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Daring to invent the future: Join the Friends of Pambazuka

Firoze Manji

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79953

As we enter a period of a profound crisis of capitalism, as working people and the poor are being forced to pay the costs of that crisis, the challenges facing Pambazuka are greater than ever. Our task in the coming period will be to expand the capacity of Pambazuka to support the growing movements for social and political transformation. We want you to join us in helping to build and support those movements. If you think that Pambazuka is important, if you find what we do useful, if you like the materials we publish in Pambazuka News, then join the Friends of Pambazuka with a donation today. Together we will dare to invent the future.
Today we are inviting you, our readers, contributors, and supporters, to become Friends of Pambazuka.

Over the last 11 years, Pambazuka News has established itself as an online weekly providing probably the most comprehensive coverage of African struggles for dignity, self-determination and emancipation anywhere. This is due, not least, to the efforts of the more than 3,100 authors who provide cutting-edge commentary and analyses, to the thousands of readers and subscribers who distribute Pambazuka News widely, and the volunteer translators and editors who help us make Pambazuka News the most important voice on freedom and justice in Africa and the global South.

But Pambazuka is more than just an online weekly; more than just a newsletter. Over the years, it has become the means by which a vast community of activists, bloggers, intellectuals, organisations and social movements communicates to the wider world and, most importantly, with each other. It has become one of the means by which they contribute towards building a movement for freedom and social justice. We are proud to have provided the means by which networks of solidarity have flourished in Africa and beyond.

As we enter a period of a profound crisis of capitalism, as working people and the poor are being forced to pay the costs of that crisis through cuts in social expenditure, declining real incomes, privatisation of the commons, dispossession of land and natural resources, and dispossession of their right to determine their own futures as governments increasingly dance to the tune of the bankers and big business, the challenges facing Pambazuka are greater than ever.

Our task in the coming period will be to expand the capacity of Pambazuka to support the growing movements for social and political transformation that will ensure that the 99 percent reclaim their dignity and control their destinies. That is no easy task.

We want you to join us in helping to build and support those movements. Critical in that task will be the need to keep Pambazuka FREE AND INDEPENDENT. Pambazuka News is accessible to all free of charge. But we cannot manage without money. Through their financial support, the Friends of Pambazuka ensure that Pambazuka News continues to thrive and belong to the people and movements it serves.

If you think that Pambazuka is important, if you find what we do useful, if you like the materials we publish in Pambazuka News, then join the Friends of Pambazuka with a donation today. Together we will dare to invent the future.

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

Egypt's other revolution: Modernizing the military-industrial complex

Shana Marshall

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80008

cc O R HPlanners in the Egyptian military want to boost the old defense-industrial complex by cultivating new smaller scale projects that partner the Egyptian armed forces with a diverse portfolio of second- and third-tier foreign defense manufacturers.

The Egyptian military produces a staggering array of manufactured goods: kitchen cutlery, flat-screen televisions, agricultural and household chemicals, refrigerators, industrial machinery, railway cars, and election booths. And while many of the military’s factory webpages make a concerted attempt to promote their wares, the careful observer gets the feeling that the production of air conditioners and gas stoves has superseded the production of guns and ammo. Although the military has been co-producing weapons systems in its factories under license from Western arms manufacturers for decades, the production lines and maintenance facilities constructing and modifying American M1A1 tanks, British armored vehicles, French Alpha Jets, and Chinese versions of Soviet MiGs are remnants of agreements originally signed in the mid-1980s and early-1990s, initiated by the now-deceased former Field Marshal (and staunch US ally) Mohamed Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala.

The intervening decade saw few new agreements — and none on the scale of these previous projects. Owing primarily to a reputation for poor quality, the Egyptian military lacks a robust export market for its defense products, many of which end up in warehouses. Yet the military’s production lines continue to roll out weapons systems that exceed what even a bloated military can absorb: thanks to its continuing M1A1 co-production program with the US, Egypt is now home to more tanks than all of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America combined. The military’s economic planners know that a revival of their defense-industrial complex will not be achieved through an expansion of these aging operations, but rather through cultivating new smaller scale projects that partner the Egyptian armed forces with a diverse portfolio of second- and third-tier foreign defense manufacturers willing to transfer modern technologies in exchange for lucrative sales contracts with Cairo.

The centerpiece of this approach is the new three billion Egyptian pound “Mubarak Complex for the Defense Industry” being constructed somewhere along the Belbeis Desert Road, which runs from the northeast section of Cairo’s ring road and extends about 50 kilometers to Belbeis in Sharkeya province.[1] This project has included the re-location of several of the military’s largest factories—including Shoubra Engineering Industries, Maasara Engineering Industries, Maadi Engineering Industries, Heliopolis Company for Chemical Industries,[2] and Abu Zaabal Company for Specialty Chemicals — from residential areas on the outskirts of Cairo to this new, more remote location.

The factories are reconstructed at the new five hundred-acre industrial park, purpose-built for the military, whose leaders say the site will house twenty-eight factories by the end of 2012, with plans to ultimately add thirty-four additional manufacturing sites.[3] The location will also include a new 200 million Egyptian pound laboratory and technical education complex, which former Minister of Military Production Sayed Meshaal said would help facilitate the transfer of relevant defense technologies. Before being replaced by Ali Sabri in December 2011, Meshaal also cited the continuing construction of the “Mubarak Complex II,” which he said would comprise eighteen munitions factories on a separate 1,500 acre plot.[4]

The relocation process has occurred in tandem with an expansion in investment in the military’s factories — especially those facilities that produce small arms and raw materials used in weapons production. The Ministry of Military Production’s five-year development plan for the period 2002-2007 detailed the expansion in factory activities, including new production of steel and copper alloys and a wide range of chemical and explosives materials; the upgrading of machinery, including blast furnaces and chemical testing equipment; and new investments in infrastructure for the military’s electronics and chemical industries.[5] Other production targets included the development of longer-range artillery and ammunition and a collaborative radar development project with an unnamed foreign partner.

Foreign firms are cooperating with Egypt in expanding the military’s ability to produce raw materials for use in weapons systems, including the Austrian-based company VAIS (a division of Siemens), which is providing technical assistance on the new 1.7 billion Egyptian pound steel rolling mill at the Abu Zabaal Engineering Industries factory, which will be outfitted with equipment supplied by the Egyptian subsidiary of the German firm Ferrometalco. [insert photo] The Ministry of Military Production has slated some of the factory’s future output for tank and armoured vehicle construction, as well as for use in shipbuilding.

Former Minister of Military Production Sayed Meshaal justified the cost of the new complex by citing dramatic (and therefore dubious) increases in output at the military’s production facilities, giving a figure of 483 million US dollars in “production” for the 2009/2010 fiscal year, and “revenues” of 345 million US dollars.[6] Meshaal also pointed to the intensification of technology and development collaboration with foreign defense manufacturers, including firms from the United States, Russia, the UK, China, South Africa, France, and Italy,[7] which necessitated the construction of new facilities for research, manufacturing, and testing.[8]

Many of these partner countries are also home to international shipping conglomerates and petroleum companies that have recently launched joint ventures with Egyptian state-owned firms in which the military owns substantial shares.[9] The Kuwait-based conglomerate Kharafi Group — whose operations hub is in Obour City near the new defense complex site — has been an instrumental link in the Egyptian military’s efforts to gain access to foreign technologies and investment capital. Over the past decade the Egyptian military has established a number of “private” sector ventures with the group, which have facilitated the transfer of technologies from firms in Taiwan, Germany, and elsewhere.[10] This is in addition to a number of joint ventures between Kharafi’s Egyptian divisions Kharafi National and EMAK, and the various subsidiaries of state-owned holding companies widely perceived to be under the control of the Egyptian military.

In addition to investments in factories and infrastructure, the Egyptian military is adapting its protocol for eliciting co-production and licensed manufacturing agreements from foreign defense firms. Instead of focusing on domestic production of very large-scale equipment in collaboration with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers — like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE, etc.) the Egyptian military appears to be diversifying its portfolio of partners, approaching subsidiaries and smaller independent suppliers instead. The relative success of both Jordan and the UAE — which now manufacture and export a relatively wide range of weapons and equipment through various joint ventures with smaller-tier suppliers — may have influenced the Egyptian military’s renewed vigour for this type of collaboration.

This strategy has two potential benefits. First, the related projects are more likely to result in sustainable production activities, since they do not necessitate the transfer of the most sensitive technologies that require official approval from the host states of exporting firms. This improves the likelihood of getting export contracts, since sales to third parties will not be hampered by concerns over technology proliferation. Although co-production programs are still ongoing for large-scale, highly advanced systems like the M1A1 tank, these do not provide any real possibility for generating exports, since very wealthy countries would prefer to buy equipment built in the US and Europe, and poorer countries may not get the requisite technology waivers.

Therefore it makes sense for the military to concentrate on mid-range manufacturing such as small arms, as well as on tasks like upgrading and modifying armoured vehicles, which can also be achieved through agreements with the smaller firms that generally provide the armaments, electronics, and fire-control systems that are added to the tanks and fighter jets built by the OEMs. Second, subsidiary firms and smaller independent manufacturers are probably more willing to acquiesce to co-production demands in order to secure a sale, since smaller firms have fewer capital resources and subsidiaries may be under pressure from the parent company to compete with other divisions.

The contracts concluded by the Egyptian military during the previous decade appear to reflect this strategy. Examples include a waterjet-powered fire-fighting vessel (with 4X4 vehicle deployment ramp) built in 2004 by the Helwan Company for Machining & Equipment (Factory 999) based on design technology and materials provided by Teknicraft Design (of New Zealand) and the local Egyptian agent[11] of Hamiltonjet (also of New Zealand); as well as a 2004 contract with US-based firm Accent Controls Inc. to “establish facilities required for the maintenance and repair of Egypt’s fleet of high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs)” — essentially military-grade Humvees — a maintenance line that had previously gone dormant. The Department of Defense said this latter contract would “help Egypt to expand its defense industry.”

The website of an Egyptian consulting firm revealed that it had worked on another product development plan, this one encompassing the military-owned firms Arab International Optronics[12] and Benha Electronics Factory, along with Motorola and the French defense firms Thales (which owns half of Arab International Optronics) and Thomson CSF.[13] Benha Electronics also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Latvian firm SAF Tehnika in 2009 pertaining to the procurement of communications systems for use by Egypt’s police force, which would be supplied by SAF Tehnika but built in Benha factories. The MoU indicated that the contract would be the basis for a long-term joint venture that would make Benha the local hub for the Latvian firm’s regional operations.[14]

A State Department cable from the American embassy in Belgrade released by WikiLeaks suggested that in 2008, Thales and Arab International Optronics were planning to import 520 kits for the Russian-designed SA-7 man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs), allowing Optronics to gain experience and technological know-how in assembling the systems. The WikiLeaks cables also revealed that the South Korean firm Hanwha (operating as a subcontractor under industrial giant Samsung) had requested approval from the State Department to transfer US-origin technologies to Abu Zaabal Company for Specialty Chemicals in 2008.

The specific technology in question — a method for testing propellants — was to be used in a production line for the manufacture of 155-millimeter ammunition (howitzers).[15] This project was meant to expand the scope of local content used in the production of howitzers, connected to an earlier deal signed with the majority state-owned Finnish company Patria Vammas (the giant European defense consortium EADS owns the remaining shares of Vammas), which granted the Egyptian military a license to manufacture its howitzers and other mortars. The Ministry of Military Production recently announced that Abu Zaabal Engineering Industries is now producing gun tubes for these 122-millimeter and 155- millimeter howitzers, as well as mortars for use on M1A1 tanks—all using locally produced steel.

Far from slowing down in the face of economic uncertainty or concerns over political stability on the part of arms exporters, co-production agreements and technology transfers may be intensifying under the leadership of the interim military government. In February 2011, Egypt requested the modification of an earlier contract signed with the American firm Swiftships (a subsidiary of Singapore-based Halter Marine). The original thirteen million US dollar contract, signed in 2008, was for four twenty-eight-meter patrol craft, but the modified contract allowed for an Egyptian shipyard to “assemble” two of the patrol craft and “co-produce” the other two—at an increased cost of twenty million US dollars.[16] In the fall, Egypt announced the purchase of six Onuk MRTP-20 fast-intervention crafts “with technology transfer” from the Turkish company Yonca-Onuk JV. Three of the units are to be assembled at the military-owned Alexandria Shipyard.[17] The increased cost that generally accompanies co-production agreements (meant to compensate foreign firms for transferring proprietary technologies) suggests that Egypt’s military rulers are seizing the opportunity to expand their technological toolbox while they hold the formal reins of government—regardless of the additional cost.

MAINTAINING HIGH-PROFILE CO-PRODUCTION PROGRAMS

Naturally, the military is unlikely to forego continued joint production of high-profile systems like the M1A1 tank, which has more to do with institutional prestige and employment for officer-engineers than it does with tactical or strategic concerns. In the summer of 2011, the US government announced the tenth round of Egypt’s co-production of the General Dynamics M1A1 tank, which included kits for 125 new tanks at a cost of 1.3 billion US dollars. Then-Minister for Military Production Sayed Meshaal stated that plans were to increase the military’s share of the tanks’ production from eighty percent to ninety per cent—a threshold that newly-appointed Minister of Military Production Dr. Ali Ibrahim Sabri indicated has since been met.

Like the M1A1 program, there are other similar examples of continuing large-scale projects with OEMs, notably in the area of armored vehicles. These include a 2005 agreement with United Technologies to co-produce M88A2 tank recovery vehicles, and a twenty million US dollar contract signed with Oshkosh Defense in 2009 to co-produce the M1070 tank transport and refueling vehicle. Both projects will be carried out at the Egyptian Tank Factory (Factory 200) where Oshkosh already co-produces the MTT (medium tactical truck) with the Egyptian army. Additional contracts have also been awarded for the construction of new facilities for depot-level maintenance (the most sophisticated form) of military vehicles, as well as for the expansion of existing facilities, including a 2011 contract that went to US-based Advanced Technology Systems Company to build a new facility for repairing and overhauling tank transporters and recovery vehicles.[18] Although these projects are relatively large in scale, they are directly connected to Egypt’s continued M1A1 tank production. As the number of tanks increases, so too must the number of tank recovery vehicles available in the army’s arsenal — if not for truly strategic reasons, at least to perpetuate the illusion that procurement is somehow tied to issues of equipment and logistics. The significant influence wielded by the Egyptian army, as opposed to the other service branches, also helps ensure that their own equipment demands are a high priority.

Continuing these high-profile production activities in parallel with more middle-range projects also increases the likelihood that Egypt’s military factories may be able to secure a spot in the increasingly globalized defense industry supply chain. The new gun tubes built at Abu Zaabal Engineering Industries, for instance, were used in the production of artillery rounds meant for the M1A1 tank, and according to Egyptian military officials, these new rounds met NATO specifications and passed US inspection. This could give the Egyptian generals greater bargaining power in future negotiations—perhaps convincing General Dynamics’ executives to purchase the gun tubes (a practice known as counter-purchase in defense industry parlance) and use them for upgrades made to the armament systems of tanks sold to other countries.

Similarly, according to a US embassy cable released by Wikileaks, the impetus for the 2006 purchase of a Chinese firm called SiTex by Kharafi Group’s Egyptian division was to secure technology transfer. As noted above, Kharafi Group has several joint ventures with the military, and the design for the Helwan-built fire-fighting vessel provided by the New Zealand firm Teknicraft includes radio technology manufactured by a firm called SiTex. Perhaps the Kharafi Group executed the purchase of the Chinese firm so the technology could be incorporated into subsequent boats manufactured by Helwan for export. Such reciprocity would not be unusual, and Kharafi Group benefited immensely from its military ties when soldiers were deployed to protect the company’s critical infrastructure during the recent uprisings. Securing a new form of technology for use by the Egyptian military is a small price to pay for such security guarantees.

There are signs of growing collaboration with non-Western suppliers as well, including a 2005 agreement to co-produce 120 Chinese K-8E trainer/light attack aircraft at the AOI Aircraft Factory in Helwan that also includes electronic and mechanical technologies for use in civil aviation.[19] In 2010, several industry outlets reported that Egypt and Pakistan were advancing negotiations on the licensed production of the JF-17 multi-role fighter,[20] and Lieutenant General Hamdy Waheba, chairman of the Arab Organization for Industrialization, told China’s state-run news agency that negotiations with an unnamed foreign partner were underway to produce Egypt’s first fighter drone.

Like all co-production programs, the 2005 agreement to co-produce Chinese jet trainers at the AOI Aircraft Factory in Helwan[21] had an inflated price tag.[22] However, the added cost appears to have secured a number of non-strategic goals for the military: first, the AOI factory assembling the planes claims that ninety-four percent of the work will be performed in Egypt—which represents a substantial increase over the proportion of manufacturing work (and therefore technology) transferred under previous co-production arrangements. Second, the nearby Factory 360 (the Helwan Metallic Appliances Company) now has a brand-new production facility churning out air conditioning units under license from Hisense, a Chinese state-owned company. Lastly, in 2011 the Aviation Industry Corporation of China signed another agreement with the AOI to collaborate on a range of aviation applications, including the establishment of a research and development facility in Egypt.[23]

HAVE WEAPONS, WILL EXPORT

The Egyptian military’s current expansion plans reveal a few general policy trajectories: the construction of new factory infrastructure, research and training facilities, and testing labs to enhance foreign collaboration; an effort to gain access to defense technologies by seeking out projects with smaller defense firms; efforts to expand weapons maintenance facilities to break into defense industry supply chains; and renewed attempts to boost Egypt’s meager record of arms exports. This last component—exports—not only generates hard currency earnings, which, like many items on the military’s balance sheet, disappear into a budgetary black hole, it also enhances the military’s institutional reputation.

Currently, criticism of the military’s commercial ventures is widespread, with jokes and rumours circulating about military-owned warehouses brimming with substandard consumer goods. However, the new Minister of Military Production, Ali Sabri, has been keen to insist that the majority of the military’s energy and capital goes into weapons development and production. Sabri’s own appointment may provide a clue to the military’s future manufacturing strategy. Although both Meshaal and Sabri served as directors in the National Service Projects Organization (which is responsible for a large segment of the military’s civilian production), Sabri served in the war against Israel in 1973, and—unlike Meshaal—there are no pictures of Sabri distributing Egyptian banknotes to NDP supporters outside polling stations. If the military wants to gain public support for channeling resources into ramped-up arms production while avoiding criticism about squandering public funds, Sabri certainly presents a better public face than his predecessor.

One successful case in Egypt's arms export record has been its sale of military-grade jeeps. In 2010, Egypt signed a new foreign military sales (FMS) contract with Chrysler for thirty-three million US dollars worth of unassembled jeeps, tools, and spare parts destined for the AOI’s Arab American Vehicle factory.[24] Two military-grade models—the Jeep TJL and the Jeep J8—are exclusively produced at the AAV factory, and have previously been exported to two-dozen countries, including Libya, where pro-government forces deployed the TJL during skirmishes with protestors in Tripoli. In contrast to many of Egypt’s other defense products, the jeeps have provided a good export opportunity, and go a long way in burnishing the military’s image as a competent producer.

The region’s current political realities also bode well for Egyptian weapons exports, and the military appears to be gearing up for the renewal of export contracts with Iraq (historically Egypt’s largest arms buyer)[25] as well as an expansion of sales to Libya, where the new government will likely face fewer import restrictions than the previous regime. A delegation that included a number of members of the Ministry of Military Production recently visited Libya to investigate business opportunities related to that country’s reconstruction. Minister Sabri stated that the Arab Spring was in fact good for the business of military production, because reconstruction contracts would likely be forthcoming, and that the “states of the Arab Spring” represented a new opportunity for Egypt to export some of its M1A1 tank arsenal. Reports from the US embassy in Cairo in 2010 foreshadowed this renewed export drive. In documents released by Wikileaks, embassy officials indicated that TPT (third party transfer) requests from the Egyptian Armament Authority had increased considerably, signaling an expansion in Egypt’s efforts to export weapons that contained technology of US origin, including potential sales of M1A1 tanks to Iraq, ammunition to Saudi Arabia, and the provision of technical support for Turkey’s arsenal of Hawk Missiles.[26]

The executives and managers overseeing Egyptian military production have also voiced rhetorical support for exports and foreign collaborations, citing Egypt’s advantages in labor costs and geographical location. A press release announcing the completion of the first Egyptian-built fire patrol vessels, referenced above, states that:

“For Mapso [the local Egyptian agent for Hamiltonjets] and Helwan [the military factory building the ships], the next challenge will be to target the export market. It is believed that the features of this vessel together with the moderate price allowed by Egypt’s lower labor costs and proximity to the Middle Eastern and European markets could make it a very attractive option.”

Philippe Maari, MAPSO’s director, also stated that, “Export is our future. We invite owners worldwide to contact us for their special craft requirements.” The military may also seek to supplement its export profile by selling items that have indirect security applications. For example, Maxalto—a joint venture between the Egyptian military and the Kharafi Group to produce smart cards using technology from the German company Siemens—already has orders from Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

If SCAF is able to use its executive power to engineer a post-transition system that protects the military’s economic perquisites, the latter will use the tactics described above to augment the share of the economy already under military control. This is only likely to increase the longer SCAF remains in control of the political system, allowing the military to shape electoral outcomes and legal frameworks. And foreign arms manufacturers will intensify their collaborative activities with Egypt’s armed forces for the same reason that they have historically formed partnerships with regime power brokers—preferential access to state contracts and the levers of economic influence. Or put more succinctly: profit.

Foreign arms manufacturers have long demonstrated a remarkable willingness to violate international laws and legal norms to enhance their influence with Egypt’s officer corps. This in turn only increases the power of the officer corps itself, which gains illicit access to resources not available to other economic sectors or social classes. Incidents of illegal payments to military generals are numerous: there are currently several cases pending under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and just two years ago, Chrysler’s parent company Diamler-Benz[27] agreed to pay two hundred million US dollars to settle charges that it bribed foreign officials, including General Abdel Hamid Wasfi, the Chairman of AOI’s Kader Factory for Developed Industries, in exchange for securing future supply contracts.[28]

Such incentives will only proliferate if SCAF manages to use its current power monopoly to expand its influence over the Egyptian economy. Even while our attention is (justifiably) focused on Egypt’s proximate political realities—electoral outcomes, the repression of demonstrators, an evolving modus vivendi between SCAF and the Muslim Brothers—the Egyptian Armed Forces is quietly pursuing a parallel track of military industrial expansion. The physical centerpiece of this project is somewhere out in the desert northeast of Cairo, but the financial epicenter is closer to home—in the boardrooms of defense firms, where executives outline plans to increase shareholder profits, and in the halls of government, where our elected representatives do everything they can to help.

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NOTES

[1] Most of these relocations have been handled by The Arab Contractors, a division of the state-owned conglomerate. The Heliopolis Company for Chemical Industries may also have been on this list, as the Ministry of Military Production website cites a large recent investment made by the ministry in this factory and the state-owned National Company for Construction & Development reports having worked on a construction project for this factory in 2004-2005.

[2] Although this company was sold to former NDP head (and owner of the Salam ferry that sank in 2006) Mamdouh Ismail, the Ministry of Military Production reported that the factory was indeed re-located in 2010.

[3] These may in fact refer to the two separate complexes, one for manufacturing arms and ammunition, and another for developing chemicals and raw materials. Also see here. This article states that The Arab Contractors won the tender from the Ministry of Military Production to move the Abu Zabaal Factory to the Heliopolis Complex for Chemical Industries, which may be part of the Mubarak Complex II.

[4] “Minister: Egypt’s Annual Military Production Reaches £2.7 Billion EGP,” Al Masry Al Youm (English edition) (24 August 2010).

[5] Chemical infrastructure includes a new wastewater treatment plant at Abu Zaabal Specialty Chemicals.

[6] “Minister: Egypt’s Annual Military Production Reaches £2.7 Billion EGP,” Al Masry Al Youm (English edition) (24 August 2010). Also see here.

[7] Meshaal also claimed publicly that the MMP managed to sell all the civilian goods it had produced — and was not maintaining warehouses full of unsold goods (a common criticism levied at the MMP).

[8] The Helwan Aircraft Factory signed several technology transfer contracts with Sifle SRL, an Italian distributor of IVECO Military Vehicles — a division of Fiat Industrial. These contracts — signed sometime before 2008 — included two CKD (complete knock-down) kits for the assembly of vehicle air conditioner production lines at AOI’s Helwan Aircraft Factory and El Nasr Automotive Factory; the construction of a hot-dip galvanizing plant (the galvanizing process prevents erosion of numerous metals) and the supply and construction of machinery for a furniture factory (both for the Helwan Aircraft Factory); as well as the supply of mobile ambulance units to the Ministry of Health. IVECO armored trucks were used in confrontations between state security forces and protesters during the recent uprisings. Also, AOI factories have produced Fiat passenger cars for sale on the domestic market in the past, and with the recent acquisition of Chrysler by Fiat, it is likely these factories may bring more Fiat models onto their production lines.

[9] France, Kuwait, and China all have sizeable investments in new maritime infrastructure projects, in which the military also owns shares through the state-owned Holding Company for Maritime & Land Transport/HCMLT, the various port authorities, and the Ministry of Maritime Transport, all of which are dominated by military officers. Italy and China also have several joint ventures with Tharwa Petroleum, in which the military also has minority shares.

[10] For specifics on these ventures, see my forthcoming article co-authored with Joshua Stacher in the Spring 2012 issue of Middle East Report.

[11] This agent, Marine Propulsion & Supply Company/MAPSO, may be the result of a previous USAID project (with Morgan International Transport & Marine); Morgan lists MAPSO project as one of its USAID contracts in a document dating from 1988 (Chairman Gabriel Maari founded MAPSO in 1976).

[12] This is part of the National Service Projects Organization, NSPO.

[13] The Egyptian firm is El Zahraa Trade & Consultants Company.

