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Daring to invent the future: Join the Friends of Pambazuka

Firoze Manji

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80176

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.

Become a Friend of Pambazuka.

To find out more, write to us.

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Abdoulaye Wade, are you a fraudulent Pan-Africanist?

Horace Campbell

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80214

cc UN PhotoPresident Wade wants a third term in office over the dead bodies of Senegalese people. Yet this is the same man who has tried to identify with Pan-Africanism. After Sunday’s elections, popular struggles for a better Senegal will continue.

Abdoulaye Wade is 85 years old. Or is it 86? Or 87? Who Knows? He is campaigning for a third term as the president of the Republic of Senegal. Wade won the elections to be president in 2000 and won another six-year term in 2007. There will be elections on Sunday, February 26, 2012. Under the Constitution of Senegal, Wade is not eligible to run for a third term. A questionable panel of judges tampered with the interpretation of the Constitution so that Wade could be ‘given’ permission to stand for a Third term. The people of Senegal have responded and have said that they have not given him permission and have been making daily manifestations against the potential third term presidency of Wade. It is likely that he will come through the elections on Sunday over the dead bodies of many Senegalese. For the past fifty years Wade represented himself as a Pan-African fighter for dignity and unity.

During the presidency of Leopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal after independence, Wade campaigned to form a political party and unsuccessfully ran against the next leader of the Socialist Party, Abdou Diouf. The Socialist Party of Senghor had dominated Senegalese politics for some 40 years but in the era of structural adjustment, this party started implementation of the ‘reforms’ to deepen capitalist exploitation. The ‘reforms’ of structural adjustment involved the strengthening of the local capitalist class in Senegal and included the privatisation of financially sound state-owned entities. In the process new social forces came into being while the majority became impoverished. Hundreds of young Senegalese started to leave the country with the exodus increasing daily. Abdou Diouf was defeated in the elections of 2000 because Wade campaigned on behalf of the people, calling himself the ‘Street President’.

Twelve years later the impact of the ’structural adjustment reforms’ are being felt even more and the people want a government that can respond to their needs. The opposition in Senegal is divided, but this is one of the most sophisticated countries in Africa with a long history of popular struggles. During the colonial period, it was the scene of one of the most protracted strikes for better living conditions. Wade had ridden on this history and had proclaimed himself as a progressive Pan-Africanist. For a short while, he was one of the few leaders calling for the immediate unification of the peoples of Africa and the building of the infrastructure for the United States of Africa. Today, as he turns the weapons of this state against the people, we are calling on Mr. Wade to step aside or go down in history as a fraudulent Pan Africanist. It is not too late to listen to the people.

PAN AFRICANISM AND DIGNITY: DEEP PAN AFRICAN TRADITIONS IN SENEGAL AND WEST AFRICA

The basic creed of Pan-Africanism is the dignity of human beings, especially the dignity of Africans. This concept of dignity has gone through many phases. At one moment it was the struggle against colonialism; at another moment, it was s struggle against apartheid. It was a struggle against Jim Crow and racism. In the 21st century, the Pan-African struggle combines the anti-colonial and the anti-racist history with a new thrust for dignity and renewal of the African person. Increasingly, as the poor people of Africa suffer the brunt of the capitalist crisis, it is clearer that the present state structures in Africa cannot be the basis for freedom and dignity. Africa cannot be free with the structures of the Berlinist state along with the institutions of exploitation and domination.

The peoples of Senegal understood this basic dictum of Pan-African unity and freedom and the ordinary workers, traders and cultural workers from Senegal claimed African and international spaces. They do not respect colonial borders. They do not respect the barriers to the free movement of people. This Pan-Africanism at the grassroots is most evident among the women who are the connective corridor between the Pan-African trade networks across Africa. Whether it is Angola, Zambia, South Africa, Ghana, one will find these traders, crafts persons who do not allow language, currencies or political forces to prevent them from carrying out their day to day existence.

It is this culture of freedom in Senegal that produced some of the greatest Pan-African thinkers and Cheikh Anta Diop stands heads and shoulders over many. Diop’s work and his contributions on the cultural unity of Africa remains one of the foundation documents for the building of the union of the peoples of Africa. Younger Pan-Africanists will do well to read his writings on Pan-Africanism and the need for one government in Africa. Diop was also aware of the need for a special place for women in this united Africa so he suggested a bicameral arrangement with special deliberative bodies for women. It is also Cheikh Anta Diop who wrote and spoke of the vibrant African optimism that will take Africa out of the barbarism of capitalism. Senegal also produced the top film maker and writer, Ousmane Sembène, whose Pan-African writings have lifted the hearts and spirits of peoples everywhere. Sembene wanted humans to have dignity. Then, there are the hundreds of cultural voices who use different mediums to bring across their message. Senegalese rappers are now joining the traditions of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and other Pan-African in singing songs of freedom and emancipation.

It is from this strong cultural background where Abdoulaye Wade attempted to carve out a space for himself in history. Wade wanted to represent himself at the political level to stand in the history of Pan-Africanism beside Cheikh Anta Diop and Sembene Ousmane. In the past twelve years, Wade has been one of the most forthright calling for the immediate unification of Africa. The long traditions of openness that had been claimed by the Senegalese people allowed African intellectuals the space in Dakar to debate the future architecture for the union of the peoples of Africa. Wade would turn up at these meetings and proclaim that he was not like other Francophone politicians who did not understand the real meaning of Pan-Africanism. However, after hearing Wade once, one could quickly penetrate the rhetoric to see that he was representing a state centered Pan-Africanism where the people were simply cheerleaders to facilitate his hold on to power.

At the Kwame Nkrumah conference in Ghana in May 2010, Wade exceeded himself in the promotion of sycophancy by bringing about 100 of the youth wing of his party for the conference in Accra. It was evident that these young persons were simply praise singers because of the lack of interest in any other persons who were offering statements on the future of Pan-Africanism. Wade was exposing himself as a fraud, one who is a sham Pan-Africanist, one who will attempt to deceive the Progressive Pan African constituency in his country.

FRAUDULENT PAN AFRICANIST AND DYNASTIC RULE

The level of political fraud and retrogression had deepened in Africa to the point that in comparison to the leaders of Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, or the other horror stories of misrule, the society of Senegal stood out. The people of Senegal had removed Diouf in a peaceful manner and this society was called a model democratic country in Africa. Senegalese working people defended their society with pride and the cultural persons sought to excel on the world stage. Wade stepped into this culture and joined what he considered the radical wing of the Pan African movement. When Muammar Gaddafi was making pronouncements on the United States of Africa, Wade was at the forefront of these pronouncements. No sooner had the rebellion started in Benghazi last year than this supporter of Gaddafi broke ranks with the position of the African Union and travelled to Benghazi to offer support for the National Transitional Council. Wade was a good voice for NATO at a moment when the African Union was offering its capabilities for negotiations. Wade undermined the African Union.

This duplicity was in line with what Wade was exercising at home. After joining in the struggles against structural adjustment in the period of Abdou Diouf, Wade went overboard to carry out the ‘reform’ packages and ingratiated himself with the lords of finance by seeking a place at the annual meeting of capitalism at Davos, Switzerland. The rich and well-connected in Senegal grew richer while the divide grew sharper. Wade promoted his family and announced his intention to hark back to the days of slavery when the rich handed down power to their sons. Wade made it clear that he was grooming his son Karim Wade to be the next president of Senegal. Karim was given a number of ministries to run and his role as a ‘super minister’ offended the sensibilities of a people who prided themselves in understanding political planning of succession. The people objected to the dynastic plans of Abdoulaye Wade.

THIRD TERM OR HISTORICAL GRAVEYARD

Under the constitution, Abdoulaye Wade was not eligible to run for a third term as president. Throughout the year 2011 the peoples of Senegal organised against the increased impoverishment. Wade was identified properly as the agent of international capitalism and the widespread looting. New forms of extra-parliamentary struggles erupted with rappers, bloggers and youth leaders coming to the fore. The struggles against the capitalist crisis were consolidated around the opposition to Mr. Wade and his son Karim. In this period the world music star Youssou N'Dour offered himself up to be a candidate for the presidency of Senegal. As in Egypt, the politics had reached a new stage where groups, associations and parties agreed to come together to oppose Wade. It was the same dynamic as in the opposition to Diouf of 2000, except by 2011 there was the additional experience of seeing that there must be new vehicles for organizing and that the struggles had to be tenacious. Rappers filled the airwaves with new words of inspiration as the music of revolution deepened the ideas of struggle and spread far beyond Senegal.

Abdoulaye Wade decided to defy the history of Senegal and pressed on with his plans for dynastic succession and announced his plan for a third term. By the end of January 2012, Senegal's constitutional council validated his candidacy and that of 13 opposition rivals. The same constitutional court turned down the presidential bid of the world music star Youssou N'Dour, saying he had not gathered the required 10,000 signatures of support. In his cynical manner, Wade has dismissed the opposition. In an interview, speaking on the constitution he said, ‘The constitution, it’s me that wrote it. All by myself,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows it better than me.’

It is the economic crisis along with the arrogance and fraud that expanded the organizational capabilities of the progressive forces and laid the basis for new demonstrations. Wade called out the police and made it clear to the world that he was going to be president regardless of how many people were killed. This was a new stage in the politics of Senegal. The coalescing of the opposition and the street demonstrations has given a new sense of purpose to the June 23 Movement (M23), an opposition umbrella group opposed to allowing Wade to seek a third term in office.

REMEMBER IVORY COAST

Abdoulaye Wade is not following the opportunism of France very closely. For decades, Ivory Coast was the jewel in the crown of the imperial French plan for Africa. When politicians in the Ivory Coast decided to militarize the contest for power, the country was thrown into a futile war that gave France even more room for intervention. France has supported Wade in the past and they will ditch him and manipulate the crisis on behalf of imperial forces who do not want Africa to unite. The African Union has sent Obasanjo to Senegal to monitor the elections. This mission of Obasanjo is making a mockery of the idea of democratic choice for the people when the system is rigged against them. The awakened Africans have their own monitors and these eyes of grassroots Pan-Africanism are plugged into the vibrant Senegalese diaspora.

The women have not yet spoken. With nearly a dozen dead, the religious institutions are being dragged in slowly. They cannot stand aloof. Wade has attempted to manipulate the differences among the religious leaders but the questions of corruption, high unemployment and mismanagement cannot be papered over by religion. Senegal's elections will usher in a further round of pressures on the poor masses. Unemployment already stands at an all-time high. The Senegalese diaspora is watching very closely. They want a government that can defend them when they are shot in the streets of Italy. They do not want a government who will succumb to the governments who shoot them and also shoot them at home. From all corners, the Senegalese diaspora are giving support and linking differing parts of Africa to this struggle for democratic freedoms.

WADE MUST STEP ASIDE FOR THE GOOD OF SENEGAL AND AFRICA

At the 2007 conference of the African Union, Wade said, ‘If we fail to unite, we will become weak, and if we live isolated in countries that are divided, we face the risk of collapsing in the face of stronger and united economies.’
If you meant these words, step down now.

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* Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University.
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Anti-gay rights crusade in Africa a distraction

Sokari Ekine

2012-02-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80243

From Uganda to Liberia, religious extremists are hijacking the law to drive the obsession with anti-homosexuality legislation rather than addressing the multitude of social and economic issues faced by 99 percent of Africa’s citizens.

Full article available as pdf

Western Sahara: Refugee starvation ‘could trigger new war’

Peter Kenworthy

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80197

cc C CSaharawis are becoming increasingly impatient with the UN and many are willing to break the ceasefire between Western Sahara’s liberation front, Polisario, and Morocco, which has been in place since 1991, and return to war.

‘The strategy of the Moroccan regime is to starve the Saharawi refugees into accepting the Moroccan position. They pressurise the UN into not giving the refugees more aid,’ says the Minister of Cooperation in Western Sahara’s exile government the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, Hach Ahmed Barek Allah. ‘If the starvation in the refugee camps continues, we cannot control the reaction of the people. We want to follow the peace process and continue negotiations, but with the situation now this is becoming increasingly difficult.’

Hach Ahmed visited Africa Contact’s offices in Copenhagen on Monday, 20. February, to discuss the increasingly desperate situation of the approximately 150.000 refugees, who have lived in isolated dessert camps in the Algerian dessert near Tindouf since they fled invading Moroccan troops in 1975, and the UN-led peace process that is meant to enable them to return to Western Sahara, but has been stalled by Morocco and its allies for over 20 years. He is also visiting Denmark and other Northern European countries to specifically ask their governments for humanitarian aid for the refugees.

‘Denmark and other Northern European countries are not like those of Southern Europe, who have too many interests with Morocco,’ Ahmed says. ‘We are therefore asking for urgent humanitarian aid from Northern European governments, including the Danish government.’

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has given basic assistance to the ‘most vulnerable’ Saharawi refugees in the Tindouf refugee camps since 1986 after the Algerian government had supported the refugees for 11 years. According to the WFP, ‘opportunities for self-reliance in the harsh, isolated desert environment where the [Tindouf refugee] camps are located are extremely limited, forcing the refugees to rely on international assistance for their survival. Malnutrition rates remain high, with acute malnutrition at a critical level of 18.2 percent, chronic malnutrition at 31.4 percent and underweight at 31.6 percent.’

But even this inadequate level of aid is being cut back, according to Hach Ahmed. ‘The UNHCR and the EU, who are the main donors, have only promised half of the aid they normally give. The economic crisis, especially in Southern Europe, has a very bad influence on the social and aid programmes.’

The Saharawis are becoming increasingly impatient with the UN, he says, and many are willing to break the ceasefire between Western Sahara’s liberation front, Polisario, and Morocco, which has been in place since 1991, and return to war.

‘It is becoming increasingly difficult to control the reaction of the people. The UN peace process has continued for over 20 years without any progress. This is because of the influence of [permanent member of the UN Security Council] France in the UN. And accepting Morocco as a member of the UN Security Council, while they are colonising Western Sahara, also makes us doubt the fairness of the UN. Would the UN have accepted Syria or Iran as a member of the Security Council? This is a clear example of the hypocrisy of the UN, and such occurrences make is very difficult for us to convince our youth to continue to accept the UN peace process.’

And especially the Saharawi youth have taken an increasingly radical approach towards the Moroccan repression, as they have done in countries throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and time is therefore running out, says Ahmed.

‘Many youths, especially in the refugee camps, do not believe a peaceful process in the occupied territories will give results anymore. Before the [13th executive] congress [of the Polisario Front in December 2011], we even thought that a new leadership that would stop the peace process might be elected. But the activists from the [Moroccan] occupied territories [of Western Sahara] that participated in the congress, advised against electing those who advocated going back to war with Morocco, and thereby gave the Polisario the space to continue with the peace process, at least until the next congress.’

Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975, where Spain secretly relinquished Western Sahara to Morocco (and Mauritania who left in 1979) in exchange for mining and fishing concessions. Being an illegal occupying force, Morocco has no right to sell the natural resources of Western Sahara, as it presently does e.g. through the EU-Moroccan Fisheries Agreement, or to continue to violate the human rights of its citizens. Instead, as international law and over a hundred UN resolutions demand, Morocco must hold a referendum on the status of Western Sahara.

The USA and France, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been the biggest obstruction to this referendum within the UN system. Instead, both are pressing for Western Sahara to remain under Moroccan autonomy. France has had ties with Morocco since the sixteenth century, as well as being Morocco’s main trading partner. The USA had one of its closest allies in Morocco in the ‘fight against communism’ and the ‘war on terror’. Morocco was the first country to recognise the independent United States, subsequently signing a treaty of friendship and commerce with the USA in 1777.

No state recognises Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara, which has also been rejected by the International Court of Justice. Over 80 countries recognise Western Sahara’s exile government, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is also a member of the African Union.

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* Peter Kenworthy writes for Africa Contact.
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Egypt: Struggles that fuelled a revolution

Mohamed Elshahed

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80143

cc O LThe film ‘Bulaq’ succeeds in highlighting the fact that strong social ties and a community’s sense of ownership of place are far stronger than state plans and oppression.

‘Bread, freedom, and social justice’ has been one of the most memorable chants from Egypt’s year of mass protests. Although world and Egyptian media have been fixated on the symbolic Tahrir Square, little attention has been directed towards places where many Egyptians converging on the square actually live. Bulaq, only a few hundred meters north of Tahrir Square, is one such neighbourhood. The residents of Bulaq represent the essence of why Egyptians erupted in mass protests last year. This is a community that has suffered for nearly forty years at the hands of the Sadat and Mubarak regimes, which aimed to erase the district from Cairo’s map. ‘Bulaq: Among the Ruins of an Unfinished Revolution’ is a short documentary film that shifts the focus from the square and into a community at the heart of the struggle for social justice.

The twenty-five minute film by Davide Morandini and Fabio Lucchini documents a deteriorating residential district where residents have faced police brutality and forced evictions for decades. Residents speak directly to the camera, sharing their ordeals and personal experiences. Although those voices speak for the specific case of Bulaq, they also reflect a wider struggle by an entire class of citizens the Egyptian government has long disregarded. As a recent Amnesty International report states, the government has used the longstanding Emergency Law to legitimize its repressive policy of forced evictions targeted at populations in areas such as Bulaq. The repeal of the Emergency Law and the demand for social justice, including housing rights, have been cornerstones of the Tahrir movement. Bulaq threads together these many strands, along with providing a rare look into the everyday lives in popular neighbourhoods such as this one.

Nearly sixty percent of Cairo’s residents today live in so-called ‘informal areas.’ These are areas that urbanized without the guidance of a government-approved urban plan. A more accurate description of those areas is ‘improvised urbanism,’ as they continue a long tradition of improvised planning found in Cairo for centuries prior to the city’s relatively brief encounter with formal planning from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. From the 6th of October Bridge, Bulaq may appear to be another of Cairo’s informal communities; however, this is in fact one of Cairo’s oldest districts.

The name Bulaq is an Arabic adaptation from the French ‘Beaux Lac,’ meaning beautiful lake. In the fifteenth century, Bulaq was Cairo’s main commercial port and was home to some of the city’s wealthy merchant families. The district was also home to the Egyptian Museum in 1858, and Muhammad Ali’s Bulaq Press was established in 1820. Throughout its history, the district developed organically as a middle and working class neighbourhood with an interesting variety of domestic architecture. Despite this rich history, today the word Bulaq is synonymous with collapsed homes and desperate living conditions. It is a community under constant threat from the authorities.

