘Gambit’ is used literarily. I consider that the writers who I shall engage with are making opening remarks in obscure places. My intent is to assert that the obscure places (sites, journals, blogs) are as important as the famous spaces.

The art of writing fiction thrives on validation. I often take with levity statements by successful novelists who claim they paid no attention to validation from publishers and readers. The truth about fiction, and writing, is that writers pay attention to encouragement, and it is doubtful that a writer whose talent is not praised will keep writing for long. To this end, I expect that ‘Gambit’ will provide some form of validation for the writers; a very modest validation, that is. I also expect that the series will make the writers temerarious. Writing on the African continent should necessarily conform to the diversity that Africa suggests. The question of what story should be told and what story should not – as peddled by the likes of Wainaina, Ekine, Adichie, Ikheloa, Habila, etc – appears to be a question of ensuring diversity. Essentially, the current discourse is one that seeks to affirm that Africa is not just one thing, and one that seeks to argue that artistic endeavours should be fixed on a fluid and asymmetrical definition of Africanness. The new generation of writers, therefore, are those on whose shoulders the task of defining diversity lies. If anything, my generation of writers should be those for whom the primary concern is to write fiction/non-fiction in a manner that disregards any fixed notion of what Africa is, or what it is not, or even what it is imagined to become.

I am particularly interested in writers whose stories are in the first place, stories. I disagree with the idea that political stories should not be written because it is a mantra. My take is that we should be eager to question existence, whether it is fixed to the convenient label of political, or social, or even sexual. The argument is that there are other things Africans do aside from being concerned with politics. Well, to say that Africans do other things is to affirm that they do something in the first place, and this ‘something’ is as existent and a fact of life as any other less politicized indulgence.

As is clear, there are complexities surrounding the definition of the words I used in the previous paragraph – ‘Africa’, ‘politics’, ‘social.’ I am quick to suggest that these words are used conveniently; the fact of life is that labels and categories will always exist. But it is important that individuality is not glossed over in these labels. Simply, I will be seeking writers who seem to, through their work, hold the view that what has been tagged as mundane as well as what has been tagged as serious should be written about, with equal ferocity.

What follows from the above points is a hope that through Gambit, writers of my generation will understand their roles on the continent. This is not an attempt to imbue their writing with the force of social criticism, and neither is it an attempt to make them less aware of their contribution to the present dialogues. It is vain, in my thinking, to define literature aside from its social context, even as Satre proposed, for important writers are often those whose work is stamped with social relevance.

Gambit will address African modernity, concisely. My talks with Bunmi Oloruntoba on African modernity have brought about 3bute, a literary anthology built on a webcomic engine. I make reference to 3bute here because it is a novel form of answering the question of what Africa is today. I am hoping that Gambit will take the question further by presenting writers who are grappling with the same conundrum.

There are ways of seeing Africa, as Susan Williams argues. One of those ways can be to see Africa through its literary identity. Gambit will bring together a group of ten emerging writers whose writing, it is hoped, will help construct a newer scope of this identity. More important to me is the need to ensure that the dialogue continues after each conversation. I trust that kind readers will comment on the various conversations, on engage directly on Twitter and Facebook with the authors. All the requisite details will be provided.

I am inspired by the work of Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Guardian Book Club, Bookworm/Michael Silverblatt, Radio Open Source, Lannan Foundation. But I am concerned that there are few models based in the African continent that openly engage with writers about the work they have produced, their personalities and their creative process.

W.S. Merwin is right to suggest that poetry begins with delight and ends with wisdom. The same can be said for fiction; stories should entertain and delight, first. I consider that writing is the act of creating, and in creation, delight is present. Each conversation in the series is expected to bring delight before conferring wisdom. I expect that the personality of each writer comes to the fore before their ideology.

I mentioned that I am making a list of small wonders. Expect nothing less.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

* Emmanuel Iduma is co-editor of Saraba Magazine - a Nigerian literary journal. He also blogs at Black Looks and Invisible Borders.
*This piece was first published on The Mantle.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Africa: A musical interlude

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/ABIlKd

Here's a video from a group called Tidal Waves entitled Rapolitiki (The politician ate the money).

Ethiopia: The moving of 70,000 in pictures

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/z29UER

Ethiopia is forcibly relocating 70,000 people from Gambella to make fertile land available for foreign investment in agriculture - aggravating current hunger while laying the groundwork for future famine in Ethiopia, as people are losing their livelihoods and being moved to areas where they cannot readily feed themselves. This snapshot video from the Oakland Institute shows the land being cleared and the people that have been evicted.

Israel: Israel to become biggest jailer of refugees

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/zIBu6P

This video from The Real News reports on how Israel's Knesset has approved plans to jail asylum seekers for the longest period in the western world.

Libya: Concern over human rights situation

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/wM76fi

The UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has raised concerns about Libya’s armed brigades and the treatment of more than 8,500 detainees, majority of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa. Addressing the UN Security Council on the situation in Libya, Pillay warned that, 'lack of oversight by the central authorities creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment'. She urged the Libyan ministry of justice and the prosecutor’s office to take over the detention centres.

Senegal: Street protests in video

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/ixgD7s

Visit the 'Recent Activity' section of Fahamu's Youtube page to view a series of videos showing protesters near place de l'obelisque on January 27 in Dakar, Senegal awaiting the constitutional court's decision on Wade's candidature in February elections.

South Africa: Have you heard from Johannesburg?

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/wQ3Z2I

'Have you heard from Johannesburg?' is a powerful seven-part documentary series that shines a light on South Africa's history and its implications for global change. It was directed and produced by Connie Field and written by Gregory Scharpen, who are both interviewed in this Walter Turner podcast.

South Africa: Video of police arrests at Rondebosch Common protests

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/wRaW1i

This video shows the police arresting protestors at a 'Taking Back The Common' protest at the Rondebosch Common on 27 January.