[14] This planned collaboration may be on hold, since SAF Tehnika signed an agreement with a newly-formed Saudi investment fund (Najahat Company for Investment & Development).

[15] The original contract was signed in 2000 — but supplementary agreements were signed again in 2001, 2002, and 2005. The deal is currently under scrutiny. Not only did the equipment ultimately fail to operate in the harsh terrain of the Egyptian desert (on one occasion the gun actually sank into the sand and could no longer operate), but the nine percent commission paid to a local agent — Wasfi & Wafik Doss & Co. — has been singled out as an illegal bribe by Swedish authorities, who are investigating the contract. A Swedish Patria employee told authorities that some portion of this commission was later transferred to the directors of the factory where the howitzers were to be produced.

[16] According to the Pentagon announcement, the contract includes “two co-assembly kits and two co-production kits to support the construction of the four twenty-eight-meter CPCs [coastal patrol crafts]. These kits, consisting of all material necessary for construction, will be shipped to Alexandria, Egypt, for construction by an Egyptian workforce, with oversight by Swiftships.” US Department of Defense; issued 10 February 2011.

[17] Ipek Yezdani, “Egypt Eyes to Buy Turkish Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Hurriyet Daily News (19 September 2011).

[18] Advanced Technology Systems Company was also awarded a contract in 2006 to expand Workshop 101—the army facility where M60 tanks are repaired. The 2011 contract is cited here. The 2006 contract is available on the USACE webpage.

[19] Counter Trade & Offset Newsletter 23(17) (2005). Factory managers claim that Egyptian technicians will perform ninety-four percent of the jets’ assembly.

[20] The JF-17 is the Pakistani version of China’s FC-1 (the JF-17 was a collaborative project between Pakistan and China). Industry reports include DefenseNews and Jane’s Defense. See Usman Ansari, “Farnborough Debut Heralds JF-17 Export Drive,” Defense News (US) (19 July 2010).

[21] Counter Trade & Offset Newsletter 23(17) (2005).

[22] Ibid. The contract cost was 345 million US dollars, which yields a per unit cost of about 4.3 million US dollars; the K-8E usually runs between 3-3.5 million US dollars.[23] J. Grevatt, “AVIC and Egypt-based AOI to Jointly Produce Equipment for Middle East,” Jane’s Defence Industry (10 January 2011).

[24] Aram Roston and David Rohde, “Egyptian Army’s Business Side Blurs Lines of US Military Aid,” New York Times (5 March 2011).

[25] Most of these exports took place during the Iran-Iraq War, and often involved the re-sale of foreign-produced equipment languishing in Egyptian stockpiles. Egypt may also have sold some of its Fahd armored personnel carriers to Kuwait, Sudan, and Oman, but these sales likewise took place two decades ago.

[26] Embassy Cairo, “TPT Blanket Approval for Non-technology Transfer Requests” (28 February 2010).

[27] Chrysler is now owned by the Italian car manufacturer Fiat, but the activity in question occurred between 1998 and 2007, during the time that Chrysler was merged with Diamler.

[28] The factory is the Kader Factory for Developed Industries in Heliopolis, which produces (or once produced) trainer aircraft, bombs, mortars, and armored vehicles, as well as the Mercedes Benz G320, known locally as the Kader-320. The bribe was in exchange for guarantees that Wasfi’s factory would place orders for parts and supplies with Diamler-Benz instead of a competitor.

Kenya: Uhuru and Ruto sowing seeds of discord

Samuel Omwenga

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79954

cc U K
cc IIP StateThe virulent speeches and chest thumping by two of Kenya’s presidential aspirants, both suspected of committing crimes against humanity, is extremely worrying. The government needs to act quickly and firmly and the people should reject these politicians.

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and MP for Eldoret North William Ruto organized what was billed as a ‘peace/prayer rally’ on Friday, January 27, 2012 at the 64 Stadium in Eldoret.

But the event was anything but a peace and prayer rally.

In fact, it was quite the opposite and can easily be classifiable as nothing but a rally designed to incite and extol racial hatred and animosity in contravention of not only our constitution, but the International Criminal Court conditions under which they and another two Kenyans are walking free instead of being in cells awaiting trial at The Hague.

According to a source privy to the planning of this event, the public rally was attended by over 45 legislators including Kenya’s Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, former MPs and presidential aspirant Raphael Tuju and another ICC suspect, Joshua arap Sang.

The same source indicates the number of current and former MPs invited was more than the number of those who actually showed up. According to another source present at the meeting, prayers took exactly 11 minutes and immediately thereafter, the rally quickly morphed into a full-fledged political rally with all the speakers making statements laced with hate speech and/or incitement.

Speaker after speaker took the mike to yelp what was clearly a well-rehearsed script, with nearly all the speakers stating that should Uhuru and Ruto (Ocampo-2) be barred from vying for the presidency, then Kenya will not have elections.

The speakers made incendiary statements, at times insinuating that it was not the Ocampo-2 that were on trial but their respective communities which they said should unite to resist or defeat the ICC process which in turn they claimed is the end product of NGOs working with Prime Minister Raila Odinga through the international community.

Belgut MP Charles Keter kicked off the storm with a rallying call. ‘Just as we said in 2007 that ‘No Raila, No Peace’, we will say ‘No Uhuru and Ruto, No Elections.’

Embakasi MP waititu said in Swahili: ‘Lazima tufanye kila kitu kuzuia huyu mjaruo kuingia state house tuingie huko wenyewe ndio tuvuruge hii maneno ICC…’ (We must do everything we can to stop this Luo man [Raila] from ascending to State House as president. We must be the ones getting in there so that we can mix-up this ICC nonsense.)

MP Gideon Mbuvi ‘Sonko’ said: ‘Hakuna vile tutakubali mtu wa jina linaanza na O asaidiwe na cousin yake huko America wa jina linaanza na O washikane na Ocampo kumaliza watu wetu….tutapambana nao’. (There is no way we can let someone with a name that starts with ‘O’ to be helped with his cousin in the US with a name that also starts with ‘O’ to work together with Ocampo to finish our people…we will deal with them)’.

Another MP Isaac Ruto said: ‘We know the international community and the civil society have a preferred candidate but let them know we shall not allow them. Uhuru and Ruto must be on the ballot.’

Eldoret East MP Peris Simam said that, ‘We will vote for them irrespective of where they will be. Let those NGOs stop going to court. I am stating that the government is here.’

Eldama Ravine MP Moses Lessonet added that, ‘It is the people of Kenya who will decide on the leadership of Kenya, not the courts and NGOs.’

Another speaker at the rally, Lucas Chepkitotony belted: ‘We stand today by our people who are being mistreated but what we know is that by the end of the day, the truth shall come out. Mosop MP David Koech added, ‘We announce today that whether they like it or not, the leader of this country is with us today.’

‘The trial of Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya’s first president) by the colonialist did not stop him from being president just as the incarceration of Nelson Mandela by the whites never stopped him from being an African leader. I tell you today, be of good courage,’ Eugene Wamalwa, too, belted while re-confirming his lack of depth and complete lack of knowledge or understanding of what the men he cited stood for in comparison to the Ocampo-2.

One theme that was clear with each speaker was the false narrative that civil society organizations (CSOs) and the prime minister are responsible for the woes facing the ICC suspects.

For his part, the source says, Kalonzo Musyoka ‘insisted that he was not the one to benefit if the suspects are tried’ because of his so-called shuttle diplomacy that he claims was ‘a fight to have the cases brought back to Kenya’ but his efforts were ‘thwarted by known people in ODM and the CSOs’.

Ruto urged his supporters to make sure that he and Uhuru are not locked out of the presidential race. He also ‘spoke for about seven minutes in his native Kalenjin Language rallying ‘his people’ to ensure that if they are locked out of the race then they should frustrate the holding of the elections by all means.’

In a clearly orchestrated fashion according to the source, Gideon Mbuvi, Ferdinand Waititu, Kazungu Kambi and a youth leader from Nyanza made derogatory statements against the Luo community calling on other tribes to ‘shun the community because its leader is a conman and untrustworthy.’

They even went as far as calling anybody saying Uhuru and Ruto should not vie for the presidency ‘mashetani’ (devils).

They then each vowed to gang up and urged others to join them in ‘denying the Luo man from having a say on the management of the coalition government’ and ‘promised to shield the president from attacks from the ODM wing of the government’ in addition to vows to resist calls for Uhuru to step aside as the deputy prime minister, including those from CSOs.

The four, with cheerful approval of the rest of the speakers, called on the president to disregard the National Accord and ‘rule the country as he deems fit since they are the majority and they will stand with him.’

Several things can be said about this grim turn of events. First, Kenyans must simply not allow these characters to once again put the country on a path to election violence.

Second, the president must come clean on his stand regarding this clear insinuation that he is an accomplice to this revving up of tribal animosity and hate by two individuals pitting their respective communities against the rest of the country.

Third, it is amazingly shocking that Mzalendo Kibunjia, the chairman of the National Integration and Cohesion Commission has been completely mute on this obviously actionable hate speech spewed at 64 Stadium. Unless Kibunjia is already acting on this in some form or fashion behind the scenes, which is doubtful, given the gravity of this matter, someone should shake Kibunjia, wake him up and promptly tell him he is sacked and the whole NCIC dismantled. What is the use of that body if it cannot address this very egregious violation of the law, a body charged with the responsibility to enforce in order to prevent a recurrence of election-related violence?

Fourth, the Supreme Court should take up the question of whether or not our constitution and laws of Kenya bar any of the ICC suspects from seeking the presidency. The Court should do so with extreme urgency because any delay will accord these characters more time to continue the dangerous path they are on relative to peace and harmony in the country.

Finally, Uhuru and Ruto should step back for a moment and answer the question, is stopping Raila from becoming president worth shedding the blood, let alone death, of a single person?

Is their ambition to take the presidency one they are willing to pursue regardless of how their quest further divides the country?

Do the people of Kenya beyond their respective tribes mean anything to them, or are they in their minds idiots they need only scheme their way to State House and to rule regardless of what divisive and backward manner they gain the presidency by?

Of what good is it to seek the presidency to govern a country up in arms or in flames or simply in total chaos?

Does Ivory Coast, Libya, Egypt, Syria and what has happened with their leaders any lesson for Uhuru and Ruto or are they so naïve as to believe Kenyans and the rest of the civilised world, for that matter, would accept or stand by and watch as they incite or pursue the presidency as if it’s a matter of birthright?

These are questions Uhuru, Ruto and those cheering them on must ask themselves, answer and act accordingly.

Regardless of whether or not they do so, the president owes the nation handing over to the next president under a climate that at least demonstrates that all the blood that was shed in 2007-2008, all the property that was stolen, taken over or burnt, all the displacement of people from their homes that occurred, all the rapes and the deaths, must never be seen again in Kenya.

His failure to do so would not only be an unbelievable letdown of Kenyans and complete evisceration of the goodwill they have given him, even notwithstanding what happened in the 2007 elections and its aftermath, but it will seal his legacy in a manner no one wishes to be remembered in history.

Some say President Kibaki doesn’t care about his legacy; others, including this writer, beg to differ and hope they are not wrong, for in the end, what Kibaki does will impact on how the next elections are conducted and concluded.

The alternative is for the people themselves to override him and anyone else who still believes they hold sway over public anger and resentment for being taken for granted and abused at will.

Let those who care about our country pray that Kibaki does the right thing.

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* Samuel Omwenga is a Kenyan lawyer and political analyst in the US.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The drama of Kenyan politics ahead of elections

Uche Igwe

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80002

cc DemoshThe emergence of presidential candidates like 27-year-old Ms Kingwa Kamenchu and Ms Martha Karua suggests a departure from the past and mirrors the yearnings and aspirations of the youth and women for an end to politics-as-usual.

As Kenyans prepare to go to the polls once again, her political terrain is getting charged as ethnic formations rehearse for potentially combustible struggles against each other, which may make or mar the fragile peace in the country.

The preponderance of political ethnicity can be said to be the most retrogressive heritage of Africa’s colonial experience. It is common knowledge that the colonial administration in Africa relied mainly on ethnic clusters to rule in their respective posts in Africa. These clusters gradually magnified and transformed into political cleavages at the twilight of independence. As the nationalist movements began to break up at the verge of independence, many leaders retreated to their ethnic cocoons as they manoeuvred to inherit power. From Nigeria to Sierra Leone, and from Uganda to Kenya, numerically large ethnic groups therefore took advantage of the situation to entrench political ethnicity, to which can be traced all the bigger issues of corruption, inept leadership and underdevelopment in Africa.

A classical manifestation is in the Republic of Kenya, East Africa’s second most populous country and economic hub. As Kenyans prepare to go to the polls once again, her political terrain is getting charged as ethnic formations rehearse for potentially combustible struggles against each other, which may make or mar the fragile peace in the country. Every passing day potentially opens up a scene of uncertainty in the suspense-filled political drama.

The latest controversy relates to the date of the forthcoming elections. Opinion is divided on which date will be most appropriate. The High Court ruled last month that the much-awaited elections could hold in March 2013, 60 days after the expiration of the current parliament’s five-year term. The court ruling also left a possibility of the elections being held 60 days after dissolution of the Grand Coalition Government. A 2012 election date is likely especially if the two protagonists in the coalition government in the persons of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga decide to part ways soon. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has called for a 17 Decembe 2012 election date which is line with what the cabinet had called for earlier. However, the fate of the elections still largely hangs on what the two leaders agree to do. Many observers speculate that Prime Minister Odinga may soon quit the coalition in order to devote more time for his presidential campaigns. President Kibaki is not eligible for re-election. A cross section of the urban population favours a December 2012 date for the elections in anticipation that the Coalition Government will be dissolved in October.

There is more to the date controversy than meets the eye. One possibility will be that two frontline presidential aspirants who have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague may not be on the ballot for the polls. Judging from the antecedents of the ICC, it is doubtful if the case will be concluded in the next one year. Some members of the Kenyan civil society have already approached the court in an effort to ensure that the embattled Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret MP William Ruto are excluded from the elections on the basis of Chapter Six of the new Constitution on Leadership and Integrity. Their position is supported by the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Mutula Kilonzo, who has proposed an amendment to the Act establishing the Ethics and Integrity Commission. Mr Kilonzo has asked parliament to give the Commission additional powers not only to investigate but also to prosecute and punish those guilty of non-compliance.

A reading of the public mood especially among the middle class would reveal that many Kenyans would prefer an interpretation of integrity requirements of the Constitution in the broadest possible way to enable the exclusion of every aspirant who has been tainted by or reasonably suspected of corruption in the past. This will mean a political tsunami which may even consume all top contenders for the presidency including Prime Minister Raila Odinga who once served as Energy Minister under President Daniel arap Moi – allegedly the most corrupt regime in Kenyan history.

Though some people may say that this is very unlikely, such a development as suggested above would dethrone the political dynasty and hegemony that has held Kenya hostage since independence. The sterilisation of the Kenyan political space for hastened reform and implementation of the prescriptions of the new Constitution will be easier to realise when the ‘old breed’ of politicians is lawfully excluded. That will also foster new political realignments and trigger fresh bonds of nationalism – that will lead to mutual forgiveness among the ethnic groups.

Although less optimistic observers are very sceptical of the chances of the above scenario playing out and would rather dismiss it with a wave of hand, no one can rule it out completely. Rather, other pundits are predicting a possible alliance along ethnic lines between the Kikuyus, Kalenjins and the Kamba – the so called KKK/G7 Alliance. In the likely event of Uhuru Kenyatta (a Kikuyu) and William Ruto (a Kalenjin) not running for the presidency, the beneficiary may well be Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka (a Kamba). On the other hand a segment of ‘diehard’ conservative Kikuyus favour the emergence of a ‘dark horse’ in the person of the Minister for Internal Security, Prof George Saitoti (a Masai/Kikuyu) as a possible inheritor of the Kikuyu block of votes per chance Uhuru Kenyatta is excluded from the contest. It is rumoured that Prof Saitoti has a Kikuyu lineage hence the affinity of some Kikuyus towards him. Opposition to this alliance is already mounting and has allegedly led to formation a group known as Kikuyus for Change – a coalition of those who see the KKK alliance as an extension of the old style politics rooted in ethnic appeals and patronage.

So where do we go from here? The palpable wish among Kenyans to find the best way to challenge entrenched power structures of the malignant political class and virulent power elite is commendable. The progressive letterings in the new constitution will require a conducive political environment for its effective implementation. There will be efforts – indeed desperate ones – to contaminate such an environment by the same people who have been associated implicitly or explicitly with the political rascality and irresponsibility of the past – who exploited ethnic divisions to service selfish interests and primitive accumulation.

Expectations are high that the forthcoming elections could become that long-awaited keen contest between the progressives and the so-called ‘dinosaurs’. Candidates like 27-year-old Ms Kamenchu Kingwa and Ms Martha Karua – both female aspirants for the presidency -- symbolise a radical departure from the past and mirror the yearnings and aspirations of the youth and women for a deeper democratic space in Kenya. A broad interpretation of Chapter Six of the constitution could provide a level playing field that will lay a foundation for that new Kenya that many Kenyans dream of – where transparency, centrifugal devolution of powers, political accountability, professionalism, commitment and meritocracy will be enthroned above cronyism, divisive hostility, backward political ethnicity and corruption.

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* Uche Igwe is a governance expert. He can be reached via ucheigwe@gmail.com.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria

Pepe Escobar

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79961

cc F HWhat is happening in Syria is a NATO-led regime change plot. It is not a popular uprising, as the West and its Gulf allies would like the world to believe. Syria is battling heavily armed foreign mercenaries.

Here's a crash course on the "democratic" machinations of the Arab League –p rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.

Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what's going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France - enthusiastically supported it. It's telling that Syria's neighbour Lebanon did not.

When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report ... surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line - which is that the "evil" Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.

The Arab League's Ministerial Committee had approved the report, with four votes in favour (Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against; guess who, Qatar - which is now presiding the Arab League because the emirate bought their (rotating) turn from the Palestinian Authority.

So the report was either ignored (by Western corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed - by Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even discussed - because it was prevented by the GCC from being translated from Arabic into English and published in the Arab League's website.

Until it was leaked. Here it is, in full.

The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.

Once again, the official NATO-GCC version of Syria is of a popular uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead, BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes of the developing world see it as the Syrian government fighting heavily armed foreign mercenaries. The report largely confirms these suspicions.

The Syrian National Council is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated with both the House of Saud and Qatar - with an uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of the Assad
regime, but most of all is infested with these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, especially Salafist gangs.

Still NATOGCC, blocked from applying in Syria its one-size-fits-all model of promoting "democracy" by bombing a country and getting rid of the proverbial evil dictator, won't be deterred. GCC leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed their own report and went straight to the meat of the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the UN Security Council.

So the current "Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown" in Syria at the UN is no less than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects Washington, London and Paris have been forced to fall over themselves to assure the real international community this is not another mandate for NATO bombing - a la Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as "a path for a political transition that would preserve Syria's unity and institutions".

But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is. Another BRICS member - India - alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled draft UN resolution.

There won't be another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be blocked - again - by Russia and China. Even NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players - Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo - has a different long-term geopolitical agenda. Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbour and trading partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any regime change scheme.

So here's a suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since you're so seduced by the prospect of "democracy" in Syria, why don't you use all your American weaponry and invade in the dead of night - like you did to Bahrain - and execute regime change by yourselves?

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* Pepe Escobar is the author of
Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
* This article was first published by Asia Times Online.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Russia's support for Syria

It is about ‘defending the whole world from fascism’

Lizzie Phelan

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79964

cc S R‘Is it possible to believe for a moment that a government, whatever it is, could commit such a massacre on the day its case is brought before the Security Council?’

The Syrian military yesterday continued their operation to defend the Syrian population from insurgents, which are most heavily concentrated in the city of Homs.

The operation expanded into the city where some reports have put the number of insurgents at up to 2,000. The latter have made certain areas like Baba Amr and Baba Sba’a impossible for police to enter to protect residents.

Indeed thousands of police, military, security forces and civilian supporters of the Syrian government have been killed, kidnapped, terrorised, detained and tortured by insurgents from the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ since the beginning of the crisis 11 months ago. This has been most comprehensively documented in video and other forms by the non-governmental Syrian Centre for Documents. (Warning: the videos published by the SYD are extremely graphic).

Despite the Arab League observers’ report verifying the threat of the Free Syrian Army (or the ‘Free Army’ (FA) as critics prefer to call it in reference to the fact that many of the organisation’s members are of non-Syrian origin), the European Union responded to the clearly defensive military operation by threatening further sanctions against the Syrian people.

Predictably, the NATO and GCC media, in perfect unison with the warmongering stance of their states, published unsubstantiated claims from unverifiable sources that the Syrian government was committing a massacre against Homs’ civilian population.

This came following an interview with one of the Arab League observers in Syria Ahmed Manaï in the Tunisian publication Nawaat where he stressed that the same media who accused the government of a massacre of 200 in Homs on February 4 (the day of the vote on the United Nations Security Council Resolution that if passed would have paved the way for military intervention in Syria) ‘were making fun of our intelligence’.

‘Is it possible to believe for a moment that, a government, whatever it is, could commit such a massacre on the day its case is brought before the Security Council?...

‘…Those who followed the TV that day have seen pictures of many victims. Most of these victims had their hands tied behind their backs and some had their faces to the ground.
 The directors told us that they were the victims of the bombing of buildings and houses by tanks and even by the Syrian Air Force. Curiously, these victims were not having injuries nor [was there] any sign of the collapse of their houses and dwellings. Each can draw the conclusions he wants. In any case throughout the 4 February, Syrian citizens testified that they recognized among the victims, relatives and neighbours removed for a week and even months.’

The principled stance taken by Russia which has unequivocally demonstrated that it will not tolerate violations of international law against Syria like those committed against Libya, primarily the violation of Syria’s right to be free from foreign interference in its internal affairs, was reaffirmed during Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Damascus with Russian Foreign Intelligence Chief Mikhail Fradkov.

Sources who were at the closed meeting between the officials and President Bashar al-Assad reported that Moscow politically and militarily supported Damascus’ military operation insisting that it was essential for a political solution to be achieved.

The Lebanese publication As-Safir commented that Lavrov Moscow’s backing demonstrated its confidence that the Syrian government would remain in power, because ‘negotiations on behalf of a powerful state are more important than negotiations over a weak state… Moscow would not have provided all this support if they have doubts about the collapse of the regime.’

The report added that the shift in Russia’s stance, from successfully pressuring the Syrian government to delay military action and maintain a flexible relationship with the Arab League in return for guaranteed support at the UNSC, came after Qatari Prime Minister (whose state presides over the Arab League) said to his Arab League counterparts: ‘Whatever you do I will send the Syrian file to the Security Council’.

Responding to why Moscow and Beijing have taken a different stance to Syria, following its failure to veto UNSC Resolution 1973 which lead to the NATO aggression that destabilised Libya, Ahmed Manaï proposed that perhaps Russia believed the resolution would be enforced ‘to the letter’.

He added: ‘The Sino-Russian double veto has …countries from becoming the next targets of the West. It is above all the affirmation of the end of a world dominated by the United States and return to a binary world. There is another reason that was explained by the head of Russian diplomacy that there was a secret clause in this resolution authorizing the use of armed intervention.’

However, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who looks set to retake the presidency in March for a new extended term of six years, openly hit back at current President Dmitry Medvedev’s failure to ensure a veto, stressing that the entire Resolution was ‘flawed’.

Prior to Lavrov’s visit to Damascus, retired Colonel General and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Leonid Ivashov slammed NATO’s aggression against Libya. ‘What they did to Libya is nearly identical to what Hitler and his armies did against Poland and then Russia. Today, therefore, Russia is defending the whole world against facism,’ he said.

He warned that: ‘fascism is making great strides on our planet’, adding that the current uncertainty was whether the West would ‘try’ to destroy Syria or Iran first.

‘A strike against Syria is an indirect strike against Russia and its interests. Russia would lose important positions and allies in the Arab world…Therefore, by defending Syria, Russia is defending its own interests. In addition, Russia is defending the whole world from fascism,’ Ivashov said.

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* Lizzie Phelan is an independent journalist from the UK. With thanks to Kevork Elmassian for contributing to this piece.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The 'scramble' for Somalia

Rasna Warah

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79957

cc C T SA huge international conference is being organised in London on Somalia, but it does not have the support of the citizens. It will fail because what the ‘international community’ has failed to learn over the years is that Somalis are fiercely independent people.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, the Somali warrior-poet Seyyid Mohammed Abdulle Hassan (nicknamed the ‘Mad Mullah’ by the British) fought against European forces that were trying to assert their influence in Somalia. His attempts were ultimately unsuccessful, but Hassan remains a source of inspiration among Somalis even today.

Foreign intervention and occupation have always been violently resisted in Somalia, as demonstrated by the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident that led to the evacuation of US forces from Somalia in the early 1990s, to the recent retreat of Ethiopian forces when they tried to assert their authority in Mogadishu after the fall of the Islamic Courts Union.

Some argue that the quagmire in Somalia is the result of too much – not too little – foreign interference, be it in the form of military invasions, humanitarian aid and even the extreme form of Islam (Salafism) imported from Saudi Arabia by Al Shabaab. Abubakar Arman, the Somali Special Envoy to the United States, calls these agents of foreign intervention ‘Ghost-lords’ – ‘a loose association of paradoxical powers of the Good, Bad and Ugly’ who control every aspect of Somali life, from politics to the economy to religion.

Even when the intervention appears to be for the good of Somalia – such as providing aid during a famine – failure by outsiders to understand the fiercely independent character of Somalis contributes to more conflict and misunderstanding, as pointed out by BBC journalist Mary Harper in her new book ‘Getting Somalia Wrong?’