Because of its central location, the district has been envisioned by various regimes as a clean slate for the implementation of new urban models. The film does not cover the trajectory of current state policy towards the district, which can be traced back to 1930, when a plan proposed the reconstruction of the district. Another 1950s plan proposed to ‘cleanse’ Bulaq by replacing its rich fabric with massive modernist blocks surrounded by gardens. These earlier visions remained only on paper. In the 1970s, however, Sadat envisioned the area as a new business district to showcase Egypt’s economic realignment with global capitalism. An aggressive campaign of forced evictions and relocation was commenced. Residents were forced out of their homes and given flats in concrete blocs built on the desert fringes of Cairo. This campaign continued under the Mubarak regime. One of the residents filmed narrates her ordeal when she was evicted in 1982, only to return later.

The film portrays the intimacy and sense of community that Bulaq offers. It also highlights the sense of security provided by living within such a community. Despite the economic hardships and the deteriorating physical environment, the community is thriving socially. The filmmaker intercuts interviews with scenes of everyday life: a woman smoking outside her home, a butcher cutting meat, a child on a bicycle, and a man who is uncomfortable with the presence of a camera and demands to know what is being filmed. Because this has been an ongoing struggle for decades, it has become an intergenerational struggle where young adults echo the concerns of their older neighbours. The film succeeds in highlighting the fact that strong social ties and a community’s sense of ownership of place are far stronger than state plans and oppression. In light of this long struggle, as well as this last year’s unfolding upheaval, the film captures a sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

However, the film lacks historical perspective and context. Although it focuses on the present situation, particularly in light of the revolution, it could have benefited from a well-researched introduction. While the English translations are fairly accurate, the interviews fail to capture how the residents of this community fit within the larger context of Cairo. Also, it would be useful to link the experience of Bulaq to other communities in the city suffering from the same state-sanctioned brutality and eviction. Another shortcoming of the film is its one-sidedness. It would have made a stronger case against government policies if the audience had the chance to hear from officials directly how they view the issue of Bulaq. The multinational developers and hotel chains that also benefit from this government policy are also unheard. An interview with the management of the Hilton Hotel overlooking the district, for example, could have been interesting.

The film is well shot and provides a series of sharp images ranging from intimate close-ups to wide panorama shots. The filmmaker uses a combination of still frames for scenery along with moving shots where he follows some of the film’s characters as they traverse Bulaq’s streets. The sound quality and editing are well done.

The strongest aspect of the film is the residents’ direct address to the audience without the mediation of a third party. They are strong-willed. They know their rights and they demand justice regardless of the obstacles. ‘Those responsible for demolitions have to be tried,’ says one man. ‘In neighborhoods like Bulaq we love each other and work together like one family,’ says a woman. Another man confirms that ‘the owners of this place are the people living here; we own this place.’

‘Bulaq: Among the Ruins of an Unfinished Revolution’ provides a much-needed portrait of the real places where Egyptians live. Officials turn a blind eye to the community they were elected to serve. With Egypt’s centralized governance and lack of local authority, Bulaq residents continue to live under the threat of forced evictions and demolitions. Their right to the city is constantly under duress. Meanwhile, the government carries on with its Cairo2050 plan that aims to transform the area into a zone of glass towers and international hotels. Currently under construction is the St. Regis, a six star hotel along the Nile turning its back on Bulaq.

Egypt’s revolution is about the people of Bulaq and their rights. It is about ending crony capitalism that allows such a disregard for citizens while making concessions to international corporations that aim only to increase their profits rather than develop and rejuvenate communities. As was the case with many Egyptians, the eruption of the revolution gave hope to the people of Bulaq. However, over the course of the past year, little has been done to ensure that the violations of the past and state oppression will end. In this sense, Bulaq continues to wait among its ruins for the still unfinished revolution to deliver real change.

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Cynthia McKinney tells it like it is

A Conversation with Gary S. Corseri

Cynthia McKinney

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80193

cc BRQ Network‘The attack on Libya was an attack on Africa! It was an attack on my aspirations as a person of African descent to have a free and independent Africa. That's what was attacked!’

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in New York City, and have travelled and lived in different parts of the world, including about 18 years in the “Peachtree State” of Georgia. For almost as long as I lived there, I'd heard of Cynthia McKinney — the first African-American woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives. To be honest, a great deal that I heard from the Mainstream Media was negative, portraying Ms. McKinney as a crazy shrew, an over-the-top black radical who questioned the official story of 9/11; opposed the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and, recently, in Libya; opposed Israeli policies, and supported Palestinian demands for statehood. About three years ago, I heard McKinney speak at a conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Instead of a crazy firebrand, I heard an intelligent, measured, if passionate, presentation of why she challenged US war policies.

When I returned to Georgia, I wrote a friend in the UK about my hope to interview McKinney. My friend related a story about the “Dignity” ship, carrying food and medical supplies to Palestine, in 2008, rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters. McKinney was on that ship, and when it was rammed, she turned to my friend's brother and said, “David, I can't swim.” Nothing I had ever heard about McKinney revealed her character more succinctly. This is a woman willing to put her life on the line in support of her principles. Missing from the mainstream media depictions were the human and humane aspects of her character. The MSM has too-often portrayed the struggle for justice as irrational, or even fanatical. I needed to know more.

THE INTERVIEW

GARY CORSERI: Let's start with a big one… about the day that changed everything—9/11.

[And, for a sense of the very sharp way McKinney performed her duties — and the People's business – in the US House of Representatives, while on the Budget Committee, I recommend checking out this 9-minute 2006 YouTube video of her grilling Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, General Meyers, and Tina Jonas about 9/11 and related matters.]

In 2004, you signed the 9/11 Truth Movement statement, calling for new investigations of “unexplained aspects of the 9/11 events.” More than 7 years have passed since then. What would you say are some of the more egregious “unexplained events”?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: … How is it that the people of the United States can invest trillions of dollars in the military and Intelligence infrastructure—and it failed four times in one day? … That singular question has never been answered.

GARY CORSERI: Staying with 9/11. … Distorted as they have been by the Mainstream Media, your views have caused uninformed Americans to question your patriotism. In 2005, you held Congressional briefings on the official 9/11 Commission Report—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Yeah. ... the only official briefing on that subject held on Capitol Hill, period!

GARY CORSERI: Well… The Atlanta-Journal Constitution editorialized that—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Oh… you mean, The Urinal-in-Constipation !

[General laughter in the room. …]

GARY CORSERI: … They editorialized that—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: You call them legitimate? I won't even legitimize them with a response! Whatever they say is bogus! You got another quote from somebody?

GARY CORSERI: No… well, hear me out.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: I'm not going to respond to anything they say!

GARY CORSERI: Well… you did, in fact, respond to an editorial they wrote when they editorialized that the briefings you were holding were to determine whether the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the attacks. That was their editorial! You replied…, but they refused to publish your response. …So… how did you respond? Can you tell us now?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Oh, I can't even remember back that far…, but, I think the record now reflects what Bush knew… and I'm sure that part of what I said is that I would never try to go inside George Bush's brain to see what's there!
GC: Too many maggots?

[Laughter. …]

GARY CORSERI: So, your main question is, Where was our air force, why didn't they prevent it—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: We know where they were. … The question is, Why didn't they follow standard operating procedures?

GARY CORSERI: And the other questions about buildings free-falling into their footprints… Building 7—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Look… I spent last September '11 in the home of a woman who is afflicted with cancer… because she lived near the World Trade center. And all of that dust came into her apartment… and she had to clean it up. … She will never figure into any of the statistics about who has been affected—her situation will never count… but it counts to me, and to all of the other memebers of the 911 Truth Community.

GARY CORSERI: Let's explore another controversial issue linked to you. … Ms. McKinney, what does the number “88794” signify for you?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: That was the number that was assigned to me by the Israeli prison system when—on my second attempt to get into Gaza—I was kidnapped on the high seas in international waters and taken against my will to Israel and put in prison. … David Halpin, the UK physician, and I sat next to each other because the volunteers—the activists that were on the boat—were international and spoke different languages… so I sat next to the English doctor… and he railed, he railed, he railed as the warship came close to us…, then backed off…, then approached us again—very quicly and very quietly--in this cat-and-mouse game. … And he cursed my government… because it was with the assistance of the United States that those engines had been provided to the Israeli military so that they could do what they were doing to us.

GARY CORSERI: Did you join him in the cursing?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: No. … In fact…, I do a lot of apologizing! I can say this: In the struggle for human rights, I consider prisoner # 88794 a badge of honor that I've acquired as a result of what I have chosen to do to assert my own right to recognize the human rights and the dignity of other people.

GARY CORSERI: Let's continue with this theme of recognizing other people's human rights. … More recently, this past year, you were in Tripoli when NATO bombed Libya. What were you doing there… and can you describe that experience?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: I voluntarily went to Libya. … Any time the War Machine rolls—I have to oppose that! Libya was a special case, a personal case… because I had just been to Libya. … I had taken a delegation of independent journalists to go to Libya… because I did not believe the explanation that was given to the public about the necessity to bomb Tripoli and other cities in Libya. … While we were there… we experienced what “shock and awe” is all about. The individual who went to the UN with allegations of thousands dying at the hands of Colonel Gaddhafi and the Libyan government—when he was pressed to substantiate his claims, he couldn't.

GARY CORSERI: That reminds me of the allegations made against the Iraqis in Kuwait, back in 1990--that they were taking babies out of incubators and throwing them on the floor!

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: It's also a situation similar to that of the Cuban-American community congregated down in Miami… right after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 where we had a community of expatriates who were willing to unleash terror on their own country… and, a similar thing was happening in Libya… with the United States providing financing for these individuals willing to lie about what was happening.
This information is available on the Internet. Julien Teil interviewed the individual making these false claims at the UN. The interview can be found here. …It's on YouTube, as well. Julien also interviewed the woman at Amnesty International who had claimed that “African mercenaries” were supporting Gaddafi's repression of his people; but, when challenged—and this was all after the devastation—she admitted that it was “just a rumor.”

My colleague, David Josue, and I had been in Libya to attend a conference for Africans on the continent as well as Africans in the diaspora. And what the Jamahariya government had devised was a call to Africans in the diaspora who were unhappy with their treatment at the hands of white Americans or white Europeans, etc.—to come back home to Africa and to help Libya rebuild Africa and rebuild itself.
[Interviewer's NOTE: (from Wikipedia): “Jamahiriya” is a term coined by Gaddafi, usually translated as “state of the masses.”]

That was the purpose of this conference I had attended. … And it was at that conference that the Jamahiriya committed 90 billion dollars to help in the creation of The United States of Africa. … That would also include a million-person army for continental Africa to drive back the attempts of AFRICOM and others to occupy the African continent. … That was in addition to the proposal for a gold-backed dinar for all of Africa. … The daughter of Kwame Nkruma was at that conference; the son of Patrice Lumumba was at that conference… the grandson of Malcom X was there. … The atmosphere was electric with the idea of the re-building, the re-kindling of the movement that these African leaders—or their forebears—represented. Well… that was all put to an end by NATO's bombing.

[Interviewer's NOTE (from Wikipedia): The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) is one of nine United Combatant Commands of the United States Armed Forces.]

The attack on Libya was an attack on Africa! It was an attack on my aspirations as a person of African descent to have a free and independent Africa. That's what was attacked!

GARY CORSERI: I've never had as complete a picture of that. … I'd heard that Gaddafi wanted to set up a gold-backed dinar. … In fact, people like Ron Paul even talk about using gold-backed currency... so I've heard that as a rationale for what we were doing there—trying to prevent any challenge to the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. … But…, nobody has described the situation as completely as you have.

My final question on Libya is this: You have praised Colonel Gaddafi's GREEN BOOK and the kind of “direct democracy” advocated therein. Can you give us a brief lesson as to how that “direct democracy” differs from our “representative democracy”?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Our “democracy” is neither democratic nor representative! But… let's start with what the Jamahiriya means to me. … The only stake that I have is that I want to see a free and independent Africa…, but the type of government that Libya has should be determined by the Libyan people. I don't really have a say in that. … And I shouldn't have a say in how they dispose of their governmental form. … Therefore, it's inexcusable to ask another country to bomb your fellow countrymen if you really care about your country!

The Jamahiriya — which had the highest living standard in all of Africa--had free education up through the Ph.D. level; free health care; free utilities, subsidized—and free, if you were poor—housing; subsidized food; subsidized transportaion, including car expenses… and so, the necessities of life were paid for by the direct democracy known as the Jamahiriya.

Can you imagine…? I have a cousin who is $120,000 in student debt in the U.S. She has a Master's degree as a social worker. Now, if she had been born in Libya — she would have no such debt. … I went to a university outside of Tripoli and asked the students about their tuition fees… and the word didn't translate. I asked them about what they paid to attend the university. … It was $9.00 per year!

When I was in Congress, one of my allies was Senator Mike Gravel… and Senator Gravel's initiative is about “direct democracy.” He had been to Libya… and he supported the establishment of the revolutionary committees which was the way Libyans determined how they would use their oil money.

A question under discussion when I attended the conference there was whether the subsidies for gas/petrol or the subsidies for education would be increased! (In the US, under “austerity” measures, people are being told which programs will be eliminated or eviscerated; in Libya, they were voting on which programs would get increased subsidization!)

What I have said publicly is that what we have been seeing is the Israelization of US policy. You know… the only reason the Libyans took any interest in me was that someone in Libya, looking at their television, saw me having all these problems trying to get into Gaza… and they said, “We want to know her!” That's why I was invited to attend this conference on THE GREEN BOOK—to explain what I was trying to do in Gaza. And what I observed in Libya was the same kind of collective punishment I observed in Gaza. People supporting their own governments were being punished by outsiders who opposed those governments!

This is the kind of thing that happens in the absence of ethics in journalism. … Because… we don't have journalists in the Mainstream—I call it the Special Interests Press--to educate and provide information to citizens so they can make a critical analysis of issues. That is absent. … We need ethics in scholarship; ethics in journalism, as well. …The journalistic community has gone along with the kind of death and destruction that has been visited upon Libya… and so many other countries. We're setting up drone bases all over Africa… and people here don't even know… don't begin to understand.

GARY CORSERI: You've mentioned many potent issues, including the “Israelization of US policy.” I'd like to explore that, and also explore the theme of alliances—even unlikely alliances. …
In the 2002 election to the House of Representatives, people like your father and the editor and commentator Alexander Cockburn alleged that your defeat by Denise Majette was a consequence of out-of-state Jewish organizations and Jewish money working against you---

CYNHTIA MCKINNEY: That's not an allegation—that's a fact! I was informed that I had been targeted by the pro-Israel lobby by the media. … I read about it in the papers! … and the evidence is readily available. …So, the fact of being targeted by the number-one special interest lobby in the United States means that there is an engagement in every aspect of one's political life.

GARY CORSERI: Well, ah, let's tackle this head-on: Are you anti-Semitic?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Well, I'm, ah… I'm no more anti-Semitic than than any of the anti-Zionist Jews who I work with on an almost-daily basis to correct US policy. And, I would suggest that the real Semites are the Palestinians. And, therefore, I would suggest that I'm not anti-Semitic, but that there are people who are anti-human rights, and there are some people who are anti-peace, and there are some people who are pro-war… and no matter who they are, I will always be against that… because I. … You see what my… my button says?

(She points to a button she is wearing on her blouse). My button says, “I'm a peace-keeper” And, this one says, “War is a crime!”

GARY CORSERI: “Blessed are the peace-keepers. …”

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: When I was in Congress, I organized a press conference with organizations like “Jewish Workers for Peace,” “Not in My Name, Women in Black [www.womeninblack.org]— we had about ten organizations at that press conference… and it was fantastic.

That night, the Atlanta News criticized me for associating with “fringe Jewish elements”! Now… what's a “fringe Jewish element”? It was the Anti-Defamation League that was casting this aspersion!

Now, the Anti-Defamation League that I knew about is supposed to be a Civil Rights organization. But… the Anti-Defamation League, in practice, filed an amicus brief with five white racists to dismantle the district—my district!--that provided an opportunity for black people in the black belt of Georgia to have representation! Those are the people who sent me to Congress to represent them! … I stand on their shoulders, and I did my darnedest to represent them—and I was rewarded by the Anti-Defamation League filing an amicus brief and a lawsuit to dismantle that district and take representation away from those poor, black people.

GARY CORSERI: I can certainly understand your indignation. And I don't want to hammer this issue. … But, this is on Wikipedia… and, as one researches you—this is what one comes across:

About that election with Majette, your father, a former state representative in Georgia, stated that “Jews have bought everybody… And then he spelled it, “J-E-W-S. …” Now…, personally, I always make a distinction between Jews and Zionists—and you just did. … I try to distinguish between people who follow a religious tradition and those who assert a political-nationalist ideology. … And, ah… I think writers like Gilad Atzmon, for example, have been very clear about making that distinction in his recent work like The Wandering Who?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: I haven't read that, but—

GARY CORSERI: I haven't read it, but I've read about it—

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Gilad is coming to Atlanta this month —

GARY CORSERI: Is he? I'd like to meet him.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Yes. … You must come —

GARY CORSERI: I will! But, ah, anyway… do you think, in retrospect, you might recommend changing the terminology a bit-- just to broaden the dialogue and widen the base of opposition to inhumane practices?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Well… let me tell you something. … I want to talk to you about. … The first time my daddy got into trouble was when he said, “racist Jew.” And, I had a Jewish friend who was trying to smooth things over. And I asked her, “Is Jew a bad word? I didn't know “Zionist”—I didn't even know that word at the time… because… here's the thing: the Anti-Defamation League says that they represent all Jews—that's what they tell us. AIPAC, also. So… I didn't know that there was a word called “Zionist” until I became involved with the Betrand Russell tribunal on Palestine. … And there was a famous Jewish lawyer who was one of the leaders in that tribunal, and I went to him and I said, “Daniel, how does your family feel about your being in this tribunal?” and he said, “My family are anti-Zionist Jews.” And I said, “I don't know what that is!” I was 50-something years old, and I'd never heard the language! Now, of course, I've been exposed… and I'm more sensitive that there's a difference. … Now… I have marvelous Jewish friends… and I understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Whoever prays to whatever God is fine with me…, but, a political ideology is quite different. … I know I have a lot to learn when it comes to Zionism and Judaism. … I'm not very religious… but I am spiritual… and I'm very interested in people's beliefs… but, I'm more interested in the way people behave. … So, I would always say, Judge me on what I do more than on what I say. … And, I acknowledge that I can be wrong about what I say. … And, my father can be wrong about what he said.