And then there were 4...And then there were 2

Gado

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/79440

Equitorial Guinea co-hosts Africa Cup of Nations

Gado

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/79442

Investors flock South Sudan

Gado

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/79441

Zimbabwe: Mujuru inquest hears gory details

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/wMTErE

The body of Zimbabwe’s first army commander General Solomon Mujuru had a hole in the abdomen and emitted blue flames when it was retrieved from his farmhouse that was gutted by fire last year, an inquest heard on Tuesday. Police Constable Clatwell Garisayi, who was the 23rd witness to give evidence after the inquest opened last week. Mujuru was considered to be the only politician in President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF who could stand up to the 87-year-old leader. He was believed to be leading one of the factions positioning themselves in anticipation of the ageing President Mugabe’s departure.

Africa: Crises dominate talks as Benin takes AU helm

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/At60Fv

The African Union's new chairman faced tough challenges Sunday as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that a furious row between Sudan and South Sudan threatened regional security. Thomas Boni Yayi, the president of Benin, vowed to work for peace in his one-year tenure as the 54-member bloc's rotating head, as sideline talks at the two-day summit tried to tackle several hotspots across the continent.

Africa: Ping fails to garner majority support for AU chair

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/ypInX7

African Union Commission chairman Jean Ping's bid for another term hit a snag Monday after he failed to garner two-thirds majority after four rounds of elections in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Reports from the AU headquarters indicated that the former Gabonese Foreign minister failed to win absolute majority support even after South African rival Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma opted out after three rounds of voting.

Africa: The AU's big budget and the begging bowl

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/y4wmrd

The African Union (AU) Commission has tabled a US$274 million budget proposal for 2012, which African leaders are expected to debate and later adopt. However, questions have been raised that the money is mainly sourced from donor partners, with some African members failing to pay their annual subscriptions. The AU is owed millions of dollars in arrears, forcing the continental body to always extend the begging bowl for its activities.

Africa: TMSA Daily News

2012-01-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/aumonitor/79518

The latest edition of TradeMark Southern Africa is dominated by news reports, speeches and commentaries from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. It includes the full text of two speeches by Jacob Zuma (at a NEPAD meeting and at an ANC centenary function) and a Goodluck Jonathan speech to the AU plenary where he cautioned against moving too quickly on a continental free trade area. Visit http://bit.ly/zt40bT to subscribe to their newsletter.

Western Sahara: Call for monitoring of human rights

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/yq1vlD

The Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) of the African Union has called for monitoring of human rights in occupied Western Sahara, during its 23rd ordinary session in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The PRC asked the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to provide constant information on the developments taking place in occupied Western Sahara.

Egypt: Meet the mother of Tahrir

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/wWuyWb

To thousands of Egyptian revolutionaries, Khadiga Hennawi is mother, says this article on www.jadaliyya.com Hennawi, who started out bringing food to protestors camped in the historic square, earned the moniker 'the Mother of Tahrir' by taking care of younger activists, often offering refuge at her home from attacks by security forces. The fifty-nine-year-old divorcee has become a figurehead of the struggle for freedom and democracy.

Malawi: President backs women in trousers after attacks

2012-01-25

http://bbc.in/yG3iwc

Malawi's president says he has ordered police to arrest anyone who attacks women for wearing trousers in public. President Bingu wa Mutharika spoke out on national radio after several women were beaten and stripped on the street for wearing non-traditional dress.

Algeria: Al-Qaeda chief sentenced to death

2012-01-24

http://n24.cm/xVqNoa

A court in Algeria has sentenced a fugitve leader of al-Qaeda's north African wing and three of his followers to death for attacks against the military. The sentence against Mokhtar Belmokhtar and the three others was handed down in absentia on Sunday night after a day-long trial in Algiers.

Egypt: ElBaradei urges abolition of repressive laws before constitution

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/A5hu7B

Parliament should prioritize abolishing repressive legislation over creating a new constitution, said Mohamed ElBaradei, former presidential hopeful. On Twitter, he said that 'the focus should be on achieving independence for the judiciary and the media, restructuring security and revitalizing the economy.' ElBaradei said dialogue among the revolutionaries, MPs, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government was key to achieving national consensus.

Egypt: Who’s behind political activists murders?

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/xqxpmr

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has highlighted the recent death of two activists. Political activist Mohamed Jamal, member of a coalition of committees defending the revolution, was found bleeding from a stab wound on 21 January and died of his injuries. Meanwhile, political activist Karim Abo Zed, member of the revolution coalition in Algharbya governorate, died on the same day in a mysterious accident on the desert road, said ANHRI.

Kenya: ICC confirms charges against four leading Kenyans

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/xkgyPl

The International Criminal Court has confirmed charges against four of the six Kenyan suspects thought to be most culpable for the post election violence that followed a disputed presidential election in 2007. Charges against deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta, MP William Ruto, radio broadcaster Joshua arap Sang and civil service boss Francis Muthaura were admitted. The ruling has been highly anticipated in the country following its impact on the elections expected to be tightly contested.

Liberia: Sirleaf to appear before committee to 'confess' her civil war role

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/x6fQoh

Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has opted to come clean over her role in the country’s civil war. Over the years innuendoes have circulated about her sponsoring the National Patriotic Front of Liberia of former warlord Charles Taylor, who is facing possible conviction before the UN-backed Sierra Leone Specia Court sitting at The Hague. Mrs Sirleaf is now promising to appear before the Leymah Gbowee committee set up last year to address pre-election abuses. The president she was ready to 'challenge the untruths' about her civil war role.

Liberia: Taylor denies being a US spy and vows to sue US newspaper

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/An3Smf

The imprisoned former Liberian president Charles Taylor has categorically denied working as a United States spy and vows to sue the Boston Globe newspaper that made the revelation. Reacting to the publication through his Jamaican-born lawyer Courtenay Griffiths, Taylor said he has never worked or played any role on behalf of any US government intelligence agency in his 'personal capacity'.

Libya: ICC denies deal for Gaddafi son to be tried in Libya

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/zwUE67

The International Criminal Court denied Monday that it had agreed that Seif al-Islam, slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's most prominent son, can be tried in Libya. 'The ICC has made no decision on this matter,' court spokesman Fadi el-Abdallah told AFP in response to a claim by Libya's Justice Minister Ali H'mida Ashur that Seif would be judged by a Libyan court.