That is why a conference set to take place in London next week is viewed with suspicion by so many Somalis. Hosted by the British government, the conference aims to ‘deliver a new international approach to Somalia’ by bringing together over 40 countries and multilateral organisations that will decide how Somalia is to be governed once the term of the Transitional Federal Government expires in August this year.

Amongst the proposals for the way forward are the establishment of a supreme authority and a Joint Financial Management Board (comprising mainly donor countries) that will manage and coordinate how donor and domestic funds and resources are to be used (essentially, doing the work of a finance ministry) and increased funding for African Union force, Amisom, and Somali security forces.

An even more absurd proposal has been submitted by the Government of Italy, which has suggested the establishment of a joint United Nations/African Union international administration comprising a core group of key ‘stakeholders’, such as the United States, the European Union and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, IGAD.

Many Somalis are understandably disgusted by these proposals because they view them as yet another attempt to ‘colonise’ Somalia. Abdirizak Mohamed, the editor of Hiraan Online, says that he was particularly dumbfounded by the Italian submission at it proposes an international administration to be named as caretaker for Somalia from August 2012 to December 2013. The Italian proposal is equivalent to the Paul Bremen-led authority imposed by the United States in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Although the Somali Transitional Federal Government has been invited to the conference, it lacks the legitimacy and authority to make decisions on an equal footing with the other so-called ‘stakeholders’. While the conference purports to address security concerns, particularly piracy and terrorism, the ultimate intention of the conference, according to many Somali analysts, could be to undermine Somalia’s sovereignty and subject the Somali people to new form of colonialism – including by ‘proxy states’ such as Kenya and Ethiopia, which are sending high-level delegations to the conference.

The sense of humiliation that many Somalis feel about the conference is best described by Arman, who in an op-ed article in Eurasia Review writes: ‘At this dreadful moment in its history – when the obituary of a nation on life-support is being written – political correctness is a luxury that Somalis cannot afford.’ He proposes that Somalia adopt a new paradigm and engage with less intrusive partners (probably a reference to Turkey, which has been active in delivering humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Somalia). Many Somali academics and analysts have also called for home-grown solutions to the Somali crisis.

What the British government and its allies must realise is that their top-down, Eurocentric approach in Somalia may look good on paper, but will most likely face fierce resistance on the ground.

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* Rasna Warah is a columnist with the Daily Nation newspaper in Kenya.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Western Sahara: fresh brutality from occupying force

Ryan Mallett-Outtrim and Laura Gilbie

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79976

cc SaharauiakTwo Australian activists visited the Western Sahara in January and spoke to ordinary people about their oppression by the Moroccan authorities.

Laayoune is the largest settlement in Western Sahara territory, which has been occupied by Morocco since 1975.

The Sahrawi people continue to demand independence after decades of poor treatment under Moroccan rule. Many Sahrawi report being routinely subjected to police brutality and say they suffer widespread discrimination.

Activists in Laayoune face a day-to-day struggle with local authorities. The city is touted by the Moroccan government as a regional development hub, but from the ground looks more like an infantry barracks.

The police station is like an enormous shopping mall. Soldiers are everywhere, patrolling the main streets.

Over the past year the situation has become increasingly tense, with opposition to the Moroccan government leading to frequent demonstrations in the streets. Sahrawi activists have repeatedly said their organised protests are peaceful until the police or military intervene.

On 13 January, one such intervention left dozens of Sahrawi injured, local activists said. Protesters rallied against the postponement of a verdict on the continued jailing of several Sahrawi people in the notorious Sale prison.

Demonstrators said a police crackdown outside the office of the ruling Justice and Development Party left many activists injured.

Mallett-Outtrim visited Laayoune during January. The day after the protest, he was shown these activists’ injuries. The first stop was the Hadad household, where Said Hadad was being nursed by his family.

During the police crackdown, Hadad and his family said he sustained a cranial injury. He explained that riot police had beaten him with batons during the peaceful demonstration.

Hadad's mother said that at a hospital, Moroccan staff refused to treat him. She said staff instructed her to take Hadad to the police. The family refused, opting instead to treat him at home.

The family produced clothing Hadad said he was wearing during the alleged assault. The clothes were covered in dry blood. Hadad said this was not the first time he had been beaten by police for protesting.

Another activist, 30-year-old Hamadi Fileli, also said he had been injured during the police intervention. He too showed clothing he said he was wearing on the day - a caftan and jacket covered in dry blood.

Three women, Fatimato Tawbali, Arlana Mahjob Fadi and Baida Mohmad Sidialhaj, took part in the same demonstration. All said they were subject to police brutality. They all showed bruising.

These were not the only activists injured during the 13 January crackdown. On 21 Januar, Kabara Abdati Babayt was being nursed by her mother on the floor of the living room in her family home. She said she had been struck by a police baton in the torso during the demonstration.

Lhbib Salhi, a Sahrawi trade unionist, said he was struck in the head and leg by riot police.

In a written statement translated by a friend who cannot be named, Sahrawi activist Hjabouha Hasana Taglabout said she was beaten by police shortly after the protest.

She said that at 9.30pm that day, six plain-clothed police ‘demolished the door’ to her home. ‘[A police officer] beats me on my arms, neck, head,’ Taglabout said.

Activists Toumi Salama and Salma Mohmed Oubeid said they were subject to police brutality during previous demonstrations. Oubeid said that on 22 December, she was collected by an ambulance after being beaten by police during another Laayoune protest.

She described how police continued to attack her in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They only stopped when a paramedic intervened. After the 13 January protest, she said police threatened her with torture.

Reports of police brutality during the 13 January protest are only the latest allegations stemming from a series of violent crackdowns by Moroccan forces.

In November, a Human Rights Watch report said: ‘Moroccan security forces repeatedly beat and abused people they detained following disturbances on 8 November 2010 in the Western Sahara capital city of El-Ayoun [Laayoune].’

In a 26 November report, Human Rights Watch said after ‘the initial violent confrontations, Moroccan security forces participated with Moroccan civilians in retaliatory attacks on civilians and homes, and blocked wounded Sahrawis from seeking medical treatment.’

Abdelhay Toubali, a long-time human rights campaigner and member of the Sahrawi Committee for the Peace Settlement and the Protection of Natural Resources, is all too familiar with the difficulties activists face in occupied Western Sahara.

Toubali applauded the recent decision of the European Union parliament to vote against the controversial EU/Moroccan fisheries deal last year. He urged Australians to follow suit and reconsider the unethical and potentially illegal trade in phosphate sourced from Western Sahara.

He said international complicity with Morocco's exploitation of Western Saharan resources was having a detrimental effect on the ground in Laayoune.

‘The [indigenous Sahrawi]…don't benefit anything from the resources of Western Sahara,’ Toubali said on 14 January. ‘All the people who benefit…are the [Moroccan] settlers and government.’

Other Sahrawi people Mallett-Outtrim spoke to all implored Australians to stop supporting the potentially illegal import of phosphate. The Moroccan-owned OCP company is the only exporter of phosphate from occupied Western Sahara.

‘We demand the Australian government put an end to their co-operation with the Moroccan government.’

Speaking in Algiers in October, president of the International Commission of Jurists John Dowd said importing Western Saharan resources was highly detrimental to the implementation of international norms in the region.

Dowd said, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514, ‘trade with Morocco for Western Saharan natural resources perpetuates the denial of the Sahrawi people their right to self-determination as a former colonial ruled people.’

Incitec Pivot, Impact Fertilisers and CSBP all import phosphate sourced from Western Sahara into Australia.

These companies have rejected past demands from activists to end the illegal and unethical import of Western Saharan phosphate.

The regime supported by Incitec Pivot, Impact Fertilisers and CSBP has scarred one family more than most.

Said Dambar, a young Sahrawi activist, was shot by police last year. An officer was given a 15-year sentence by a Moroccan court, but the family is dissatisfied.

Dambar's sister, Mattou Dambar, said on 5 January that she remains sceptical over the circumstances of her brother's death. For nearly a year, the family have been petitioning the Moroccan authorities for an autopsy, but have been repeatedly refused.

Mattou and her mother expressed suspicion towards the Moroccan authorities. They said there are recurrent attacks on their house in Laayoune, which they blame on their continuing campaign for justice.

The Dambar family say on 19 May last year, uniformed and plain clothed police attacked their home during a sit-in demonstration. Footage of the attack was filmed by human rights activists and can be seen at Freesahara.ning.com.

Mattou said: ‘They attacked the house before the sit-in. We said we would [be] beginning at five o'clock exactly. At half past four they attacked the house.

‘They attacked the people who were there…the older men, the older women, they attacked my mum.

‘Really, really…I didn't believe what I'm watching. How they can attack a peaceful sit-in?

‘We didn't do anything wrong, just to say it's illegal to leave my brother in the morgue till now. It's illegal to refuse to have an autopsy for my brother that's all.’

Mattou also expressed fear that further reprisals may occur in the future. However, ‘nothing will let us give up.’

‘We have a right to ask for [an autopsy].’

Her mother agrees, and in an interview in her home, she made an ‘urgent appeal to the international community’.

She urged for an international boycott of Western Saharan resources extracted by Moroccan companies, including phosphate.

‘Mothers all over the world,’ she said, should support such a boycott in hopes that the fate of her son will not be shared by other activists.

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* Ryan Mallett-Outtrim and Laura Gilbie are members of Resistance, a socialist youth organisation in Adelaide. Mallett-Outtrim visited Western Sahara in January.
* This article was first published in Green Left Weekly.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Promoting social and economic justice for all

Jean Symes

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79955

cc M ARaising awareness of inequality is building social solidarity and common cause action, locally and globally.

Since its founding 35 years ago, Inter Pares — an international social justice organization – has worked with farmers' groups, women's organizations, human rights groups, indigenous organizations, health associations and social movements around the world. We have had the privilege of relating to many people who are working, often against great odds, to overcome the obstacles to equality and social justice.

But in the late 1990s, something new started happening. Inter Pares began to receive requests from our counterparts in Ghana, in the Philippines, in Nicaragua and elsewhere telling us that Canadian mining companies were digging trenches in the rainforest reserve, forcing communities off their land and refusing to clean up spills of toxic wastes in local fishing waters. Inter Pares had had no experience with mining and we had no idea what to do.

So we reached out to organisations we knew here in Canada for help and we discovered that the same kinds of abuses were happening right here in Canada, particularly in the North, and particularly in Aboriginal communities.

From the outset, we understood that problems with mining companies in Canada and problems with those same mining companies overseas couldn't be addressed in isolation. So we got together with environmental and Aboriginal groups to create MiningWatch Canada. MiningWatch now provides technical support to communities affected by mining in Canada and around the world and has acquired the expertise to help Canadians craft proposals for reforms to prevent irresponsible mining practices here and internationally.

As we learned about mining policy and practices, we found out about just how few economic benefits from mining reached the communities involved. And we learned about public subsidies the mining industry receives from governments, and particularly from the Canadian government. We realised we had to do more to address broader issues of corporate accountability.

Working with MiningWatch and others, we created the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA). In 2010, CNCA promoted modest federal legislation that would have required that, in order to qualify for government subsidies, Canadian mining companies operating overseas would have to comply with basic standards of corporate social responsibility. This campaign was an enormous success and, after fierce lobbying by the mining industry, the proposed legislation lost in parliament by only six votes. And it prompted a national debate on the subject. When new legislation comes back – and it will – we'll be demanding much more.

***

Inter Pares is now raising the issue of tax evasion and tax avoidance. We're collaborating with TWN Africa, a member of Tax Justice Network Africa, which has released an excellent report called ‘Tax us if you can: why Africa should stand up for tax justice.

And here in Canada, we're supporting a new organisation called Canadians for Tax Fairness, which is the new Canadian member of the international Tax Justice Network.

With Canadians for Tax Fairness, we think the role of governments should be to orient their economic and social policies for the well being of all. They should be accountable to citizens for the implementation of a just democracy. Instead, we see governments around the world supporting a global economy organised in the interests of speculators, an economy largely disconnected from how most people earn a living.

The last 30 years have seen a campaign by financial and political élites to eliminate as much regulatory oversight of national and international banking systems as possible. This deregulation led us to an economic collapse that continues to inflict enormous damage throughout the world. And that in turn led – in much of the North – to a bailout of banks and financial institutions, which is being paid for by cutting back social services, education, workers' pensions and health care. Now governments are using the crisis to justify further corporate tax cuts and cuts to social services and investments.

In the global South, countries are experiencing decreased remittances from migrant workers, lower export revenues, rising unemployment rates and steep increases in food and energy prices. An additional 130 to 155 million people have been pushed into poverty. More than a billion people go to bed at night hungry and 50,000 people die every day from poverty and poverty-related causes.

There is growing economic disparity in Canada as well. Current levels of economic inequality have not been seen here since 1929. Before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, 3.5 million Canadians lived in poverty; an additional 1.8 million are estimated to have joined the ranks of the poor by the end of 2011. One in nine Canadian children lives in poverty, and for Aboriginal children, that figure is one in four. This is a tragedy and a national scandal.

On the upside, deepening economic inequality has become a major political issue. People are organising with the Occupy movement and are out on the streets of countries around the world because they realise that deepening inequality is not only unjust but also irrational. As British researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett documented in their best-selling book ‘The Spirit Level’ a few years ago, the more egalitarian a society, the lower its incidence of physical and mental health problems, addictions, crime, imprisonment and violence. This research demonstrates what many of us intuitively know: that more equal societies are happier and healthier and enjoy higher levels of social cohesion, trust and civic engagement.

And more people are beginning to understand what it takes to make a more just and equal society. Edgar Bronfman, son of the wealthy Montreal Bronfman family who now lives in the United States, joined billionaire Warren Buffet in asking that taxes be raised on the rich. He noted that the wealthy benefited disproportionately from the deregulation and tax cuts of the last few decades, most of the cost of which has fallen on the poor and middle class.

Corporations claim they use the money saved from tax cuts to invest in machinery and equipment and to create jobs. A StatsCan analysis, however, refutes this claim, showing that investment in machinery and equipment has decreased in lock step with cuts in corporate tax rates over the last 10 years. What businesses are doing is hoarding cash, adding $83 billion to their reserves since the 2008 recession.

Tax evasion and avoidance has a dire impact on the economies of developing countries, too. Between $850 billion and $1 trillion of illicit money flows out of developing countries every year. Some is due to criminal activity such as drug trafficking and corruption, but the largest amount of illicit capital flight is from the commercial activities of multinational corporations, particularly the mining and oil companies. Multinational corporations avoid paying taxes in the countries where they are operating, with the help of tax havens, dummy corporations, profit-laundering techniques and loopholes intentionally left in the laws of Western countries.

Developing countries thus lose billions in tax revenues that could have been invested in schools, health care and other public services. For every dollar delivered in the form of international aid, developing countries lose $10 through illicit capital flight. A recent report estimated that, if these lost revenues were invested in Southern countries' health programs, it would save the lives of 350,000 children a year.

And this links to Canada in a way most Canadians aren't aware of: as Canada's Auditor General warned in 2002, ‘corporate tax arrangements with foreign affiliates have eroded Canadian tax revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past ten years.’ And the Library of Parliament in 2004 noted that, between 1990 and 2003, Canadian corporate tax-sheltered portfolios in Barbados increased from $1.5 billion to $24.7 billion, exceeding the GDP of Barbados by a factor of six.

Also significant is that, in both the North and South, the private wealth of corporations is generated through access to the environmental commons and the natural resources they contain, through public subsidies, through infrastructure such as roads, bridges, seaports and airports. The corporations have access to a publicly-educated workforce and to publicly-funded social services, without having to make a fair contribution to governments' tax revenue for the public good and to protect the environment from which they draw their wealth.

***
These are grim trends, but there is some good news as well. Along with the Occupy movement that has raised awareness at all levels, citizen's groups everywhere are working to democratise their political systems and economies. There are many ideas for what we can do, working in our own communities, or collaborating internationally for a more sane and equitable economic system.

The first thing we need to do is implement an international Financial Transaction Tax. Such a tax has been proposed many times since first promoted in the 1980s by U.S. economist James Tobin. A tax of 1 percent on the trading of shares was proposed at the last G-20 meeting, but was rejected by the U.S., Britain, and Canada, and thus defeated – even though such a small tax would have raised an estimated $50 billion a year if applied on a world-wide basis. There is still a possibility, however, that the Eurozone countries will implement some form of a ‘Tobin tax,’ which would put pressure on other countries to fall in line.

In the North, for the benefit of both North and South, we must bring in rules that reconnect finance to long-term productive and green investments, rather than more speculation.

We also need to implement regulations to prevent speculation on staple food commodities.

We need to insist that businesses operating trans-nationally reveal publicly how much profit they make, how many people they employ and what they pay in tax in every country where they do business. Such transparency would ensure that abuses would be identified quickly.

Tax havens must be closed.

And we will need to re-negotiate the dozens of free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties that currently ban governments from placing controls on capital flows and conditions on foreign investment and financial transactions.

These are big demands, and there are many others. Someone once said that, while it's true we cannot do everything at once, we can do something at once.

Inequality is not necessary in our societies. We have a choice: we can either accept how the world, our country, our communities and corporations are structured, or we can decide to work with others for needed changes, reforms, and improvements.

Millions of people around the world are standing up and saying: This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that people go hungry in a world full of food, or that the people who grow the food we eat must find other work to feed themselves; it is not acceptable that the people who live on land full of gold should lose their houses, have their water contaminated, have their children poisoned.

And it's not acceptable that wealthy corporations and individuals are able to generate wealth from public resources, without making a fair contribution back to the public good through taxes. Taxes support the public goods and services we need to thrive as societies, North and South.

There are many people here in Canada, and more thousands of people around the world who have ideas about what we can do, if we choose to. The other day, I heard a speaker at an Occupy rally say that the greatest contribution the Occupy movement has made is to inspire us to imagine solutions that are at the same scale as our problems.

Inter Pares is working in common cause with people in Canada and around the world to address the root causes of inequity, globally and in our communities. We are hoping to make a modest contribution to the discussions that are happening in Canada, and to link them with similar discussions going on all over the world.

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* Jean Symes is a member of the staff team of Inter Pares, a Canadian social justice organization based in Ottawa. Jean currently works on Inter Pares' Africa program, as well as its global program on extractive industries and tax justice.
* This article was first published in the February 2012 issue of The CCPA Monitor, the monthly research magazine of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Mega-super star Madonna's campaign for world peace

Horace Campbell

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79990

cc B RThere was no mistake about the message that Madonna wanted everyone to take away from her Super Bowl performance in a society that is gung-ho on war. But did the warmongers get the point?

On Sunday February 5, 2012 one of the biggest spectacles in the US entertainment and sports world took place, Super Bowl XLVI, the annual championship game of American football. It was during the half time show when over 111 million spectators watched when the world famous songstress, Madonna unveiled her statement of World Peace. These two words were released as a puff of smoke after she sang one of her more well-known songs, “Like a Prayer.”

The Super Bowl half time show is one of the most coveted slots in the United States’ entertainment calendar. Remarkably, this artist was able to sing a medley of 8 songs in ten minutes. In these ten minutes Madonna brought out a performance that must have taken months of rehearsing, using the most advanced technology and working with the circus entertainment company, Cirque du Soleil. Drawing on the talents of other younger radical and anti-imperialist artist M.I.A, the unclear Nicki Minaj along with others such as LMFAO and Cee Lo Green, Madonna brought out collaboration. With her “World Peace” statement, she intended the halftime show was to make a statement to the US society to get off its militaristic path. There are sections of the militaristic wing of the United States which is currently in a fever pitch of discussion about ‘Will Israel Attack Iran’?

There is not a day where there is not speculation in the media whether the Israelis will blackmail Obama into joining Israel in an attack on Iran. Ira Chernus in his submission, “New York Times Hypes Israeli Attack On Iran” has drawn attention to how mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are hyping the question of war against Iran. The Madonna message was presented in the midst of this media pressure for war.

Will the society listen? I don’t know. But I was listening, and I want to share what I took away from her performance.

SUPER BOWL 46

American Football is a game similar to rugby football in which two teams attempt to get an ovoid ball into each other's territory. Called football in the United States and Canada and American football elsewhere, it is an aggressive contact sport.

At the end of the season (which is usually played in the winter), there is the main championship game between the winners of the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Professional football is distinguishable from the games played at the college level, called Bowl games. Whether at the college level (which is supposed to be non-professional), or at the Professional level, this sport is a multi-billion dollar business.

In this 2012 championship match, the game, played in Indiana, was between the New York Giants (NFC) and the New England Patriots (AFC). Much like the annual cup final which is played at Wembley Stadium every year in England, this championship show is moved around different locales in the United States, but it is consistently viewed by more than 100 million individuals, the biggest TV event of the year. This game played on a Sunday is one where the society basically shuts down.

American football, like the society is a violent contact (some would say militarized) sport. It forms an important link in the chain of the armaments culture where the patriotism is called forth by the rendition of the national anthem before the game. All major sports events in the United States are preceded by the singing of the anthem but somehow at Super Bowl games there is an added emphasis on patriotism and support for the militaristic traditions of the USA. Roger Cohen in his commentary in the New York Times on Super bowl 46 entitled, ‘The Puzzle of Two Footballs’ had this description of the US game in comparing US football to soccer in the rest of the world:

“A rugby-style game was formalized and militarized with the introduction of painted lines on the field, the scrimmage confrontation rather than the free-for-all scrum, the forward pass, and drives (“March, march on down the field,” was how Yale serenaded it) orchestrated by a quarterback playing general and masterminded by a hands-on coach cast as generalissimo. A New York Times analysis of six months of coverage of the National Football League on two ESPN shows revealed that “coverage is often cast in battleground terms.” ESPN sportscasters used the word “weapon” at least 123 times.”

THE PERFORMANCE

Every year for the past thirty years, the half time show of the Super Bowl has featured popular recording artists and other well-known celebrities. This half time show represents a fundamental link to United States popular culture and the performer at this show is supposed to be at the top of the list of entertainers. This year the performer was Madonna, the well -known singer, actress, artist and activist. Madonna is 53 years old and the performance drew from the depth of her skills to make a major statement. There is enough written about her illustrious career so that it is not necessary to go over the highlights. Suffice to say, she is what is called a mega-super star in the North American entertainment business.


First, it was the entrance. Madonna enters the field on an angular golden throne, which is pulled across the 50-yard line by a group of dancers whose costume is that of a legion of Roman Centurions. Was Madonna bringing to the attention of this vast audience the imagery of Roman Centurions in a country that posits itself as the Roman Empire of modern times (USA)? The entire spectacle was presented in a brilliant piece of technical wizadry that brought out the best in 21st century technology where according to one commentator:

“The ground beneath their feet begins to change; not just onstage, but on the field too. Suddenly the floor appears to be made of hundreds of squares which flip over and morph into covers of Vogue magazine, an image of Madonna looking out from each of them. These images aren’t stationary, though. They are continually overturning, rearranging, pulsating, and alive.”

The image of the ground moving beneath their feet was the backdrop to the voice of Madonna chanting, “Don’t just stand there,” as she sang, “Vogue.” This was the only song that she performed solo. The projection mapping, that is, transposing 3-D visual effects over physical spaces, was used to bring on hundreds in a music and dance performance that was supposed to entertain, inspire and inform the possibilities of cooperation and collaboration across many different artists and professionals in far flung places.

COLLABORATION

From this song “Vogue” she went into a medley of songs. With a cast of more than 200 dancers, Madonna at 53 years old brought forth in a wonderfully choreographed performance with LMFAO. There was the kind of dancing with high wire balancing and acrobatics which was itself symbolic of the high wire cultural statement that Madonna was making. This was in the hip-hop mode replete with break-dancers -- and an impressive tight-rope walker. This is when she performed “Music,” accompanied by the duo LMFAO who with Madonna offered the hit “Sexy and I Know It.”

The well-known rap artists Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. then joined Madonna set to a cheerleader theme., Madonna teamed with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A in singing of the song, “Give Me All Your Luvin.” These three performers danced as cheerleaders, complete with golden pom-poms and marching band. Again the choreography was outstanding and was as spectacular as the main artists. Younger readers of Pambazuka will know of the strong anti-imperialist positions of artists such as M.I. A (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) who supports the cause of self- determination of the Palestinian people. With a heritage from the war torn society of Sri Lanka where the Tamil people have been fighting for dignity, M.I.A has given voice to that section of Asian society.

Nicki Minaj is another young artist from the Caribbean whose heritage is of both Africa and India. Nicki Minaj is not yet clear in her politics and has signed on to a recording company that exploits sexual deviancy. Last year at her Grammy performance she simulated an exorcism of Roman, a clear reference to is Roman Zolansky, considered a code name for Roman Polansky who has sought refuge in Europe for committing child abuse. Nicki is talented but unlike M.I. A who sends out clear positive anti-imperialist messages, her message to young teenage girls is confusing.

That Madonna chose to sing the song “Give Me All Your Luvin’” with these two artists whose youthful energy and power were in and of themselves another statement of collaboration and support. Collaboration is a commonplace feature today's music industry and is rarely done to advance the spirit of unity. It is usually a profit driven marketing strategy where veterans like Madonna are paired with the hottest and most popular artists of the day to increase sales, tap a larger market share and expand the audience of all parties involved. In this collaboration, Madonna seem to be turning the sales strategy on its head, tapping into a larger audience to promote a peace message in a society where the Lords of Finance consciously mobilize religion, art and culture as tools for social and political control of the mass society.

LIKE A PRAYER FOR WORLD PEACE

The scenes of cheerleading and singing was quickly changed to another set depicting a serious religious scene. Fusing together gospel music with hip hop culture, Madonna sang “Like A Prayer” as a duet with the rapper Cee-Lo Green, who was dressed in the ministerial garb of a pastor, representing a leader in the Christian faith. The 3-D technology was now being utilized to the maximum as the stadium flickered with white lights while Cee-lo Green brought out the best of the gospel traditions of African American life and sang, “Like A Prayer,” black and white singing together challenging the old taboos. It was not by accident that the music videos for this song had the background of a burning cross.