GARY CORSERI: Thank you very much. … I think you've clarified that for a lot of people. Now… this idea of building alliances. … I'd like to discuss current events, namely, the Presidential election

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Um-ha.

GARY CORSERI: First, a re-cap: In 2008, disgusted with the Democratic Party, you were the Green Party candidate for president. That same year, you joined a press conference held by 3 rd party and independent candidates, including Ralph Nader and Ron Paul. The participants agreed on 4 basic principles:

1. An early end to the Iraq War, and an end to threats of war against other countries, including Iran.

2. Safeguarding privacy and civil liberties, including repeal of the Patriot Act, the Military Commisions Act and FISA legislation.

3. No increase in the National Debt.

4. A thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System.
My question is this: If these different elements of Independent thought could come together on these 4 basic principles in 2008, why can't they unite behind the same principles in 2012?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: They can.

GARY CORSERI: Isn't it possible to conceive a party that speaks for the majority of Independents, that unites Independents? The 4 principles that united Independents then are still very much with us—and in many ways the dangers are greater—the possibility of war with Iran looms larger now, and there's the National Defense Authorization Act, as well as the other intrusions on privacy and civil liberties. More Americans classify themselves as “Independents” than as Republicans or Democrats. How can the varied strands of Independents work together to defeat the Republicrats?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: The answer to that question goes to the core of the kind of change we hope to initiate on a policy basis. … So… how do we do that? I think the first thing is that we have to be willing to talk to each other. We have to recognize that there's commonality despite difference. So… the thing that allowed Nader and me and Paul to come together is that we were at least willing to see areas of commonality. We should be able to do that across the political spectrum. And, in fact, when I was in the Congress, I was forced to do that. … As a Southerner, I — and as someone who had to get votes — not lose them — I needed the endorsement of a leader in the community… and he was a Klan member… and I had no choice. … I asked him for his support—and I got it! (After I sat there for over an hour and he described to me how “confused” the people were because of the way they judged the Ku Klux Klan to be racist!)

[Here, CM gives a strong, hearty guffaw!]

And… I sat there and found a place where we could have a meeting of the minds—and I did it!

GARY CORSERI: Related question then: I've been criticized because I wrote an article, about a month ago—“The Lion and the Ox” — praising Ron Paul's stance on ending the wars, ending the Empire, auditing the Fed. I also think his views on our antiquated, absurd and minority-punishing drug laws are far more enlightened than anyone else's —with the exception of 2012 Green Party candidate, Jill Stein's. Paul makes a distinction between Capitalism and Corporatism — an important distinction. Now, I'm not a Libertarian; I don't agree with “unregulated” Capitalism to the extent Paul and Libertarians do. But, I wonder: Given various points of convergence, how can the Green Party and Libertarians work together to overturn what we have in America today—basically, a one-party system, a Corporate Party system, abetted by corporate media?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Well, one thing is that the Libertarians and the Greens could join forces — kind of a united front. So… I'd like to see if those kinds of talks could get anywhere.

GARY CORSERI: A friend of mine suggested a Paul-McKinney ticket.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: That was your friend, huh?

GARY CORSERI: Well, you know… when I first heard that, I thought, “That's crazy!” But… I thought about it, and I thought, “Why not? We live in crazy times. …”

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Yeah… we do.

GARY CORSERI: I mean… look what we have to choose from: Santorum, Michelle Bachman, Hermain Cain, Gingrich, Romney--all these crazy people.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Every time there's a vote, it gets more outrageous, doesn't it?

GARY CORSERI: It does! Well… what do you think about Paul-McKinney?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Well… we're not there yet, so I don't have to think about it at all!

GARY CORSERI: Well.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Let me put it this way. … We do have overlapping constituencies. … So… it would be wonderful if the two circles could expand beyond their points of intersection. …And I'm not just talking about Paul. … I'm talking about people on the Left in general. … Because, there's no more Left and Right. It's only Right and Wrong now… and the old “Right” is Wrong… and the old “Left” needs to be more Right… does that make sense?

GARY CORSERI: Yes.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Yeah, because the Left is being co-opted. … So, the Left needs to be more Left!

GARY CORSERI: There needs to be a convergence where the Greens and the Libertarians can meet —

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: And the militia! You know… I have to deal with the militia, too. I'm from Georgia, right? They participate in the political system—to the extent that they do—and somebody needs to be talking to'em… because, ultimately, they're a part of the 99%. … And that's the gift that the Occupy Movement has given to us—they've given us a way to self-identify. Now we know—it's not about color, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation—all of those things. At the end of the day—if you're part of the 99%, you're part of us… and if you're part of the 1%--you're part of them!
GC: Related question: Okay…also about Current Events: this is about the Occupy Movement, then.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Okay.

GARY CORSERI: We live in a Surveilance State. Our license plate numbers are routinely recorded; we're finger-printed for jobs, our Social Security numbers serve as National I.D.'s, our e-mails are monitored for “code” words or phrases, our homes are surveiled by satellite mapping systems of Google, Yahoo, etc. Those who protest, as in the Occupy Wall Street movement, are arrested, booked, and more closely watched. Now they have “records” that affect their employment. … My question is: how do we battle this pervasive system? Do you get discouraged? What do you do when you are discouraged? Who are your “heroes”? To whom do you turn for inspiration?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Do I get discouraged? Yes! What do I do when I'm discouraged? … find other people who are not yet discouraged!

Who are my heroes? Everybody! Everybody who has a tough row to hoe in life! Those are my heroes. Those are the people who give the most! When I was running for Congress back in 1992--for the first time—I was running to represent the second poorest district in Georgia… and, what I learned was that the poor people gave the most! The people who had… didn't give as generously as the people who didn't have! So… my first campaign theme was, “Warriors don't wear medals, they wear scars!” So… my heroes are the community and neighborhood warriors who have a whole lof of scars, a whole lot of dignity.

GARY CORSERI: I'd like you to talk specifically about what used to be called the Black Liberation Struggle. As a young, white man, I was inspired by the works of black writers like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Leroi Jones (now called Baraka), Eldridge Cleaver, W.E.B. DuBois, and poets like Langston Hughes. Martin Luther King and Malcom X were inspirational leaders for all people; Rosa Parks was a woman of quiet, dignified courage. But, now, with the election of Obama, and with the prominence of people like Bill Cosby first, and Oprah Winfrey, the billionairess—the great struggles of the past almost seem quaint. What's your take on this? Who are the great black leaders today? What is the struggle about today?

[Note: There are 7 million Americans now under “correctional observation.” More African-Americans' lives intersect with our prison-industrial-surveillance complex than there were African-American slaves in 1850!]

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: You asked me who are my heroes. … One of my heroes is Glen Ford, who writes for The Black Agenda Report [http://blackagendareport.com/]. I view him as the most astute political observer of our times.

There's a whole lot of pundits who are in our faces every Sunday morning who think they are political observers…, but they are not astute! And they're also not independent. Glen Ford is independent, he's been through the wars and he has no special interests to kow-tow to. … He just wrote a piece… “Can the Proud African-American Progressive Legacy Survive Another Four Years of Cowing to the Corporate Servant in the White House?” That's strong stuff…, but right on point!

We have a situation now… it was the Black struggle that really defined morality in the United States. It defined the moral imperative. And the character of the country was measured by how well it answered the call of Black people for justice. But what happens when Black people stop asking for justice? I think you get exactly what we've got now—a President who is dropping bombs on Africa… which is un-thought-of; I mean, it would have been un-thought-of four years ago that Africa would be bombed—routinely! But it's a routine matter now that the United States Africa Command [AFRICOM] would actively establish itself and militarize the US relationship with Africa. AFRICOM represents a kind of US imperial occupation of the continent that we haven't seen since the days of outright colonialism of the Europeans. We are being told about issues that are “important”…, but we're ignoring the real issues that are important! Henry Kissinger said that he couldn't believe the amount of good will that was embodied in this president! But… what people like Kissinger don't “get” is that this president sits on top of the historic Black struggle that characterized the United States to the world! People around the world thought that Barack Obama characterized the New United States! But… far from it! A lot of people got tricked and fooled and now… as philosopher Michel Foucault has observed—the every-day actions of ordinary people actually entrap them in “powerlessness”. … So, to break out of your powerlessness, you've got to break out of your existing paradigm. So, as long as Barack Obama is representative of the existing paradigm, this is what we're going to get… because the existing paradigm is war and more war!
GARY CORSERI: How do we “break out”? How do we fight the Mainstream Media that's constantly projecting that paradigm and hammering it into our brains?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: The literature suggests that people have to be confronted with a “disorienting dilemma” that causes them to reflect on what they've just experienced.

GARY CORSERI: Cognitive dissonance?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: That's right. … Reflect on what you always assumed… and what you've been confronted with that contradicts your assumptions. … For some people, it was the murder of JFK; for others, it was the murder of Malcom; for others, it was the murder of MLK; for a whole bunch of others, it was the murder of RFK; and for some people who began to look and pay attention like me… it was the murder of all of them and then add onto it the murder of the members of the Black Panther Party—who were attacked by our own government.

You could say that for me, my first “disorienting dilemma” was when I realized that I was black. I realized that the world around me was not like me, and that it didn't value my black skin! That, for me was when I began to pay attention and wake up!

GARY CORSERI: How old were you?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Seven or eight. …You know… for some people it's religion, it's race, it's gender, it's, maybe, sexual orientation. … Everyone has their moment of reckoning.

I think, ultimately… it's about the love we have for humanity and how we see something is wrong and we have to stop it!

So… by the time I got to Congress… I had had my “reckoning,” and I had had my “break-out” moments, and I guess this gave me strength and vibrancy… and there were people who didn't like it. I wore my hair differently, I dressed differently from the other people in Congress. There was even a segment of the Capitol Hill police that didn't like that.

GARY CORSERI: What year was that?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: 1993.

GARY CORSERI: Wasn't there a much more recent incident with the Capitol Hill police?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: No, no, no. … It happened for twelve years! … Twelve years of harrassment from the Capitol Hill police! They considered it a “sport” to harass me! … It's available on the Internet… if you go to YouTube and you put in “The Last Plantation.”

GARY CORSERI: The infamous incident is when you apparently struck back at the officer who was harassing you. … Is that correct?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: The officer had no business putting his hands on me! … And I reacted like any normal person would react when being attacked by some great big, huge guy from behind! … This was a “hit.” It was a “hit”—a “sport”--for the white officers. You'll see if you go to that “Last Plantation” site that I had been targeted because I had written a letter of support for the Black Capitol Hill police officers.

GARY CORSERI: And this most infamous incident… that was the same day as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: That's right. … The Mainstream Media didn't want to lead with that indictment, did they? It was much more sensational and distracting to lead with the story of a black Congresswoman attacking a Capitol Hill police officer!

[Laughter]

GARY CORSERI: You're a pretty brave woman, aren't you?

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: Everybody can be brave… they just need that break-out moment of recognition. … I've stood on some big shoulders. … As I said before — my campaign theme: “Warriors don't wear medals… they wear scars.”

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

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* Editor, teacher and writer Dr. Gary S. Corseri has taught in universities in the U.S. and Japan, and in public schools and prisons in the U.S. His articles, poems, fiction and dramas have appeared at Countercurrents, CounterPunch, InformationClearingHouse, CommonDreams, The New York Times, The Village Voice , and hundreds of other venues worldwide. His dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library. His books include novels and poetry collections. He can be contacted at gary_corseri@comcast.net.
* This article was first published by Countercurrents.
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How to change the world?

Esther Vivas

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80144

cc D S‘It is necessary to formulate alternative policy options which have their centre of gravity in social struggles, antagonistic to today’s ruling class.’

How do we change the world? This is the question asked by thousands of people intent on changing things, the question that is often repeated in alternative social gatherings — a question that the French philosopher Daniel Bensaïd said has no answer: ‘Make no mistake, no one knows how to change the world.’ We do not have an instruction manual but we do have some hints on how to do it and some working hypotheses.

Fighting in the streets and in social movements is the first premise, as there will not be spontaneous changes from above. Those in power today will not give up their privileges without this. Any process of change will depend on the consciousness of those below and the fight to take back our rights in the street, defying the powers that be. This is what history shows.

But it is also necessary to build political alternatives that go beyond social mobilization, since we cannot just be a lobby of those who rule. It is necessary to formulate alternative policy options which have their centre of gravity in social struggles, antagonistic to today’s ruling class. We are well aware that the system cannot be changed from within the institutions but rather from the street, but we cannot give up spaces that also belong to us.

Today, institutions are hijacked by private interests and capital. A social minority, which is the one with economic power, is totally over-represented in these institutions and has the full support of the majority of those who hold elected office. The dynamics of ‘revolving doors’: those who are currently in the institutions and tomorrow on the advisory boards of major companies in the country, is a constant and a reality. We present here the socially dominant neoliberal ideology — and the fact that it is untrue. We think that anti-capitalist and anti-systemic voices would be useful in breaking the hegemonic political discourse of the institutions, proving that ‘other worlds’ are viable and that ‘another political practice’ is both possible and necessary.

We must move in both directions, subjecting the latter to the former, creating mechanisms for control from the bottom up and learning from past mistakes of both the political and social left. On the basis that no one knows the absolute truth, that the process of change will be collective or it will not happen, that we must learn from each other, that is necessary to work without sectarianism or tailendism and that labels more often separate than bind. Without, however, falling into relativism or ideological resignation. Surely these are the most difficult lessons: to break the moral and ideological domination of the capitalist and patriarchal system.

And how to change the world is not something that will happen in two days — it’s a long-haul task, which requires consistency, perseverance and ‘slow impatience’ as Daniel Bensaïd used to say. We have to go forward in our utopias starting from daily life in parallel with social mobilization against the current policies and in defense of alternative measures. We have to change the world in our own lives, demonstrating in practice that ‘another way of life’ is both possible and desirable. Alternative learning from the cooperative economy, self-management, critical consumption and agro-ecology, ethical finance, the alternative media — all these initiatives are essential to move towards a different model of society.

We have to be aware that these prefigurative models are not an end in themselves but a means to move forward without losing sight of the goal of more just and equitable society for everyone. Fighting for an economy based on solidarity in daily life and demanding a progressive tax policy, in which those who have more pay more, which will eliminate unit trusts, where tax evasion is prosecuted, which builds agro-ecological projects and works to ban GMOs, in favour of a public land bank, to have our savings in a credit union but to claim a public banking service from below. The way forward is shown by walking it and this cannot wait until tomorrow.

We should not forget that our model of social change requires the conscious mobilization of the majority of the population and a process of breaking the current institutional and economic framework. The emergence of the ‘revolution’ in the political landscape again, following the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, despite their weaknesses and limits, was the great and unexpected news that 2011 has brought us.

We also need to understand our role in the world and the impact of our practices on the ecosystem. We live on a finite planet, but the capitalist system ensures that we often forget this. Our consumption has a direct impact where we live and if everyone consumed as we do here a single planet would not suffice. But we are also encouraged in unbridled, compulsive consumerism, with the promise that more consumption means happiness, though in the end the promise is never fulfilled. We must begin to ask whether we can ‘live better with less’.

Anyway, we want to hold responsible those who impose such practices. We are told we live in a consumer society because people like consumption, which is why we have industrial agriculture and genetically modified foods — lies. Our model of consumption is based on the logic of a capitalist system that produces goods on a large scale and needs someone to buy them to keep the model running. They want to make everyone accomplices of policies that benefit only themselves. Fortunately, this great myth has begun to crumble. The ecological crisis we live in has turned on the warning lights. And we know that the climate crisis is rooted in a system that is productivist and short-sighted.

Today, a wave of anger is sweeping across Europe and the world — breaking the scepticism and resignation that for years have prevailed in our society, and restoring confidence in collective action which is useful and necessary for changing the existing order of things. We have seen the Arab Spring, the movement against the debt in Europe, the Icelandic people, the popular uprising, general strike after strike in Greece and now Occupy Wall Street in the ‘belly of the beast’ which says we are the 99 percent opposed to the 1 percent. The time is short and moving quickly. We know we can.

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*Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Re-igniting agents of social change in Kenya

Julius Okoth

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80150

cc ZoriahArticle 43 of Kenya’s constitution provides for social and economic rights of the citizens. All proponents of change need to work very hard to realise these rights, which are essential for ending the suffering of the poor.

The adoption of Kenya's new constitution in 2010 provided a solid foundation for the growth of vibrant democracy that is supposed to lead to sweeping social progress. The constitution automatically provides for social and economic rights and free expression. Despite this success, Article 43 on the rights to food, housing, health and education has not met ordinary Kenyans’ aspirations, especially for those living in urban slums and rural set-ups who are faced by widespread poverty and deep-rooeted inequality which have intermittently giving rise to conflict and violence. The majority has limited access to basic rights, resources, education and are prone to infectious diseases and AIDS-related deaths.

Life is grim. Heed keenly all the voices in urban slums and rural areas, even from the mentally unstable, because that mental instability could be socially constructed and expression of our possible collective condition. This condition should not be obscured by the sentimental philosophy of the pulpit, where everything is outsourced to God and ordinary people encouraged to believe that justice and goodness will somehow result from some deity reaching down through the clouds to sweep all our sorrows away, wipe our tears, build roads, schools and most important of all dish out money to the poor, idle and jobless youths.

Unless we, the visionaries in the front line of social change in Kenya, compound ourselves and create an impact by coming out in a clearer, more consistent and compelling voice and propose conceivable actions to demand the realisation of Article 43, that section of the constitution would be a sheer blueprint, like Vision 2030 prepared by the Kenyan government as a guide for Kenya’s much-vaunted long-term development strategy.

With the promulgation of the new constitution, the fight against poverty needs to be renewed and intensified. To pressure the Kenyan government to actualise Article 43 requires a formidable force of agents of social change who are active, unafraid to take risks in order to find lasting solutions to the most urgent problems of access to food, health, sanitation, housing and education. A force that will be central to collective action. Successful poverty eradication does not lie in paper work but in mobilising and lobbying communities to demand what is in the paper work. If a movement boosts its impact in a large scale it will attract political forces that share certain basic values rooted in social movements.