Rwanda: Canada deports Rwanda genocide suspect Leon Mugesera

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/wfNSSu

A Rwandan man has been deported from Canada to Kigali where he faces charges of helping to incite the 1994 genocide. Leon Mugesera has been fighting deportation for 16 years with a series of appeals, even after the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the order in 2005. He faces charges in Rwanda of inciting genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from an incendiary anti-Tutsi speech he gave in 1992.

Swaziland: Dlamini nominated for Irish human rights award

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/y9KoXI

President of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), Maxwell Dlamini, has been nominated for the 2012 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. The award is presented by Front Line, an Irish-based human rights organisation founded by former director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International, Mary Lawlor. Maxwell Dlamini was detained, tortured and forced to sign a confession by members of Swaziland’s police and security forces during the so-called April 12 Swazi Uprising, a peaceful protest inspired by the Arab Spring that was brutally clamped down upon by Swazi police and security forces.

Ethiopia: Saudi Star among firms behind thousands of forced relocations

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/w5YiHZ

Last week BBC News reported that 70,000 indigenous people have been forced to relocate in the western Gambella region of Ethiopia to new villages that lack adequate resources for their survival. The land has been signed over to foreign investors, including Saudi Star Agriculture Development Plc, a company owned by Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi. Saudi Star has begun rice cultivation on 10,000ha of land in Gambella and a 10,000ha irrigation project along the already-compromised Alwero River. Only grain that does not meet export requirements will be sold locally.

Kenya: UN concerned about worsening security at camps

2012-01-25

http://wapo.st/xT7Z6G

The United Nations says it is concerned about worsening security at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia that are home to more than 700,000 Somali citizens. The UN refugee agency says it is particularly worried about the situation in Kenya’s massive Dadaab camp following a spate of kidnappings, murders and robberies there. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says Kenyan police are investigating whether the Dadaab attacks are being carried out by outsiders or by people within the camp.

Kenya: US urges Kenya not to send back Somali refugees

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/zd07QM

Kenya has been urged to continue providing refuge to Somalis fleeing violence and hunger in their homeland, a US State Department official said. 'We continue to rely on and advocate strongly for the protection of Somalis inside Kenya, that they should not be sent back into Somalia in order to create some sort of a buffer zone,' declared David Robinson, acting assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration. Mr Robinson spoke at a press briefing in Washington Tuesday on the status of the food crisis in Kenya and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

South Africa: Attacking and blaming foreign nationals not the answer

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/zJO5Vx

The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) continues to be alarmed at the growing number of violent attacks on foreign nationals, of which recent events in Thokozo in Ekurhuleni is an example. The burning down of small businesses in our townships, and the physical and verbal attacks visited upon their proprietors is a shocking indictment of the state of our poorer communities, and the actions of a minority of clearly desperate but misguided people.

South Africa: Red tape ensnares asylum seekers

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/wtwCN8

Asylum-seekers entering South Africa are no longer being issued with the necessary documents to apply for refugee status. Without a so-called section 23 permit, they are being turned away from Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) and denied the opportunity to legalize their stay in the country. The section 23 permit is normally issued to anyone entering the country who wants to apply for asylum. It gives them 14 days to report to an RRO and formally apply for refugee status, although following an amendment to South Africa’s immigration law, the section 23 permit will soon only be valid for five days.

South Africa: About the People's Land! Housing! and Jobs! Summit

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/yai0wA

Visit the Take Back the Commons website to read about the People's Land! Housing! and Jobs! Summit that was due to take place 27 - 29 January, but instead led to a number of arrests. The summit was to discuss and develop 'a more radical people driven program for the proper integration of our cities and establishing the right of families to a basic income, jobs, economic opportunities, social mobility, housing, land and the right to the city.'

South Africa: Rondebosch common becomes site of battle over inequality

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/yYbQNd

Scores of people were bundled into police vans on Friday when police forcibly prevented organisations from setting up a planned three-day summit on Jobs, Land and Housing on Rondebosch Common as a means of highlighting inequality in South African society. Organisations included Passop, Proudly Mannenberg, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign, the South African NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches. Determination to reclaim the common as a public area nonetheless led to clashes with police who sprayed water cannons loaded with blue dye at the demonstrators, a move reminiscent of apartheid police spraying purple dye on protestors marching to Parliament on September 2, 1989. Rihanna Marthinus, 57, a participant from Mannenberg, said the city had been promising to improve services in Mannenberg for years but nothing was being done.

Egypt: One year on, the labour revolution is stalling

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/z6KTkh

On 30 January, only five days into the revolution, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions was born, the first such federation to be established since the union movement was monopolized by the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation in 1957. Since then, some 300 independent unions have been established nationwide, with a reported membership of nearly two million workers. Labour leaders met recently at a conference titled 'Workers and Revolution', to discuss how the declared objective of 'Bread, Freedom and Social Justice' has yet to be realised for much of Egypt’s working class. The conference, which was held at the Center for Socialist Studies in Giza, also focused on the campaign 'The Factories and the Square are One', with the aim of coordinating the struggles of protesters in the streets with those of labourers in their workplaces.

Latest edition: emerging powers news roundup

2012-01-30

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/79519

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

New AU HQ marks strong China-Africa ties
Towering above the Ethiopian capital, cloaked in urban smog, the new Chinese-built African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa is a bold symbol of China's rapidly changing role in Africa. Once seen as strictly interested in extracting raw resources and investing in infrastructure, China has interests on the continent that are increasingly shifting to investing in institutions and governments, experts say.
Read More

Oil price row closes China-built refinery in Chad
Chad authorities on Thursday shut down a major new oil refinery amid a price row with its Chinese owners, sources said. The Djarmaya refinery, located 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the Chadian capital Ndjamena, was inaugurated last June by President Idriss Deby Itno who described it as a "gift from China" that would offer energy independence to his land-locked central African nation.
Read More

Ethiopia, China sign 7 agreements
Ethiopia and China here on Saturday signed seven economic and technical agreements to further strengthen the bilateral cooperation between the two countries. Accordingly, the two governments signed two economic and technical cooperation agreements to provide grant and interest-free loan to Ethiopia.
Read More