Green brought forth the vigor of black talent as Madonna sang on and off on her knees, until she disappeared in a blast of smoke, crooning , “I hear you call my name and it feels like home.” The stadium was illuminated with thousands of tiny lights, concluding with the words “World Peace” set against the darkness of the field -- and Madonna disappearing in a puff of smoke.

There was no mistake in the message that Madonna wanted everyone to take away from this Super Bowl in the midst of a society that is gung-ho on war.

The corporate media choose to ignore this clear call for peace and instead worked hard to focus on a gesture of M.I.A. who during the performance of "Give Me All You Luvin,’” displayed her middle finger at a point when most people did not see it. This media furor over M.I. A was to serve two purposes, it was to discredit the strong positions of M.I.A as well as to divert attention from the fact that Madonna was calling for world peace.

AS WE MOURN WHITNEY HOUSTON

One could not end this commentary on the performance of Madonna at the Super Bowl without joining with millions around the world in mourning the passing of Whitney Houston. As one who enjoyed the music of Whitney Houston over the years, I received the news of her transition at the age of 48 with genuine sadness. Houston was a tremendous singer, whose best performances contained energy, vibrancy and inspiration. In joining the ancestors at the young age of 48, the last years of the life of Whitney Houston was one of profound challenges and struggles. And, now that Houston has passed, the corporate media machine is going into overdrive to discredit her contributions without grasping the kind of pressure cooker world that artists such as Whitney Houston had to inhabit. Whitney Houston was an artist that inspired Nelson Mandela, a leader who stood for peace and Ubuntu. When Houston performed at the White House for Mandela, Mandela paid her the highest tribute. Whitney said at the Rose Garden in 1994, "This performance is very special to me because in 1988 I sang in honour of Nelson Mandela the inmate and tonight I sing for elected president, Nelson Mandela." Whitney Houston paid attention to the injustice of apartheid and wanted peace.

CREATIVE ENERGIES CANNOT BE CRUSHED

Super Bowl 46 was played on February 5, 2012 in an environment where the mainstream media are cheerleaders for war against the people of Iran. Into this armaments culture, Madonna entered onto the stage and in ten minutes incorporated songs, dance, music, technology, artistry to redirect the attention of the more than 112 million viewers to the idea of peace. There were many statements that Madonna made in this performance and those who want to get the message can study the video on You Tube. This was an intentional statement where the creativity and voice was being beamed as an intervention against the militarists in Israel and the United States. Madonna was born into a Roman Catholic family and for decades has been associated with the sexpolitation of Hollywood. From Catholicism, she has since converted to Judaism, and has been forthright in her desire for a peaceful resolution to the question of self-determination for the Palestinian peoples. Her fan base in Israel is not inconsequential and many of the youths there instinctively grasped the importance of her message of peace.
 
Madonna has been seeking to develop links in Africa, especially Malawi. She has been a forthright advocate for Ubuntu. This sentiment was clearly articulated in her film, “I Am Because We Are,” a film about the impact of HIV AIDS in Malawi.

Madonna is now standing along with another super athlete who has positively identified with world peace. Last year the NBA player, Ron Artest of the Los Angeles Lakers officially changed his name to Metta World peace. The first name is a Buddhist term meaning “loving kindness. With the words World Peace printed as his name on the back of his Lakers jersey, every time this athlete jumps to make a shot he wants the world to think and reflect on world peace at all levels.

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(Revised 16 February 2012)

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* 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.

How Zambia became Africa's football kings

Cameron Duodu

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79997

cc WikimediaSleazy goings-on in nughtclubs around Lusaka, the presence of legendary old man KK at the stadium in Libreville, memories of the 1993 tragedy in which nearly the entire national side was killed in Gabon… all worked together to propel Zambia to victory.

I was absolutely convinced that Zambia would win the African Cup of Nations football competition, which took place in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea from 21 January to 12 February 2012.

Before I am taken for one of the numerous football 'Delphis' who operate on our continent, I hasten to clarify that I didn’t come by this conviction through divine inspiration. I didn't even deduce it from an expert analysis of Zambia’s playing strategy. I merely read everything there was to read about the Zambian team, and arrived at my own conclusion – clear as daylight.

You see, when they beat Ghana 2-0, I said to myself, ‘Ei, Lusaka is going to put on a show tonight’. I’ve been there before, and I know what they can be up to. And sure enough, up on my screen popped a news report that a reporter who had made a tour of Lusaka ‘nightclubs’, such as Kanyama’s Kanchembele and Chine Chikayeba, had observed long queues of men ‘waiting to have sex’ with a limited number of sex workers. Apparently, word had gone round that in celebration of the victory against Ghana, some of the ladies were making their services available free of charge.

The reporter gave some interesting details: a single sex worker serviced ‘nearly 11 men’. Why ‘nearly’? Was one of them short in the masculinity department?

Anyway, ‘there were more than 200 men’ waiting to celebrate ‘in style’ Zambia’s first qualification to the Africa Cup final since 1994.

Another engaging detail: ‘At Corogo,’ (the reporter went on) ‘a man in his mid-twenties was beaten up’ after he ‘took too long’ to do his business.

“‘Yes, we beat him up because he took too long…. We were too many ... and the guy kept on wasting time', said an eyewitness, identified only as James.”

The problem of numbers also arose ‘in Chawama, as well as Kalingalinga: only a handful of ladies were made to serve tens of Chipolopolo fans’. Were the madams deliberately restricting service in order not to go bankrupt?

When I read these reports, I said to myself that if this was the situation when only a semi-final match had been won, then Lusaka would catch fire if and when Zambia won the cup itself.

I also surmised that if the Zambian football authorities knew about human psychology at all, they would communicate a certain message to their players, which would win the cup for Zambia ‘by act, not of God, but of woman’.

It was a good thing I did not under-estimate the psychological skills of the Zambian football authorities. For among the VIPs they took to watch the match and act as cheerleaders was 88-year-old Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the leader who won independence for the country in 1964.

Now, the name of ‘KK’ (as he is affectionately known) features in almost every history examination in Zambia. But the examination questions never make reference to two of his qualities, which are only known to some of us who have been watching him for a very long time. First of all, he has a very good voice. He can sing emotionally-laden songs — in a very good baritone — at the drop of a hat.

Indeed, KK became leader of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) of the then Northern Rhodesia partly because he always carried a guitar to party meetings and animated the discussions with a catchy song, whenever sleep threatened to overtake the rhetorical zeal of those fighting to liberate Zambia from Sir Roy Welensky's ‘Federation’ [of Rhodesia and Nyasaland].

Second, Kaunda can weep on tap. He used to carry a white handkerchief around to wipe away the tears, which flowed profusely whenever he described the heinous activities of the racist, Ian Smith [of Rhodesia's 'unilateral declaration of independence' fame] and his accomplices in the apartheid regime of South Africa. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Kaunda regularly addressed the United Nations General Assembly on racism and never failed to brandish his white handkerchief to wipe … you know what.

Not that there isn't, of course, a lot about Zambian football that can make even a crocodile weep buckets of tears. In 1993, Zambia was taking part in the African Cup competition when a plane carrying its players crashed at Libreville, Gabon — the same place where the final against the Ivory Coast was due to take place. Almost the entire national team was killed. Only one member, Kalusha Bwalya, was spared, and that was only because he travelled to Gabon separately.

Kalusha is now president of the Zambian Football Association. Well, okay, give anyone with imagination a juxtaposition of a lone survivor and a known weeper and he can wreak havoc with it in men's psyches. And then just add to the mixture the fact that Zambia’s first national team was named as ‘KK Eleven’ after Kaunda. Which Zambian player, watching the tears of the legendary old man they have all read about in books, would fail to become an instant 'MaraPele' on the playing field?

But the Zambians, a canny lot, did not want to put all their tears in one bucket, so to speak. What they did, on the day before the final took place, was to take the entire Zambian contingent to the actual beach near Libreville, where the plane crashed in 1993. They threw flowers into the water, in remembrance of their heroic footballers who had perished on national duty. Even merely seeing them pay their respects on TV was a most moving sight. To the players whose feet touched the wet sands, watching the waves eddying around the flowers, thoughts of the transition of man from body into soul could not have been too far away; thoughts that were potent enough to make any man wish to slay even elephants [the Ivory Coast team is called 'The Elephants'] with his bare hands.

But to cap it all, a rumour was floated among the Zambian players that Zambian intelligence had secretly cabled the team officials that street talk in Lusaka had it that all the sex workers in the city had agreed to make their services entirely free to Zambian men who turned up that Sunday, if the Zambian players won the cup! This had, of course, caused a great stir amongst certain categories of Zambian men, and intelligence sources had picked up further ‘chatter’ to the effect that, if the team did not bring the cup to Lusaka, testosterone-crazy men would march to meet them at Lusaka airport and string them up on the nearest lamp-posts.

‘Some of the men, especially those who have a high sexual drive but no money, have been hanging around the airport already,’ the players were informed. ‘They will go back to Lusaka to claim their prize if Zambia wins. But if we lose, they will be on hand to greet us…. And they will be reinforced by new mobs of other sex-starved men, who will be carrying ropes with nooses knotted on them, ready to do their job.’

The Zambian intelligence agency reportedly updated its story, as the final was being played, with a message that: ‘When Didier Drogba [of the Ivory Coast] missed the penalty [during the first part of the match, before the eventual penalty shoot-out] some sex workers in Lusaka took off their tops and jumped up and down, yelling: ‘Didier Drogba is dead!’

That was all that was necessary. It showed that the rumours linking sex with the match could be taken as confirmed.

Well, the Zambian players knew their own people very well. And they didn’t want to take any chances. They would find it difficult to survive in the city if so much popular anger was aroused against him.

So, then, picture the scene in Lusaka’s Red Light districts as the game entered extra-time, followed by a penalty shoot-out.

Many testosterone-filled men have already taken their places in the long queues. TV sets and radios are relaying the match live.

An Ivorian player takes the first penalty. He scores. Every Zambian goes deadly quiet.

But the Zambians successfully reply. This is greeted with wild cheers. And so it goes on.

It is now five goals each. And then an Ivorian misses the next shot. A yell goes up.

But then, a Zambian too misses. ‘Ohhhhhhhhh!’ At least 10 million throats howl in pain.

Everyone becomes tense again. We are now in ‘sudden death’ territory.

And an Ivorian misses! ‘YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’

And then – Zambia scores!

If I were to reproduce the sound that emanated across Lusaka, reverberated through the Copperbelt, crossed Lake Malawi, then created ripples in River Zambezi and then flowed all the way to Harare and Soweto, we would be here till next year.

As for what happened in bedrooms across Zambia that night, I leave that to your imagination to wrestle with.

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* Cameron Doudu is a writer and commentator.
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The struggle for street politics

Jane Duncan

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79965

cc W VEvidence is emerging from many parts of the country that freedom of expression is not the only constitutional right in trouble at the moment: the right to assembly, demonstration and picket is as well.

Public demonstrations have been central to South Africa’s democratic life for decades. Yet recent events suggest a narrowing of the substance of the right to assemble, demonstrate and picket and a de-legitimisation of street politics.

In this regard, the City of Cape Town’s near hysterical overreaction to attempts to occupy Rondebosch Common is cause for concern. Last week’s Constitutional Court case about whether the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union should be held responsible for violence they could not have foreseen in one of their marches, and the chilling effect on freedom of assembly if they are, also raises important questions about whether the state respects the space for street politics as a legitimate form of politics.

Evidence is emerging from many parts of the country that freedom of expression is not the only Constitutional right in trouble at the moment: the right to assembly, demonstration and picket is as well. The Regulation of Gatherings Act gives effect to this right.

When the Commission of Enquiry into the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote the Act in the early 1990s, it marked a radical departure from past practices.

The Commission argued that rather than seeing gatherings as threats to national security, the state should recognise them as essential forms of democratic expression. The state should also have a positive obligation to facilitate rather than repress gatherings. Municipalities would play this facilitative role, ensuring that negotiations took place between themselves, the South African Police Services (SAPS) and the convenors of the march.

The Commission also argued for a radically different approach towards policing. Gatherings were to be handled with tolerance and sympathy so as not to provoke a confrontation that may result in violence. Furthermore, gatherings were meant largely to be self-policing, with protestors being responsible for controlling participants through the delegation of marshals.

In terms of the Act, a convener must give notice of an intended gathering to the Municipality at least seven days before the march, although there is also provision for urgent notifications. The responsible officer of the municipality may then call up a meeting between the three role players to discuss the gathering within 24 hours of having received the notice. In this meeting, the police may request that certain conditions be imposed on the gathering. But the Act requires that the negotiations in meetings take place in good faith. If a meeting is not called up, then the gathering is automatically lawful.

Yet local authorities repeatedly conflate notification with permission seeking, treating the application process as a permission-seeking exercise. This has led to the police breaking up gatherings if the convenor cannot produce a permit proving that the march ‘has permission’ to proceed. Admittedly, the Act lends itself to such confusion.

Furthermore, meetings are often not called within 24 hours, and negotiations often do not take place in good faith and in a spirit of negotiation. In fact the meeting may be called on the eve of the march, making it extremely difficult for the convenor to take the municipality to court on review if the march is banned. Furthermore, municipalities and the police have been known to impose conditions that may compromise the purpose of the protest and alter its message, thereby reducing the meaningfulness of the protest.

For instance, the Emfuleni Local Municipality charges protestors R165.00 per traffic officer per hour or part thereof as a condition for allowing a gathering. Such practices are discriminatory as they make the exercise of a right subject to financial means.

Municipalities have also been known to invite individuals into the meeting that have a vested interest in the gathering, such as councillors, who in turn have been known to influence decisions about whether to allow gatherings or not, especially if the gatherings are protests against their own performance. In Johannesburg, a councillor even instructed the responsible officer to prohibit a Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee march before the section four meeting took place, which demonstrated manifest bad faith.

Gatherings have also been prohibited without a meeting, which demonstrates bad faith too as the local authority and police have not even attempted to negotiate conditions short of outright prohibition.

In terms of the Act, the responsible officer may prohibit a gathering on very narrow grounds, especially if violence is likely and no conditions can be imposed that can mitigate this threat. But the responsible officer’s decisions can be challenged in a magistrate's court within 24 hours of the prohibition.

However, municipalities have been known to ban gatherings on grounds that are not recognised by the Act. For instance, the Mogalakwena Municipality in Limpopo banned a march by the GaPila community on the basis that their grievances were not taken to the ward committee first. The Act does not specify any particular route for grievances to follow before they can form the basis of a gathering.

Other marches have been banned on the basis that there is no one to accept the memorandum. According to the Emfuleni Municipality’s traffic department, the organisation wishing to hold a march must secure a written undertaking from the institution they are marching against confirming that a representative will be available to accept the memorandum. This makes the right to protest subject to the cooperation of the protestors’ adversary, who can easily squash a march simply by not making themselves available to accept the memorandum.

Another popular reason for prohibiting gatherings is that other gatherings are taking place on the same day, and the police do not have the resources to police more than one gathering. This reason has been manipulated in the past to allow gatherings that are more politically palatable to the ruling party, while disallowing gatherings that are more critical.

In order to prohibit a march, the SAPS must provide credible information on oath that the protest is likely to result in violence. The fact that the Act makes no provision for alternative affidavits from the convenor makes this in inherently one-sided process, capable of manipulation by municipalities and the police. On at least one occasion in Thembelihle, a police affidavit containing highly disputable information was used as a basis to ban a protest.

Gatherings of 15 people or fewer are known as demonstrations and are unregulated by the Act. Yet the police have been known to break up demonstrations on the grounds that they are illegal.

The Goldstone Commission argued that the police should not be required or authorised to disperse a gathering on the grounds that it has not been approved. In this regard, the police need to exercise high levels of judgement and not act in ways that may inflame a volatile situation.

According to the Act, when a gathering turns violent or where there is serious risk of injury to persons or property, then police may disperse the gathering but first, must use ‘reasonable force’ to disperse the demonstrators.

However, the argument that the gathering was spontaneous, rather than premeditated, can be used as a defence against a charge of an illegal gathering, as the Act contemplates situations where people gather spontaneously in reaction to unforeseen events.

The letter and spirit of the Act have been blithely ignored on many occasions, with peaceful but ‘unlawful’ gatherings being broken up with excessive force. A shift from softer to harder forms of policing has also become apparent in the policing of protests.

The Act does not contemplate a situation where blanket bans of protests can be instituted, except under a state of emergency when the right can be suspended. Yet, evidence has emerged since 2010 of unconstitutional blanket bans of protests.

By acting in these ways, the state has made a mockery of Goldstone’s original intentions. At the time of drafting the Act, Goldstone did not foresee the possibility that local governments would become the focus of such controversy around service delivery, and that in response they would develop myriad ways of misapplying the Act to censor their own critics.

In Makana Municipality, for instance, which has been the target of several service delivery protests, the responsible officer is the Director of Corporate Services, which falls under the office of the Municipal manager. He is part of the Municipal machine, and cannot be expected to take impartial decisions, especially when it comes to protests about the Municipality’s delivery record. Officials in other Municipalities undoubtedly also find themselves conflicted.

The assumption that the ‘golden triangle’ of the convenor, the municipality and the police would be capable of a co-operative relationship is a fatal flaw in the Act. It is inappropriate to make the ability to exercise a constitutional right contingent on the good conduct of an actor that has a vested interest in not seeing the right being exercised at all.

At the very least, an independent ombudsman should perform the functions assigned to the responsible officer, rather than a Municipal functionary.

But should gatherings be regulated at all? Drexel University’s Tabatha Abu El-Haj has documented how in the United States, since the nineteenth century, the right to assembly has been gradually whittled down and its political effectiveness neutralised.

At that stage, street politics was popular and large spontaneous gatherings were the order of the day. The law interfered with gatherings only when they became disorderly. Since then, pre-emptive regulation was introduced, where permits were required to gather, and where marches could be banned if they disrupted traffic. Minimum time periods for notification made it practically impossible to gather spontaneously to respond quickly to political events. These changes have turned gatherings into a forced ritual that the authorities often simply ignore. But these practices, with certain variations, have become ‘commonsense’ in official circles in many countries.

However, the spate of recent protests in South Africa, many of them ‘illegal’, strongly suggests that South Africans are no longer willing to accept the state’s limitations on their right to practice politics in the most effective way possible. These protestors are communicating the message that the Regulation of Gatherings Act has had its day, and needs to be reviewed. The danger, though, is that in the current political environment, it may be replaced with something far worse.

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* Professor Jane Duncan is Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society, School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.
* This article was first published by South Africa Civil Society Information Service.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

South Africa: ‘Global sustainability’ wilts in political hot air

Patrick Bond

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80007

cc OxfamNearly everything President Zuma and the big corporates are doing places short-term demands above long-term thinking, both in the marketplace and at the polling place, promoting unfairness and exclusion, and thus preventing lasting prosperity and stability.

The latest acts in this country’s intensifying political drama include a sizzling summer-long battle between the young and old within the African National Congress (ANC), last week’s State of the Nation speech by president Jacob Zuma and the release of the ANC’s ‘research’ on alternatives to mining nationalisation, a demand by the ANC youth which is now one of the main wedge issues dividing the ruling party.

Amidst the chaos, stepping over the political corpse of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema (about to be expelled for ‘throwing the ANC into disrepute’), Zuma apparently also wants to be considered a world eco-visionary. As co-chairs of the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, he and Finnish president Tarja Halonen published an article last week entitled ‘Seizing sustainable development.’ Zuma and Halonen ask, ‘How do we begin to tackle the massive challenge of retooling our global economy, preserving the environment and providing greater opportunity and equity, including gender equality, to all?’

From the panel’s report, ‘Resilient People, Resilient Planet,’ come answers that include neoliberal fixes – ‘Pollution, including carbon emissions, must no longer be free’ – and obvious reforms: ‘Price-and trade-distorting subsidies should be made transparent and phased out for fossil fuels by 2020.’ Plus sanctimony: ‘We need to place long-term thinking above short-term demands, both in the marketplace and at the polling place. Promoting fairness and inclusion is the right thing to do – and the smart thing to do for lasting prosperity and stability.’

Two days later, in a speech to parliament considered the finest in his blooper-filled career, Zuma declared, ‘Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the inter-ministerial committee on COP17 for making the conference a huge success. The final outcome of COP17 was historic and precedent setting, ranking with the 1997 conference where the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.’

But who won at Durban’s climate summit? The biggest polluters, it turns out, who got off scot-free on emissions cuts as well as on North-South fairness. According to the New York Times, at the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a top aide to chief US State Department negotiator Todd Stern remarked that ‘the Durban platform was promising because of what it did not say.’ After all, revealed Trevor Houser, ‘There is no mention of historic responsibility or per capita emissions. There is no mention of economic development as the priority for developing countries. There is no mention of a difference between developed and developing country action.’

Zuma’s ‘huge success’ was in reality a sell-out of the UN’s tradition of differentiated responsibility between rich and poor countries. As climate chaos hits, Africa will be the worst-affected continent. (And so who can blame the African Union for its majority-vote hostility to Pretoria’s leadership candidate in a hung election last week?) The only Africans who smiled when leaving Durban were those from South Africa’s mining and electricity-guzzling industry – along with oil extractors – blessed by COP17’s failure to make binding emissions cuts.

Zuma’s State of the Nation address expanded his to-do list of climate-destroying investments. Already Pretoria is constructing the world’s fourth-largest coal-fired power plant with the World Bank’s largest-ever project loan, at Medupi in the beautiful Waterberg Mountains where there is insufficient water for cooling it. Not far away, contracts are being signed for the world’s third-largest coal-fired plant, Eskom’s Kusile.

The main Eskom beneficiary is BHP Billiton, which consumes more than 10 percent of SA’s electricity and still gets the world’s cheapest power deal at Richard’s Bay, where the workforce has been shaved back by increasingly capital-intensive aluminum smelters to now fewer than 1500. The other beneficiary is the Japanese firm Hitachi, which in 2010 pretended not to know that its owners included the ANC’s Chancellor House, and whose supply of boilers – for which they are paid a mind-boggling R40+ billion – is so far behind schedule that more Eskom electricity black-outs loom.

Zuma’s speech unveiled yet more eco-destructive capital-intensive projects: ‘First, we plan to develop and integrate rail, road and water infrastructure, centered on two main areas in Limpopo: the Waterberg in the western part of the province and Steelpoort in the eastern part. These efforts are intended to unlock the enormous mineral belt of coal, platinum, palladium, chrome and other minerals, in order to facilitate increased mining as well as stepped-up beneficiation of minerals.’

There is much more: ‘Among the list of planned projects is the expansion of the iron ore export channel from 60-million tons per annum to 82-million tons per annum…, development of a new 16-million-tons-per-annum manganese export channel through the Port of Ngqura in Nelson Mandela Bay… and expansion of the iron-ore rail line between Sishen in the Northern Cape and Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape.’

Speaking to CityPress newspaper after Thursday’s speech, Zuma elaborated: ‘By 2014, I’d want to see the cranes, building, digging everything. I’d like to see people employed. We are looking at a new kind of city at Waterberg. That’s how Johannesburg began, as a mining town.’ Set aside that Johannesburg is the world’s least sustainable city, does Zuma know that there’s a vast national housing shortage and a vast surplus of unemployed people, and that building homes doesn’t require cranes, but does create far more jobs per unit of capital spent?

Did he notice that the largest platinum operation, Implats, fired 17,000 workers just a week before his speech, whom when rehired will suffer a substantial cut in their pensions? Did he read the National Planning Commission’s finding that ‘South Africa needs to move away from the unsustainable use of natural resources’?

As for non-renewable resources now being drawn from South African soil with only a pittance for communities, workers and the government fiscus, Zuma protected multinational mining capital from Malema’s populist nationalisation demands by setting up a commission whose report is already drawing ridicule.

Malema, who became exceptionally wealthy in recent years allegedly by influencing Limpopo Province tenders for large payouts, was predictably hostile. As he explained last Friday, the lead researcher, Paul Jordaan, was ‘compromised’ for opposing 1955 ANC Freedom Charter nationalisation promises: ‘Jordaan and the research team visited 13 countries and the only conclusion they could come up with are the opinions held by Comrade Paul Jordaan in 2010. It is possible that the research was a smokescreen to legitimise the personal opinions of Comrade Paul Jordaan and that is not how the ANC works.’

Other critics were just as harsh. Explained University of Cape Town political scientist Anthony Butler, a leading commentator: ‘The document’s intellectual quality is uneven. The research ‘methodology’ involves lots of foreign travel and ‘stakeholder workshops’. The study team also makes unacknowledged use of ‘less scholarly’ resources, such as Wikipedia and answers.com. The credibility of the report is damaged by long passages that bear a remarkable resemblance to the work of retired North American mine-tax expert Charles McPherson.’

As Butler complained, in one of many ‘unfathomable coincidences of word selection and arrangement (such borrowings are far too extensive to set out fully here) both [the ANC and McPherson] call for ‘the explicit recognition in budgets and planning documents of the financial and fiscal costs and risks associated with state participation’. Did McPherson help draw up the ANC’s report? If so, was the ANC’s national executive committee aware that a former oil-industry executive, who only recently ended his career in the fiscal affairs department of the International Monetary Fund, was commissioned to contribute to its study?’

Butler worries that the report still supports elements of Malema’s ‘phoney nationalisation drive’, such as transferring mineworker pension funds ‘into special purpose vehicles in the service of developmental objectives. In reality, such instruments would be abused to fund corporate welfare for the politically connected.’

Indeed under conditions of neoliberal nationalism, the outcome of most public policy in South Africa is inevitably crony capitalism rife with corruption. A major ANC-initiated forensic audit into corruption in the second-largest city, Durban, last week revealed massive illegalities especially in $400 million worth of privatised housing construction contracts under the 2002-11 leadership of city manager Mike Sutcliffe, who claims he will soon rebut the charges.