In order to actualise Article 43, we, the social justice actors, must create opportunities. As Kenya heads towards general elections, this is the best time that calls for clear thinking and rationality are urgently needed, not magical solutions and reliance on divine intervention. Currently there is increasing interest in grassroots movements from political forces and this is the right time to demand for actualisation of Article 43. Various political parties that were previously resistant to social change have significantly shown interest as others are strategising on how to align with social movements in order to reach their political goals.

There are two reasons why political forces are currently interested with grassroots social movements; first, many militant social activists originally came from political parties that they left when they got disappointed. Second, and more importantly, young people who are the bulk of voters are found in social movements and have a growing influence in the public. For example, Safina and SDP political parties have co-opted some of the forward looking social movement actors into their ranks. The parties are working to ensure that all social movement agents are in their midst to use their expertise in lobbying and mobilisation of voters at the grassroots.

Indeed, grassroots movements in Kenya like the Unga Movement and Bunge La Mwananchi, have more membership than most registered political parties. Political visibility of these movements has continued to increase with a growing influence in the general public and in the media. Because of this growing influence and weight, various political parties have attempted to increase contacts at times even providing financial and other support. At the same time, the drivers of Unga and Bunge La Mwananchi have openly called for political parties to reclaim the ideas advanced by the movements.

For example, the co convener of the Unga movement which has been advocating for reduction of prices of basic commodities, Mr Franco Sakwa, once said: ‘I say to the political parties: go ahead, take us on board, you adopt our ideas. And even put in practice our proposals concretely’. This is measured in terms of Unga movement’s capacity to challenge existing power by demonstrating and picketing at the office of Kenya's Prime Minister demanding the realisation of article 43. Furthermore, many of the calls and claims that arose from Unga movement made the President of Kenya to sign into law the Price Control Bill.

As we are hunting for political parties that will fight for our course and Article 43 when those parties campaign to form the next government, first we have to do a thorough vetting of these parties that want to align with grassroots social movements. We have to look at their leaders, new and old, parade them before ourselves. We will look at their manifestos. What is the party’s essence? Does it have a set of principles and values for the greater benefit of the poor? Is it being led by opportunists seeking temporary courtship with social movements until something better comes along?

We have to look at the values of these party leaders to see if they are relevant to our mission. Is that mission reflected in their faces, their words, their deeds and campaigns? We, as Kenya's social actors fighting for social justice, should not display blind, emotional loyalty to political leaders who have little to offer in realization of Article 43. The good society of which we speak of will not be built by waving the hand, one finger, two fingers, three fingers, raised thumbs or any other symbol of a political party. That society will be built by men and women who act, who take it upon themselves to sacrifice a little bit of their individual pursuit for the common good.

The good society will be built by agents of social change who are able to identify common problems and find alternative solutions while resisting the lure of easy money. And yes, by citizens who understand and accept the collective responsibility of good citizenship. Real change will come from us first as individuals and then as a collective. Personal values drives the collective action; and our destiny is in our own hands. Good government is necessary and good leaders are vital. We need men and women of good will and good intent who are going to emerge from among us and to give alternatives for the greater benefit of the poor and who can show pathways to lasting social change.

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* Julius Okoth is a community mobiliser with Bunge la Mwananchi movement in Kenya.
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Say no to Haile Selassie statue at AU

An open letter to acting AU Commission Chairperson

Asrat Deferes

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80178

cc A DEmperor Haile Selassie was no pan-Africanist. In fact there is overwhelming evidence of his autocracy and rejection of the Black cause. It will be an injustice to African history to erect his statue at the new AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.

H.E. Mr. Erastus Mwencha
Acting Chairperson of AU Commission
African Union Head Office
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Chairperson@africa-union.org

Your Excellency,

The Ethiopian Pan-African Society would like to express its views on the demands by Ethiopian individuals forwarded to you to consider the erection of the statue of ex-emperor Haile Selassie along with that of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah at the premises of the new AU headquarters. We strongly urge you not to consider this demand as the ex-emperor was neither a pan-Africanist nor a model head of state to be emulated.
Whether or not the ex-emperor of Ethiopia has contributed to Pan-Africanism cannot be judged:
• out of abstract sentiment or out of opposition to the current regime in Ethiopia
• through the songs of Bob Marley, other Rasta reggae singers or through the Ethiopian singer, Tewodros Kassahun
• through sentimental anecdotes on such as what happened at the founding conference of the OAU in 1963 as a certain Mismaku did recently.

1. Africa is in a deep crisis emanating from a prevailing system of governance that is corrupt and dictatorial through and through. That calls for an egalitarian system of governance that takes the crying plights of the ordinary African into consideration. Cultivating the new generation of Africans imbued with the spirit of Pan-Africanism that springs from the plight of the poor and with freedom and democracy in the first place is an absolute pre-requisite. Construction of Africa’s own history can be part of this process of cultivating such a new generation. The place we give to past heads of state in the contemporary history of Africa is as crucial. This is where our serious objection to the eulogy paid to the ex-emperor of Ethiopia.

Anybody who has contributed to Pan-Africanism must be judged by the person’s contribution to the construction of the very thought of Pan-Africanism; or by what they did in practice to advance Pan-Africanism be it in the area of liberating Africa from colonisation or by a construction of ideas towards an egalitarian (democratic and free) system of governance for the continent. To that extent, the ex-emperor of Ethiopia or his government had not done anything exceptionally more than what the rest of independent states of Africa did at the time. The support the ex-emperor rendered to the Kenyatta family during Kenya’s struggle against British colonisation and the military training given to Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment were not exceptional at all as other African governments, the front line state to Southern Africa in particular, had done more to the extent of being attacked by the apartheid regime. Tanzania and Zambia have been attacked and Mozambique in particular was subjected to regular aerial bombardment by apartheid forces, which finally shot down an aircraft killing the country’s president, Samora Machel. (Speaking of statues, Samora Machel, Edwardo Mondlane, Amilcal Cabral, Patrice Lumumba were real heroes of Africa’s liberation and who stood for Pan-Africanism and sacrificed for it. These are the ones who deserve statues along with Nkrumah.)

2. At the beginning of the second millennium, the BBC held an opinion survey and collected votes from its listeners in Africa as to who their ‘African of the Millennium’ was. Kwame Nkrumah was voted first by a huge margin followed by Nelson Mandela in the second place. It is for their monumental contribution to Africa’s liberation and to the thought of Pan-Africanism as well as for their exemplary role that Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela were voted as ‘my African of the millennium’. This is a prototype of African perception of leaders who contributed for Africa.

3. Apart from issues of construction of ideas and direct contribution to Africa’s liberation, another crucial element is the leaders’ own internal policies on governance. What were their policies particularly as regards the various ethnic groups within their own countries? Pan-Africanism is an African outlook and is deeply rooted on the identity of Africans as black people because of the dehumanisation by colonisation. This is indeed the bottom line as nobody can be a pan-Africanist disregarding black identity.

The record of the ex-emperor of Ethiopia in this regard is shocking to say the least. First, slavery was practiced in Ethiopia widely. People of the border regions who are physically Nilotic or Bantu were taken in custody by the monarchy, nobility and feudal lords under his regime and kept forcibly as slaves. In fact, in order to prevent escape, tissues from the hamstrings of most of the male ‘slaves’ were cut out. Ethiopia had difficulties in joining the League of Nations precisely because of the practice of slavery. After the war, chattel slavery continued to the final days of the emperor in 1974. The ex-emperor of Ethiopia had not lifted a finger to end slavery in his own country. On the contrary, he was one of the big owners of chattel claves.

Secondly, the nobility at the time of his rule never considered themselves as black and African. For political reasons, being African was ‘accepted’ particularly when the OAU was about to be established. But, being black has never been accepted. No wonder when the ex-emperor visited Jamaica in 1967, he said in an interview with a journalist that, ‘We Ethiopians are not black’. The ruling ideas of a given society at a given point in time are also the ideas of the ruling class. That includes negative ideas filled with all sorts of bigotry. But if such ideas are not deconstructed thoroughly, they persist for too long. This notion of ‘not being black’ is still widespread in Ethiopia. It is even noticeable today among members of the Diaspora, who refer to Nilotic or Bantu Africans as ‘black’. These are undeniable facts that can be proved so easily.

Thirdly, one can also look at the ex-emperor’s policy on Ethiopian ethnic groups other than the Amhara. Discrimination and political as well as economic marginalisation was the daily companion of millions and millions of non-Amhara Ethiopians. Their lands were taken over by the feudal lords and were treated as second-class citizens. Many were forced to change their names to Amharic ones to be accepted. Those who resorted to rebellions were met with fierce punishment including outright massacres as in the case of Tigray (1943), Eritrea (1961-1974), Ogaden (1960-1974), Bale (1967), Sidamo and many other places. The ex-emperor’s ‘Imperial Body Guard’ shot in the crowd of university students on December 29, who assembled to pay the last respects to their leaders assassinated the previous day by the ex-emperor’s secret police. The repressive rule also clamped down against trade union activists and student leaders. Trade unionists such as Abera Gemu and student leaders such as Tilahun Gizaw were assassinated in broad daylight. (Incidentally, Tilahin Gizaw was a champion of Pan-Africanism who received a gun shot by police during a demonstration against Ian Smiths’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence and he was also instrumental in organising a rally in solidarity in 1969 with the struggling people of South Africa and Zimbabwe.)

The ex-emperor was also known for his cruelty and viciousness. Apart from the massacres committed in the Ogaden, Eritrea and so on, his regime had also practiced the most heinous crimes. Lands were confiscated from the rural population (poor farmers and nomads) without compensation; political opponents or conscientious objectors were met with police brutality including torture. Political suspects were banished to remote areas. The ex-emperor is even accused of practicing witchcraft orgies in which he sacrificed children for a spirit called Korit at Lake Bishoftu. In 1961, he personally ordered the corpse of Girmame Neway, the slain coup leader, to be hanged and displayed in public. When all these crimes were committed, the ex-emperor appeared extremely calm and ‘dignified’. Needless to say, sir, we simply cannot list all the crimes of the ex-emperor.

We hold that the current regime in Ethiopia is as autocratic as ex-emperor Haile Selassie’s and Colonel Mengistu’s. We applaud the struggle of the people of Ethiopia for justice and freedom. We understand that the Ethiopian Diaspora is also active in this struggle. But fighting against injustice with injustice done to Ethiopia’s history is something that won’t work.

Sir, we fully support the erection of Kwame Nkrumah’s statue at the premises of the new AU headquarters and strongly demand that you ignore the demand to have a statue for the ex-emperor Haile Selassie alongside it. If other African heroes are to be included in the list deserving their statue in the AU premises, we suggest the inclusion of Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel and Edwardo Mondlane.

Sincerely yours,

Asrat Deferes, Chairperson, The Ethiopian Pan-African Society, Addis Ababa.

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AU vote a setback for South Africa

Jakkie Cilliers and Liesl Louw-Vaudran

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80191

cc E E GSouth Africa as a powerhouse on the continent expected to take the AU Commission Chairperson’s job. But the outcome of the election indicates that opposition to Ms Dlamini-Zuma was intractable.

The 18th Summit of the African Union (AU) that took place in Addis Ababa this week has led to a sudden surge of interest into the workings of the organisation. This is due to the intense battle for chairperson that was fought between the incumbent former Gabonese foreign minister Jean Ping and South African home affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

The Constitutive Act of the African Union stipulates that the 10 key members of the AU Commission – effectively the bureau of the AU – will be elected every four years. The chairperson, deputy chair and commissioners can serve a maximum of two four-year terms with the chair and deputy chair elected by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government during a secret ballot, as was held Monday 30 January. Each of Africa's five regions may have two members on the commission (including chair and deputy chair), who are elected by the Executive Council (consisting of foreign ministers of Member States) following the outcome of the vote on the chair and deputy chair.

Since its inception in 2002, the AU has had three chairpersons: former Ivorian foreign minister Amara Essy, former Malian president Alpha Omar Konaré and Ping, elected in February 2008. Many had expected Ping to be re-elected to this position at the summit, since he was generally seen as a relatively effective mediator and managed to find consensus amongst member states on a number of key peace and security issues. Though some accuse him of not being strong enough to take a stand on issues like the controversial Nato military intervention in Libya in 2011. In addition, the AU as an organisation still remains hugely lacking. It is understaffed, with 324 vacant posts, which is 48 percent of its staff compliment. Many departments also underspend massively on their budgets with an average budget utilisation of 37 percent.

South Africa's bid to have its home affairs minister and former foreign minister Dlamini-Zuma elected to the position of chairperson was only announced late in 2011. However, South Africa's minister of international relations and cooperation Maite Nkoane-Mashabane told the media at the summit that the unanimous decision to put forward Dlamini-Zuma's candidacy was taken by all SADC member states at its summit in August 2011.

After much behind-the-scenes lobbying the Assembly proceeded with three rounds of voting and no candidate managed to achieve a two-thirds majority - the requirement for the election of chairperson. During the fourth round of voting, where Ping was the only candidate, he still failed to get two-thirds of the votes and the election was suspended. Ping, his chairperson Erastus Mwencha and the entire team of commissioners will now stay on until the next summit that will be held in Lilongwe in Malawi in June this year. It is still unclear whether Ping and Dlamini-Zuma will be allowed (or would want) to stand again for election to this position.

For South Africa and for its foreign policy, this is a serious setback. While the fact that Ping couldn't achieve a two-thirds majority in the final round is indicative of a unified response from SADC Member States, South Africa as a powerhouse on the continent was expecting to win this election, for the voting also indicates that opposition to Ms Dlamini-Zuma was similarly intractable.

One of the two main reasons for the outcome is undoubtedly the foreign policy blunders made by South Africa during the term of president Jacob Zuma, especially during 2011. In both major crises that the continent faced last year, in Côte d'Ivoire and in Libya, South Africa was seen to act without due consultation and made a number of contradictory decisions when it came to peace and security issues. South Africa's stance on the Ivorian crisis in early 2011, where it was seen to favour the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, especially angered Nigeria, the regional powerhouse.

The fact that South Africa voted in favour of Resolution 1973 of the United Nations Security Council that authorized a no-fly zone against former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and soon afterwards strongly opposed Nato's military intervention in Libya, was also extremely harmful to the country's reputation. Key countries, the UK and France in particular, subsequently abused the UNSC resolution to pursue a regime-change strategy and South Africa was left to scramble for cover. Dlamini-Zuma, a fearless and strong willed politician, who is extremely highly regarded for her management skills and work ethic, was in this sense the victim of her country's foreign policy, despite the fact that she was standing as a regional candidate on behalf of southern Africa.

The second, and perhaps more important reason for her failure to secure the position – at least in this round – was the fact that South Africa had broken an unwritten rule in the AU that anchor states should not occupy the position of chairperson of the AU to prevent power plays from paralysing the continent. In fact, one could argue that the bid by South Africa and Nigeria's strong opposition to it (supported by a large Francophone block) was what caused the stalemate during the voting. If Dlamini-Zuma had won the vote and Nigeria would decide to oppose everything the chairperson does during her term simply because she is South African, that would be extremely harmful to the continent. Indications are that Kenya, Egypt, Senegal, Ethiopia and other larger countries also voted against Dlamini-Zuma possibly reflecting a common resistance to South Africa, or indeed possibly any of Africa's powerhouse countries to stand for the position of Chairperson.

The events at the AU Summit these last couple of days have raised the profile of the AU and the Commission and placed renewed focus on the importance of strengthening the leadership of Africa's continental institution. This is certainly an important step towards creating a more effective and efficient AU. In addition, the election has given Africa's regional powers an opportunity to test their strength, in all likelihood in preparation for the much bigger future battle for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. And the key lesson is clear - despite its relative power and influence, South Africa should not take its African support base for granted and should not readily assume, at the G20 or elsewhere, that it speaks for the continent.

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* Jakkie Cilliers and Liesl Louw-Vaudran are Executive Director and Associate Editor, ISS Pretoria.
* This article was first published by Polity.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

‘Empty land’ in South Africa is desperate colonial madness

Motsoko Pheko

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80196

cc UN PhotoThe colonial ‘empty land’ theory has no historical credence. It stirs very deep emotions in the hearts of African people who were dispossessed of their land at gunpoint and are still dispossessed – hence rampant poverty among them, whether they be Zulu Africans or Khoi Africans.

On 16 February 2012, speaking in a purported ‘New South Africa’ Parliament, a former member of the apartheid colonialist National Party now leading the opposition Freedom Party Plus claimed that Africans are not the original inhabitants of 40 percent of Azania which colonialists called South Africa on 2O September 1909. His name is Pieter Muller. He is the minister of agriculture in the ANC Government led by President Jacob Zuma.

Muller posits that Africans, whom he calls Bantu, never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa. ‘The Bantu-speaking people moved from the Equator down south while the white people moved from the Cape to meet each other at the Kei River.’ He does not disclose that the colonialists came from Europe. Their sole purpose was to take African lands by terrorist militarism. He does mention the Khoi and San people, whom colonialists called Hottentots and Bushmen respectively.

This reflects a despicable colonial attempt to falsify African history and conceal the genocide that colonialists perpetrated on the Khoisan African people. They were not only in the Western Cape but all over Azania as were all various other African people. For instance, King Adam Kok, one of the Khoi Kings still has a town called Kokstad after his name. The Khoi Africans in the Western Cape under King Koebaha Heijkon maintained trade links with the Xhosa-speaking Africans to the North East of the Cape. The Dutch officials kept records that show that Europeans were amazed that the Khoi Africans traded copper ore with the Xhosa-speaking Africans. The Khoi also traded in goats with the Batswana.

Hendrik Witbooi was a King of the Nama section of the Khoi Africans that lived in parts of both Azania and Namibia. This was before colonialists gave colonial names to these African countries. It was also long before the imperialist Berlin Conference boundaries drawn by European imperialists. In July 1892, Major Curt von Francis of the German army ordered King Witbooi to surrender his African country to the Germans.

The Khoi King replied, ‘Africa belongs to us, both through the hue of our skin and our way of life. We belong together. And this Africa is entirely our country. The fact that we possess a variety of diverse LANDS and variety of kingships does not mean any secondary division and does not sever our solidarity. The Emperor of Germany has no business in Africa.’