China to Build Ministerial Complex
The new ministry of health built by the Chinese government in Oldest Congo town is named "Joseph Nagbe Togba, Sr. M.D. Office Complex, in memory of Liberia's first medical doctor who also served as the first general administrator of the JFK Medical Center. During the dedicatory ceremony of the new Ministry of Health and Social Welfare Thursday, the Chinese Ambassador to Liberia, Zhao Jianhua disclosed that Beijing will grant Liberia US$50m to build a modern ministerial complex within three years beginning mid 2012.
Read More

FM: China stays firmly committed to advancing ties with Africa
China will firmly stand together with African countries while unswervingly pushing forward Sino-African strategic partnership, no matter how the international environment changes, said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun Thursday. Zhai made the remarks in a signed article on top Chinese political advisor Jia Qinglin's upcoming visit to Africa.
Read More

2. India in Africa

Ethiopia seeks India's financial muscle for its rail project
Ethiopia wants $300 million more from India for an ambitious railway project that would connect it with neighbouring Djibouti, a venture that India backs as part of its "support for regional integration in Africa". India has already inked a loan agreement worth $300 million for the railway project. However, the loan from New Delhi is yet to be disbursed.
Read More

3. In Other Emerging Powers News

IBSA deeply disappointed over Doha impasse
Expressing disappointment over impasse in WTO Doha talks for a global trade deal, India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) on Saturday underscored the need for resisting protectionism in the current economic scenario. “Global economic conditions are challenging, this is almost fourth year of recession. The only way is to engage more and work for a multilateral trade regime,” Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma told reporters here.
Read More

Russia wants AU pledge for UN seat
RUSSIA will support a bid by African countries for a permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council only if there is "consensus and unanimity" in the African Union (AU) on which country will best represent the continent’s interests.
Read More

Russia to pull helicopters from South Sudan
Russia will withdraw its helicopters and personnel servicing the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, a move that will cause problems for the stretched mission. The move followed expressions of concern by Russian diplomats over security in South Sudan, including attacks on helicopters operated by Russia's military.
Read More

4. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Will China help out the West in Sudan?
China, which purchases much of the oil from East Africa and provides investment and armaments to the Sudanese government in return, has suffered abuse and derision for its engagement with Khartoum. But perhaps only China has the deep pockets and appetite for risk to buy the world's way out of its Sudan problem: a problem created largely by Western fecklessness.
Read More

Burundi: Tanzania frees Burundi opposition leader

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/yAZgKb

Tanzanian police have freed a Burundian opposition leader, Alexis Sinduhije, who was arrested two weeks ago in Dar es Salaam at Burundi’s request, a senior Burundian security official said. 'We have just learned that Tanzanian authorities did not want to follow up on our extradition request for Alexis Sinduhije to Burundi and preferred to expel him to Uganda this morning,' the official said.

Ghana: Mills does a cabinet reshuffle

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/yEw1ei

Ghana’s President John Atta Mills on 25 January announced a cabinet reshuffle that saw two ministers - Health minister Joseph Yieleh Chireh and Information minister John Tia – lose their jobs. The reshuffle had been speculated about over the past several months following revelations that a leading member of the ruling National Democratic Congress had been awarded millions of dollars in court-approved debt payments that went against the government.

Kenya: How Uhuru bankrolled violence - ICC judges

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/AB6yjJ

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta distributed close to Sh50 million to mobilise and arm attackers during the post-election violence, according to the ruling of ICC judges. The money was released in instalments through three former MPs from Kiambu and Nakuru counties and former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga. In the ruling delivered on Monday 23 January, the judges pieced together events leading to the revenge attacks on ODM supporters in Naivasha and Nakuru by Mungiki members, who were said to be supporters of the rival Party of National Unity (PNU).

Kenya: Impunity and elections

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/zSVtJz

A recent edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin contain the December speech by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, and the executive summary and key recommendations on US policy from a policy brief from the Friends Committee on National Legislation on the context for Kenya's next elections. Another AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an overview from an International Crisis Group briefing on the ICC and Kenya and the executive summary of the most recent monitoring report from the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) Monitoring Project.

Kenya: Uhuru, Muthaura bow to pressure, step aside

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/yOBTnA

Kenya's Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura step aside from office after ICC pre-trial Judges confirmed charges levelled against them. Mr Kenyatta will however retain his post as Deputy Prime Minister. President Kibaki accepted the decision of the two to step aside and appointed Nairobi Metropolitan Minister Njeru Githae to act as Finance Minister. Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia also takes over Mr Muthaura's duties on an acting capacity.

Madagascar: Leaders head to Pretoria for crisis talks

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/wcNkkL

South African President Jacob Zuma has summoned Madagascar interim authorities for an urgent meeting in Pretoria in a fresh attempt to resolve the political deadlock in the island nation. This after a plane carrying the exiled leader Marc Ravalomanana home was turned away. The party of Ravalomanana then decided to suspend its role in Madagascar's unity government citing violation of the political roadmap.

Nigeria: #OccupyNigeria shows the movement's global face

2012-01-29

http://aje.me/w9zbSg

Even as the Occupy movement recedes in size, if not in activism, in the global North, it has, to its own surprise, opened up a new front in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria - where tens of thousands have occupied and paralysed the economy in a protest against the lifting of oil subsidies. The Arab Spring is moving south, thanks to #OccupyNigeria. If nothing else, this movement dramatises the global nature of the new wave of Occupy protests.

Senegal: Activists rounded up over Wade term protests

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/yPdNPg

Senegalese police have arrested close to a dozen opposition protestors including an outspoken civil society leader as they struggled to get a grip on street protests that have rocked the country following a controversial court ruling. Mr Alioune Tine, the vocal secretary-general of the African Assembly for Human Rights Defence was arrested after he turned himself in to the authorities. The other protestors arrested are being held in Dakar and in several regional headquarters including Thies, 70 kilometres and Kaolack, some 150 kilometres outside Dakar.