The overall problem is not housing, though, which remains an area of vast underinvestment. It is the incessant construction of white elephants and prestige projects. These were what the former trade union leader Ebrahim Patel – now Minister of Economic Development – was reduced to celebrating, in justifying the vast infrastructure investments. In his parliamentary response to Zuma, Patel remarked: ‘We took account of the lessons of the 2010 World Cup infrastructure and the growing experience in the build programmes for the Gautrain, the Medupi and Kusile power stations, the Freeway improvement programme and the major airport revamps.’

But to continue along this track is suicide. The World Cup stadia are nearly all losing money on operations and maintenance. The Gautrain’s speedy lifts from the Johannesburg airport to the financial district and government buildings in Pretoria are too expensive for the masses. The power stations have already raised the price of electricity by more than 150 percent, with another 25 percent increase scheduled in April. The public-private highway tolling partnership with an Austrian firm is so unpopular that on March 9 the trade union movement is threatening a national strike. The utterly unnecessary airport revamps are, again, for elites only.

Zuma’s pandering to mining houses is especially galling. As if to celebrate the state’s renewed orientation to big business interests, the ‘Mining Indaba’ – Africa’s biggest trade fair – in Cape Town last week was capped with a keynote speech by an extremist climate-change denialist, David Evans. The ‘performance’ was ‘well received by an audience of miners, who come from an industry that often feels the pinch of climate control in the regulation of their industries,’ reported the Mail&Guardian.

Zuma’s crucial challenge, under such influences, is to continue opposing the rhetoric of his Global Sustainability Panel, insofar as nearly everything he and the big corporates are doing here place short-term demands above long-term thinking, both in the marketplace and at the polling place, promoting unfairness and exclusion, and thus preventing lasting prosperity and stability. It’s from such accumulation dynamics that South Africa has come to specialise in ‘talk left, walk right’ politics. Whether it is the ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ fronting scams, such as Hitachi and Chancellor House, or the greedy corporations’ influence, the ruling party appears addicted to unsustainable underdevelopment hyped by big-business cheerleading.

From Zuma’s main political base, for instance, Toyota South Africa CEO Johan van Zyl last week argued, ‘Durban as a brand is not strong enough to simply say “come and invest in Durban”. What it needs to attract investors are big projects.’ At a seminar of the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and Business Day newspaper, van Zyl insisted, ‘Durban needs to keep ahead of the competition. China is building ports they don’t even know when they will use. If return on investment is the line of thinking we may never see the infrastructure.’

In other words, please supply more public subsidies to the high-carbon fat cats. In that very spirit, Durban’s new city manager S’bu Sithole inherited a secretive $32 billion ‘Back-of-Port’ plan to expand what is already Africa’s largest harbour, in the process demolishing the 150-year old neighbourhood of Clairwood and expanding the deadly petro-chemical industry.

Also at that seminar was former Durban mayor Obed Mlaba, criticised in the forensic audit for illegally hijacking a $400 million waste-energy infrastructure tender at the Bisasar Road landfill, site of a high-profile carbon-trading pilot project. Complained Mlaba, ‘Big projects or even creating clusters around them are hampered by small-town mentality.’

Typical of a big-town mentality was this banal command to Zuma by Business Day editor Peter Bruce on Monday: ‘Mine more and faster and ship what we mine cheaper and faster.’

If we do so, then bye-bye resilient people and resilient planet.

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* Patrick Bond authored Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press), edited Durban’s Climate Gamble (Unisa Press), and directs the UKZN Centre for Civil Society.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Rio+20 and the Peoples' Summit

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79974

cc Fotos Gov/BaWith the Rio+20 summit taking place this year, what would be some of the key pillars of a society not based on capitalist development?

The treatment given by the major media to two events occurring during the last few weeks – the World Economic Social Forum of Davos and the Thematic Social Forum of Porto Alegre – speaks loudly of the interests presiding over world public opinion in our time. The former attracted a lot of attention, although its discussions did not contribute anything new: the same old analyses of the European crisis and the same insistent ruminations on the symptoms of the crisis while concealing its true causes. The latter was totally ignored, even though it engaged in productive discussion of the issues that most decisively condition our future: climate change, water availability, quality and quantity of food resources in view of the threat of hunger and malnutrition, environmental justice, the common goods of humankind, and the worth of grassroots, non- Eurocentric knowledge in the pursuit of environmental justice. This kind of media selectivity clearly exposes the risks we run when public opinion is reduced to publicized opinion.

The objective of the Porto Alegre Forum was to debate Rio+20, that is to say, the UN Conference on sustainable development to take place next June in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the first UN Conference on the same topic, which took place in Rio as well. It was a path-breaking conference in that it called attention to the environmental problems we face and the new dimensions of social injustice they bring along. The debates focused on two major issues. On the one hand, the critical analysis of the past 20 years and how it is reflected on the documents preparatory of the Conference; on the other, the discussion of the proposals to be presented at the Peoples Summit, the conference of the civil society organisations taking place alongside the UN intergovernmental conference. Let us ponder each one of them in turn.

RIO+20: THE CRITIQUE

Twenty years ago, the UN played an important role in calling attention to the dangers that human and nonhuman life runs if the myth of endless economic growth goes on dominating economic policies and if irresponsible consumerism is not curbed: the planet is finite, the vital cycles for replenishment of natural resources are being destroyed, and nature will inevitably ‘take revenge’ in climate changes soon to become irreversible and affect, in special ways, the poorest populations, thus adding more social injustice to the one already existing. The States seemed to heed the warnings and many promises were made in conventions and protocols. The multinationals, those major agents of environmental deterioration, seemed to be on guard.

Unfortunately, this moment of reflection and hope soon disappeared. The USA, then the main polluter and today the main per capita polluter, refused to assume any binding commitment toward reducing the emissions that cause global warming. Instead of decreasing, the emissions increased even more. The less developed countries claimed their right to pollute until the more developed ones agreed to assume their ecological debt for having polluted so much for so long.

The multinationals successfully invested in the formulation of laws and international treaties allowing them to pursue their polluting activities with a minimum of restrictions. The result is glaringly to be seen in the documents prepared by the UN for the Rio+20 Conference. There is some relevant information about innovations regarding environmental care but the proposals advanced - summed up in the concept of green economy - are shockingly inefficient and even counterproductive: the aim is to persuade the always free, ever unrestrained markets that there are opportunities for profit in investing in the environment, accounting for environmental costs (externalities) and ascribing market value to nature. In the fantasy world in which these documents exist, the ‘market failures’ are due exclusively to lack of information; as soon as these are overcome, there will be plenty of green investment and innovation. In other words, there is no other way for relationships among humans and with nature but the market and strife for individual profit. In sum, a neoliberal orgy in the North that seems now to be spreading to the emergent countries.

THE PEOPLES SUMMIT: THE PROPOSALS

Alongside the UN Conference, civil society is organising the Peoples Summit in Rio, and here there is ground for some hope. The preparatory debates in Porto Alegre shed some light on the strong alternatives that need to be presented and pushed into the national and international political agendas.

First, the importance and defense of the common goods of humankind as a response to the mercantilization, privatization and financialization of life, which are implicit in the concept of green economy. The common goods of humankind consist of goods produced by nature or by human groups, at the local, national or global level, goods of collective property, unlike private or public (State owned), even though in the latter case the State must cooperate in protecting the common good.

The first woman to win the Noble Prize for Economics, Elinor Ostrom, has devoted all her work to studying the diversity of the means of managing the common goods, always with the proviso that the right to the common goods is the same for everybody. The common good is the counterpart of capitalist development, rather than its appendage, as happens with the concept of sustainability. Besides the individual use of the common good, the collective use of indigenous and peasant communities is to be born in mind as well. The common goods of humankind include: the air and atmosphere, water, aquifers, rivers, oceans, lakes, communal or ancestral land, seeds, biodiversity, parks and squares, language, landscape, memory, knowledge, calendar, internet, HTML, free licensing distribution of goods, wikipedia, genetic information, open-source software, free digital zones, and so on and so forth. Common goods entail common rights and individual rights of temporary use. Some of these goods may demand or tolerate a few restrictions to equal common use, but these must be exceptional and temporary. Water has become a common good par excellence; struggles against its privatization in several countries are among the most successful, particularly when they combine peasant and urban struggles.

Second, the gradual passage from an anthropocentric to a biocentric civilization, which implies recognizing the rights of nature; redefining good living and prosperity independently of infinite growth; promoting truly renewable energies (no agrofuel) that refuse to expel peasants and indigenous peoples from their territories; designing transition policies for countries whose budgets rely too much on extractive industries (whether ore, oil or monoculture farming) under prices controlled by large monopolist companies in the North.

Third, food sovereignty, i.e. the principle that, as much as possible, each community should have control over the foodstuffs it produces and consumes, thus bringing consumers closer to producers, supporting peasant agriculture, promoting urban, free-time agriculture, and forbidding financial speculation in foodstuffs. Food sovereignty is a form of self-determination.

It entails prohibition of mass land acquisition (e.g. in Africa) by foreign countries (China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) or multinationals in pursuit of food reservations (South Korean Daewoo’s project to buy 1,3 million acres in Madagascar).

Fourth, it involves a vast program of responsible consumption which includes a new ethics of caring and new education for caring and sharing. This means accountability vis-à-vis those without access to minimal consumption to guarantee survival; a struggle against the artificial obsolescence of products; a preference for products of social and solidarity economies, based on labour rather than capital, on personal and collective flourishing rather than infinite accumulation; a preference for collective and shared consumption whenever possible; a wider literacy as regards the processes of production in order to allow for the boycotting of products produced at the cost of slave labour, displacement of peasants and indigenous peoples, serious water contaminations, destruction of sacred places, civil war, and colonial-like occupation.

Fifth, all struggles and alternative proposals should include transversal requirements to deepen democracy and fight against sexual, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination; and against war.

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DR Congo: The trap of February 17

JP Mbelu

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79972

cc E PThe current situation in the DR Congo should prompt organised minorities to engage in a long term struggle of resistance against both visible and invisible forces.

The outgoing rulers are jogging along quite happily no matter its costs in our country with the help of their sponsors as if nothing had happened. After exploiting the Independent National Electoral Commission, they want to win the ‘upcoming majority of seats in the Parliament’ in order to challenge the majority of citizens who have chosen to put an end to the culture of cheating, lying, fraud and terror. There are people who would like to question several ‘badly elected’ or ‘co-opted Members of Parliament’ during a plenary assembly on February 17, 2012.The choice of this date does not seem to be made random, because it delivers a message to them.

February 17, 2012 might be a day of responding to Christians, to willing persons (men and women) who are planning to protest on the 16 February to demand ‘legitimacy and legality of the regime’, according to the slogan of the church leadership in Kinshasa. This response would be: ‘Let the world say what it will’. We must go on our way without excessively upsetting so many people across the world, such as ‘the advocates of democracy and human rights’.

Where is the trap? Salary, desire for power and honour can lure into a trap the ‘badly elected’ or ‘co-opted Members of Parliament’ from the forces of change as others did so. The purpose of this ‘co-optation’ would end up in the enforcement of a principle of ‘divide and rule’. A valuable principle for ‘the masters of the world’ and for those who are obeying them.

Atomising the forces of change by proposing them financial benefits which are part of a policy of merchandising our way of ‘living together’ and valuable for the ‘the conglomerate of adventurers’ who initiated the war inherited from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, any involvement in this policy is synonymous with renewal of the deadly system they established. Having a seat on the ‘co-opted’ National Assembly after a chaotic and masquerade election will symbolise a death sentence given to our beautiful and big country.

At this point, members of the forces of change should think about strategies likely to help them to minimise the iniquitous order resulting from an electoral masquerade in order to build up institutions and organisations close to the people. The construction of business premises for the people will really contribute to building up another Congo. Organized minority groups working within the forces of change should do more to prevent further stealing of votes in this last ‘popular elections’ by adopting or elaborating various action plans in the medium and long term.

Let’s give a quick look at the events of recent years which remind us that by working together, we have been able to establish patriotic ties that helped prevent the war of attrition that occurred before. For many people, streets are places for learning the recent history of our country marred by transnational predation orchestrated by financial oligarchies and satellite states as well as African and Congolese elites. We have been able to express our indignation through street demonstration by waving pictures of killed people and all victims of cynicism, rapacity and cupidity of ‘the masters of the world’.

The involvement of children in the street protest was a guarantee for the next generation and a medium of expression of our discontent by holding sit-ins. Prayers at churches and other rallies sustained the efforts of people who decided to be mobilised whatever it cost, but they do not have enough capabilities to implement the methods and strategies advocated by ‘experts’ of resistance against tyrannical, dictatorial regime, and other death forces in order to achieve success, whether some people like it or not.

In principle, we should combine all methods, means, tactics and strategies with a view of putting theories into practice. The actions which have been undertaken are meant for achieving concrete results immediately, but a large number of people failed to learn from mistakes and do more to achieve our purpose. It would be risky to resort again to the same conventional methods, tactics and strategies and finally fall in shortness of breath when it takes long to achieve tangible results. The current situation in the DR Congo should prompt organised minorities to engage in a long term struggle of resistance both against visible and invisible forces.

Let’s talk again about the trap of February 17, 2012. How can we support the forces of change who would refuse to obey the iniquitous order of a co-opted National Assembly with a view of reestablishing a ‘fair’ political and legal order? How Congolese living abroad who are in favour of change could become a reliable partner of their people and take actions instead of words? What resources can they make available so that citizens cannot be corrupted and can be determined to resist? A large number of people have been asking themselves these questions and have been urging their fellow countrymen and women to continuously work in synergy. We have to wait and see!

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* Translated from French by freelance journalist and translator Amadou Timbine for Pambazuka News.
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From Black to African History Month

Sabamya Jaugu

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79956

cc E MAfrican History Month will counter Euro-centrism with historical truth. As well, it is important to embrace our culture and take ownership of our ethnicity.

Every February, Black History Month is celebrated because of one man. In 1926, Dr. Carter Woodson created ‘Negro History Week’ and in 1976 it became Black History Month. The world in general and black people, in particular, owe him a debt of gratitude.

Unfortunately, during his time period, our minds were poisoned against Africa.

This is best exemplified by the following quote. ‘Number one, first you have to realise that up until 1959 Africa was dominated by colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected the image of Africa negatively. They projected Africa always in a negative light; jungles, savages, cannibals. Nothing civilised.

‘Naturally it became negative to you and me and you and I began to hate it. We did not want anyone to tell us anything about Africa, much less call us an African. And in hating Africa, and in hating the African, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realising it, because you cannot hate the roots of the tree and not hate the tree.’ Malcom X.

Subconsciously we are living the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and solely focus on breaking racial barriers. We must cleanse our minds by learning history from our own perspective to comprehend the present socio-economic conditions.

Just as Negro History Week grew into Black History Month to address the changes in society, in the same spirit we must continue Dr Carter's creation by extenuating it into an African History Month. The extenuation would include history of the 150 million blacks in Latin America together with the 50 million in the Caribbean and, more importantly, the history of the motherland.

Not only will we build on Dr Carter's great legacy but by adding the motherland's culture and other history that has been neglected. Such as Blacks in Latin America, where 90 percent of the slaves were sent, mostly in Brazil. The extenuation would encapsulate African history from the dawn of time until the present.

Most notably, because of slavery and colonialism, the culture has been changed in the Americas and altered in Africa. This constitutes an urgent necessity for its people to learn their history from their own perspective. Moreover, modern history is a reflection of the European conquest, according to their interpretations. Learning African history is more important than ever, because of the diversity, in Africa and Diaspora.

In our contemporary world, we have accepted new identities and terminologies. The whole dynamics of Africa, its people and the rest of the Diaspora has dramatically changed. A new geography has been created with the birth of the Americas, over 50 countries in Africa and colonialism has changed the cultural dynamics. It suffices to say that an African History Month would be appropriate. It is essential that we recall our past in order to negotiate the future. The importance of understanding Euro-centrism and ethnicity cannot be over emphasized .

EURO-CENTRISM

Euro-centrism really began in 1493, because the second voyage was a large-scale colonisation and exploration project. Columbus was given 17 ships and over 1,000 men. Included on this voyage, for the first time, were European domesticated animals such as pigs, horses and cattle.

Columbus' orders were to expand the settlement on Hispaniola, convert the natives to Christianity, establish a trading post and continue his explorations in search of China or Japan. Moreover, the conquest of their land would provide gold and other wealth to Europeans. Encouraged by their successes, they embraced Euro-centrism, using the gun to conquer and the bible to deceive.

Colonialism proved even more successful in later centuries, eventually reaching the level where Europeans could conquer and rule not only the Americas but also Africa. During this process, they realised that forcing their culture on their victims was more potent than their guns.

They renamed rivers, cities, lakes, created countries, continents and forced their culture on all of their victims. And European endeavors in all of these continents continued to be hugely profitable. So Euro-centric beliefs seemed to be continually confirmed as both true and useful and they gradually evolved into the Euro-centric world-model of modern times.

Euro-centrism's views of Africa were most famously expressed by Scottish
philosopher David Hume: ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences.’

Whilst some changed slightly over time, there were still some who continued to hold these derogatory views. In the 19th century, the German philosopher Hegel simply declared: ‘Africa is no historical part of the world.’

Later, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Professor of History at Oxford University expressed openly the racist view that Africa has no history, as recently as 1963. When this model was fully developed, in the 19th century, it created its own conception of the history and geography of the entire world. And it became the mirror in which Europeans came to see themselves and their own past.

Before the European Conquest, the world was abundant with homogeneous societies. Many African cultures were uninterrupted for thousands of years . All this changed when the slaves were scattered and forced to accept foreign cultures.

During the seasoning or the breaking in period, Africans were forced to learn different cultures, speak a variety of European languages, embrace Christianity and were denied any connection with Africa, thus becoming Negroes. In the framework of colonialism, the Africans in Africa suffered a similar fate. That was implemented by their educational institutions and the missionaries. The denial of culture and adisconnection from Africa produced Negroes.

‘African History Month’ is essential to recognise Euro-centrism in order to counter it with the historical truth. It is important to embrace our culture and take ownership of our ethnicity.

ETHNICITY

Just think: Several generations ago in America, we were known as Negroes. The 1960s' was the era of African revolutionary wars and the Civil Rights Movements. Black was considered beautiful and slogans, like ‘We are black and proud’ became prominent. Once Negro became stigmatised, black was
substituted.

Imagine it required generations to accept to be addressed as black instead of Negro. Unfortunately, neither word identifies land or culture.

Because, there isn't a Negro-land, nor Blackens-tan, nor Black-land. The most important factor is that it disconnects the African descendants from Africa. Most notably, it promotes and perpetuates the divide-and-conquer theme. Just as Negro has outlived its usefulness, so has ‘black’ because it does not describe ethnicity. It is a colour and nothing more.

If we have kinky, coarse or nappy hair and our facial features consist of broad noses, thick lips and our bodies contain melanin, the chemical that defines our pigmentation, regardless of embracing different cultures , the ethnicity still remains the same. Additionally, the term ‘from African descent’ is rhetorical and serves no purpose because that is seldom mentioned by any other ethnic group. After scores of generations, they are still referred to as the respective cultures: Chinese, Indian, Japanese, English, German and so on.

Although, it is impossible to identify the exact location on the motherland, the word ‘African’ should be used with its appropriate sub-categories regardless of whether it refers to descendants from the Diaspora or those on the continent. Hence, when referencing ethnicity, the
descriptive word should always be ‘African.’

The descendants should be identified by inserting African or Afro before their birth country. The following are examples: Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, etc. And conversely, the motherland's reference would be Nigerian, Ghanaian and so on.

Finally, taking ownership of the word ‘African’ would negate the nonsense that Egypt, Carthage, Great Zimbabwe, Ethiopia or the Moorish civilizations are not black; simply because all of these civilisations are located on African soil.

Furthermore, the Japanese, Chinese or Koreans are never questioned about their ethnicity. Most notably, those three cultures are distinctly different. Moreover, neither of these groups identifies themselves as being yellow. They are considered Asians.

We must take charge of ethnicity as Africans, regardless if on the motherland or from the Diaspora. More importantly, together with Euro-centrism understanding the importance of ethnicity are both keys
to the development of the African History Month.

WHY AN AFRICAN HISTORY MONTH?

In order to compare the present with the past, we must remember the conditions when Dr. Woodson created Negro History Week. Jim Crow segregation and lynching were common. The Berlin conference occurred in 1884 that led to the partition of Africa. Black Wall Street was destroyed in 1921 and Marcus Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1925.

In this hostile atmosphere, in 1926 Dr Woodson almost single-handedly
created ‘Negro History Week’. In 1976, it was lengthened into a month-long
celebration and renamed Black History Month. Britain adopted this holiday in 1987 when it emerged as part of the African Jubilee celebrations for the Marcus Garvey Centenary.

This was an outstanding achievement by one of our greatest heroes. The holiday served its purpose well. Obviously, the issues of Euro-centrism and ethnicity could not be addressed in the white supremacy era.

Now its time to pass the baton and extenuate his legacy. By addressing forbidden issues extending the narrative of Black History Month will be
inclusive of the motherland history. To set the background for an African History month, a brief encapsulation of history before and after 1492 is required because the geography and cultures of the world were quite different then.

In ancient history, the term 'African' would have had no meaning. People defined themselves as members of kingdoms and regions. When you consider the fact that the culture has in some ways been altered in today's modern
world, these identities were still of people of the continent we call Africa.

The African continent is now recognised as the birthplace of humanity and the cradle of civilisation. We still marvel at the great achievements of Kemet, or Ancient Egypt, for example, one of the most notable for the early civilizations, which first developed in the Nile valley over 5,000 years ago.

However, even before the rise of Kemet it seems likely that an even more ancient Kingdom known as Ta Seti existed in what is today Nubia in Sudan. This may well have been the earliest state to exist anywhere in the world.

The African continent continued on its own path of development, without significant external intervention until the 15th century of our era. Some of the world's other civilisations such as Kush, Axum, Mali and Great Zimbabwe, flourished in Africa in the years before 1492. In this early period Africans participated in extensive international trading networks and in trans-oceanic travel. Kilwa had established important trading relations with India, China and other parts of Asia long before these were disrupted by European intervention.

The Moors conquest of the Iberian peninsular began in the 7th century and led to the occupation of much of Spain and Portugal for several centuries. The Moorish invasion re-introduced much of the knowledge of the ancient world to Europe. However, Spain expelled the Moors in 1492, the same year of Christopher Columbus’ voyage.

Western culture deliberately omits African history before 1492. The transatlantic enslavement distorted Africa's views of the history and importance of the continent itself. It is only in the last 50 years that it has been possible to redress this distortion and to begin to re-establish Africa's rightful place in world history.

It is important to recognise two major omissions in the celebrations. One is that black history began in 1620 when the first slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Completely ignoring the Latin American slaves who arrived more than one hundred years earlier. And the other presupposes that our history didn't exist before contact with the Europeans.

The African History Honth will address ancient Africa, the Caribbean and Afro-Latino history. Moreover, history cannot be planned because it's the record of the past. However, it has a tendency to repeat itself in some form or another. Therefore, it's important to learn from the past glories and bitter defeats, especially from mistakes and failures.

All the above-mentioned are necessary to prepare for the future. If we ignore history, then we will meander and drift where the world will take us. The purpose of the African History Month is learned from these events and develop a strategy to address our everyday encounters, and this will help guide us in planning our future.

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Tanzania: US university withdraws from land grab deal

The Oakland Institute

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79967

cc A TThe most controversial and potentially devastating part of the deal was the forceful removal of 162,000 people thriving on the land.

In a turnabout that should remove AgriSol's last shred of credibility as a ‘responsible investor’ in Tanzania, Iowa State University (ISU) announced in a statement on February 10, 2012 that they have withdrawn themselves entirely from ties to AgriSol and the land deal it is planning in Tanzania. From Dean Wintersteen's statement we learned that the university is tired of spending ‘much of our time and energy . . . directed at countering misrepresentations about why and how we were involved.’

Wintersteen added that attention has ‘not been directed at what originally compelled us to explore program development in Tanzania – the role agricultural education can play in helping small farmers and families struggling against poverty and hunger.’

In response, Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, had this to say:

‘What has been hard about ISU's role in the AgriSol deal is that we share the mission of supporting small farmers. However, the Tanzanian land deal spearheaded by political insider Bruce Rastetter, who used ISU's involvement to gain credibility and further a charade of 'responsible agriculture,' would not have helped small farmers and their families."

Iowa State University's role in the AgriSol deal was first uncovered by the Oakland Institute in June, 2011 in a brief that questioned its ties to the project and to Bruce Rastetter, co-founder and Managing Director of AgriSol and an important donor to the university and a member of the Iowa board of Regents.

Since then, AgriSol has been the target of media coverage and other investigative reports including one by Dan Rather. AgriSol has issued a variety of statements regarding their intent in Tanzania but has not formally announced a withdrawal from the most controversial and potentially devastating part of their plan – the removal of 162,000 people thriving on the land they have their proposed sites.

The Oakland Institute countered AgriSol's claims of being ‘responsible investors’ with a myths and facts brief. In particular, AgriSol claims that they have little or no role in moving the long-standing refugee communities in Tanzania, stating that the Tanzanian government is responsible for this.

To that claim Oakland Institute Executive Director, Anuradha Mittal, responded with:

‘It is a 'chicken versus the egg' situation. The communities would not be forced to move if there was not an investor interested in their lands and had not expressed this interest to the government. We know for a fact that AgriSol is misrepresenting their desire to take over the land in the areas known as Lugufu, Katumba and Mishamo.’

The Oakland Institute applauds the critical role of campus and media activism that has resulted in the turnabout at the university. Mittal added, ‘Bad press alone won't stop this kind of devastation; our partners in the student community, the press, and of course in Tanzania are having an impact and we sincerely hope that we can keep the pressure on and have a just outcome.’