The beneficiaries of European colonialism have no business to claim an inch of African soil. Long before Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company established a ‘provision station’ in the Southern tip of Africa (Western Cape) the first war of national resistance against European colonial aggression was fought in this part of Azania (South Africa). The colonial aggressors were Portuguese. Their war of colonial aggression was led by Dom Francisco de Almeida. The Khoi people with a section of the Xhosa allies won this war. This was at the Battle of Salt River. It took place in 1510.All the Portuguese colonialists were killed. Probably as a result of this victory, it took 142 years before Europeans dared invade Azania.

It was after the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck through the Azanian Sea (now colonially called ‘Indian Ocean’) that Africans fought several wars of national resistance against colonialism. One of the first of such wars was fought beneath Table Mountain. This war was led by a Khoi leader called Doman. The colonial wars against the Khoi, as against the rest of Africans throughout Azania were in 1657, 1659 and 1673 to 1677. These three wars against colonialism by Khoi and San proved that the bravery of these sons and daughters of Africa was no match for the military terrorism of imperialist aggressors.

But even then, a Khoi African king in today’s Western Cape asked Jan van Riebeeck, ‘If we (Africans), were to come to Europe, would we be permitted to act in a similar manner you act here? It would not matter if you stayed at the ‘provision station’, but you come out here in the interior. You select the best land for yourselves. You never ask us even once whether we like it or not or whether it will disadvantage us. You say land is not enough for the pastures of your cattle and sheep as well as ours. Tell me, Jan van Riebeeck and your colonial settlers: Who then, with the greatest degree of justice should give way, the natural owner or the foreign invader?’

Colonialists are hungry for the riches of Africa and they have desperately tried to make their own wishful thinking the history of Africa ever since they landed in Africa. In 1961 the colonial prime minster of South Africa, Hendrick Verwoerd, told an audience in London: ‘More than 300 years ago, two population groups equally foreign to South Africa converged in rather small numbers on what was practically empty land. Neither group colonised or robbed the other by invasion.’

His foreign affairs minister, Eric Louw had earlier said, ‘The Bantu began to trek from the North across the Limpopo when Jan van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay in 1652.’

The colonial ‘empty land’ theory has no historical credence. It is conceived in the womb of imperialism. Pieter Muller suggests that the records of the Boer Trekkers must be consulted to prove his ridiculous point of view. This would be like asking the European Allies in the Second World to consult Nazi history records. The colonisers of Azania have worked for centuries to turn Azania into an ‘Australia’ or ‘New Zealand.’ South Africa is the only British colony in Africa that was called a ‘dominion.’ Britain and its colonial settlers smuggled the African country it had colonised into the League of Nations and into the United Nations as a ‘sovereign state’, though the coloniser and its settlers could not tell the world on what date South Africa was returned to its rightful owners.

In 1930 reports on excavations at Mapungubwe in the Limpopo area revealed skeletal remains of what was called ‘ancient Azanians.’ (See also Old Africa Rediscovered page 95, The Lost Cities Of Africa pages 155-156 by Basil Davidson; Man In Africa by L.S.B. Leakey; The History Of The World J.M. Roberts pages 457-458; Apartheid: The Story Of A Dispossessed People published by Marram Books London 1984 with a foreword by former Professor of history at Harvard University, C L R James).

A British academic, Shula Marks, has pointed out that the carbon dates that have been processed from the Early Iron Age stretching over central, eastern and southern Africa reveal that the first Iron Age African farmers arrived here in the first millennium and not as had been previously assumed, relatively late in the second. Prof. Marks further stated that, ‘The earliest dates we have for the Iron Age in South Africa go back to 1200 years before the Portuguese rounded the southern tip of the Continent of Africa.’ This will be about 286 A.D. When it is considered that there were some Europeans who passed through this country earlier than Portuguese Diaz in 1486, the date is much earlier.

Addressing a symposium in 1973 on ancient mining in Azania (South Africa), head of archaeology department of Witwatersrand University stated that ‘the early Iron Age Africans entered Transvaal between 27 B.C. and 473 A.D.’

Heinous atrocities committed against the Khoi and San Africans is to the degree that they were exterminated. They are a few Khoi in South Africa today, but hardly any San people. The San had to flee to Namibia, Botswana and Angola to survive their colonial extermination. Here are a few examples: In 1771 another war broke out between the San people and the Dutch settlers. The San people had begun to retaliate against the setters. The settlers had taken large tracts of their hunting land for farming. As a result of this war, the settler leadership ordered that ‘every Bushman, Hottentot or Bastaad robber of any sex or age be delivered alive at Robben Island, there to serve the Dutch Company in chains....The Graaf Reinet turned out too late, but Jan van der Walt of the Koude Bokkeveld and Jonker Afrikaner...did yeoman service killing over 600 Bushmen and taking a few alive. As a reward for all this, Van der Walt was given two farms on the Nieuwveld,’ writes Erick A Walker in his book ‘A History Of Southern Africa’, page 118.

It is estimated that the population of the Khoi people when the colonisers arrived in the Western Cape was over a quarter million. Their extermination was not only with colonial guns. Leprosy disease introduced from passing European ships decimated the Khoi people. They had no clue how to treat this foreign disease. They died in great numbers. As Peter Dreyer, author f MARTYRS AND FANATICS.... puts it, ‘the Khoi were reduced to a landless proletariat – labourers or vagrants on the land of their ancestors.’

The colonial settlers having now subjugated the Khoi Africans and dispossessed them of their land employed them as labourers on their own robbed farmland. They paid them with food, old clothing and alcohol. The liquor is said to have been ‘hot ten tots’ a month – hence the new colonial name ‘Hottentots’ for the Khoi people.

Another false theory that colonialists and their historians have propagated is that there was deep hatred between the Khoisan Africans and other Africans in Azania. As indicated earlier in this discussion, King Witbooi one of the Khoi kings dismissed this colonial fallacy. Historian Shula Marks has written, ‘Contrary to much of the mythology which dwells on the inveterate hatred between them...there is much archaeological as well as linguist record of long peaceful interaction between them. The clicks characteristic of the Southern Bantu languages, that are characteristic of the South Eastern Bantu languages, that are unique to this family, also bespeak a long and intimate relationship between Khoisan and Bantu-speakers. Oral tradition in many areas recalls the intermarriage even of Bantu-speaking people with Khoisan women. Chief Molhebangwe(sic) of the southernmost Tswana people, the Tlhaping – his mother was a Khoi.’

In fact, a Mofokeng King married a San woman as his senior wife in 145O. Intermarriage between Xhosa-speaking Africans and Khoi Africans was so common that Amagqwashu, Amangqunukhwebe, Amacira and Amasukwini have been described by some historians as half-Xhosa and half-Khoi (Peter Dreyer author of MARTYS AND FANATICS page 81).These people spoke of their women as ‘Amalawukazi ampundu zibomvu’ (The Khoi women who have fair red buttocks).

King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho was among kings who married San women. Their names were Rosaleng also known as Qea and Motseola known as Seqha.

The historical fact is that the colonialists exterminated the Khoisan Africans. Loss of land results in loss of national sovereignty and nationhood. The national tragedy of losing one’s land was highlighted by Eta when the Khoi African King Adam Kok III died on 30 December 1875. In a moving funeral oration, Eta, the king’s cousin told the Khoi rather prophetically.

‘We have laid in the grave a man you all knew and loved. He is the last king of our people. After him there will be no Khoi African in South Africa....Take a look into that grave. You will never look into the face of another king of our people. Do you realise that your nationality is buried there?’

When the Peter Mulders, the Hendrick Verwoerds, Eric Louws and their historians talk of ‘empty land’ when colonialists arrived in Azania, they provoke very deep emotions in the hearts of the African people who were dispossessed of their land at gunpoint and are still dispossessed – hence rampart poverty among them, whether they be Zulu Africans or Khoi Africans.

Prof. James H. Evans of the Faculty of Colgate Rochester Divinity College in America has asked, ‘Why does the white myth of South differ widely from reality?’ He hits the nail on the head when he says, ‘The answer to this question in part is that the invaders found it necessary to justify historically, their invasion of a large portion of a black continent. By controlling the history of the region, they could control its inhabitants...the sole aim of which is keep the Black majority in slavery.’

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* Dr. Motsoko Pheko is author of several books such as The Hidden Side Of South African Politics and How The Freedom Charter Betrayed The Dispossessed. He is a former Member of the South African Parliament as well as a former Representative of the victims of apartheid at the United Nations in New York as well as at the UN Commission On Human Rights in Geneva.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The Igbo genocide and its aftermath

The tragedy of Africa’s unlearned lessons

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80138

cc JonathanThe perpetrators, of what were unquestionably crimes against humanity appear to have got off free. The consequences of the Igbo genocide for Africa have been catastrophic.
In 1966, soon after the world commemorated the 21st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and made the customary solemn declaration of ‘Never, Never Again’, Nigeria defiled that season of reflection, commiseration and hope. Its military officers, the police, Hausa-Fulani emirs, Muslim clerics and intellectuals, civil servants, journalists, politicians and other public figures planned and executed the Igbo genocide – the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. [1] This is also Africa’s most devastating genocide of the 20th century. A total of 3.1 million Igbo people, a quarter of this nation’s population at the time, were murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970.

Most of Africa and the world stood by and watched, hardly critical or condemnatory of this wanton destruction of human lives, raping, sacking and plundering of towns, villages, community after community in Biafra and elsewhere... Most Igbo were slaughtered in their homes, offices, businesses, schools, colleges, hospitals, markets, churches, shrines, farmlands, factories/industrial enterprises, children’s playground, town halls, refugee centres, cars, lorries, and at bus stations, railway stations, airports and on buses, trains and planes and on foot, or starved to death – the openly propagated regime-‘weapon’ to achieve its heinous goal more speedily. In the end, the Igbo genocide was enforced, devastatingly, by Nigeria’s simultaneously pursued land, aerial and naval blockade and bombardment of Igboland, Africa’s highest population density region outside the Nile Delta. Earlier on in 1945 and 1953, under the very watch of British occupation, the Hausa-Fulani political leadership had carried out two premeditated pogroms on Igbo immigrant populations in Jos and Kano in opposition to the Igbo vanguard role in the struggle for the restoration of Nigerian independence from British conquest. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered on each occasion and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property looted or destroyed. Neither in Kano nor Jos did the occupation regime apprehend or prosecute anyone for these massacres and destruction. Tragically, these pogroms turned out as ‘dress rehearsals’ for the 1966-1970 genocide.

The perpetrators, who subsequently seized and pillaged the rich Nigeria economy, appear to have got off free from any forms of sanctions from Africa (and the world) for what are, unquestionably, crimes against humanity. The consequences for Africa have been catastrophic. Several regimes elsewhere in Africa are ‘convinced’ of the conclusions that they have drawn from this crime by their Nigerian counterpart: ‘We can murder targeted constituent people(s) at will within the state we control … Haul off their prized property and livelihood … Comprehensively destroy their cities, towns, villages, communities – precisely their age long, priceless, inheritance ... There will be no sanctions from Africa – and the world’. As a result, the Igbo genocide becomes the clearing site for the haunting killing fields that would snake across the African geographical landscape in the subsequent 40 years, with the murders of additional 12 million Africans, since January 1970, by regimes in further genocide in Rwanda, Darfur and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of Congo and other killings in Liberia, Ethiopia, Congo Republic, Somalia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, South Sudan and Burundi. [2]

YAKI, IT ISN’T

The records of those who carried out the Igbo genocide make no pretences, offer no excuses, whatsoever, about the goal of their dreadful mission – such was the maniacal insouciance and rabid Igbophobia that propelled the project. The principal language used in the prosecution of the genocide was Hausa. The words of the ghoulish anthem of the genocide, published and broadcast on Kaduna radio and television throughout the duration of the crime, are in Hausa:

‘Mu je mu kashe nyamiri
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su

(English translation: Let’s go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property).

The Hausa word for war is ‘yaki’. Whilst Hausa speakers would employ this word to refer to the involvement/combat services of their grandfathers, fathers, uncles, sons, brothers, other relatives/friends in ‘Boma’ (reference to World War II Burma [contemporary Myanmar] military campaigns/others in southeast Asia, fighting for the British against the Japanese) or even in the post-1960s Africa-based ‘peace-keeping’ military engagements in west, east and central Africa, they rarely use ‘yaki’ to describe the May 1966-January 1970 mass murders of Igbo people. In Hausaspeak, the latter is either referred to as ‘lokochi mu kashe nyamiri’ (English: ‘when we murdered the damned Igbo’) or ‘lokochi muna kashe nyamiri’ (English: ‘when we were murdering the damned Igbo’). Pointedly, this ‘lokochi’ (when, time) conflates the timeframes that encapsulate the two phases of the genocide (May 1966-October 1966 and July 1967-January 1970), a reminder, if one is required, for those who bizarrely, if not mischievously, wish to break this organic link.

Elsewhere, genocidist documentation on this crime is equally malevolent and brazenly vulgar. A study of the genocide-time/‘post’-genocide era interviews, comments, broadcasts and writings on the campaign by key genocidist commanders, commandants and ‘theorists’ and propagandists including, particularly, Yakubu Danjuma, Ibrahim Haruna, Yakubu Gowon, Benjamin Adekunle, Olusegun Obasanjo, Oluwole Rotimi, Obafemi Awolowo, Allison Ayida and Anthony Enaharo is at once revealing and profoundly troubling. Adekunle, a notoriously gruesome commander, had no qualms; indeed, in boasting about the goal of this horrendous mission he told an August 1968 press conference, attended by journalists including those from the international media: ‘We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces march into the centre of I[g]bo territory, we shoot at everything, even at things that do not move’.[3] True to type, Adekunle duly carried through his threat with clinical precision both on his ‘everything that moves’-targeting, especially in south Igboland where his forces slaughtered hundreds of thousands, and on the ‘things that do not move’-assault category. Adekunle’s gratuitous destruction of the famed Igbo economic infrastructure, one of the most advanced in Africa of the era, was indescribably barbaric.

A brief review of Olusegun Obasanjo’s own contribution (published in his memoirs, My Command) that focuses on his May 1969 direct orders to his air force to destroy an international Red Cross aircraft carrying relief supplies to the encircled and blockaded Igbo is crucially appropriate. Obasanjo had ‘challenged’, [4] to quote his words, Captain Gbadomosi King (genocidist air force pilot), who he had known since 1966, to ‘produce results’ in stopping further international relief flight deliveries to the Igbo. [5] Within a week of his infamous challenge, 5 June 1969, Obasanjo recalls nostalgically, Gbadomosi King ‘redeemed his promise’. [6] Gbadomosi King had shot down a clearly marked, incoming relief-bearing International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7 plane near Eket, south Biafra, with the loss of its three-person crew. Obasanjo’s perverse satisfaction over the aftermath of this horrendous crime is fiendish, chillingly revolting. He writes: ‘The effect of [this] singular achievement of the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division [the notorious unit Obasanjo, who later became Nigeria’s head of regime for 11 years, commanded] was profound. It raised morale of all service personnel, especially of the Air Force detachment concerned and the troops they supported in [my] 3 Marine Commando Division’. [7] Yet despite the huffing and puffing, the raving commanding brute is essentially a coward who lacks the courage to face up to a world totally outraged by his gruesome crime. Instead, Obasanjo, the quintessential Caliban, cringes into a stupor and beacons to his Prospero, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (as he, Obansanjo, indeed unashamedly acknowledges in his My Command), [8] to ‘sort out’ the raging international outcry generated by the destruction of the ICRC plane...

WHAT ‘INTERNAL AFFAIR’? WHOSE ‘INTERNAL AFFAIR’?

There was an extensive coverage of the Igbo genocide in the international media throughout its duration. The United Nations though never condemned this atrocity unequivocally. U Thant, its secretary-general, consistently maintained that it was a ‘Nigerian internal affair’. The United Nations could have stopped this genocide; the United Nations should have stopped this genocide instead of protecting the interests of the Nigeria state, the very perpetrator of the crime. In the wake of the Jewish genocide of the 1930s-1940s during which 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany, Africa was, with hindsight, most cruelly unlucky to have been the ‘testing ground’ for the presumed global community’s resolve to fight genocide subsequently, particularly after the 1948 historic United Nations declaration on this crime against humanity. [9] Only a few would have failed to note that U Thant’s reference to ‘internal’ was staggeringly disingenuous as genocide, as was demonstrated devastatingly 20-30 years earlier on in Europe, would of course occur within some territoriality (‘internal’) where the perpetrator exercises a permanent or limited/partial/temporary sociopolitical control (cf. Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy its Jewish population within Germany itself; Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy Jewish populations within those countries in Europe under its occupation from 1939 and 1945). Between 1966 and 2006, the world would witness genocide carried out against the Igbo, the Tutsi/some Hutu, and Darfuri in ‘internal’ spaces that go by the names Nigeria, Rwanda, and the Sudan respectively. The contours of the territory where genocide is executed do not therefore make the perpetrators less culpable nor the crime permissible as the United Nations’s crucial 1948 genocide declaration states unambiguously.

The very central role played by Britain in support of the Igbo genocide no doubt reinforced the scandalous failure of the United Nations to protect Igbo people during this catastrophe. Britain, a fully-fledged member of the United Nations – indeed a founding member of the organisation who enjoys a permanent seat on its security council and participated in drafting the anti-genocide declaration – supported the Igbo genocide militarily, politically and diplomatically. It is extraordinary that in his otherwise informative study, ‘Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice’ (London: Penguin Books, 2006), Geoffrey Robertson, a British human rights lawyer, a queen’s counsel, does not discuss the Igbo genocide anywhere in his 759-page text nor Britain’s instrumental role in perpetrating this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa.

Britain was deeply riled by the Igbo lead role in terminating its occupation of Nigeria and had since sought to ‘punish’ them for this. A senior British foreign office official was adamant that his government’s position on international relief supply effort to the encircled and bombarded Igbo was to ‘show conspicuous zeal in relief while in fact letting the little buggers starve out’. [10] Indeed as the slaughtering of the Igbo progressively worsened, Prime Minister Wilson was unashamedly unfazed when he informed Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, ‘would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took’ [11] Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide. Such was the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide. As the final tally of its murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Nigeria probably had the perverted satisfaction of having performed far in excess of Wilson’s grim target… Predictably, it was to Wilson that the Nigerians turned to, in 1969, to ‘sort out’ the international revulsion generated by the latter’s destruction of the ICRC aircraft as we have already stated.