Senegal: Opposition vows to resist Wade bid

2012-01-30

http://aje.me/wDL6nt

Senegal's opposition has called for more resistance to the court approval of President Abdoulaye Wade's bid to seek a highly disputed third term, after a night of riots in the capital, Dakar. Opposition leaders vowed on Saturday to force the president out of office, threatening to march on the palace in a city reeling from violent riots that left at least one policeman dead, according to local media. The ruling sparked fury in the capital, where protesters clashed with police. Anti-Wade protesters threw stones at police who responded with batons and tear gas after the much-anticipated ruling.

South Africa: Limpopo debacle hots up

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/yDxtKl

Allegations of sabotage, mounting debt and widespread financial mismanagement….The debacle in Limpopo has spewed out a dangerous brew of bad money and political in-fighting, writes Kim Cloete in Business Day. The financial mismanagement may have been rotten to the core, but it’s the timing of the intervention that has riled Limpopo’s ANC-run administration. National Treasury says it had warned the Limpopo Treasury throughout last year that it would run out of funds if it was going to continue with its rampant spending. Eventually the situation reached a head in November when it became clear that the province was bankrupt.

Uganda: Police fire tear gas at protesters

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/y9HMBi

Ugandan police clashed with opposition supporters in Kampala Tuesday 24 January after security forces tried to detain opposition leader Kizza Besigye following a protest rally over rising living costs. Police fired tear gas at protesters after they started throwing stones following an unsuccessful attempt by a plainclothed security agent to drag Besigye into a waiting van, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Zambia: Sata condemns assassination rumour

2012-01-24

http://tgr.ph/ze5Aj7

Michael Sata, the Zambian president, has been 'assassinated' according to a mischievous alteration to his profile on Wikipedia. Reports about Mr Sata's death are not new – there were several in the run-up to the election – but generally they emanate from concerns about his health. A chain smoker with a history of heart problems, he is thought to travel with a cardiologist and go to bed early each night to prevent overstrain. But speaking to The Daily Telegraph last week, he insisted he was going nowhere. 'David Cameron has more physicians than me. He has all sorts, for eyes, for teeth, me I only have one person,' he said. 'I am 74, even if I died today, it would not be untimely.'

Angola: IMF finds most of Angola's missing $32 bln

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/A7VqwQ

The IMF said on Tuesday a $32 billion accounting discrepancy in Angola's state funds was linked to 'quasi-fiscal operations' by state oil firm Sonangol done on the government's behalf, but not recorded in official budget accounts. 'Preliminary data indicate that quasi-fiscal operations undertaken by the state oil company on behalf of the government, financed out of oil revenues but not recorded in the budgetary accounts, can explain a large part of the discrepancy,' the IMF said in a statement.

Swaziland: Perks of Swazi politicians exposed

2012-01-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/79506

Trade unions are gearing up to advance their fight against the Swaziland regime and the greed of the politicians who voted themselves payoffs and perks worth millions of US dollars. Protestors want the Finance Circular No 1 2010 that authorised the payments scrapped. Swaziland, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is broke and the government is struggling to pay its bills, including wages of public servants. Seven in 10 of the one million population live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 per day.

Africa: As Africa's consumers rise, so does inequality

2012-01-24

http://reut.rs/yrsK1A

Even as rich countries face a slowdown, sub-Saharan African economies are expected to post nearly six per cent average growth in 2012, according to the IMF. But the wealth has a flip side, notes this Reuters article. 'The consumption boom has been fueled by fast-growing credit. In Kenya and elsewhere that has sucked in imports - cars, shoes, clothes, wines and whiskies - and swelled the current account deficit. Inflation in Kenya is now nearing 20 per cent. As always, high inflation hurts the poorest most.'

Africa: Strong political will needed from African leaders to boost critical aspects of intra-African trade

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/yH61M2

With the 18th African Union Summit taking place in Addis Ababa, civil society organizations from across Africa are concerned that the summit’s central theme, 'Boosting Intra- African Trade,' risks being overshadowed and will not get the focus needed to tackle this urgent issue. The organizations said that intra-African trade remains weak, making up only 11 per cent of total trade in Africa. Comparatively, in Asia intra-trade represents 52 per cent and in Europe 82 per cent. Failure to invest more in intra-African trade is likely to harm the continent’s development, the groups said.

Angola: Sonangol, banks interested in Portuguese companies

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/wICVS3

Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol EP and some of the African country's banks are interested in stakes in Portuguese companies, Angolan Economy Minister Abraao Gourgel said. Angolan companies and investors have been increasing their stakes in companies in Portugal, which last year became the third euro-region country to request a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Sonangol owned 11.6 per cent of Banco Comercial Portugues, Portugal's second-biggest publicly traded bank in terms of market value, as of last June. Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, owned 10 per cent of Portugal's Banco BPI SA and 10 percent of Zon Multimedia SGPS SA , Portugal's biggest cable television operator. Angola is Africa's second-biggest oil producer.

Global: State of Corporate Power 2012

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/x2SHUD

Who are the global 1%? What companies do they run? How do they escape accountability? Check out the Transnational Institute's powerful infographic displays that expose the social and environmental costs of global corporate power. TNI, as part of its new Corporate Power project, is producing a series of infographics over 2012 that expose the reality of corporate power, and our need to fundamentally change direction. Download and share these infographics, and watch out for new ones over the coming months.

Kenya: IMF advises Kenya to cut growing public

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/ApWYAz

The International Monetary Fund wants Kenya to slash its swelling public expenditure and increase its revenue base to cushion it from expected harsh economic conditions this year. The financial institution argues that the government should also continue focusing on consolidation of medium-term plans and effective monetary policy to curb domestic demand.

Lesotho: Economy catches flu rom South Africa’s sneeze

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/wuxMfZ

South Africa’s economic difficulties are placing Lesotho’s economy at a crossroads, as the government struggles to push big rocks up the mountain to balance the national budget. Lesotho is wrestling with a 30 per cent decline in domestic revenues and a 15 per cent budget deficit in the 2011/12 financial year. The government expects to fund the gap with loans from international financial institutions and foreign aid.