‘We invite Iowa State University to join with us. In over 40 years the Burundians have built a robust and productive farming community. It would demonstrate support of ISU's mission to help 'small farmers and families struggling against poverty and hunger,' to ensure that they are not forcibly moved.’

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Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone

Pan-African consultation on how to deepen our organisational democracy

John Caulker

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/79968

cc Amnesty Int'lThis initiative addresses local legacies of the conflict in Sierra Leone which the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whatever their wider achievements, have been unable to tackle.

ABOUT US

Fambul Tok (Krio for Family Talk) is a community-owned and led organisation, founded on principles of constant consultation and dialogue, that has been promoting reconciliation across five districts of Sierra Leone since 2008. We now have over two thousand volunteers working with us at community-level, with a small number of district and national staff providing support.

The organisation revives and builds upon traditional forms of mediation and conflict resolution, including through bonfire ceremonies that often bring together victims and perpetrators, with the latter confessing before the entire community how they have wronged their victims. They seek - and, on many occasions, receive - forgiveness.

These processes, along with other aspects of the organisation’s follow-up work, help to create a foundation upon which those individuals and their communities can build a better future. In doing so, Fambul Tok is addressing local legacies of the conflict in Sierra Leone which the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whatever their wider achievements, have been unable to tackle. We believe that addressing these local legacies is absolutely vital to building a sustainable peace in Sierra Leone. There is also growing evidence that community involvement in Fambul Tok processes is contributing significantly to improved development outcomes within those communities.

IDENTIFYING THE CHALLENGE

Our purpose here is not to go into lots of detail about us, or our work. You can find out more by checking out our website.

Until now, while seeking at all times to respond to the views of our constituencies at community-level, at board and national level we have been organised in a more ‘conventional NGO’ way. For example, we do not have clear and consistent structures in place to ensure that national-level decisions really do reflect the views of Fambul Tok communities; nor have these communities had any say so far about who should be on the board.

For these sorts of reasons, we believe that we have more work to do to ensure that we reflect our commitment to organisational democracy all the way from top to bottom.

So, we are beginning a process of consultation, internally and beyond, about changes to our organisational structures and processes.

One major proposal being floated is to establish an annual ‘General Assembly’ of the organisation, to which Fambul Tok communities would send representatives. At the general assembly, key decisions about the direction of the organisation would be taken. Its first task could be to draft and approve the organisation’s new constitution. Ultimately, this general assembly might even decide the membership of the board.

There are a host of linked issues and dilemmas that might flow from any decision to establish such a deliberative body. Would the general assembly take decisions only by consensus, as has been our approach to decision-making to date? Would there be a need for a concept of ‘sufficient consensus’? If so, what might that mean? How long should a person’s term on the general assembly be? Should there be powers of recall if members of the general assembly lose the confidence of those they represent?

These are the sorts of questions with which we will be wrestling if we do move in the direction we are considering. We have produced an initial discussion paper that goes into greater detail about our preliminary thinking. Please do contact us if you would like to see a copy of it.

WE NEED YOUR ADVICE

As we begin our internal consultations about how best to deepen our organisational democracy, we are acutely aware that thousands of other organisations across Africa (and the rest of the world, for that matter) have wrestled with this question in the past and continue to do so now.

We know that this will not be an easy path to take. But if we can avoid making mistakes others have already made, it will at least free us up to make some new ones!

This is why, with the help of Pambazuka News, we are today launching this Pan-African consultation, which will run until 30 April 2012.

We would benefit enormously from any advice that you can give us. Long and detailed responses would be wonderful, but we know how busy the activists and intellectuals that read Pambazuka News are, so we certainly don’t expect long tracts.

Quality matters more to us than quantity. Even a couple of sentences to say ‘watch out for this problem’, or, ‘do not try x or y, it just won’t work’, could make a big difference in persuading us to pause, reflect and perhaps change course before it is too late! We will also respect your confidentiality if any advice is provided on this basis.

It is highly likely that a lot of the feedback will be useful to other organisations across Africa too. Pambabuka News and Fambul Tok pledge to publish a detailed report back at the end of the consultation.

One last thing: In the end, Fambul Tok will have to make its own decisions and live with the consequences, good or bad. We promise that we will not hold you responsible for our actions.

Please send your comments to fambultok, writing ‘Pan-African Consultation’ plus your name – and, if applicable, the name of your organisation – in the subject line. You should also feel free to contact us if you have any questions about us.

We look forward to hearing from you – and thanks!

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*John Caulker is the executive director of Fambul Tok.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Campaign for Peace and Democracy Left Forum panel

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/80010

March 2012

CPD believes that peace, global justice and ecology are intertwined. This year we are sponsoring a panel at the Left Forum entitled ‘Should Labour and the Left Propose a Global Green Jobs Alternative to Austerity and Climate Change?’

We invite you to attend the event, which will be held at Pace University in Manhattan, March 16-18. You will be notified when the exact day and time for the panel are set.

We have an outstanding group of panelists:

Jeremy Brecher of the Labour Network for Sustainability
Greg Albo, who teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto
and is co-editor of the Socialist Register
Elaine Bernard, Executive Director of the Labour and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Trade Union Program
Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute, Univ of Massachusetts
Chair: Joanne Landy, Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy

PANEL DESCRIPTION

The aim of this panel is to explore and debate the question of whether it is productive for labour and the left to propose ‘transitional programs’ to address the growing global ecological and economic crises. What types of proposals can move the agenda in the right direction? In particular, we will talk about how a global green jobs alternative might be defined and presented in a way that is convincing and attractive to ordinary people around the world. Is there a danger that such a proposal could end up reinforcing rather than weakening the power of elites and their institutions? If so, can this pitfall be avoided? We will discuss what a progressive global green jobs proposal might actually look like. Can and should a jobs program be international? How can such a program be paid for? How would it realistically address the issues of climate change, pollution, development and conservation of energy resources, migration, poverty, inequality, democracy, and the world-wide race to the bottom in wages and working conditions? Furthermore, we will ask how, if at all, a movement for this kind of reform relates to achieving the goal of socialism.

More information about the Left Forum is available on their website. For more information about the Campaign for Peace
and Democracy, where you will read about CPD's opposition to U.S. wars against Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and our support for democratic struggles in Bahrain, Iran, Syria, Egypt and around the globe, see our website.

BRIEF PANELIST BIOS

Jeremy Brecher's new book ‘Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action’, just published by Paradigm Publishers, addresses how social movements make social change. Brecher is the author of more than a dozen books on labour and social movements, including ‘Strike!’ and ‘Global Village or Global Pillage’ and the winner of five regional Emmy awards for his documentary movie work. He currently works with the Labour Network for Sustainability.

Greg Albo teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto. He is co-editor of the Socialist Register, and on the editorial boards of ‘Studies in Political Economy’, ‘Relay’, ‘Capitalism’, ‘Nature’, ‘Socialism’, ‘Canadian Dimension’, ‘The Bullet’, and ‘Historical Materialism’. He teaches courses on the foundations of political economy, Canadian political economy, alternatives to capitalism, and democratic administration.

Elaine Bernard is a lifelong union member and activist who has conducted courses for unions, community groups, universities and government departments. Research and teaching interests are international comparative labour movements, union leadership and governance, and the role of unions in promoting civil society, democracy and economic justice. Talks and publications include: "From Heroes to Zeros: the War on Unions and the Public Sector" and "Social Unionism: Labor as a Political Force."

Robert Pollin's research centres on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the US and globally, analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in
the US. His books include ‘Back to Full Employment’ (forthcoming 2012); ‘A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States’; and ‘Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity’. He co-authored the recent studies ‘Green Recovery and Green Prosperity’.

Campaign for Peace and Democracy, 2790 Broadway, #12 New York, New York 10025.

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Fuel scarcity and renewable energy option for Nigeria’s South-South

Fidelis Allen

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/79991

cc A DThe fuel crisis in Nigeria proves the truism that no government ever voluntarily pursues the public good without some form of struggle by the governed. It ought not to be so.

The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, announced on its 7:00am network news of 14 February 2012, perhaps, as a Valentine gift to the people of Rivers State, that the nearly four days of painful experience of staying without fuel for transportation and power generating sets in homes and businesses, now waiting for full deregulation of the power sector before seeing electricity, is the result of conflict between Eleme youths and petroleum tanker drivers. The intensity of the scarcity and the attendant pain to road users and households clearly speak volumes about the existing huge vacuum in governance, with regards to responsiveness of government to the plight of poor Nigerians, who often are the victims of the greed and evil of fossil fuel politics and conflict. It speaks volumes about how few decision makers can influence self-serving decisions that bring pain to the generality of Nigerians without themselves considering the outcome on their sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers and so on. It portrays a country without adequate enforcement of relevant laws and rules for the good of citizens. It further exposes how enslaved Nigerians are to hydrocarbon, when alternative renewable energy sources such as solar and wind can be explored, at least to take care of household energy needs of cooking, electricity and so on.

As I drove out this morning to drop my kids in school with barely four litres of fuel which I bought yesterday at N2, 200, the sight of people standing and waiting at bus stops for commercial vehicles endlessly to take them to work, market, school or so, reminded me of what I heard one of my lecturers say during my undergraduate days at university as a young political science student. ‘In the history of governance world-wide, no government has ever voluntarily pursued the public good without some form of struggle by the governed.’ On a daily basis, this seems to be playing out globally with governments as those in positions of authority have a tendency to neglect the people and their pain until they cry out. It ought not to be so.

The story goes that Eleme youths have issues with the tanker drivers. Conflict is part of human life, which requires ingenuity and wisdom to tackle. The general good should be uppermost in the minds of those in such conflicts, knowing that conflicts are capable of resulting in massive losses for the economy and Nigerians. Even more important is the question of what relevant governmental authorities do when such conflicts escalate to the point of not only threatening the peace of the nation but also become an instrument of politicking in the hands of those involved in dangerous fuel or petroleum distribution politics.

Already, the crisis has hit nearly all the states in the Niger Delta, South-South of Nigeria, where claims by the government of massive development of gas gathering projects are being utilised for provision of electricity. Ironically, many homes have remained basically without electricity, which would have lessened the effect of the current scarcity by heating water and cooking with it. Life for the average citizen in this part of the country in the last four days has been unbearable. The cost of local transportation has gone up very high beyond what even the N18,000 minimum wage offered workers in Nigeria can afford. Already, Nigerian Bureau of Statistics announced on radio today as having declared current poverty rates in Nigeria to be at 69 percent. This is likely to increase by the end of 2012.

Imagine life without energy. But what type of energy? Oil, coal, natural gas are principal hydrocarbons with demonic qualities. They are responsible for the current global climate change and attendant problems; corruption in governance and malgovernance of many oil exporting countries; are responsible for the delay in renewable energy policies that privilege alternative sources of power from solar and wind, especially at the micro levels of households of the poor. Minor issues of cooking and heating of water can comfortably be handled with such alternative energy. Even the so-called natural gas, which the Nigerian government is developing, is another promoter of greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, all natural gas is incidental to oil and cannot be free from flares that pollute the earth. The stories, therefore, about reduction in flares from gas gathering projects may be true only to an extent. Worse, hydrocarbons are not renewable and are depleting, even if it takes an unpredictable number of years to happen.

Following the current federal government’s reforms in the power sector, states are now to generate electricity, which the private sector can distribute. This provides ample opportunity for states like Rivers State to start using their resources to develop infrastructure for alternative energy from solar and wind. Nigeria boasts of massive availability of sun and wind yet to be explored and exploited for the benefit of the good people of the state, especially in rural areas. It may be expensive but remains the best option to start moving away from fossil fuel addiction. The government can provide the ground for the private sector to get involved by initiating investments in manufacture of solar panels and other resources for engaging with those with facilities for exploring these energy sources. With many households depending on solar energy for cooking and heating of water, at least, pressure for fossil and wood fuel as well as the unruly behaviour of some actors in the petroleum sector would have been reduced.

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* Fidelis Allen,PhD, is based at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus.
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CAL Condemns Ugandan government closure of LGBT workshop

Coalition of African Lesbians

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79973

The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), a coalition of lesbians, bisexual women and trans-gender organisations and individuals, condemns the orders of the State Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Hon. Simon Lukodo, to close an LGBT Leadership Training workshop on the morning of Tuesday, February 14, 2012.

Furthermore, the coalition condemns the outright intimidation by government officials of the organisers of this workshop, in particular, human rights defender Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera. The week-long workshop was due to end February 15, 2012.

Such actions are in direct contravention of the Constitution of Uganda, The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, amongst other international human rights instruments, all of which strongly promote and protect the rights to freedom of association, assembly, speech, expression and the right to information of all citizens and human beings, without discrimination.

In the middle of the parliamentary review of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, The Coalition of African Lesbians strongly demands that the Government of Uganda protects all LGBT people in Uganda, particularly known and targeted LGBT human rights defenders. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure safety for all who live within its borders.


BACKGROUND

Activists report that in the morning of February 14, 2012, a government official claiming to belong to the President’s Office walked into the workshop room and sat down. With concern, one of the organisers, Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, asked him to move out as he was uninvited to the workshop. The official asked Kasha to follow him to a spot in the hotel.

Upon entering that room with him, Kasha met with the minister and his aides. The minister demanded to know the purpose of the workshop and Kasha responded that it was about leadership. He further demanded to know what kind of leadership the workshop was addressing and again Kasha responded to his inquiry.

The minister then asked Kasha to go with him to the workshop room where he began to speak to the participants directly. At that point, the minister announced that the workshop was illegal and unethical and ordered its closure. There was resistance from the workshop organisers and participants and as a result, the minister ordered for the arrest of Kasha. Fortunately, Kasha was able to sneak out and run. On reaching her room, the hotel staff called Kasha to inform her that the minister and police were waiting for her at the hotel lobby. Kasha managed to sneak out of her room and escaped by jumping over the hotel fence.

The hotel manager is reported to have been ordered at gunpoint to produce Kasha and the minister left an order for both Kasha and another defender to leave the country as they are not needed in Uganda. According to further reports from activists, Kasha was summoned by the office of the minister yesterday afternoon to explain more about the purpose of the workshop, which she declined to do for safety reasons. The rest of the participants checked out of their rooms, amidst officials searching for Kasha on every floor of the hotel, and returned safely to their homes.

Eight days after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been re-tabled, the general sense among LGBT people is that of fear and hopelessness.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera
Executive Director
Freedom and Roam Uganda
Tel: +256 772 463161
Email: jnkasha@gmail.com

Moses Kimbugwe
Programs Coordinator
Spectrum Uganda Initiatives
Tel: +256 782 854 391
Email: manyagwa2000@yahoo.com

Victor Mukasa
Advocacy Adviser for East Africa
Coalition of African Lesbians
Tel: +27 11 918 2182
Mobile: +27 78 436 3635
Email: victor@cal.org.za

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Resist, reject, oppose the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79971

(Please circulate to all your African contacts)

The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), a pan African network of lesbian, bisexual and gender non-conforming people, organisations and individuals, calls upon every person who believes in the dignity, equality and freedom of every human being, to take note of and act urgently to halt the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which has just been re tabled in Uganda. We look to African human rights activists and defenders, politicians, religious leaders, cultural leaders, scholars, lawyers, medical professionals, educators, parents and all human rights respecting and promoting individuals and institutions, to take such urgent action.

The draconian Bill was re-tabled in the Parliament of Uganda by Member of Parliament David Bahati on 7 February 2012. The Bill had its first reading and was referred to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee for scrutiny. The Committee is expected to examine it and conduct public hearings, and then it will report back to the House for a formal debate on the Bill.

Background:

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 was first introduced in the Parliament of Uganda by Member of Parliament David Bahati as a Private Member’s Bill in October 2009. The Bill proposes severe prison sentences, and in some cases the death penalty. It states that anyone who commits the offence of homosexuality will be liable to life imprisonment as the provisions, according to the Bill, are meant to ‘protect the traditional family by prohibiting any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex’. The Bill further states that ‘aggravated homosexuality’ will be punished by death as it aims to ban all forms of expression advocating for homosexuality. It would also be an offence for a person who is aware of any violations of the Bill’s provisions not to report them to the authorities within 24 hours. Furthermore, the Bill proposes to criminalize the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ which is a provision targeting civil society and human rights defenders. These and other provisions of the Bill go beyond targeting homosexuals, to affect families, human rights defenders, teachers, neighbours, friends, spiritual leaders, medical professionals, shop owners, to mention but a few.

Stand out and up against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 NOW. We have limited time. Resist this unconstitutional bill and take on one, some, or all of the following actions;

1. Pass on this Call to Action to as many concerned Africans as you can and urge them to take action.

2. Write emails to and or call Ugandan Members of Parliament (MPs) urging them to resist and reject the Bill in its entirety because it is anti-human rights and affects every Ugandan in different ways. The full list of all 386 MPs can be found at http://www.parliament.go.ug/mpdata/mps.hei Click on the MP’s name and you will get their email address and phone number. The MPs can also be contacted through social media such as Facebook. Just search for their name on Facebook and or Twitter.

3. Write to the President of Uganda, H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and urge him to reject this draconian proposed Bill in its entirety. Urge him to discourage further debate and consideration of the Bill by Parliament and to decline to sign this unconstitutional Bill into law. (Contacts below)

4. Write, call or fax the Inspector General of Police in Uganda, Major General Kale Kaihura, and urge him to ensure the protection of the human rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Uganda and those who defend LGBT people. This includes protection from both state and non-state actors who have started to take the law in their hands by harassing and violating LGBT Ugandans. (Contacts below)

5. Write, fax and or call the Minister of Justice in Uganda, Hon. Major General Kahinda Otafire, and the State Minister of Justice Hon. Fred Ruhindi and urge them to speak out against the unconstitutionality of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 and to discourage any further debate on the Bill. (Contacts below)

6. Write to the Minister of Health in Uganda, Hon. Dr. Christine Ondoa and bring to her attention the implications of this Bill on the fight against HIV/AIDS and on access to medical services by LGBT citizens. (Contacts below)

7. Write to the Cardinal of Uganda, His Eminence Emmanuel Wamala, and the Arch Bishop of the Church of Uganda , The Most Revd Henry Luke Orombi and urge them to stand out and up and oppose the Bill in its entirety. Tell them that homosexuals need their protection. Point out, to the Cardinal of the Catholic Church, the Catechism of the Catholic Church which says in Article 6, 2358: The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. They are called to protect and not to remain silent amidst injustice and discrimination. (Contacts below)

8. Write, call, fax your Minister of Foreign Affairs and urge him/her to put pressure on the Government of Uganda against the further debating of the unconstitutional Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.

For more information, please contact;

* Victor Mukasa

Advocacy Advisor for East Africa

Coalition of African Lesbians

Tel: +27 11 918 2182

Mobile: +27 78 436 3635

Email: victor@cal.org.za

* Fikile Vilakazi

Programs Director

Coalition of African Lesbians

Tel: +27 11 918 2182

Email: fikile@cal.org.za

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

ACTION CONTACTS:

* The President of the Republic of Uganda

H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

Email: aak@statehouse.go.ug, cc: pps@statehouse.go.ug

* The Inspector General of Police

Major-General Kale Kaihura

Tel: +256 414 258 114

Fax : +256 414 270 502

* Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs

Hon Maj.Gen Kahinda Otafire

Email: mojca@africaonline.co.ug

Tel: +256-414- 230538

Fax: +256-414- 254829

* State Minister of Justice

Hon. Fred Ruhindi

Email: fruhindi@parliament.go.ug

* Minister of Health

Hon. Christine Ondoa

Tel: +256-414-340872

Mobile: +256772428346/ +256701428346

Fax: 256-41-4231584

Email: info@health.go.ug

* The Cardinal of the Catholic Church

His Eminence Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala

Tel: +256 414 510389/510570/510544/510571

Fax: +256 41 510545

* Archbishop of Uganda & and Bishop of Kampala

The Most Revd Henry Orombi

Email: abpcou@gmail.com

Tel: +256 414 270 218 / 9

Fax: +256 414 251 925

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Uganda anti-homosexuality bill: Standing in solidarity…

Urgent Action Fund-Africa

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79970

Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa) would like to express outrage and dismay at the re-introduction of the anti-homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan parliament.

As an African regional organisation that supports women’s human rights, we recognize that sexual orientation and gender identity are integral aspects of ourselves and should never lead to discrimination, abuse or murder.

We should not make people live in constant fear of losing their jobs, their families, their livelihoods, their freedom and their lives because they are seen as different from the rest of us. We are of the opinion that this proposed law is inhumane because it violates every aspect of a human being.

UAF-Africa stands in solidarity with all Africans who stand up, raise their voices, and defend the full equality and human rights of all, including LGBTQI people. We call upon the Ugandan parliament to dismiss the Bill when it comes to the floor of the house for debate. The Ugandan government should be cognisant of its responsibility to promote, protect and respect the human rights of all citizens including putting measures in place that assure everyone of this protection instead of taking away this fundamental human right.

Over the years, Valentine's Day has become a reminder to demonstrate love for each other through gift giving. However, for others it may mean giving even bigger and more substantial gifts, it can be a timely reminder of what REALLY matters in relationships and can help us refocus on giving gifts that have no price tag but can make or break our relationships; Gifts of tolerance, kindness and understanding- the very characteristics that define our humanity.

This Valentine’s Day, UAF-Africa would like to express our unending and full support to the Ugandan LGBTQI community as they go through this trying period and urge all people of the world who support the principles of constitutionalism, human rights for all, inclusivity, and democratic governance to put pressure on the Ugandan parliament to drop this Bill.

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* Urgent Action Fund-Africa, a consciously feminist and women’s human rights Pan-African Fund, was established in 2001 in Nairobi, Kenya. As the first rapid response grantmaker on the continent, UAF-Africa adds value to the work of activists and civil society organisations focusing on women’s active socio-political participation and visibility by leveraging resources and opportunities for critical engagements that advance women’s rights.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Government must consult rural women on the Traditional Courts Bill

Democratic Left Front

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80003

15 February 2012

The Democratic Left Front is extremely concerned that today’s deadline for public submissions on the Traditional Courts Bill (TCB, Bill 15 of 2008) to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) is passing without much notice and without government engaging in genuine consultation with those who will be most affected by it, in particular rural women.

The DLF calls on the NCOP, the National Assembly and government to create adequate opportunity for all rural people to be consulted on, and make their views heard on this Bill. Specifically, we call on the NCOP to ensure that such consultations are not held at the homesteads of chiefs or headman under the guise that those are tribunes of custom. That would be a sham.

We are extremely concerned that this Bill is anti-democratic in both content and process. No matter what our critiques of the post-1994 socio-economic and political dispensation are as the DLF, however, South Africa is one country with a constitutional framework that commits to human rights, equality and consultation. It is therefore unacceptable that through the TCB close to 17 million South Africans living in the former homelands are about to be stripped of their constitutional rights. This Bill will create a separate legal regime under the jurisdiction of unaccountable traditional leaders: rural dwellers in former homeland rural areas will effectively become subjects yet again.

In our analysis, the Bill embodies the increasingly autocratic and patriarchal approach of government - making it virtually impossible for rural people to be heard in their own right without the mediation of unaccountable and unelected traditional leaders. In this way, government renders rural women and other rural dwellers essentially voiceless. Already, many traditional leaders are mired in corrupt mining and land deals in the poorest parts of South Africa. This has been done in ways that violate the rights and interests of broader communities. If passed, this Bill will reinforce the power and such practices of unaccountable traditional leaders.

The DLF calls on rural women and other rural dwellers to stand up and fight this Bill. It is their organised social power and not boardroom negotiations or promises by this or that leader that will ensure that government listens to them and that they achieve real democracy and socio-economic change in the rural areas of our country. Given the broader anti-democratic content and implications of the Bill, the DLF calls on South Africans who can to speak out in support of the rights of rural people as well as in support of ongoing mobilisation taking place in some of the rural areas.

The DLF calls for a new law to govern community-based access to justice mechanisms that would be deeply democratic in content and process. Such a law must establish a broad national legal framework to standardise common systems, principles and procedures for community-based access to justice that are fundamentally founded on the promotion, advancement and deepening of justice, gender equality, democracy, accountability and human rights. Key principles in such a law must include the following:

1. Such a law must ensure access to justice through mechanisms that are democratic, accountable and challengeable. This therefore means that such mechanisms must not be reduced and integrated with the powers of chiefs.

2. Rural people must also be able to opt whether to use such mechanisms. They must not be forced into one regime as the TCB does by not allowing them to opt out of the TCB regime.

3. Women must be adequately represented (50-50) in such structures.

4. Gender equality must be effectively integrated and actively promoted in content and practice.

5. People’s customs and practices must be respected whilst also harnessed to be consistent with the freedoms of association and expression as well as the rights to equality, non-discrimination, legal representation and other democratic rights.

6. The approach to judgments to be followed must not deprive people of their rights including land. The judgments must actively promote the social justice principles of equality, solidarity, dignity and human rights.

7. Community-based mechanisms or customary law must not be used to limit and hollow out democracy, human rights, gender equality, non-discrimination, and the freedoms of association and expression.

Working with our rural affiliates, as the DLF we will elaborate the above principles into a detailed submission on the TCB. This will also be part of the DLF Speak Out! … Listen to the People Campaign!

Don’t be Afraid…Speak Out!

The People Have Solutions…

We Demand…Listen to the People!

Democratic Left Front

FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:

Mazibuko K. Jara – 083 651 0271
Brian Ashley – 082 085 7088
Vishwas Satgar – 082 775 3420

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This intolerance/intimidation by Kikuyu political elites must stop

KikuyusforChange

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79952

13 February 2012

On 30 March 2011 we made a public statement denouncing Hon Uhuru Kenyatta’s comments made in Muranga on the Sunday 27 March 2011. Mr Kenyatta had been quoted as having said that ‘ ... we will not allow ourselves to be killed just because we do not follow our leaders. Those who fail to do this we will follow to their homes and expose them as the ones who are betraying us ...”