ARMS BAN

Without British active involvement in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, it was highly unlikely that this crime would have been committed. Nigeria did not have an arms-manufacturing capacity then to embark on this terror without external support. Forty-five years on, Nigeria still does not have such an internal military capability. It still relies heavily on Britain, currently the world’s leading arms exporter to Africa, for its supplies [12]. One immediate move that Britain, the West, and the rest of the world can make to support the ongoing efforts by peoples in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa to rid themselves of the genocide-state is to ban all arms sales to Nigeria and the rest of Africa. [13] Nigeria and other Africa genocide-states require the political and diplomatic support from abroad and the deadly array of arms ever streaming into their arsenal from Britain and elsewhere to exist and terrorise the people(s) in their territories. This is part of the cardinal and enduring lessons of the Igbo genocide. The legacy has indeed been catastrophic.

A comprehensive arms ban on Africa will radically advance the current hectic quest on the ground by peoples across the continent to construct democratic and extensively decentralised new state forms that guarantee and safeguard human rights, equality and freedom for individuals and peoples – alternatives to the extant genocide-state. Africans know very well that there are alternatives to the genocide-state. They have both the vision and the capacity to create these alternatives. For Africans, indeed, the creation of these alternatives is imperative in this age of pestilence. Nothing else.

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* Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of ‘Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature’ (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011).
* Published paper, International Association of Genocide Scholars 9th Biennial Conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 19-22 July 2011 (Conference hosts: Genocide Studies Center, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires).
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

END NOTES

1. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra Revisited (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2006) and Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011).
2. Ibid.
3. The Economist (London), 24 August 1968.
4. Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command (Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980), p. 78.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 79.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 165
9. Cf. Hugh McCullum, ‘Biafra was the beginning’ (accessed 14 June 2010).
10. Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger & American Foreign Policy (London & New York: Quartet Books, 1977), p. 122. See also Michael Leapman, ‘While the Biafrans starved, the FO moaned with hacks’, The Independent on Sunday (London), 3 January 1999.
11. Morris, Uncertain Greatness, p. 122.

REFERENCES

1. Barnett, Antony. ‘UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 billion mark’(accessed 13 June 2005).
2. Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature. Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011.
3. Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. Biafra Revisited. Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2006.
4. Leapman, Michael. ‘While the Biafrans starved, the FO moaned with hacks’, The Independent on Sunday, London, 3 January 1999.
5. McCullum, Hugh. ‘Biafra was the beginning’ (accessed 14 June 2010).
6. Morris, Roger. Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger & American Foreign Policy. London & New York: Quartet Books, 1977.
7. Obasanjo, Olusegun. My Command. Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980.
8. Robertson, Geoffrey. Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice. London: Penguin Books, 2006.

Toilet capitalism: A Zimbabwean basket case

Khadija Sharife

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80142

cc SokwaneleThe power imbalances underpinning the structural layout of public worlds have reflected economic inequalities in areas characterised by those lacking political capital.In Zimbabwe, the scene is ripe for private waste sanitation companies or toilet capitalists.

The restaurateur-cook-waitress looked more like a grandmother than mother, shrunken with poverty. Scarf tied around her simple but sweet face. Tired but with a smile and outspread, work-worn hands, one felt the urge to give her a hug, and tuck her into bed, rather than giving 'Mama' an order for several plates piled high with steak and sadza (maize meal) at nearly midnight.

Our group (from Italy, Malawi, Britain and South Africa) had been invited by our lovely Zimbabwean friend 'F' to hang out at one of the best 'braai' or BBQ stands, in Harare. The braai stands, with rows of well-skewered customers on wooden benches, frequently act as gourmet cooks to Harare's poor and not-so-poor people - ministers, businessmen, wannabes and in-betweeners - despite being located in the deprived Warren Park area in the heart of kwaMereki.

For a 'cooking' fee – about $16 for two kilograms of steak bought from across the road, 'Mama' got to work, flaming up a world-class braai, served on two metal trays. No utensils were provided and, until the very end, there was no light in the area, save from store-signs across the road and cars, some of them Mercedes, parked near the stands. Our enterprising Italian 'G', proffered up a lighter for our viewing pleasure; and a pen knife; and then it was our turn to work – eat, quickly, to free up a table.

Meanwhile, kwaMereki's business-minded youth were being their usual resourceful selves, as they made a killing walking to and fro the 50 metres between the liquor stores and food stands, selling alcohol and soft drinks to thirsty diners. It appeared that beer made diners more thoughtful and largely immobile. Though the business of selling drinks was done in almost complete darkness, somehow, they would notice whenever a drinker approached the bottom of the bottle and offer to top-up.

Before and after we ate, our hands were bathed by a woman who walked around with a jug filled with lukewarm water and a bucket. There was no bathroom. Men migrated to far corners for their business. The women had it much more difficult and, when not able to escape to a discrete spot, often waited until they were able to return home. 'It is not always safe across the road, in the dark, with all of these people,' said one Zimbabwean woman.

While the gourmet restaurateurs pay $5 rent to the council (and city) on a monthly basis, like much of Zimbabwe, the area has several times prior been stricken by illnesses stemming from various structural problems – mainly the lack of toilet facilities and tap water. Since the early 1990s, save for negotiating use of bathrooms available in the mainly liquor and butcheries across the road, customers have been using the same area as a place of convenience. Problems are myriad. When it rains, amongst other things, the great wash of human release floods the vegetable gardens in the area. Cholera outbreaks sometimes occur, in Mereki and surrounding areas. All of a sudden, the delicious crunchy green vegetables from the gardens in our plates conjure horror.

But where are the rolling toilets?

With a piece of crunchy green salad in my mouth, it occurred to me then that Warren Park and Mereki went hand in glove with toilet capitalism. Sometime back, one Zimbabwean, in partnership with a South African, purchased mobile toilets from South Africa for Mereki, charging customers R5 a hit. He would go on to win an award. We inquired, but did not see, these award-winning toilets. Several younger chaps confirmed the rumour: 'the rolling toilets? It has come through here, but I cannot say the whereabouts now.’

Certainly, the mobile toilet would have been a welcome addition and brilliant short-term solution - but at what cost? ‘What we want,’ said Mama, ‘is for them (government) to put in toilets and taps.’ From Thursdays to Fridays, she said, the place was jam-packed.

Of course, Warren Park is not special: one of my earliest memories is running almost straight into a 'flying toilet' in Nairobi, which until 2008 had just 150 public toilets for over 3.5 million people. The public toilets then, were a scene of physical chaos, later dubbed by a friend, visiting India - where over 800 million have little access to sanitation facilities, 'toilet warfare'. Historically, the power imbalances underpinning the structural layout of public worlds have reflected economic inequalities in areas characterised by those lacking political capital.

Similar to environmental racism, evidencing landfills, slaughterhouses and the like, situated in the poorest areas, lack of waste sanitation is often interlocked with lack of access to clean water. In her book, 'The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters', detailing the waste sanitation crisis, Rose George writes, 'I thought a toilet was my right. It was a privilege.' But as every African knows - this is untrue. Access to clean water and safe sanitation is a fundamental human right, only the quality of that provision (such as Japan's high tech toilets) is a privilege.

This much was confirmed by the UN's General Assembly, which bemoaned in the UN's usual toothless way, that as much as 2.6 billion people globally have no access to waste sanitation. A situation that results in 2.2 million deaths annually, of which 1.5 million are children - excluding the numerous consequences of illnesses such as cholera, frequently affecting African countries.

Like Uganda's Kampala - which hosted just 108 public toilets for a population of more than 2 million people, and privatised public toilets several years ago, in Zimbabwe, the scene is ripe for private waste sanitation companies or toilet capitalists.

According to one development worker I bumped into, waste sanitation apparently rests under the mandate of the country's National Water Department via the Harare Water Supply Division. This was allegedly inherited from the City Council of Harare, thereafter further devolved to local councils. But neither department seems overly anxious to claim the responsibility of upgrading, connecting and developing, what is actually a matter of life and death. Of late, it seems China - anxious to secure platinum reserves allegedly worth US$40 billion, had negotiated a US$144m deal with China Exim and the government to finance three phase development of basic needs including sewer and waste sanitation systems.

This was also allegedly discussed with the local councils. But when I asked a receptionist at a guesthouse about the interest of the city and local councils in the constituencies, she responded in the negative, saying that right now, while things had greatly improved, the battle between 'those who wanted power for good, and those who were good at having power', had drained the life from Zimbabwe's political scene, corrupting many in the process. The people on the periphery of these political battles - particularly women like Mama, not only had no political say, but also, no financial choice to opt for private or portable toilets.

Where did the money go?

Cumulatively, since the 1970s, Africa has lost over US$730 billion - money that should have been invested in infrastructure, to illicit flight. More than 60 per cent of the continent's annual wealth is lost to corporate mispricing - your everyday respectable multinationals looting through respectable institutions. In 2008, as a vicious cholera epidemic swept through Zimbabwe much of the country's GDP was siphoned through illicit flight, while the political situation deteriorated.

Revenue leakage not only drains nations of funds required for basic needs – and decent and dignified lives, but is also the symptom of a corruption that is global in architecture, and globally pervasive in nature. This reality is reflected in the indignity of having no toilets, no water, not enough food and no medicines.

I got the chance to speak with police chiefs and soldiers. I got the chance to speak with students. I got to speak with everyday people. And forefront in their minds is access to basic services: even in good areas, electricity cuts were common. Basic services – the kind that provide the architecture of living (water, waste sanitation, schools etc) may just become possible soon enough, if diamond revenue could be caught before gross revenue leakage, already pegged at US$1 billion. The legitimisation of Zimbabwe's diamond industry, considered the gravy train of Zanu PF chaps, is pegged by Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, to generate upward of US$1 billion annually.

The dollarisation of the economy, and almost sole reliance on imported goods, particularly from South Africa, has rendered the economy a landscape of exploitation – to the point where Finance Minister Tendai Biti has banned importation of second-hand underwear. Like the cost of food, Zimbabwe's toilet capitalism is symbolic of the structural inequalities that constitute the character profile of the political economy. Everywhere, vulnerability was evident.

By the time I left, I began to harbour - nonsensically - a hatred against ATM machines, bizarre boxes that poured magically, not to the deserving, the hungry, the fearful, but to the right code. I was extremely grateful to our hosts and a friend, who previously lived in Zimbabwe for decades, for bringing us out of the usual 'tourist sphere', and into the lives and worlds of real Zimbabweans – the grocery markets, food stalls, neighbourhoods, townships, and bars. Though many South Africans from an early age, witnessed a mass divide between those dispossessed, and those with the mansions, the Zimbabwean divide is seemingly greater. While we did not visit the richest areas, the semi-rich area suburbs were dotted with opulent mansions and gardens so large, I presumed, initially, to the amusement of my hosts, that it was an area filled with beautiful guesthouses.

The gap between the 'haves' and have nots' must not simply be seen through the prism of the economic, despite its primacy over other forms of similarly powerful 'capital' (from gender to culture). But a significant problem of the economy itself, i.e; the need for development revenue, is possible given that Kimberly Process approval has been granted under the US. This is good news for Zimbabwe, now one of the world's top eight diamond producers, and Mines Minister Obert Mpofu estimates Zimbabwe's Marange diamonds to generate upward of $1 billion annually.

That is, if revenue can be captured.

In 2008, as cholera swept through the country due to aging and absent water and waste sanitation systems, 800 per cent of the country's GDP left through flight. Arguably the Minister most concerned about revenue leakage and political corruption, the opposition MDC's Biti, is frequently harassed and sidelined by ZANU officials (example, the recent alleged fraud charges relating to $500 million in IMF funds).

Yet without people like Biti in positions of power, it is unlikely that the revenue will flow in the direction of the public good. For rent-seeking looters like those preying off public revenue – and the toilet capitalists - this will certainly come as welcome news. For the rest of the nation, not so much.

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* Khadija Sharife is a journalist; visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society (CCS) based in South Africa.
* This article was first published by The Africa Report.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Crisis at private universities in Nigeria

Kola Ibrahim

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80146

cc G C Comm.Education in Nigeria is in crisis following years of underfunding. And private universities that have mushroomed to meet the growing need for higher education have become so commercialised many of them are no better than glorified high schools.

The recent newspaper reports about a crisis in Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, has again brought to the fore the role of privately owned educational institutions as a way out of the crises in the education sector. According to reports, the students of the institution had embarked on a violent protest to vent their anger against the mismanagement of the health condition of a fellow student by the university administration thatled to his demise. The victim had gone to the institution’s health centre to complain about a health problems, but his situation grew worse. Rather than switch on the electricity generator to give the student the treatment required, the health centre management instead preferred to preserve the generator for the vice chancellor. Worse still, attempts by the deceased’s colleagues to facilitate his transfer to a better hospital in town were frustrated by the institution’s security personnel.

All of these are serious grounds for protest by the students, as they reflect not only a high level of insensitivity but also high-handedness by those that are the supposed to assist the students. However, that the protest turned violent is a reflection of the lack of democratic space for students to air their views and peacefully seek for redress over their living and studying conditions. This is compounded by terrible living conditions of the students and the exploitation of their parents by the authorities of the institution. According to the newspaper reports, the basic living facilities needed by students for normal studies – electricity supply, water, etc – are simply unavailable, despite students paying for these facilities. Moreover, the payable fees are irregularly hiked without any regard for the economic planning and conditions of parents. It was the summation of all this that led to the violent protest.

However, what happened at Ajayi Crowther University can easily be wished away as an isolated problem of the institution’s management; but the reality is that the ACU case is a direct mirror of the rot that the private university system represents. While there may not be protests (nay, violent protests) in many private universities yet, it does not, however, imply that those other institutions are not operating with the same system as ACU. For instance, none of the private universities allows student unionism, even workers’ unionism, which is flagrant violation of the principle of academic freedom and the constitutional right of association that are fundamental ingredients for the proper development of intellectualism. According to the 1994 Lima (Peru) Declaration on Academic Freedom, right to dissent and alternative views and opinions not only on intellectual activities but also on societal and collective issues is fundamental to academic freedom, especially in an intellectual factory like university.

That these private institutions do not allow democratic engagement in their domain is not accidental; it is itself a product of attempts at protecting their exploitative system. Had vibrant unionism been allowed for students and staff, the various private institutions’ owners, including the faith groups, would have been exposed for their dubious and exploitative activities. Most of the private schools, in an attempt to rake in profits, had to cut funding for facilities available to students while also underpaying the lecturers. In fact, there are several reports of unqualified lecturers employed in order to reduce cost of running the institutions. Furthermore, as a result of the business orientation of these institutions, standards are compromised with a view to present the institutions as being success stories of private efforts. A story was once related of a senior academic who went to a private university for sabbatical, but hurriedly left as he was asked to compromise standards for all the students to pass! This is aside from the entrenched admission racket, which bypasses the admission requirements set by government’s agencies. For instance, while students from poor and working class backgrounds struggle to overcome the various roadblocks of national exams and admission cut off marks in order to gain admission to public universities, students from rich backgrounds only need to show any indication of undertaking admission examination to gain entrance into private universities.

Surely, this cannot happen where there is academic freedom. While not advocating for a sadistic policy of failing students in order to show fake quality, evaluating students should not be compromised on the altar of patronage. Ironically, the aim of the private universities’ managements is not real quality or bringing out the students’ best, but gaining more patronage and resources through dubious whitewashing and public relations. It is thus not accidental that these institutions spend more money on media spin. In fact, a sizable proportion of private universities that are portrayed as being of high quality in the newspapers are nothing more than glorified secondary schools.

That all of this is allowed by the government and its supervising agencies like the National Universities Commission (NUC) is a reflection of the pro-big business character of government and its officials. In the real sense, it is the children of the rich few and the upper middle class who mostly patronize these private institutions. Moreover, private education is an excuse for government and politicians in power to shirk their responsibility towards public education. The government is deliberately propping up these private educational institutions, many of which are owned and run by government officials (present and past) and their cronies. For instance, the present head of NUC was a former vice chancellor of a private university (Bells University) while the immediate past head of the same agency is a pro-chancellor of Osun State University (UNIOSUN) where exorbitant fees are charged despite exceptionally poor facilities. Therefore, it is no accident that supervising agencies in the education sector such as NUC and the ministry blind themselves to the rot in the private institutions.

The general excuse for denying unionism is that unionism breeds long academic calendars. What is not said is that it is government neglect and irresponsibility – coupled with high-handedness of university administrators who see their roles as those of conduit pipes for their principals’ retrogressive policies – that have turned our public tertiary institutions to citadels of crises. Interestingly, the same insensitivity is now the fad in these private institutions as exemplified by arbitrary hikes in fees, lack of democratic rights for students and staff and worse living and working conditions. What distinguishes the two is the presence of unionism in public institutions, which makes managing the students’ reactions to the retrogressive policies of the government and university officials better organised. It is worth mentioning, however, that majority of public university administrations are now vigorously adopting the anti-democratic approach of private institutions to curtail the rights of students and even staff; it is part of the holistic plan of the government to completely privatise and commercialise (out of common man’s reach) public education. The private institutions have denied this right outright with the spectre of unplanned and violent outbursts of bottled up angers at the manner of running these institutions as manifested in the ACU case.

As a way of running away from the basic question of academic freedom and democratic rights, many of the private university owners hide under the guise of raising morally upright graduates with good entrepreneurial skills. However, as the popular axiom teaches, education is what is left in the student after what has been taught has gone. How then can a student develop a critical mind of self-recreation if the culture of criticism and inquisition (of seeming accepted norms) are denied? In reality, this veil of morality is merely an excuse to avoid answering the basic question of how the institutions are run in an exploitative, undemocratic and anti-intellectual manner. Consequently, various completely anti-intellectual rules are set in order to gag the students. It is thus a fashion for university authorities to treat undergraduates, who ordinarily are ripe for social/public tasks, like school pupils. Principal officials of a faith-based university in Osun State were recently reported to be flogging students, ostensibly on the order of their parents! Another faith-based university in the same state was reported to bar students from wearing jeans, while compulsory religious devotions and prep classes are organised for them! Surely, similar if not worse policies will be practiced in ACU.