Malawi: $28 million being lost in fisheries resources

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/zfRlkP

Malawi is losing $28 million (about MK4.6 billion) worth of fisheries resources each year due to unsustainable fishing in natural bodies, an estimate which represents 0.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Ministry of Finance and Development’s Economic valuation of Sustainable Natural Resource Use report in Malawi.

Nigeria: Nigeria faces grave consequences, IMF warns

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/zdUvOw

The IMF has issued a blunt warning that unless the European economic crisis is resolved, the global economy faces another 1930s style ‘Great Depression’ which would negatively affect frontier markets including Nigeria. This followed the failure of European finance ministers to reach a restructuring agreement with private holders of Greek debt Monday night. If Greece does not put itself in a position to receive aid funding by the end of March, it will suffer a disorderly default on its debt. A drop in global demand would affect Nigeria negatively, as the country depends almost exclusively on oil sales to fund more than 90 per cent of its budget and Foreign Exchange earnings.

Nigeria: Shock full of nuts

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/yEpC1s

This article takes economist Jeffrey Sachs to task for an op-ed article in the New York Times in which he argued that despite continuing demonstrations against the government’s surprise decision on New Year’s Day to halt state subsidies of oil for millions of Nigerians, things aren’t as bad as they seem. 'Sachs had no idea what he was talking about, his knee-jerk response to the crisis celebrated policies of austerity and economic shock, and the Grey Lady gave none of it a second thought. Neoliberalism, it would seem, is alive and well.'

Côte d'Ivoire: Government scraps free health care for all

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/zGgi2S

Côte d'Ivoire is abandoning free health care for all after a brief experiment because of skyrocketing costs. 'In nine months the government had to pay 30 billion CFA francs [about US$60 million] under difficult circumstances,' Ivoirian Health Minister Yoman N'dri said in Abidjan on 24 January. As of February, the free service would only be available to mothers and their children.

South Africa: 4.4m people lost to HIV/AIDS

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/yrzxGR

If it was not for HIV/AIDS, the population of South Africa would be over 4.4 million more than it is today, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations' latest South Africa Survey. The survey, published this week, says there are 50.6 million people in the country and in the absence of AIDS, this would have been 55.0 million.

Southern Africa: Eastern, Southern Africa scale up efforts against high AIDS prevalence, says UN official

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/z3Vocv

Eastern and Southern Africa, the region most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, is making great strides to scale up access to prevention and treatment services, a United Nations official said today, adding that focus is on behavioural change and prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Of the estimated 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS across the world, almost three quarters live in Eastern and Southern Africa, Sheila Tlou, the Director of the Regional Support Team for the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) told a media briefing in Geneva.

Tanzania: PM says govt ready to listen to striking medics

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/A6VE6N

The Tanzanian government has indicated it was bowing to pressure from medical doctors in public hospitals, who have been on strike to press for improved working conditions. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda has appealed to the doctors to resume work, underlining his readiness to meet with their representatives in order to work out a lasting solution to their grievances.

South Africa: Zulu king's 'homophobic utterances' to be investigated

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/Al3gXM

The South African Human Rights Commission said on Monday that it would be writing to King Goodwill Zwelithini following reports that he made homophobic comments at a function attended by President Jacob Zuma. Zwelithini reportedly told guests at the 133rd commemoration of the January 22 1879 Battle of Isandlwana at Nquthu, KwaZulu-Natal, on Sunday that 'traditionally, there were no people who engaged in same sex-relationships'. 'There was nothing like that and if you do it, you must know that you are rotten. I don't care how you feel about it. If you do it, you must know that it is wrong and you are rotten. Same sex is not acceptable,' he was quoted as saying.

Haiti: Haiti refuses Monsanto seed donation

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/x9E9Dk

Advocates for Haitian peasants said a US-based company’s donation of up to 475 tons of hybrid vegetable seeds to aid Haitian farmers will harm the island-nation’s agriculture. The advocates contend the donation is being made in an effort to shift farmer dependence from local seed to more expensive hybrid varieties shipped from overseas. Haitian farmers and small growers traditionally save seed from season to season or buy the seed they desire from traditional seed markets.

Egypt: Blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad freed after being held for 10 months

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/ztEIeF

Reporters Without Borders says it welcomes blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad's release late on 25 January under an amnesty announced on 21 January for around 2,000 civilians who had been convicted by military courts during the past year. Sanad, who had been detained for 10 months on a charge of insulting the armed forces, was freed from Cairo's Tora prison late in the afternoon.

Nigeria: IFJ condemns killing of Nigerian journalist

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/zihqxS

The press freedom watchdog, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Tuesday 24 January condemned the killing of Nigerian journalist, Enenche Akogwu, in Kano, northern Nigeria. According to IFJ, Enenche, a reporter with the privately-owned Channels Television station, was gunned down on Friday, 20 January. 'We condemn this latest killing which shows that journalists in Nigeria need adequate protection in the face of increasing risks,' Gabriel Baglo, the IFJ Africa Director, was quoted as saying.

Sierra Leone: Police violently assault radio journalist

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/yQbImp

Allieu Sesay, a broadcast journalist working with Freetown-based Radio Democracy, was reportedly assaulted on 15 January 2012 and briefly detained by some policemen drawn from the Operation Support Division (OSD) of the Sierra Leonean police. Sesay met his ordeal when covering the arrest of Aziz Carew, a constituency chairman of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) at his Fourah Bay home in the east of the capital Freetown. This was after a bye- election which resulted in violence.

Somalia: Radio journalist gunned down in Mogadishu

2012-01-30

http://aje.me/yzc3Z0

Gunmen in Somalia have shot dead the director of a major radio station in front of his home in Mogadishu, colleagues and witnesses said. Hassan Osman Abdi, who headed Radio Shabelle, was stopped by two men as he was entering his gate on Saturday. He was shot several times, according to Mohamed Moalim, a relative who stayed in the area.

Uganda: Uganda drops in press freedom ranking

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/yEEcgP

Alleged brutality by security forces against journalists and proposed draconian legislation against newspapers have plunged Uganda 43 places lower in the latest press freedom ranking by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The Press Freedom Index notes that an increased number of journalists in Uganda reported more acts of violence meted out on them by security agencies. 'Journalists in Uganda were the targets of violence and surveillance during the presidential election in February (2011) and were targeted again during the brutal crackdown on the Walk-to-Work protests later in the year, when dozens of journalists were arrested,' the report indicated.