In our press statement we stated very firmly that those comments were completely irresponsible, especially coming from a leader who served as a Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance (then) of the Republic of Kenya. We also stated that these comments ‘were not only dangerous, but were also intra-ethnically and inter-ethnically divisive as well as detrimental to the national cohesiveness most of us were working so hard for, following the 2007 PEV’

On 6 February 2012, under the KikuyusforChange Programme we initiated a series of forums under the name ‘Engaging Ethno-Centric Prejudice’. This was done in the first such forum held at Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, as a prelude to a series of subsequent town-hall forums to be held in Nyandarua, Muranga, Kirinyaga, Nyeri and Kiambu Counties, where the Prime Minister of Kenya (Rt Hon Raila Odinga) will meet with local opinion leaders from each county to answer to/challenge personality stereotypes being circulated by sections of the region’s political elite, about him.

The reason behind this initiative is that after working for over four years on the issue of interethnic cohesion and nation-hood we are convinced that personality-based political stereotyping must be challenged, and it is best done by publicly exposing any such stereotypes to all parties involved, and confronting them. This is the only way we will avoid inter-ethnic tension during political competition.

Unfortunately we have learnt that this initiative is being resisted, mainly by some political elites from the five counties above, who are benefitting politically from the stereotypes against the Prime Minister. This was expected.

However we are now informed that such resistance has taken the form of inciteful comments against those involved in the programme, as well as physical attacks on the properties of participants invited, as a means of intimidating the County populations from participating. For example, on 12 February 2012, at a Church Service at Kanderedu AIPCA Church, an aide to the Tetu MP (Hon FT Nyamu) by the name of Mr. Njanjo made comments that implied that ODM should not be allowed anywhere in Tetu Constituency. In another incident the house of one of the participants during the Nairobi launch (Mr Gitau Kiarie), situated in Kikuyu, Kamuguga, was invaded at 3pm by unknown people. The group ransacked the house, wrote ‘Raila X’ on two walls in his house and scattered documents on this initiative all over his house.

These acts of violence and intimidation, especially when viewed with the attack against Hon David Njuguna’s family in his home, where his car was burnt allegedly because he made comments that were interpreted as support for the Prime Minister, are quite unfortunate.

It is our belief that these actions are directly and/or indirectly related to the comments Hon Kenyatta made in the Muranga rally close to one year ago. We also believe that for as long as these comments are not rebutted, overzealous supporters and/or unscrupulous political brokers in the region will continue to organize attacks against people perceived not to toe his political line; attacks that will certainly lead to injury, loss of life and/or further loss of property, and that could adversely affect his defence at the International Criminal Court. We also believe that if unchallenged, especially directly by him, these comments could also lead to violent political confrontations between his supporters and those of his rivals during the political campaigns that start in a few months

We therefore call upon him to first and foremost publicly denounce any interpretation of his Muranga comments, as incitement to attacks on his political rivals or their supporters, and to desist from any further comments that could be (mis)interpreted as incitement to attack Kikuyus who do not agree with his political positions. We also expect that, as the national leader he is, he will publicly denounce those behind the attack on Hon Njuguna’s home and property, as well as those speaking out against the activities of the KikuyusforChange initiative.

We also call upon President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, as the leaders of the Coalition Government formed to stop such violence, as well as upon the Minister of Provincial Administration & Internal Security Hon George Saitoti, to protect Kenyans from politicians out to incite Kenyans against each other, especially for political gain. We also remind them that Kenyans depend on them to ensure there is no repeat of the kind of violence seen in the last general elections, during the forthcoming one.

Finally we urge Dr Mzalendo Kibunjia and his colleagues in the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to publicly expose and denounce anyone they know has been dividing Kenyans through political/ethnic stereotyping, and to do so publicly rather than in secret. Only such 'naming and shaming' of such people will help Kenya move beyond politics of dividing Kenyans, to a united nation.

Signed By:

Ngunjiri Wambugu, Executive Director, (0724 958 331) Change Associates Trust (Hosts of the Kikuyusforchange Initiative).

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Egypt repeals death sentences for Taba bombing suspects

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79963

London/Cairo, 14 Feb 2012

Egypt's interim government announced yesterday the repeal of the death sentences issued by the Supreme Emergency State Security Courts against three men for their alleged roles in the October 2004 bombings in the Sinai Peninsula tourist resorts of Taba and Nuweiba and the 2005 bombings at Sharm el Sheikh. This major development follows the recent adoption by the African Union of a far-reaching decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights which found Egypt in violation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights for the torture of the three men and their unfair trial in a special emergency court. The decision was handed down by the African Commission in a case brought by the Cairo-based organisation Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and INTERIGHTS, an international organisation engaged in the legal protection of human rights. Following a trial which fell far short of international fair trial standards, including Africa’s own fair trial and ‘Robben Island’ guidelines which deal with torture, the three men (Mohamed Gayez Sabbah, Ossama Mohamed Abdel-Ghani Al-Nakhlawi and Younis Mohamed Abu-Gareer) were sentenced to death for their alleged role in the attacks.

The three men were among the thousands who were rounded up by Egyptian authorities in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. They were held in incommunicado detention and subjected to torture including electric shocks, beatings and hanging by their hands and legs for days and weeks on end. During their months of torture and interrogation by intelligence services they were denied access to lawyers and to medical treatment. They were not brought before a court, nor did they have access to legal representation, until the day their criminal trial began. Following a sham trial by the Supreme State Security Emergency Court, they were convicted on the basis of confessions extracted under torture and sentenced to death with no right of appeal.

The Commission found multiple human rights violations, notably of torture, and violations of detention and fair trial rights. The Commission clarified that these rights include the right to access a lawyer and medical care shortly after detention, trial before an independent judiciary, and preclude the use of evidence obtained through torture in any judicial proceedings The Commission concluded that implementing the death sentences handed down by the State Security Court would be a violation of the right to life given the irregularities that characterised its proceedings.

The Commission called for Egypt not to execute the applicants but to immediately release them and provide compensation; to reform the State Security Courts so that they become independent and capable of providing a fair trial; to ensure access by detainees to lawyers, doctors and courts; and to bring their emergency laws into line with international standards. The Commission had already requested that Egypt not execute the men before it had the opportunity to consider the case fully.

The Commission emphasised that the state security courts, which remain operational in Egypt, are not independent and cannot provide fair trials. It found that the Supreme State Security Emergency Court’s competence and procedures “fall far short” of international fair trial obligations, adding that: “the degree of control which the President of the Republic exercises over the composition, conduct and outcome of proceedings before the State Security Court is antithetical to the notion of an independent and impartial judicial process.” This adds to the growing body of decisions from the Commission that condemn such special tribunals.

The decision also sets down important benchmarks for African states concerning their obligations to prevent torture. These include the requirement of providing early and regular access to lawyers and doctors for all persons in detention. It also makes clear that “evidence and confessions obtained through torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment cannot be used in judicial proceedings”. The principles in this case are applicable to many countries across the region where there is insufficient oversight of police and security services in their detention of suspects, and where confessions continue to be used in criminal trials absent suitable safeguards.

Hossam Bahgat, Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said: “The decision to repeal the death sentences is a welcome and significant development, but the Egyptian government must now take further measures to prevent the recurrence of these abuses, including by immediately lifting the State of Emergency, abolishing Emergency Courts and ending the endemic practice of incommunicado detention. We urge the Egyptian authorities to ensure that the retrial of the defendants is conducted before an ordinary civilian court that upholds the international and regional standards of independence and fair trial.”

Helen Duffy, Senior Counsel at INTERIGHTS, said: “This is a landmark decision by the African Commission. It clarifies safeguards that African states must put in place to meet their obligations to prevent torture and ill-treatment during detention. It also makes clear that 'state security courts' have no role in an Egypt based on respect for democracy and human rights. Whether Egypt implements the decision in full will be a measure of its commitment to move from authoritarian rule to the rule of law.”

Spokespeople are available for interview:

1. Hossam Bahgat, Director, EIPR on +(202) 2794-3606, hossam@eipr.org
2. Helen Duffy, Senior Counsel, INTERIGHTS on +31 62 42 83 283, hduffy@interights.org
3. Sarah Harrington, Communications, INTERIGHTS on 0044 20 7843 0472, sharrington@interights.org

Notes to editors:

1. EIPR is an independent Egyptian human rights organisation that was established in 2002 to promote and defend the personal rights and freedoms of individuals.
2. INTERIGHTS is an international NGO which works to ensure that human rights standards are protected and promoted effectively in domestic courts and before regional and international bodies.
3. Ratified by 53 countries including Egypt, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights is a charter intended to promote and protect human rights and freedoms in Africa
4. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is a quasi-judicial body which promotes and protects human rights in Africa including through being the body which oversees and interprets the African Charter.

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An Open Letter to Human Rights Watch

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79966

Dear Kenneth Roth,

Please sign the petition that goes with this letter at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support-separation-between-religion-and- state-a/

In your Introduction to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2012, ‘Time to Abandon the Autocrats and Embrace Rights’, you urge support for the newly elected governments that have brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tunisia and Egypt. In your desire to ‘constructively engage’ with the new governments, you ask states to stop supporting autocrats. But you are not a state; you are the head of an international human rights organisation whose role is to report on human rights violations, an honourable and necessary task which your essay largely neglects.

You say, ‘It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name,’ but you fail to call for the most basic guarantee of rights - the separation of religion from the state. Salafi mobs have caned women in Tunisian cafes and Egyptian shops; attacked churches in Egypt; taken over whole villages in Tunisia and shut down Manouba University for two months in an effort to exert social pressure on veiling. And while ‘moderate Islamist’ leaders say they will protect the rights of women (if not gays), they have done very little to bring these mobs under control. You, however, are so unconcerned with the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities that you mention them only once, as follows: ‘Many Islamic parties have indeed embraced disturbing positions that would subjugate the rights of women and restrict religious, personal, and political freedoms. But so have many of the autocratic regimes that the West props up.’ Are we really going to set the bar that low? This is the voice of an apologist, not a senior human rights advocate.

Nor do you point to the one of the clearest threats to rights - particularly to women and religious and sexual minorities - the threat to introduce so-called ‘shari’a law’. It is simply not good enough to say we do not know what kind of Islamic law, if any, will result, when it is already clear that freedom of expression and freedom of religion - not to mention the choice not to veil - are under threat. And while it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been in power for very long, we can get some idea of what to expect by looking at their track record. In the UK, where they were in exile for decades, unfettered by political persecution, the exigencies of government, or the demands of popular pressure, the Muslim Brotherhood systematically promoted gender apartheid and parallel legal systems enshrining the most regressive version of ‘shari’a law’.

Yusef al-Qaradawi, a leading scholar associated with them, publicly maintains that homosexuality should be punished by death. They supported deniers of the holocaust and the Bangladesh genocide of 1971, and shared platforms with salafi-jihadis, spreading their calls for militant jihad. But, rather than examine the record of Muslim fundamentalists in the West, you keep demanding that Western governments ‘engage’. Western governments are engaged already; if support for autocrats was their Plan A, the Muslim Brotherhood has long been their Plan B. The CIA’s involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 1950s and was revived under the Bush administration, while support for both the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e Islaami has been crucial to the ‘soft counter-terror’ strategy of the British state. Have you heard the phrases ‘non-violent extremism’ or ‘moderate Islamism?’ This language is deployed to sanitise movements that may have substituted elections for bombs as a way of achieving power but still remain committed to systematic discrimination.

Like you, we support calls to dismantle the security state and to promote the rule of law. But we do not see that one set of autocratic structures should be replaced by another which claims divine sanction. And while the overthrow of repressive governments was a victory and free elections are, in principle, a step towards democracy, shouldn’t the leader of a prominent human rights organisation be supporting popular calls to prevent backlash and safeguard fundamental rights? In other words, rather than advocating strategic support for parties who may use elections to halt the call for continuing change and attack basic rights, shouldn’t you support the voices for both liberty and equality that are arguing that the revolutions must continue?

Throughout your essay, you focus only on the traditional political aspects of the human rights agenda. You say, for instance, that ‘the Arab upheavals were inspired by a vision of freedom, a desire for a voice in one’s destiny, and a quest for governments that are accountable to the public rather than captured by a ruling elite.’ While this is true as far as it goes, it completely leaves out the role that economic and social demands played in the uprisings. You seem able to hear only the voices of the right wing - the Islamist politicians - and not the voices of the people who initiated and sustained these revolutions: the unemployed and the poor of Tunisia, seeking ways to survive; the thousands of Egyptian women who mobilised against the security forces who tore off their clothes and subjected them to the sexual assaults known as ‘virginity tests’. These assaults are a form of state torture, usually a central issue to human rights organisations, yet you overlook them because they happen to women.

The way you ignore social and economic rights is of a piece with your neglect of women, sexual rights, and religious minorities. Your vision is still rooted in the period before the Vienna Conference and the great advances it made in holding non-state actors accountable and seeing women’s rights as human rights. Your essay makes it all too clear that while the researchers, campaigners, and country specialists who are the arms and legs and body of Human Rights Watch may defend the rights of women, minorities, and the poor, the head of their organisation is mainly interested in relations between states.

Organisations:

Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) www.ccmw.com
Center for a Secular Space (CSS), global
Marea, Italy
Nijeri Khori, Bangladesh
One Law for All, UK
Organisation Against Women's Discrimination in Iran, UK
Secularism Is a Women’s Issue (siawi.org), global
Southall Black Sisters, UK
WICUR-Women's Initiative for Citizenship and Universal Rights, global
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (wluml.org), global

Individuals (organizations listed for identification purposes only)
Dorothy Aken'Ova, Exercutive Director, INCRESE, Minna, Nigeria
Codou Bop, Coordinator, Research Group on Women and the Law, Senegal
Ariane Brunet, Co-Founder, Urgent Action Fund, Canada
Lalia Ducos, WICUR-Women’s Initiative for Citizenship and Universal Rights Laura Giudetti, Marea, Italy
Anissa Helie, Assistant Professor, John Jay College, US
Marieme Helie Lucas, Secularism is a Women’s Issue
Alia Hogben, Canadian Council of Muslim Women
Hameeda Hossain, Bangladesh Khushi Kabir, Nijera Kori, Bangladesh
Frances Kissling, Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics
Maryam Namazie, One Law for All and Equal Rights Now; Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, UK
Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters, UK Gita Sahgal - Centre for Secular Space, UK Fatou Sow, WLUML, Women Living Under Muslim Laws Meredith Tax – Centre for Secular Space, USA
Afiya Zia, Journalist, Pakistan

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Kenya: On illegal arrests and detention

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/79969

Illegal arrest and detention of 31 members of Kijiji Cha Chewa IDP network and members of Bunge La Mwananchi and Nisisi chapter mobilisers.

On 26 February, members of the Mathare network of IDPs had invited Bunge La Mwananchi to help them in a petition to the area divisional officer. The issues involved were on resettlement and return to their homes and with regards to access to justice and humanitarian assistance, that is provided by the ministry of special programs but which is corruptly sold in the area of Huruma and Mathare.

As Nisisi community facilitator and other members of Bunge La Mwananchi, we were invited by Kijiji cha Chewa that borders Mathare 4A and which was burned during post election violence and saw thousands of tenants and landlords displaced who have never been able to return to their homes or hold meetings in the area due to the political violence they are subjected to by the local police stations to prevent them returning to their homes and rebuilding their livelihoods.

A meeting was planned between the committee of the IDPs of Kijiji cha chewa and members of Bunge La Mwananchi to help the IDPs in developing a petition to the minister of lands and special programs on resettlement and access to justice, and to help the youth of this area that were affected by post-election violence to organise themselves under the Nisisi Chapters a program of Inuka, in order to benefit from a USAID ‘Yes Youth Can’ youth project that is targeting the areas that were affected by post-election violence in 2007, and mitigate the youth in being involved in political violence.

This was the basis of the Wednesday meeting in Mathare 4A, to deliberate on issues and write a petition to present to the relevant authority that is concerned with the matter of internally displaced people.

The meeting had started very well with most elderly women and men gathering opposite a city council clinic in Mathare North, that borders the Kijiji Cha Chewa village, where cases of destruction and displacement of people during 2007 post election violence is well documented by human rights organisations.

After a few minutes, when the meeting had begun, four plainclothes police officers entered and we were ordered to stop the meeting while I was put under arrest. My phone, camera and a notebook was taken away by some plain clothes police officers, and I was bundled violently into a police vehicle, together with 14 other people and taken to Muthaiga police station. Another group of 16 arrested people were brought later, our names were taken and without being booked we were immediately locked in the cells as Mungiki suspects.

We were released at around 1am without charge and the OCS of Muthaiga, Mr. Johnstone Wanyama, said that he had acted on wrong information reported to him by his officers that we were members of Mungiki meeting in the area, and that this had been the reason of our arrest.

This informs the ethnic tension within the area and how the security agencies are being used by the local political class to prevent the victims of post-election violence in organising themselves to access justice and return to their homes. This has been simmering and there is heightened tension since the ICC ruling. There are reports of ethnic communities in the area organising at night and some communities are moving and shifting from one area to another, and regrouping for fear of attacks.

Members of Kijiji Cha Chewa IDP network are seeking legal assistance to pursue their case of compensation, resettlement and protection against violence from political gangs in the era, which has prevented them from resettling their land, and also help the youth in this area to organise in the Bunge and Nisisi Chapters to benefit from the ‘Yes we Can’ youth project.

This IDP network will again hold a meeting on the coming Wednesday to discuss the issues of the petition and the program of Nairobi IDPs getting justice.

During my arrest my phone, camera, notebook and flash disk were taken. Later, during the release, I was given back the notebook and the camera, but not my flash disk. With intervention, I was given it back yesterday morning when I visited the station.

I request organisations to take up the matter of illegal detention and beatings by the police in the interests of accountability and restoration of freedom to assemble for IDPs in Mathare.

Thank-you to all who raised the alarm about our arrest, especially members of Bunge La Mwananchi, Cidi Otieno , Mumbi , Kwamboka, Betty Murungi, John Githongo and INUKA , RPP, Noah. Thanks for that great solidarity.

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* Gacheke Gachihi is a community facilitator with Inuka and member of Bunge La Mwananchi.

Reclaiming our future: Rio +20 and Beyond

La Vía Campesina Call to action

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80009

On 20-22 June 2012, governments from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to commemorate 20 years of the "Earth Summit", the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that first established a global agenda for "sustainable development". During the 1992 summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification, were all adopted. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was also established to ensure effective follow-up of the UNCED “Earth Summit.”

Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the "green economy" led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.

La Vía Campesina will mobilise for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.

20 YEARS LATER: A PLANET IN CRISIS

20 years after the Earth Summit, life has become more difficult for the majority of the planet's inhabitants. The number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one out of six human beings is going hungry, women and small farmers being the most affected. Meanwhile, the environment is depleting fast, biodiversity is being destroyed, water resources are getting scarce and contaminated and the climate is in crisis. This is jeopardizing our very future on Earth while poverty and inequalities are increasing.

The idea of "Sustainable Development" put forward in 1992, which merged "development" and "environment" concerns, did not solve the problem because it did not stop the capitalist system in its race towards profit at the expense of all human and natural resources:

- The food system is increasingly in the grips of large corporations seeking profit, not aimed at feeding the people.

- The Convention on Biodiversiy has created benefit sharing mechanisms but at the end of the day, they legitimize the capitalization of genetic resources by the private sector.

- The UN Convention on Climate Change, instead of forcing countries and corporations to reduce pollution, invented a new profitable and speculative commodity with the carbon trading mechanisms, allowing the polluter to continue polluting and profit from it.

The framework of “sustainable development” continues to see peasant agriculture as backwards and responsible for the deterioration of natural resources and the environment. The same paradigm of development is perpetuated, which is nothing less than the development of capitalism by means of a “green industrialization.”

THE “GREEN ECONOMY” – FINAL ENCLOSURE?

Today the "greening of the economy" pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The "green economy" is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming "green capitalism".

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of "green economy".

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

WHY PEASANT FARMERS MOBILISE

Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants - women and men - are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life and to propose another way to organize our relationship with nature on earth based on agrarian reform, food sovereignty and peasant based agroecology.

We reject the "Green Economy" as it is pushed now in the Rio+20 process. It is a new mask to hide an ever-present, growing greed of corporations and food imperialism in the world.

We oppose carbon trading and all market solutions to the environmental crisis including the proposed liberalization of environmental services under the WTO.

We reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) which allows rich countries to avoid cutting their carbon emissions by financing often damaging projects in developing countries.

We expose and reject the corporate capture of the rio+20 process and all multilateral processes within the United Nations.

We oppose land grabs, water grabs, seeds grabs, forest grabs - all resources' grabs!

We defend the natural resources in our countries as a matter of national and popular sovereignty, to face the offensive and private appropriation of capital;

We demand public policies from governments for the protection of the interests of the majority of the population, especially the poorest, and landless workers;

We demand a complete ban on geoengineering projects and experiments; under the guise of ‘green’ or ‘clean’ technology to the benefit of agribusiness. This includes new technologies being proposed for adaptation and mitigation to climate change under the banners of “geo-engineering” and “climate smart agriculture”, including false solutions like transgenic plants supposed to adapt to climate change, and "biochar" purported to replenish the soil with carbon.

We resolve to protect our native seeds and our right to exchange seeds.

We demand genuine agrarian reform that distributes and redistributes the land - the main factor in production - especially taking into account women and youth. Land must be a means of production to secure the livelihood of the people and must not be a commodity subject to speculation on international markets. We reject "market assisted land reform", which is another word for land privatization.

We struggle for small scale sustainable food production for community and local consumption as opposed to agribusiness, monoculture plantations for export.
We continue to organize and practice agroecology based production, ensuring food sovereignty for all and implementing collective management of our resources.

CALL TO ACTION

We call for a major world mobilization to be held between 18-26 June in Rio de Janeiro, with a permanent camp, for the Peoples Summit, to counter the summit of governments and capital.

We will be in Rio at the People’s Summit where anti-capitalist struggles of the world will meet and together we will propose real solutions. The People’s Permanent Assembly, between the 18 and 22, will present the daily struggles against the promoters of capitalism y the attacks against our lands. Today, Rio de Janeiro is one of the cities which receive the most contributions from global capital and will host the Soccer World Cup and Olympics. We will unite our symbolic struggles from the urban to the landless movements and fishers.

We also declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilise:

Defend sustainable peasant agriculture

Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food

Reclaim and exchange native seeds

Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land

Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism

Dream of a different world and create it!!

The future that we want is based on Agrarian Reform, Peasant's based sustainable agriculture and Food Sovereignty!

GLOBALISE THE STRUGGLE!!
GLOBALISE HOPE!!!
--
Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers. We are an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or other type of affiliation. Born in 1993, La Via Campesina now gathers about 150 organisations in 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

International Operational Secretariat:
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV no 5 Jakarta Selatan 12790, Indonesia
Tel/fax: +62-21-7991890/+62-21-7993426
Email: viacampesina@viacampesina.org

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Homage to a humble man

Karim F. Hirji

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/79958

On 29 January 2012, a humble man left this planet, forever. Complications of malaria, maybe. Sixty-seven years old, with a jovial, simple, diligent personality, he had run a small management consulting company in Dar es Salaam for nearly 20 years.

His family, neighbours, co-workers, clients and friends grieved deeply. But few others took note of his sudden passing. Ordinarily, the demise of a person of any prominence occasions a media tsunami in Tanzania. This one, however, did not generate even a tiny wave.

Should it have been otherwise? Let us pause to reflect: his name was Henry Mapolu. He had lectured in the Sociology Department of the University of Dar es Salaam from 1972 to 1978.

In that short period, he conducted pioneering, meticulous research into topics as diverse as industrial management and work relations, and rural development and social stratification in Tanzania. His MA thesis dealt with tobacco farming and social change in rural Tabora.

He edited one book, co-edited a second, and wrote erudite chapters therein. On the first book, ‘Workers and Management in Tanzania’ (Tanzania Publishing House, 1974), Professor Andrew Coulson of the University of Birmingham notes: ‘[I]t will always be a classic. In many ways, it pioneered urban sociology in Tanzania.’

Henry Mapolu demonstrated his mettle from his student days. He was an active member of a socialist, Pan Africanist student organization, and sat on the editorial board of its journal, ‘Cheche’, until both were banned in 1970 for being too outspoken. Not deterred, he went on to found and be the senior editor of another progressive student journal, ‘MajiMaji’. These journals addressed burning social and economic issues in an engaged and scholarly manner. They carried perceptive papers from distinguished academics, local and international. The readership extended beyond the borders of Tanzania to Kenya, Uganda, Europe, USA, China and elsewhere.

As a student and an academic, Mapolu not only took part in the scholarly exchanges of the era, but also wrote letters, commentaries, articles and book reviews for popular consumption in the national press. His delivery in both venues was logical and evidence-based. Yet, unlike most ivory tower residents, he had a particular knack for converting an intricate idea into a clear form. His eminently understandable writing style was widely appreciated by students, colleagues and readers.

And Henry was not just a man of words. With fellow progressives, he worked in Ujamaa villages, self-help projects and adult literacy campaigns. He went door to door to raise funds for African liberation movements. His popular writings and voluntary work yielded no personal gain. They just imposed an additional burden on top of the heavy demands of the academia. And, often, they drew the ire of the powers that be. Nevertheless, he persevered, and excelled on both fronts.

By 1978, Henry Mapolu was an eminent-sociologist-in-the-making, and was viewed as such, here and abroad. His works featured in university courses, and were cited and quoted widely.
Yet, one fine day, on his own volition, and without any inducements, he stepped off the ivory tower to take up the post of the workers education officer at the Urafiki Textile Mill, the largest industrial enterprise in the nation. Strange as it may seem today, the rationale underlying this unorthodox step was simple: he was a public intellectual, a socialist dedicated to the welfare of the common man and Africa.