But has this stopped the violent protests? In fact, private universities are increasingly becoming safe havens for gangsters, many of whom are wards of upper middle class or the rich few in the society. At private university in Ibadan, there are regular reports of anti-social activities like robbery, rape and other crimes perpetrated by the students. It could not have been otherwise, as the so-called moral values cannot be enforced on grown-up youths, nor is morality itself determined by the choice of clothes you wear, the kind of music you listen to, and the rest. Social morality is a reflection of the socio-economic and political setting of the society. A country where a few rich can have their ways and make riches without undertaking any productive activity and nobody, agency or structure, questions such cannot escape from desperation of the youths. A society where public resources meant to expand social infrastructures that will provide decent jobs for millions of youths are diverted to private pockets, thus creating generations of hopeless, desperate youths, cannot escape from disintegration of the social fabric.

It has nothing to do with self-righteous and archaic religious injunctions and morality. Interestingly, these private universities themselves are run on immoral and not-so-transparent manners as cited above – cronyism, erosion of standards (for patronage and profits), exploitation of students, gagging the students and staff from asking questions, etc. What is even the morality in feasting on the rotten carcass of public education, with a view to gaining profits? Is it accidental that a sizable proportion of the private universities are run by religious organisations, which charge pocket-tearing fees? Yet the funding of these faith-based universities is supposedly from their members’ offerings.

It can easily be argued that private universities provide choice for those who can afford them. This argument is simplistic. In the first instance, private education did not arise on the basis of choice but on the basis of collapse of public university system, occasioned by deliberate and criminal underfunding and mismanagement (of meager resources) by the capitalist governments and their stooges in university administrations. Until the mid-1980s, private education (including primary and post-primary) were not popular. This is not accidental, but a product of pressure (through bitter struggles of workers and students) on the government to commit public resources to public education. Despite government’s falling funding of public education, it is still possible to hope to be educated even if your parents are poor. Consequent upon the adoption of the poisonous pills of neo-liberalism, exemplified by the President Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP), public education was rapidly turned into commodity that has to be bought in the market by parents who want educated children, the same way health and decent jobs were made privileges.

Thus, governments subsequently did not see education as a social obligation of the society but a private affair of individuals. This is backed up by chronic and continuous underfunding of the whole education sector leading to terrible working conditions of teaching staff from primary to tertiary levels. The end results of these are: continuous crises in the sector through elongated industrial actions of teaching and non-teaching staff (who needed to protect their hard-won rights), commercialisation of education facilities and increases in fees, collapse of facilities (leading to students’ resistance), etc. With total collapse of the economy and its attendant erosion of hope in the ability of the state to raise living standards including provision of jobs, public education simply lost the compass with the rise in gangster activities on campus, declining interests in education, a drastic fall in morale of working staff, etc. It is on this rot that private education (starting with private primary and post-primary schools) started gaining echo, especially among middle class people. Today, despite the emergence of the so-called civilian rule coupled with the huge resources at the disposal of the state, the state of public education has worsened to the extent that even a pepper seller, who can afford it, sends her ward to a private school.

This, however, does not imply that the private schools provide any real quality; in the real sense, it is otherwise. More than 90 percent of private schools still lack the basic standards of public schools, even in their current debilitating conditions. The few private schools that have adequate facilities and infrastructures are simply unaffordable for majority of the population who struggle to make ends meet. That this virus of private education has crept into the life of a sick public education, has found its way to the zenith of education – university system – underlines the complete irresponsibility of the governments at all levels. Worse still, to underscore ruling class shameless backwardness, the private education system (an abnormality in itself) is now being used as the standard to run public institutions with, state universities competing with private ones in commercialisation of education.

This is not surprising, as the politicians in power are members of the rich class who do not feel what those they are supposedly representing are suffering. In fact, virtually all politicians in power are themselves members of the exploiting, big business class who see no sense in anything public; thus their negative, or at best, carefree attitude towards everything public – education, health, water, sanitation, jobs, etc. This in itself underscores the fact that revamping public education to adequate standards with unrestricted access to the majority requires a government that really believes in public education as a social responsibility of the state; a government that will not see education in isolation from other social obligations, including decent job provision for graduates and non-graduates, among others. Therefore, education workers and students and indeed the working and oppressed people in general must see the struggle to salvage public education as a collective one against the behemoth of politicians in power. The campaign of the university lecturers’ union for proper funding of education and democratisation of decision making in the university system must become the collective struggle of all education workers and students. More than this, working people must begin the process of altering the political landscape by building alternative political platforms that will put a proper funded and democratically run education system on the front burner, as part of the holistic programmes of mass investment in social and public infrastructures.

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* Kola Ibrahim writes from Enuwa, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Rwandan exiled journalist comes out of hiding

Tom Rhodes

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80145

cc A SGasasira has reason to be wary of Rwandan authorities. After three men beat him severely in 2007, his newspaper was suspended in April 2010 and his deputy editor assassinated in unclear circumstances in July that year.

I must have received at least a dozen communications from worried friends and colleagues, asking the whereabouts of the chief editor of the highly critical Rwandan website, Umuvugizi. By mid-January, no one had heard from John Bosco Gasasira, nothing new had been published on Umuvugizi since January 11, and his cell phones were switched off. Last week, concerned colleagues wrote a public letter expressing concern over their missing colleague.

‘I could not keep my phones on. I knew Rwandan agents were hunting me,’ Gasasira told me. He had decided to go into hiding. Gasasira alleges that Rwandan agents in Sweden have been monitoring him since September 2010 and even attempted to poison him that month. ‘Ever since September 2010 I was protected by Swedish authorities – they have really helped me.’

His claim would sound preposterous except for the fact that European governments have accused the Rwandan government of using agents to target opponents abroad. In 2011, London's Metropolitan Police warned three Rwandan nationals living in Britain that the Rwandan government posed an imminent threat to their lives, the BBC reported. The Rwandan High Commissioner in Britain rejected the police claims.

But last week, Swedish officials evicted the second-highest ranking Rwandan embassy official, Evode Mudaheranwa, for ‘refugee espionage,’ the Associated Press reported. ‘Evode Mudaheranwa was evicted the same day I came out of hiding,’ Gasasira told me.

Neither government has commented on the eviction, according to international reports. One thing is certain though – Gasasira has reason to be wary of Rwandan authorities. After three men beat him severely with iron bars in 2007; his newspaper was suspended in Rwanda in April 2010; and his deputy editor assassinated in unclear circumstances in July that year, it is no wonder Gasasira fled the country and lives in exile in Sweden. (In December, a Rwandan journalist was shot dead by unknown assailants in Kampala, the capital of neighbouring Uganda. Rwandan mourners at his funeral reported being scared of Rwandan agents in Kampala).

Judging by the plethora of scathing articles against the Rwandan government on his website, Gasasira's unpopularity with Rwandan authorities would also not be surprising. Stories published in 2010 and 2011 claim President Kagame used public funds to purchase a private jet and a house in Britain and set up a bank account in Mauritius to launder money.

‘Paul Kagame wants to destroy the Rwandan media and he does this by forcing journalists into exile. You find many Rwandan journalists go into exile but cannot afford to continue the profession,’ Gasasira said. Umuvugizi has managed to continue and, according to Gasasira, has more impact as a website than when it was published as a weekly newspaper back home in the capital, Kigali. ‘Our statistics show this. In Kigali we were read by 3,000 people, now we are read by 7,000 people online per day,’ he said. Although the site is periodically blocked in Rwanda, local journalists told me, many are able to access Umuvugizi articles through other websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

All this leads Gasasira to stay cautious. ‘All along I've been limiting my movements in Sweden,’ he told me, ‘I don't go to public places like normal people, but that's life – if I don't do this who knows what might happen.’

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* Tom Rhodes is Committee to Protect Journalists’ East Africa consultant, based in Nairobi.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

IMF’s man Ouattara now head of ECOWAS

Crossed Crocodiles

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80152

cc CSIS‘They tell you in the mainstream media that Quattara won? How did he win? Who decides on who wins elections? What constitutional body has absolute and final say on election malpractices? The Supreme Court.’

Alassane Ouattara is the current president of Ivory Coast, selected by France and the United States on behalf of the international community, and with the assistance of the U.N. mission chief to Ivory Coast Y.J. Choi. They declared Ouattara winner of the November 2010 Ivoirian presidential election in 2011. Ouattara spent much of his career at the IMF, including serving as Deputy Managing Director from 1994-1999.

In his acceptance speech he concentrated on security issues, which works well with the priorities of France, the US and NATO.

The Ivorian president was elected for a single-year tenure at the 40th Ordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS concluded in Abuja on Friday.

Quattara said in his acceptance speech that his administration would define common policy and combine resources to fight terrorism, piracy, banditry and proliferation of small arms and light weapons in the sub-region.

The Ivorian president also said that he would ensure the modernisation of ECOMOG to tackle security challenges.

He thanked his immediate predecessor, Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan, for his efforts in piloting ECOWAS in the resolution of the Ivorian political crisis and consolidation of peace and stability in other member-states.

The next summit of ECOWAS has been fixed for the Ivorian Capital, Yamussoukrou, on a date to be announced by the chairman.

At Nairaland, where the comments can be interesting, in comment #5 here, Danka7777 wrote:

‘Quattara – a known former IMF executive, this guy that was hand picked by the western countries to rule Ivory Coast. We are finished. Nigerians reading this, don’t take my words at face value, go and do your own research on why former President of Ivory Coast, Gbagbo, was hunted and ousted from power. This guy was trying to untie Ivory Coast from the shackles of colonial France, in other words, he was trying to untie Ivorian currency from French currency.

‘Essentially what this means is that the former colonial master (France) still controls the currency value of Ivory Coast. Gbagbo was hunted because he VOWED to untie Ivory Coast from the shackles of colonial slavery. They tell you in the mainstream media that Quattara won? Let’s put this in context: how did he win? Who decides on who won elections? What constitutional body has absolute and final say on election malpractices? Is it the Supreme Court or electoral body? My judgement tells me it’s the Supreme Court and most of you will agree. Who decided the election of President Goodluck Jonathan vs. Buhari few weeks ago and in the past elections, was it Supreme Court or electoral body (INEC)? Of course it was the Nigerian Supreme Court. Who decided the election of Bush vs. Gore in 2000? United States Supreme Court did. Now, conversely, when the Ivorian Supreme Court ruled that Gbagbo was the winner of the election in Ivory Coast, the western world said, No! no! no! … Who did these people think they are fooling? Like we are babies and can’t think for our selves?’

IMF policies, particularly the market theology inspired SAPs, structural adjustment programs, have been responsible for the death and suffering of hundreds and thousands of people and the dismantling and destruction of vital institutions of government in many developing countries around the world. The IMF is the tool of bankers, with a banker’s view of the world. Currently we can see how harmful that can be in Greece.

I think it is important to consider this in the light of recent studies and information about the nature of global finance.

REVEALED: THE CAPITALIST NETWORK THAT RUNS THE WORLD

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

“The super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

I don’t believe much in conspiracies, eventually people talk. The more people that know a secret, the less likely it is to stay a secret. Common interests are a different matter. Individuals and groups can organize and act as powerful forces to protect their own interests without the need to conspire.

As a long term employee and official of the IMF, Ouattara is a part of the global financial structure and likely to work for its interests above the interests of Ivory Coast, West Africa, or the continent of Africa. To date he has shown no sign that his allegiances are with Ivory Coast or with Africa above the IMF, Sarkozy, France, and the bankers.

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* This article was first published by Crossed Crocodiles blog.
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On the lure of India and China

Richard Pithouse

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80179

cc F FIt's not only money and military power that count in this world. Popular mobilisation can transform societies from below and it can strengthen states against private and imperial interests.

There's a new buoyancy in certain circles following Jacob Zuma's announcement of an impressive programme of infrastructural development. In a country that has seemed to be drifting rather aimlessly in the icy waters of the global economy, it's no surprise that a more decisive posture from the President, backed up with lots of concrete plans, is animating renewed optimism.

And in a moment in which the wheel of history is steadily bringing down the influence of the old imperial powers as it elevates India, China and Brazil there is a scent of real possibility for some in the African air. Luanda is becoming a city of Angolan millionaires and Portuguese professionals looking for work. Fortunes, incredible fortunes, are being made in the apparently endless disaster of the Congo. In South Africa, the World Cup has marked the landscape of our cities with futuristic and monumental promises of the modern Africa that can be conjured out of the devastation of the past. Increasingly voices amidst both our political and corporate elites are suggesting that we look to India and China to find our own way forward.

Ever since the revolution of the Haitian slaves in 1804 every collective political attempt at African assertion of an equal place in the modern world has been encircled and contained, and undone from without and from within. But now, in a striking reversal of Kwame Nkrumah's dictum to 'Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added onto you', it seems inevitable that the economic undoing of Western dominance from the great economies across the global South must eventually lead to its political undoing. It would be no small thing if African elites could, on the back of growing economic power rooted in natural resources and expanding domestic markets, take a decent seat at the table of the new world order that, while its form is unclear, is certainly on the way.

Wealth is a form of power and it is a form of power that has, as a result of a history of violence and domination, been held in particular hands. Just as the accumulation of black wealth, even if only on the part of a minority, inevitably takes on an anti-racist dimension in South Africa where whiteness and wealth became intertwined during colonialism and apartheid, the rush to accumulate in Bombay and Beijing inevitably takes on a dimension that sets Indian and Chinese power against that of the old world order with its roots in colonial domination. The growing excitement that travels the same circuits as the new fortunes in the global South is not just fuelled by the pursuit of money as an end in-itself. It's also about the end of some forms of collective subordination, insult and contempt.

But in India and China the means towards the economic defeat of neo-colonial arrangements, a process that has lifted millions into the middle class, is a kind of internal colonialism. People are being forced off their land, thrown out of the cities, subject to the most gross exploitation in mines and factories and politically repressed at a scale and intensity that rivals some of the horrors of colonialism itself. They are doing to their own people what the English elites first did to their own people and then to the colonised at the dawn of capitalism. This has not been uncontested. Large swathes of India are under the control of armed rebels and the state is waging a war against a considerable proportion of the people it claims to represent. In China, ferocious repression has not stopped riots and strikes and the sometimes-insurrectionary mobilisation of whole villages against an economic model that smashes everything in its path as it impoverishes some and enriches others.

Those who would argue that in the hard world of realpolitik it is only money and military strength that really talk can show that elsewhere in the world more democratic and inclusive attempts to undo the domination of the World Bank, the US military, rapacious global corporations, their local political partners and the other powers of the old system of domination have not always fared well.

The tenacious popular struggle in Haiti has been ruthlessly suppressed by the same contemptuous disregard for the Haitian people to decide their own future that has long marked the orientation of North America and Western Europe towards the old colonies. The extraordinary political vision and courage gathered into Tahrir Square and honed into a movement that could depose a grotesque American backed dictator has rapidly, although of course neither entirely nor decisively, been absorbed into a system of global domination that is, as we in South Africa know very well, able to accommodate limited democratisation in the client states on its periphery.

But across Latin America there have been, for some time now, a set of innovative political experiments in and outside of states. The gains of these Latin American experiments have often been quite modest and in some cases have functioned to, as happened to some degree after apartheid, entrench rather than to oppose exploitative and exclusionary economic practices by offering them a new sense of legitimacy. New elites have sometimes actively sought to stake their claim within these practices. But a break with the IMF, a refusal to accept a new base for the US military and a reversal of water privatisation along with declining inequality, some land reform, important steps towards more participatory budgeting and policy making, the development of transport systems organised with more concern for people's needs than private profit and direct action by movements of peasants and shack dwellers have enabled some real shifts in power relations within some countries and between these countries and the West.

And whatever the limits of the governments that have come to power on the strength of popular mobilisation in Latin America in recent years, they are vastly less political and economically brutal than the regimes in India and China. In many Latin America countries there are routes, often constructed from below as much as opened up from above, towards political participation by the organised poor that are simply unthinkable in India or China.

In a 1972 interview with Gail Gerhart that has become quite famous in recent years, Steve Biko warned that it would be possible to create a “capitalist black society, [a] black middle class,” and to “succeed in putting across to the world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with still 70 percent of the population being underdogs”. If we can successfully follow aspects of the Chinese or Indian model we will be able to produce elites that can be integrated into the global elite. But this would hardly be the society with 'a more human face' that Biko had not just called for in South Africa but also suggested as the basis for our post-apartheid engagement with the rest of the world - a basis that was, in his view, of more value than industrial and military strength.

The range of political experiments that have been undertaken in Latin America in recent years, some of which are facing a degree of crisis as internal contradictions become evident and popular movements and governments part ways, offer us no firm blue prints for a better future. What they do show though is that it's not only money and military power that count in this world. Popular mobilisation can transform societies from below and it can strengthen states against private and imperial interests. But for as long as the ANC continues to believe that it alone represents the people, that popular organisation outside of its control is politically illegitimate, if not treasonous or criminal, and that it must always lead from above, the ruthless nexus between corporate and political power in Beijing and New Delhi will offer far more attractive alliances than the political innovation in the government offices in La Plaz or Quito, the barrios of Caracas or the land occupations in rural Brazil.

In a recent essay, Achille Mbembe argues that “the human has consistently taken on the form of waste within the peculiar trajectory race and capitalism espoused in South Africa” and that “for the democratic project to have any future at all, it should necessarily take the form of a conscious attempt to retrieve life and 'the human' from a history of waste.” This takes us to the heart of the choices that confront us as we chart a course into the new world.

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* Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University.
* This article was first published by the South African Civil Society Information Service.
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Fidel Castro & 540 minutes

Farooque Chowdhury

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80183

cc AbirdieThe meeting, dubbed ‘Encounter of Intellectuals for Peace and Environmental Conservation’, was attended by more than a hundred laureates in literature, history and social and natural sciences and eminent thinkers from 21 countries.

‘Fight, don’t let pessimism win; it’s our duty’

“We have to fight. We can’t let pessimism win. It’s our duty”, Fidel Castro said.