Burkina Faso: Ganzourgou, gold mine and child exploitation

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/xZjuNG

A dozen traditional gold mining sites have appeared in recent years in the province of Ganzourgou. Gold panners from all over flock there to work the sites, most often living in the greatest promiscuity, without any infrastructure for sanitation and with no access to public basic services. The miners migrate according to the discovery of new veins of gold, usually moving there from the rural areas of Burkina Faso as well as from neighbouring countries (Togo, Benin, Ghana). Between one quarter and one third of them are under 18.

Iran: 10 reasons not to go to war

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/xuXB8p

There is no threat, sanctions lead to war and war leads to welfare cuts: These are three of the 10 reasons advanced by the website www.counterfire.org/ against possible war against Iran by Western powers.

United States: White house announces Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg as a change champion

2012-01-30

http://bit.ly/wZRI1i

The White House has chosen to honour Akili Dada founder and executive director, Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, as one of fourteen Champions of Change who are leaders in American Diaspora communities with roots in the Horn of Africa. These leaders are helping to build stronger neighborhoods in communities across the country, and are working to mobilize networks across borders to address global challenges. Akili Dada works to empower a new generation of African women leaders.

Burundi: Fears of looming food shortage

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/zeWLOE

There are fears of a looming food shortage in Burundi after heavy rains damaged two successive harvests, say officials. 'More than half of the expected harvest was lost in flooding and siltation,' Methode Niyongendako, a consultant with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said. The rains peaked in mid-September and November, exceeding forecasts in terms of volume and frequency, and were the heaviest since October 1961, according to households questioned, added Niyongendako.

DRC: Conflict minerals, an infographic

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/wi08xf

This infographic briefly defines what a conflict mineral is and follows up with a map that shows worldwide production of each mineral. We have also included a graphical representation of the estimated amount of funds that are going to the armed conflict within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Ethiopia: Ethiopia, Eritrea trade accusations after deadly tourist attack

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/AE2Bs2

The Ethiopian government has said it will defend itself from 'terrorist' acts sponsored by Eritrea following a deadly attack this week on western tourists which Addis Ababa said was carried out by armed groups sponsored by its arch-rival. In a statement, Ethiopia said it would invoke its right to self-defence as the already-strained relations between the two neighbours threatened to deteriorate even further. Asmara denies the allegation and said it had put its troops at their border on high alert following the accusation.

Liberia: The Charles Taylor revelation

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/xl0udS

The international dimension of Liberia’s civil war is rarely given the attention it deserves, writes Boima Tucker on the blog Africa is a Country. 'The fact that Charles Taylor stands on trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone points to it partially, but often not realized are the roles that countries like Libya, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria played in initiating a truly multinational war. Recent revelations by the CIA - which have always been suspected - put the United States’ role in the war at center stage, adding fuel to claims of outside intervention in Liberian politics, since its founding as a Western style nation-state, up until today.'

Libya: Gaddafi supporters seize control of Libyan town

2012-01-24

http://reut.rs/w37L8w

Fighters loyal to Libya's overthrown leader Muammar Gaddafi took control of a town south-east of the capital on Monday, flying their green flags in defiance of the country's fragile new government. The fightback by Gaddafi supporters defeated in Libya's civil war, though unlikely to spread elsewhere, added to the problems besetting a government which in the past week has been reeling from one crisis to another. Gaddafi himself was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run.

Mauritania: Security meeting in Nouakchott

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/zXWBJD

Foreign ministers of the four countries involved in the fight against terrorism by the Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – have met to discuss the issue. Nigeria and the African Centre for Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT) are also guests at the meeting whose agenda is to 'review the terrorist threat in the Sahel-Sahara, assess joint action in the field of security and development and agree on measures to be taken to consolidate the regional strategy for implementation of the Common policy.'

Mozambique: Floods cut off Maputo

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/zsWciN

The flood waters of the Incomati river and its tributaries swept across Mozambique's main north-south highway cutting off Maputo from the north and centre of the country, it was reported on Monday. Earlier, disaster relief officials said storms had forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and had killed 22 in Mozambique, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Nigeria: Who is sending the guns to Nigeria?

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/zJOLyl

In the context of widespread instability in Nigeria, this blog post raises questions about recent cases in which arms destined for the country were intercepted. In one case, a British based man was arraigned in the UK over the shipping of 80,000 rifles and pistols and 32 million rounds of ammunition to Nigeria. The shipment included 40,000 AK47 assault rifles, 30,000 rifles and 10,000 9mm pistols. In another case, Ghanaian authorities intercepted a truck loaded with arms and ammunitions heading to Nigeria. Both cases are cause for concern, argues the blogger.

Nigeria: Youths overrun bombed north police station

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/A1V5J7

Jubilant youths overran a blood-splattered police station on Wednesday 25 January after it was attacked by a radical Islamist sect, revealing a streak of popular discontent with a government that many say has failed them in Africa's most populous nation. Suspected members of Boko Haram surrounded the police station Tuesday night in Kano, ordered civilians to get off the street, began chanting 'God is great' and threw homemade bombs into the station while spraying it with assault rifles, witnesses said. The attack followed coordinated assaults on Friday that killed at least 185 people in Kano, Nigeria's second-largest city.

Somalia: Al-Shabab attack Ethiopian base in Beledweyne

2012-01-24

http://bbc.in/A04zYs

Islamist militants have launched a suicide truck bomb attack on an Ethiopian military base in central Somalia, witnesses say. Al-Shabab says it killed 10 Ethiopian soldiers in the attack in the town of Beledweyne but this has not been confirmed. Ethiopian forces seized Beledweyne from al-Shabab earlier this month.

South Sudan: UN raises alarm over Sudan’s air attack in South

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/A4lsgM

Sudan air force on Monday 23 January bombed Elfoj refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, leaving 14 civilians missing and injuring another, the UN said, raising the already high tensions between the two countries. 'The aerial bombing occurred just after 10am local time in Elfoj in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state,' the UN High Commissioner for refugees said in a statement.