At the Mill, he worked as hard and as creatively as ever to organise a broad based worker education program. It included literacy classes, basic economics, labour law, technical aspects of textile production, social issues, national affairs and global politics. He recruited qualified experts to write simple but not simplistic pamphlets of relevance, and teach the workers. It was a remarkable, well attended and genuinely popular program the like of which has not been seen elsewhere in Africa. A segment of the material for these courses was later produced in a book form.

Henry was also a man of principles. One fine morning, he heard on the radio that he was to be a district commissioner. It was a presidential appointment. Most would either have jumped at the opportunity, or be too intimidated to decline. But Henry did not covet the position. Importantly, he had not been consulted beforehand. So, he simply but firmly said, “No, I do not accept.” And that was that - the first and only time such a bold stand has been taken in the history of independent Tanzania.

In the last two decades of his life, Henry receded from public view to immerse himself in consultancy work and family affairs. Unlike others of his era, he did not join the corrupt state bureaucracy, or attempt to rapidly rise through dubious means. On a rare occasion, he wrote a book review or so. His last scholarly contribution was a fabulous chapter dealing with the challenges of publishing a student magazine for the book ‘Cheche: Reminscences of a Radical Magazine’ (Mkuki na Nyota, 2010).

The illuminating writings of Henry Mapolu have stood the test of time to constitute an enduring part of the finest scholarship on Africa. His analyses of rural development and stratification presage and stand shoulder to shoulder with the writings of the ablest modern social scientists on globalisation. They are as relevant now as they were then. In the struggle for the genuine liberation of Africa, they are a must read.

Upon learning of his death, eminent scholars from all over have written to his friends to declare to that effect. Those who knew him personally speak of his fine intellect, his integrity, humility and friendliness, and indeed, of how much they have learned from him. Veteran journalist Jenerali Ulimwengu depicts him as ‘an outstanding thinker, a man of high moral stature, and a truly compassionate and gentle being.’

On the other hand, most Tanzanians and East Africans, including university students and staff in the social sciences, do not know him, this distinguished, dedicated son of Africa. It is a sign of the times. We pay lip service to the plight of the common man but covet donor dollars and worship Western capitalist ideas and ideology. We have outsourced our thought processes. And thereby we forget what they desire us to forget.

I had the privilege of learning, working, and laughing with Henry Mapolu for almost four and a half decades. With his family and close associates, I am extremely dejected at his unexpected and untimely departure.

More than ever, Africa needs to remember, respect and heed the words of its authentic, committed intellectuals. The true rebirth of Africa cannot be other than an internally driven process, in thoughts and deeds.

Farwell then, comrade Henry Mapolu. We owe you much. You so well played your part in this ongoing rebirth. One day, your dream will be realised. May you then generate a spark in the sky in celebration.

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* Karim F. Hirji is a Professor of Biostatistics at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

'Robert Mugabe: What Happened?'

National roll-out of new film in February 2012

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79959

In parallel narratives Simon Bright tells the stories of Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe and the personal journey of Robert Mugabe, using one to explain the other and finally suggesting why Mugabe chose the road he has.

As a biography it has everything - first-hand accounts of Mugabe’s early life with a desperately poor Catholic mother, what he was like at school, the effects of a Jesuit education and his rage against his absent father. As his star ascends commentators reflect on early landmarks, particularly his attendance of Ghana’s independence celebrations in 1957.

It’s clear the highly intellectual Young Turk was admired and respected through the 1960s and 70s: Bright traces the origins of the esteem through fascinating archival film interviews. The parallel story of the transition is equally well researched, as are later episodes of importance, notably Lancaster House, the Matabeleland genocide and the growing role of global business in Africa’s economies.

But it’s the behind-the-scenes jostling for power which Bright exposes that is the most riveting, and from it Mugabe emerges as unquestionably one of history’s most canny, devious leaders. It is a haunting film, the music an achievement in itself, a mix of liberation, folk and contemporary sounds. Simon Bright was co-producer of the pivotal 1996 Zimbabwe liberation film ‘Flame’.

* This brief is courtesy of the director and Spier Films.

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‘Over The Years’

Louis Bankole Jones

Roland Bankole Marke

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/79962

Publication date: September 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4653-6842-3
Publisher: Xlibris.com

I’m delighted, if not enchanted, when a Sierra Leonean ventures into the literary realm, and Dr. Louis Bankole Jones’ maiden and slim collection of poems: ‘Over The Years’ is no exception.

The field remains open and encourages more writers and poets of diverse backgrounds, with fresh inspirational voices, in luxuriating their valuable work to educate, inform and entertain readers, especially those Sierra Leoneans yet to be acculturated into the culture of reading for information and entertainment. Our folks shouldn’t be stuck solely in the pursuit of academic prowess or advancement. It’s sad to be reminded that literacy in Sierra Leone is deplorable, and the emergence of the nation’s gruesome civil war hindered the advancement of education. A nation that pays more lip service to education than to its transformation will be stalled in the oasis of underdevelopment and its attendant social problems. Dr. B. Jones, as a medical doctor, points his homegrown radar toward a new vision and perspective.

His poems dilute empty theories, if not the cerebral cortex, and penetrate the shortcomings of humanity. And he pivots at the confluence of spirituality and humanity to help prepare us for the necessary and inevitable celestial domain. He is endowed with the ability to explore the mind, body and soul connection. And he does so with clarity, vividness, intensity and raw emotions, seemingly boiling over with nostalgia and organic patriotism. His genuine fortitude indicts toxic ignorance, greed and lust for power, even by folks without the fire in their bellies to help change the lives and destiny of a destitute nation, nailed and crucified on the cross of poverty and backwardness. Aside from the motherland, he transports us to his exile days in neighbouring Guinea, forced on him by tragic events in Sierra Leone. His love of nature blossoms in the poem Valentine’s Day, experienced in South Brunswick N.J. In the poem; ‘The Lily’s Turn’, he compares the beauty and gift of nature with the gloom created by humanity:

‘Disbelieving beings, shocked and dumbfounded
At the madness of their fellow human fools
The lily flower smiles and says:
“Look at me how beautiful and calm I am
Amidst this terrible gloom.”

“When will you realize
This is not God’s purpose
For humanity, nor for all creation?”’
The enigma of hopelessness ongoing in this battered nation has infected the vulnerable as self-centred converts to abuse the DNA of good citizenry and leadership. Children and aged men and women are left to fend for themselves, as the connected and selected prosper, some by looting the national coffers. And celebrate their sudden huge fortunes amid the abject poverty of the masses, who are condemned to eternal poverty. The poem on page 11: ‘Who Are They’, reminds us of, and illuminates the ugly past. In the absence of legitimate and functional leadership, pandemonium of a rudderless nation eventually lands Sierra Leone at the lowest ebb, if not the point of no return:

‘And who are they
Who eat the still-pulsating hearts
Of young virgins
And drink the blood
Of our freshly killed fathers and mothers?
Please tell us who are they
Who say they are fighting
To save us all?

And who are they
Who buy their blood-stained DIAMONDS
And sell them for guns, bombs and drugs
And who are they
Who speak on their behalf?’

Dr. Jones’ bare-knuckled stance as pragmatism should not be mistaken as advocating anti-government bad blood, or over the top radicalism. He is speaking the truth that could save his motherland and himself – but only if our people and the leaders listen to his passionate message. Recent reports of violence nationwide remind us that Sierra Leone has not learned the lessons of its grim past.

‘Over The Years’ is a stark reminder that this ailing nation needs to chart a more peaceful and responsible path in conducting the business of politics. Grenades are littered all over the country and they could go off at will without much deterrence. The writer in me is often asking the question boiling inside me. Is Sierra Leonean blood cheaper than the value of its natural resources so easily carted away at rock bottom prices? This poetry collection must be on the coffee table of every Sierra Leonean and African. Readers around the world would benefit from its revelations and illumination. I find this book interesting and enjoyable and a worthy investment. I look forward to more inspiring and artistic work coming from the promising pen of this Sierra Leonean patriot, Dr. Louis Bankole Jones.

* Contact Dr. Louis Bankole Jones at louisbjones@aol.com
* Roland Bankole Marke © 2012

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A Tribute to Gil Scott Heron and the Black Panther Party

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/80101

http://bit.ly/yWrtty

America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama

2012-02-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/79960

http://bit.ly/w2NpLz

Film on blind migrants in Johannesburg

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/80103

http://bit.ly/wl8G16

Zimbabwe: 'Mugabe won't sign Constitution that disqualifies him'

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/79937

http://bit.ly/wyp44b

Zimbabwe: 29 NGOs suspended

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/79982

http://bit.ly/x0M798

Zimbabwe: Court dismisses acquittal application by ‘video watching’ activists

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/80005

http://bit.ly/yIMitc

Zimbabwe: EU lifts more sanctions

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/80107

http://bbc.in/z1EAjj

Africa: Try again, SADC tells Nkosazana

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/aumonitor/80096

http://bit.ly/ywl07J

Egypt: Women lash out at presidential hopeful Abu Ismail’s veil comments

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/79949

http://bit.ly/A9RUxO

Kenya: Bill aims to improve care and justice for rape victims

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/79948

http://bit.ly/wAVZtb

Liberia: Women look to family planning

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/79947

http://bit.ly/x1PCmx

Sudan: Darfur women take on hard labour

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80104

http://bit.ly/xNdtvI

Uganda: Concerns over Malaysia sex trade

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/79983

http://bit.ly/xtveA0

Botswana: Call to end death penalty

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80112

http://bit.ly/y1P8mx

Egypt: MPs slam fact-finding mission report on Port Said massacre

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/79950

http://bit.ly/ylvYYW

Equatorial Guinea: Opposition figure held

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80113

http://bit.ly/yBE5dP

Ethiopia: Ogaden Somalis seek Ethiopia abuse inquiry

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80115

http://bit.ly/y3oiE7

Malawi: Outspoken critic of Malawi's president jailed

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80114

http://bit.ly/yvaAgi

Morocco: Morocco urged to drop vote boycott cases

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80111

http://bit.ly/xDPxSR

South Africa: Police unit probed over 51 deaths

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80075

http://bit.ly/wOYBj0

Sudan: University students assaulted

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80105

http://aje.me/zE5Xtu

Tanzania: Call for support of arrested activists

2012-02-20

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/570/Letter to Tanzania President.doc

Sixteen Tanzanian human rights defenders were arrested on 9 February. In protest against the Tanzanian authority's act that goes counter their state commitment to protect, respect and fulfill human rights, Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) has drafted a letter urging the Tanzania authorities to release and drops all charges against these activists. They are requesting people to support the 16 activists by:
1. printing and delivering/posting the letter to the president's office in Dar-es-salaam if based in Dar-es-salaam or any part of Tanzania
2. printing and delivering the letter to the Tanzania embassy/consulate in your country if based outside Tanzania,
3. adapting the letter and putting it on your organisation's letter head, signing it and delivering it to the president office or the representative of Tanzania government in your country.

Africa: 1,500 migrants died trying to reach Europe in 2011

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80110

http://reut.rs/wQOHRW

Global: Canadian refugee system faces 'unprecedented dismantling'

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80109

http://bit.ly/y5YN3s

Global: Investigation on arbitrary detention of migrants

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/79994

http://bit.ly/AsKDOc

Kenya: Hundreds displaced by fresh clashes in Isiolo

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/79985

http://bit.ly/AkkHnJ

Mali: UN warning over refugees fleeing Tuareg rebellion

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80108

http://bbc.in/yYrJjU

South Africa: Migrants face unlawful arrests and hasty deportations

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/79987

http://bit.ly/ytoeA0

South Africa: March against housing corruption in Shallcross

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/80116

http://bit.ly/A4WfWJ

Egypt: Calls for general strike see limited appeal

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/79951

http://bit.ly/xGdcnq

South Africa: Miner dead in platinum mine protest

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/80006

http://bit.ly/xmhFLQ

Latest edition: emerging powers news roundup

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/80102

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

China rail company inks $1.4 billion contracts in Africa
A subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corp Ltd has signed two projects in Africa with a total contract value of 9.1 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), the company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The value of the projects, located in Nigeria and Djibouti, equates to just under 2 percent of China Railway's 2010 operating income, the company said.
Read More

South Sudan threatens to expel Chinese oil companies
Chinese oil companies operating in South Sudan face the possibility of expulsion if it is proven that they are complicit in stealing the country’s oil, a senior official said here today. The newborn state which became independent last July is locked in a row with its northern neighbour over oil and transporting it through the pipeline that runs through Sudan’s territory.
Read More

President Jonathan Unveils $1 billion Dangote Cement Plant
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has formally unveiled a new cement factory built by the Dangote Cement group at Ibese, Ogun state. The ceremony was witnessed by business moguls and bankers. Governor Ibikunle Amosun, the host governor was also in attendance. The $1 billion plant has capacity to produce 6 million metric tonnes of cement per annum.
Read More

Ghana cautioned on Chinese $3-billion loan arrangement
The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) says Ghana's decision to allow the use of 70 per cent of future oil revenue as collateral for borrowing gives cause for concern. The report, made available in Accra Monday, says if not managed properly, little benefit will be seen in return for a larger debt stock and greater potential for corruption. The EIU believes observers should monitor closely how the Ghanaian government, under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, handles the US$3bn loan package for infrastructure from China.
Read More

China's Minmetals wins $1.3 bln Anvil bid, eyes more
China's Minmetals Resources sealed a C$1.3 billion ($1.3 billion) bid for Africa-focused copper miner Anvil Mining on Friday, and said it was on the lookout for copper, zinc and nickel acquisitions for up to $7 billion. Hong Kong-listed Minmetals (MMR), a unit of China's biggest metals trader, wanted Anvil for its Kinsevere copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is expected to produce 60,000 tonnes of copper cathode a year.
Read More

EDF to bid with Chinese partner for SA nuclear tender
French utility EDF said it plans to bid for a contract to build nuclear reactors in South Africa in a possible Franco-Chinese partnership. EDF's nuclear business helped it to post higher 2011 earnings on Thursday, offsetting lower hydroelectric power generation. The group kept its profit growth forecasts despite higher costs to fund safety improvements at the 58 nuclear reactors it runs in France, recommended following the Fukushima disaster.
Read More

China appoints new special representative for African affairs
The Chinese government has appointed a new special representative for African affairs, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said here Tuesday. Liu said at a press conference that Zhong Jianhua, a senior diplomat who once served as Chinese ambassador to South Africa, has succeeded Liu Guijin as the special representative.
Read More

2. India in Africa

Rwanda: Kagame Receives Indian Minister
President Paul Kagame yesterday received in his office the visiting Indian State Minister for External Affairs, Preneet Kaur. They discussed bilateral ties as well as the Indo-Africa Partnership (IAP) under which India has committed $5 billion for Africa. The deal, which involves a grant of $700 million and loan schemes, was announced during the IAP forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May last year.
Read More

India: Africa operation boosts revenue of Indian telecoms firm
The African operations of Indian telecommunications firm Bharti Airtel has raised the company's global revenue for the third quarter of 2011 up to December by 17 per cent. The local media Friday quoted the company as saying in a statement that the revenue growth was particularly strong in Nigeria and other African operations, which boosted the revenue by 32 per cent to US$1.057 million.
Read More

3. In Other Emerging Powers News

Environment ministers of BASIC to discuss climate strategy
For the first time since the December climate change meet in Durban, environment ministers from the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - will come together in New Delhi this week. The meeting will be focused on working out a common and concerted strategy on the proposed new global climate change regime.
Read More

Maritime piracy under the spotlight
South Africa will host 32 member states of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) and various international parties with interests in these waters when the third such event takes place in Cape Town in April 2012. The South African Navy also assumes the chair of the IONS this year, a position it will hold for the next two years.
Read More

4. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Nigeria: China's African Union Secretariat 'Gift'
One of the highlights of the three-day meeting of African heads of state and governments in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia held between the 18 and 21 of January was the commissioning of a new $200 million secretariat. The 12-storey edifice was built by the Chinese and donated to the African Union to serve as its new headquarters. China made the gift of the headquarters perhaps to demonstrate its appreciation for the many economic projects it is undertaking on the continent. In its relentless drive for economic development which it has sustained at the rate of 10% annually for more than a decade now, China's forays into Africa have been mainly for sourcing of raw materials, but it has also made improvement of Africa's infrastructure, a component of the relationship. While prospecting for mineral ores in Zambia, China has built an oil refinery complex in Niger Republic and is modernizing railways in East Africa.
Read More

South Sudan: A critical battleground between China and USA
With only few months into independence, the oil rich, but yet impoverished South Sudan finds itself trapped on the cycle of foreign aid dependency as well as a battleground for superpowers’ hegemony and influence. This is the classical rivalry and the clash of East meeting West being put into play, with the number two world economy, China, trying to hold on its sphere, while the the number one USA is trying to outmaneuver its way through. The battle between China and USA over influence in Africa, the Sudan in particular, has been brewing for years. The rivalry is now reaching its climax, with South Sudan being set as the theater of operations.
Read More

5 Lessons From the Rise of the BRICs
As investors and economic analysts cast about for the next batch of high-growth markets, let's pause to recall the lessons from the BRICs: (1) Work on the middle-income transition plan; (2) Trade, trade, trade; (3) state capitalism can work; (4) corruption kills; (5) strong civil society matters.
Read More

Angola: Dos Santos to seek new term

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/79935

http://n24.cm/wmMcIu

Egypt: June presidential election date set

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80063

http://bit.ly/zzHzCR

Kenya: Raila, Ruto feud goes to Parliament

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/79992

http://bit.ly/z6lrWw

Malawi: No end in sight to judiciary strike

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/79941

http://bit.ly/ybeRI1

Senegal: Leading rappers seized in Senegal protests

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80068

http://bit.ly/yhEOyp

Senegal: Police prevent opposition sit-in

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/79980

http://bit.ly/Arn8rU

Senegal: Protesters and police clash just before vote

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80073

http://bit.ly/yqMxpp

Somalia: Leaders decide on key deal

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80065

http://bit.ly/xCEuUA

South Africa: Malema may be gone, but issues still remain

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/79998

http://bit.ly/wrXZuL

Angola: Saga over CNNs Angola coverage continues

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/79934

http://bit.ly/xbJIho

Swaziland: PM in conflict of interest reports

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/79946

http://bit.ly/A8Zcvv

Tanzania: Were Dar floods worsened by corruption?

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/79995

http://bit.ly/wdefnJ

Africa: $50-billion illegally exported from Africa annually

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80074

http://bit.ly/A6Gntu

Angola: Hundreds of companies privatised in 10 years

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/79944

http://bit.ly/w6Nik1

Global: Campaigners demand fair selection process in appointment of new Bank head

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80004

http://bit.ly/xePBPa

Global: The state of the global economy

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/79999

http://bit.ly/xDqA1Z

Namibia: Areva involved in nuclear energy plan

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/79936

http://bit.ly/yOndWb

Burkina Faso: More money needed to guarantee the availability of ARVs

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80000

http://bit.ly/zRYJZN

Côte d’Ivoire: Meningitis spreads as people scramble for vaccine

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/79988

http://bit.ly/yYWqn6

Kenya: Discordance strains commitment

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80067

http://bit.ly/yYFvhL

Mozambique: Cholera fears amid depleting stocks

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80001

http://bit.ly/xePBPa

South Africa: Accounts of women with a history of AIDS activism

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80076

http://bit.ly/z6QDWV

Southern Africa: Mines, migration and HIV/AIDS

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80090

http://bit.ly/xm9RnU

Zimbabwe: Two suspected typhoid deaths

2012-02-14

http://bit.ly/xcEWG2

The Health Ministry in Zimbabwe said it has recorded two suspected typhoid deaths, as an outbreak of the disease appeared to worsen. The ministry was awaiting laboratory analysis to confirm if the deaths were the result of the bacterial disease that is spread through contaminated food and water. Since the start of the outbreak in late October, 2,716 cases have been identified, mostly in two crowded townships with limited and run-down sanitation infrastructure near the capital Harare.
The Health Ministry in Zimbabwe said it has recorded two suspected typhoid deaths, as an outbreak of the disease appeared to worsen. The ministry was awaiting laboratory analysis to confirm if the deaths were the result of the bacterial disease that is spread through contaminated food and water. Since the start of the outbreak in late October, 2,716 cases have been identified, mostly in two crowded townships with limited and run-down sanitation infrastructure near the capital Harare.

Liberia: Anti-Homosexuality Bill: An open letter to Leymah Gbowee

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80093

http://bit.ly/At08Ya

South Africa: When our sexuality is referred to as a 'thing'

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/79978

http://bit.ly/zJRQyc

Uganda: Statements by Ugandan & African organisations against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80092

http://bit.ly/zK6V73

Zimbabwe: UK court blow for gay Zimbabwean asylum seekers

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/79939

http://bit.ly/wXiEmZ

Africa: The impact of land grabs on women

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/79993

http://bit.ly/xU339D

Liberia: Land grab or development opportunity?

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80064

http://bit.ly/wK4dOC

South Africa: Young Communist League calls for Mulder's resignation

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80072

http://bit.ly/ygKwlY

Global: Monsanto found guilty of chemical poisoning in France

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/80097

http://bit.ly/zzoycb

DRC: Government pulls three media houses off air

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80070

http://bit.ly/zeKg6M

Ethiopia: EU backs Ethiopia into a corner over jailed Swedes

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80069

http://bit.ly/yApQnb

Kenya: Army is on Twitter, but it’s not sharing much

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/79979

http://bit.ly/z8gpwk

Somalia: Exiled journalists mark emotional event to celebrate world radio day

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80099

http://bit.ly/wglU4X

South Sudan: Attack on South Sudan reporter sparks critical debate

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80095

http://bit.ly/zXaclK

The Gambia: ECOWAS Court orders Gambia to pay compensation to tortured newspaper editor

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/79984

http://bit.ly/wpUqTW

Zimbabwe: Community radio projects under threat

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/79938

http://bit.ly/yShSeo

Africa: Multiple attempts to lure diaspora

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/diaspora/79981

http://bit.ly/zv54gE

Global: The twisted history of the drone

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/79989

http://bit.ly/xA6Cbr

Libya: Militias commit widespread abuses, says Amnesty

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/79996

http://bit.ly/xiKEmE

Madagascar: Cyclone kills at least 10 people

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/79986

http://bit.ly/AzrqJL

Mozambique: New cyclone threat

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80077

http://bit.ly/wCiqcf

Nigeria: Boko Haram says killed 12 soldiers

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/79945

http://reut.rs/yICaMr

Nigeria: Bomb explodes near church

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80106

http://aje.me/wOiLRE

Sahel: UN calls for more help to assist 10 million in need

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80071

http://huff.to/xB4qzd

Senegal: No end in sight to Casamance conflict

2012-02-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80066

http://bit.ly/zSfOam

South Africa: Woman killed in Mpumalanga protests

2012-02-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/79943

http://n24.cm/xUiWY2

Latin America: Fifth South-South Summer Institute

21 May – 1 June, 2012 - Recife, Brazil

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/80089

Rethinking development: global and regional alternatives for the development in the South

African applicants should send their applications to:
CODESRIA,
2012 South-South Summer Institute,
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, SENEGAL
Tel: (221) 825 9822: Fax: (221) 824 1289
E-mail: south.institute@codesria.sn
Website: www.codesria.org

Asian applicants should send their applications to:
CODESRIA,
2012 South-South Summer Institute,
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, SENEGAL
Tel: (221) 825 9822: Fax: (221) 824 1289
E-mail: south.institute@codesria.sn
Website: www.codesria.org

and

CLACSO,
2012 South- South Summer Institute
Callao 875, 3º (1023) Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
Tel: (54 11) 4811-6588 / 4814-2301; Fax: (54 11) 4812-845
E-mail: sur@clacso.edu.ar
Website: www.clacso.org

Latin American and Caribbean applicants should send their applications to:
CLACSO,
2012 South- South Summer Institute
Callao 875, 3º (1023) Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
Tel: (54 11) 4811-6588 / 4814-2301; Fax: (54 11) 4812-845
E-mail: sur@clacso.edu.ar
Website: www.clacso.org

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: Latest issue of Corporate Watch Magazine available

Housing Crisis?

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/80100

This edition deals with the housing crisis and includes the following articles:
- The Neoliberal Project, Privatisation and the Housing Crisis
- Housing Associations: Privatisation Via Not-For-Profits
- Housing Profiteers and their Facilitators & Company Profile: Grainger
- Homelessness: Who profits from destitution?
- The Return of Class War Conservatism: the Realities of Housing in the ‘Big Society'
- Housing Benefit Cuts: Educate, Agitate, Organise!
- Anti-Squat Security Companies: Protection by Occupation?
- The Criminalisation of Squatting
- Alternatives: Housing Co-ops & Case Study: Phoenix Co-op
- Campaign Spotlight: SQUASH

Visit http://corporatewatch.org/?lid=4178 for more information.

Global: The Journal of Peace Research

Special issue on climate change

2012-02-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/80098

http://bit.ly/xgJcyk

Vacancies at the Refugee Law Project

2012-02-20

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/570/RLP_Job_dvert_Feb_2012.pdf

The Refugee Law Project (RLP) is an outreach project of the School of Law, Makerere University. Our Mission is to empower asylum seekers, refugees, deportees, IDPs and host communities to enjoy their human rights and lead dignified lives. RLP is currently seeking to appoint a number of staff, including the following: Human Resources Manager, Research Analyst, Volunteer English For Adults (EFA) Instructor, Volunteer Lawyer – Durable Solutions, Volunteer Lawyer – Gender & Sexuality, Volunteer Assessment Assistants, Finance Assistant and Volunteer Finance Assistant, Office Assistant, Community Interpreters.

South Africa: Sex work during the 2010 world cup

2012-02-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wc2010/79977

http://bit.ly/yLKUim

Fahamu