West Africa: Concern over Boko Haram

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/wPCixc

The ECOWAS Commission has said that it roundly condemns the spate of terror attacks in different parts of Nigeria. It maintained that the attacks by Boko Haram were 'aggravating insecurity among both citizens and visitors'. According to the sub-regional group, the West African leaders have noted with regret that 'the latest deadly attacks in the country’s ancient northern city of Kano on Friday, January 20, 2012 happened in spite of the determined efforts by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to rein in those behind these attacks.' Nigeria’s violent situation has reportedly featured at the United Nations Security Council.

Africa: New research shows how Africa tweets

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/zAtdHt

Young people Tweeting from mobile devices are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, according to How Africa Tweets, new research launched in Nairobi. In the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland Communications and Tweetminster analysed over 11.5 million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011.

Africa: Orange to provide Wikipedia free in Middle East and Africa

2012-01-24

http://bit.ly/wOkWNF

Mobile phone company Orange has struck a deal with Wikipedia to make its digital encyclopaedia available free of data charges to millions of mobile phone users across the Middle East and Africa. The free service will be launched in 20 markets across 2012, with a spokesman from Orange saying that the aim is to increase the proportion of 2G and 3G phones to 50% of customers by 2015.

Africa: WikiLeaks cable on Chinese ICT agenda

2012-01-25

http://bit.ly/xfx02K

The latest US cable released by Wikileaks accuses Chinese ICT companies doing business in Kenya of 're-colonising Africa' with 'good and cheap' equipment. The US embassy cable, from Nairobi to Washington, says Chinese firms selling into Kenya’s ICT sector are 'throwing a lot of money around' and influence may be so great 'that it is distorting important investment decisions in the country', according to industry contacts.

Global: Is a Google and World Bank partnership empowering cartographers?

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/zpw6c0

World Bank Managing Director Caroline Anstey recently announced a new partnership with Google that will apparently empower citizen cartographers in 150 countries worldwide. This has provoked some concern among open source enthusiasts. The worry is, says this www.blog.ushahidi.com post, that Google will organize crowdsourced mapping projects and use people with local knowledge to improve Map Maker data, which will carry Google licencing agreement restrictions. Does this really empower citizen cartographers?

Egypt: The timeline of a one-year old revolution

2012-01-26

http://bit.ly/xVjPEu

Wednesday 25 January marked the one-year anniversary since the beginning of 18 days of protests that ousted the previous regime of Hosni Mubarak. Since that day, Egypt remains struggling to see the revolution succeed. Website www.bikyamasr.com has a useful timeline of important events throughout the year.

OSIWA 2012 Call for Proposals

Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA)

2012-01-26

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/566/OSIWA - 2012 Call for Proposal.pdf

OSIWA calls for proposals that seek to:
1. Foster building of strong governance institutions, processes and structures that are transparent, accountable and intolerant of impunity;
2. Build the capacity of civil society organizations and increase citizen participation in decision-making processes and
3. Promote the protection of fundamental rights and citizenship groups exposed to discrimination.

The programs will be implemented in one or more of these countries: Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Please click on the link provided to access the full Call for Proposals, which contains further links to a detailed strategy to guide the application process and the application documents.

Call for Pre-conference Workshops

55th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association

2012-01-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/79408

Because of the outstanding success of the workshops at last year's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the ASA will welcome proposals for workshops on a wide range of topics to be held on Wednesday, November 28, 2012, prior to the 55th Annual Meeting.

Last year's workshops were organized by the Library of Congress, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, American University; and scholars from the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. Topics included health in Africa, governance and development, new technologies in the field of museum studies, and information resources and materials.

To propose a workshop, please visit the ASA website to view and complete the application. Submit the completed document as an attachment to asameeting2012@gmail.com or mail to: Pre-Conference Workshops, African Studies Association, Rutgers University-Livingston Campus, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854. The deadline to submit applications is March 15, 2012. Applicants will be notified of the Program Committee's decision in early April.

Click hereto view photos of pre-conference workshops at the 54th Annual Meeting.

OpenForum: Money, Power & Sex: The Paradox of Unequal Growth

22-24 May 2012, Cape Town, South Africa

2012-01-29

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/79504

OSISA, in conjucnction with the Africa Foundations of the Open Society network of Foundations (OSF) is hosting a gathering in Cape Town, 22-24 May 2012, entitled the 'OpenForum: Money, Power & Sex: The Paradox of Unequal Growth'. Under the theme, the OpenForum will provide a space to talk about the economic, social and political implications of the emerging world order. It will also provide space for a range of actors - prominent and well known, as well as younger and newer voices - to take a critical look at the factors that will influence the African democracy and governance agenda over the next decade. Bring your ideas, let’s turn them into action!
The Call for Proposals is available at the following link: http://www.openforum.net/index.php/call-for-proposals

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

Global: Guide to the ins and outs of the financial sector

2012-01-29

http://bit.ly/yXGob5

Corporate Watch has announced the publication of a clear and concise, 24-page 'Nuts & Bolts' Guide to the ins and outs of the financial sector. From hedge funds to the money markets and derivatives, all of the major players and products are broken down from a critical perspective.

Kenya: Oxfam vacancies

2012-01-26

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/566/Oxfam Consolidated Job ad v240112.pdf

Oxfam seeks to expand its capacity to hold global multi-lateral institutions and African States accountable to the claims of people living in poverty, suffering and injustice in the African countries we work in. The Pan Africa Programme is a continental public policy advocacy programme with staff in based Nairobi, Hague, Addis Ababa and Dakar. Together with the State of the Union coalition (www.stateoftheunionafrica.net) , we are looking to fill seven exciting vacancies based in Nairobi. Are you ready to act with poor people and their allies to make claims on the global and African policy processes? Are you committed to holding African States accountable to their own decisions within the African Union? We are looking for people like you to fill a total of seven positions. The first three positions will form the Nairobi based secretariat of newly established State of the Union coalition. The remaining four positions will be Oxfam staff working within the Pan Africa programme office in Nairobi, Kenya.

Fahamu