This call to duty comes from the person who, long ago, in a court of trial quoted Martí: ‘A true man does not seek the path where advantage lies, but rather, the path where duty lies […]’ (Fidel Castro, ‘History will absolve me’) Of this person, Tad Szulc observes: ‘Cuban and world history would have evolved differently had this single individual been less determined […]’ (‘Fidel: A Critical Portrait’) And, of the same person, Raul Castro said: ‘The most important feature of Fidel’s character is that he will not accept defeat.’ (Herbert Matthews, ‘Castro: A Political Biography’)

So, today, Fidel describes the current world period as ‘harsh and difficult, with everyone asking each other what to do […]’. In terms of the enemy, the aspect that concerns him most is that ‘they believe that they are in control, they try to impose things, but they are not in control. Nobody really knows what is happening.’ Elucidating the point Fidel cited the situation related to Iran. ‘The principal truth is the danger of war’, he said. Fidel warned: ‘[T]he most dangerous aspect is that enemy forces are less and less in control of the terrible forces and processes which they have unleashed. This is the situation of the United States and Europe in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they can neither stay nor go.’ (Arleen Rodríguez and Rosa Míriam Elizalde, ‘Nine Hours of Dialogue with the Leader of the Revolution’, Feb. 14, 2012)

Fidel reiterated the need to keep people informed, (emphasis, here and henceforth, added) another news agency report said.

Fidel Castro was having a discussion in Havana. A Reuters news report said: ‘Fidel had a nine-hour discussion with intellectuals’.

The meeting, ‘Encounter of Intellectuals for Peace and Environmental Conservation’, was attended by more than a hundred laureates in literature, history and social and natural sciences, eminent thinkers from 21 countries and Cuba including Cervantes Prize (the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world) 2005 winner prominent Mexican writer, translator and diplomat Sergio Pitol, and Nobel Peace Prize (1980) laureate Argentine sculptor, architect and pacifist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. They were attending the 21st International Book Fair of Havana. The discussions covered issues including the state of the world, possible extinction of humanity, exhaustion of the planet’s natural resources, perversions of media transnationals, military and mind control devices and the 85-year-old comandante’s health. An intimate Fidel gave full attention to all the speakers during these 540 minutes with two brief recesses’. (Arleen and Rosa, op. cit.)

‘He is the same Fidel as always’, said Ignacio Ramonet, author of ‘Cien horas con Fidel’ (One Hundred Hours with Fidel), Spanish journalist, writer and former editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique. The revolutionary’s inexhaustible curiosity was there. As the participants were expressing ideas, Fidel’s thoughts were live with expression; there was his habitual gesture – touching face with index finger or reflectively stroking his beard’. (Arleen and Rosa, op. cit.)

Daniel Chavarría, the Uruguayan-Cuban revolutionary, writer, and winner of the National Literature Prize, mentioned Fidel’s capacity for being ahead of events, of being a type of ‘historical prophesier’, a ‘tactical pessimist and strategic optimist’. Chavarría wanted Fidel ‘to say whether, in a world at the point of going to the winds and with […] enormous problems […] he should be alarmed or stay calm. Fidel unhesitatingly replied, ‘In order to remain calm you have to think about the problem and fight against it.’ One of the best ways of helping the act of ‘thinking about the problem’ is to provide peoples with as much information as possible.’ (ibid.)

Stella Calloni, Argentine journalist and writer, cited the frightening silence of media and part of the left in the face of colonial wars unleashed one after another since 2001 and those threatening to follow the script in Syria and Iran. She called for greater coordination on the Defense of Humanity network. ‘If we cannot stop these wars, they will come down on us later […] Silence on the part of intellectuals, never again’, she said. Frei Betto, author of the book ‘Fidel and Religion’, urged people to generate projects, not only outrage, because it is not enough to address global injustice. (ibid.)

Award-winning Argentine journalist, novelist and politician Miguel Bonasso raised a burning issue: The latest British colonial aggression in the Malvinas. Fidel observed: ‘They have no choice but to negotiate and leave. What they have done is totally brazen: they even dispatched a destroyer and a helicopter with the Prince as a pilot. The Americans definitely won’t be very happy about that. The situation is not one of war, but pressure has to be put on them.’ ‘Pinochet’s no longer here; he was the one who helped the British in their last war on Argentina. They are desperate, and that’s the way in which they reacted when Uruguay recently vetoed the entry of a British ship flying the Malvinas flag. They have no business there, the only option left open to them is to leave’, Fidel said. (ibid.)

The dialogue turned amazing as Brazilian Marilia Guimaraes informed them that architect Oscar Niemeyer, a friend of Fidel, is now 104 years of age. ‘His mind is extremely lucid and he often asks after ‘the 85-year-old boy.’’ An amused Fidel asked: ‘Why don’t we make a genetic study of him?’ He wanted to know from German Harri Grünberg the way Germany plans to replace nuclear energy. Santiago Alba Rico, ‘Arab by adoption and a homeless European who, like many others, moves about defending Cuba’, was asked questions on the post-revolt situation in Tunisia – Rico’s present place of residence – its economy, agriculture, and its wine and date production. This led Frei Betto to comment: ‘Many people here, like Santiago Alba have experienced what an oral test in a Jesuit school means. It’s hard. That’s where Fidel comes from.’ (ibid.)

Famous author of juvenile and youth literature Carlos Frabetti referred to advertising: ‘Advertising tries to convince us that happiness is possessing more than others, when happiness is having more with others.’ Children are the most vulnerable to advertising, he said. Frabetti congratulated Cuba for not being subjected to this aggression while Europeans can receive up to 1,000 advertising impacts every day. He said children living under constant consumer stimulus turn frustrated and react aggressively. Fidel expressed his aversion to advertising, which the Cuban Revolution has never utilized, not even as a means of testifying to its positive actions. (ibid.)

Everything that Cuba has done for other peoples was without any desire for competitiveness, publicity or propaganda, Fidel said. He affirmed: The spirit of solidarity is part of the foundations of the Revolution that triumphed in January of 1959. In those years, Cuba had 6,000 doctors. Many of them left for the US when the economic and political blockade was imposed. However, at the same time, some of the professionals who joined the revolutionary process were also prepared to go to Algeria to help that country. ‘Thus Cuba’s internationalist tradition began’, Fidel noted. He recalled that ‘the initial aid for Angola was transported in the old Britannia aircraft that we had. We did it without seeking any limelight.’ Experience was added to these principles, intertwined with what Fidel called ‘an honourable politics, not exempt from errors, but honourable.’ He added, ‘The ideas which we defend are based on experience, they are not simply imaginings. We have experienced them.’ (ibid.)

Honour and dignity are fundamental and uncompromising issues to Fidel. Even his class enemies fail to deny it while they refer to Fidel and Cuba. The revolutionary, whose struggle transgresses centuries, initiated in the twentieth century and continuing in the twenty-first century, stands for honesty, honour and dignity since the initial days of his revolutionary activities, since the days of his dream to ‘revolutionize [Cuba] from top to bottom’ (Fidel, My Early Years, ‘Letters from prison, 1953-55’, April 15, 1954)

Fidel praised the Telesur network […] ‘for working very seriously and professionally […]’. ‘I like Telesur very much’, he said. On ways to confront lies by the enemy’s powerful media, he said he was no longer bothered by these lies. ‘The problem is not in the lies they say, but that we cannot prevent them. What we are looking at today is how we ourselves state the truth.’ The key, according to Fidel, is to inform. He praised Telesur’s approach and its lack of advertisements that bombard media users almost everywhere in the world. (Arleen and Rosa, op. cit.)

‘[T]oday, information within the media system operates like merchandise’, affirmed Ignacio Ramonet, Spanish writer and journalist. ‘[T]here are many free daily newspapers today […] How is it that a system which is always so concerned about benefit, is making the circulation of information free of charge? Because these days, the information trade does not consist of selling information to people, but in selling people advertising [….I]nformation is a strategic raw material [….M]edia power […] can only be conceived of as the twin of financial power [.…T]his media-financial link is more powerful than political power […P]olitical leaders have less power than before and the media is taking advantage of this weakening and the absence of authority to attack on behalf of objectives set by the financial power’, he added. (ibid.)

Fidel observed the abuse of technology that intrudes on people’s privacy. ‘All aspects of their personal lives are explored and this surveillance is being carried out by those who consider themselves champions of individual rights.’ He joked about certain people still believing in code and commented that the Yankee secret in wars has always been to know these codes. He went on to talk about devices already at the advanced research stage which can transmit electricity through appliances of barely one atom in height, from drone aircrafts, and of the possibility of making soldiers subconsciously react to electronic orders more rapidly than by traditional means. The persons inventing them, he noted, ‘are going beyond insanity’. (ibid.)

Argentine writer Vicente Battista, Salvadorian playwright Lina Cerritos and the culture ministers of Angola, Ecuador and Jamaica referred to cultural resistance, standing up to domination, environmental conservation, and the importance of discussing ideas. (ibid.)

Bonasso recalled with emotion a February day of 2006 when Fidel wrote the following dedication on the first page of a book which he was given: ‘With great hope in youth and that the world will continue to exist’. He narrated another incident on one night in Havana’s Palace of the Revolution, just after the earthquake in northern Pakistan in October 2005. The decision to send a Cuban medical team to the aid of the victims was taken on that night. Bonasso recalled that Fidel said, ‘The winter and the cold are coming now and thousands upon thousands of people have lost their homes in the mountains. What will happen to these people, to the women and children?’ The Argentine writer added, ‘You are the only statesman I have known to have the capacity of thinking sensitively and whom I have seen deeply moved by […] people.’ (ibid.)

In an exchange with Francisco Sesto, Venezuelan minister for the reconstruction of Caracas, Fidel inquired about housing and other social projects being implemented by the Bolivarian government and exposed ‘the propaganda and publicity apparatus being fired at Chávez.’ (ibid.)

‘I came to listen to you, to learn from you’, the Comandante en Jefe insisted. Argentine political scientist Atilio Borón recalled the absurd divisions within the left. ‘These are old habits which will gradually [get] eliminated’, observed Fidel. He termed the audience as ‘Infinite’. Probably he was meaning ‘the capability of the men and women accompanying him to multiply their non-acceptance of the current world order and to establish projects and models which can save humanity from its self-destruction.’(ibid.)

Fidel recommended that contributions to the encounter should be compiled into a book in order to disseminate the ideas expressed. The intellectuals present could revise their words, edit them and add what they might have forgotten in the heat of the dialogue. ‘Given that we are very pressed, there’s no need for haste’, he said. (ibid.)

Fidel’s moves make news. His admirers and enemies keep eyes on him, on all news on him. The discussion with the intellectuals is significant as it brings notice to the deteriorating world situation, as imperialism is making one onslaught after another, as imperialism is turning captive to its crisis that makes it desperate. The days are much dangerous and uncertain than the Empire’s Iraq invasion days. ‘No other era in the history of humankind has experienced the current dangers humanity faces.’ (Fidel Castro, ‘Marching toward the abyss’, Reflections, Jan.4, 2012) On the one hand, a section in peoples’ camp with their inert, ignorant brain is joining imperialists’ covert and overt invasions in the name of democracy, and on the other, capital is cementing ties with one of its old allies, retrogressive forces, while the inert brains join the alliance. Fidel, Guerrillero del tiempo, Guerrilla of Time, in this situation, calls to practice ‘honourable politics’ that should be upheld and practiced at all costs, that a significant section in people’s camp in a number of poor countries has abandoned, and that moneyed elites dominating societies can’t practice.

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* Dhaka-based freelancer Farooque Chowdhury contributes on socioeconomic issues.
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The other darker Charles Dickens

Nigel Westmaas

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80192

cc WikipediaThere is a paradox between the Dickens of empathy for the working class in industrial England and the Dickens who spoke and wrote about and supported some of the vilest descriptions and actions on blacks and Asians.

February 7, the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Dickens, kicked off a year of celebrations to commemorate the work and impact of the great British novelist. His timeless prose, including Hard Times, A Tale of Two cities, Bleak House, Pickwick Papers and other great books of the Victorian era will be re-read, celebrated and analysed. His class portrayals of industrial Britain with its high measure of empathy for the working class and the colorful characters that made his books live in the imagination will be fêted.

Nevertheless, in this anniversary year it is also important for us to take a closer look at the least discussed aspects of Dickens’ life and work. Call it what you will, but there is a paradox, ambiguity, or hypocrisy between the Dickens of empathy for the working class in industrial England and the Dickens who spoke and wrote about and supported some of the vilest descriptions and actions on blacks and Asians. In other terms, his reputation as a Victorian social reformer scarcely measures up to his “darker” side – the one in which Dickens in public and private prose held contempt for the black world. Perhaps there were hints in his works on his positions on Britain’s colonial subjects abroad. Let’s say for the sake of literary license we forget those transgressions. But there were two major events in the colonial world that defines the strategic Dickens and that are specially valid and poignant examples of his regular descriptive of blacks and Asians as “savages”.

In 1865 there was a cataclysmic social explosion in a Caribbean colony of Jamaica had a profound impact on English society and severely questioned Victorian liberal values.

The event in question came to be called the Morant Bay rebellion. In summary, rebels led by a black Jamaican deacon Paul Bogle seized a courthouse to protest economic and judicial injustice on the island. The action, which also resulted in the deaths of policemen, colonial officials and native Jamaicans, triggered a savage response from the island’s Governor, Edward John Eyre that unleashed a brutal crackdown on the rebels and the general black and colored population. By the time the dust settled after a month of martial law, hundreds were dead, the majority executed on the Governors’ orders.

The grisly statistics of the outcome were “439 dead, six hundred flogged and 1,000 houses burned.” Another leader described as a radical spokesperson for the demonstration, George William Gordon, a colored man, was put on trial and summarily hanged for his alleged role in the initial revolt. Racial vengeance was at its worst. When the news of the uprising and subsequent repression reached London, the brutality of the Governor’s response evoked horror and rage in some quarters in England. Two major lines of public opinion were drawn in the sand. Some English luminaries called for Governor Eyre to be put on trial for the atrocity. These came to be known as the Jamaica Committee and included Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and even “survival of the fittest” proponent Herbert Spencer.

Other Victorian leading lights immediately sprang to Eyre’s defense. Among them were Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Dickens. The defenders were dubbed the Eyre Defence Committee. Of course the agency of the black Jamaicans on whose soil the atrocity was committed was scarcely heard amid the public voice of the two committees. Here we also have to be careful for another reason. The participants in the Jamaica Committee were far from being anti-colonial activists and were certainly not supporters of the Morant Bay revolt. As British historian Catherine Hall observed, the “protagonists and antagonists of Governor Eyre in the metropole were convinced that Jamaica was not fit for representative government, and that dependencies were best ruled from London.”

Dickens’ support for the genocidal Governor of Jamaica was by no means an aberration. In October 1849, Dickens reportedly wrote to a friend about a proposal for an article in his Household Words that would discuss “a history of savages, showing the singular respect in which all savages are like each other; and those in which civilized men, under circumstances of difficulty, soonest become like savages.”

Eight years earlier in 1857, another powerful revolt had taken place in India, then a colony in the British Empire. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 also known as the Sepoy(Indian soldiers employed by the British) Mutiny began as a revolt against the British East India Company's army in Meerut near Delhi and spread throughout India. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British rule in India. It was finally contained and brutally crushed by the British army by June 1858. The Indian populace suffered horrific causalities in the aftermath. The course and aftermath of the revolt was also a source of debate in England.

On the Indian “mutiny” Dickens wrote to an acquaintance: “I wish I were Commander in Chief in India… I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon the stain of the late cruelties rested…to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth.”

The responses of Charles Dickens to both incidents in the British Empire, Morant Bay and the Sepoy revolt, in a context where issues of race, empire and morality were subjects of debate in Victorian England.

This anniversary then, while paying tribute to the undoubtedly great novelist must take pause and place in context the gravity of his social and political positions on some of the victims of the British Empire. Arguments will rationalise that Dickens actions and statements on race should not be a shock given the century in which it occurred. Whatever the overall perception of the celebrated novelist in this 200th anniversary, we owe it to posterity to subscribe to a fuller, holistic sense of Charles Dickens, his positions on the black world inclusive.

Indeed the novelist who in much of his work inspired charity at home and showed humanity toward the poor and neglected in London, was not as charitable to the non-white poor in opposite ends of the British empire.

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* Nigel Westmaas is Assistant Professor Africana Studies Hamilton Cole
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The problem with Black Republicans

Jessica Ann Mitchell

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80194

cc F D TIf Black Republicans want more members of the Black community to learn about the benefits of their party, they are going to have to do a better job of openly holding their party accountable for racially divisive and hatefully charged rhetoric.

In the United States of America, it has become a norm in the Black community to vote for members of the Democratic Party, even if we don’t know exactly who the candidate is. This is a major issue because members of the Democratic Party do not always implement policies that benefit the Black community. Voting for Democrats blindly is very harmful to the democratic process. Nevertheless, the allegiance to the Democrats continues. I have never professed to be a member of either party, however I recognize that I definitely have a preference for Democrats over Republicans as well.

Indeed this is a complex issue because the Black community is complex and not monolithic. However, upon a scan of Black community members, many would appear to side with Republicans on certain ‘conservative’ issues. Still there is a major disconnect between the Republican Party and African American voters. As I watched Allen West’s interesting Black Republican panel on C-SPAN, an issue was raised by one of the attendees. How do they get more Black voters to understand and join the Republican party? This same concern was raised recently on a BlackRepublicans.blogspot.com]blog run by Frances Rice, a co-founder of the National Black Republican Association. Rice asks, “But how do we win 25% of the black vote?”

Well, the problem lies in a horrible public relations track record on the part of the Republican Party when dealing with Black voters over the last few decades.

1. In the name of conservatism, many proposed policies promote individualistic approaches to education and economic growth. Consequently, unions, affirmative action and government assistance can be perceived as unnecessary handouts and are constantly under the strain of possible cuts by Republican politicians. This causes historically disadvantaged communities to continue existing as last on the totem pole with stifled opportunities for upward mobility. However, as many Black republicans point out, self-determination and perseverance play important roles as well. And I think for the most part, many would agree with the self-determination aspect of this argument. However, in a modern world, built and based on historic inequalities and disenfranchisement, sometimes self-determination is not enough to secure equal pay, equal rights and equal access to the pursuit of happiness. Until the Republican Party takes steps towards recognizing this, it is going to have a hard time amongst Black communities.

2. The Republican Party may have been the party of Frederick Douglas, but in 2012 the party is certainly hell bent on reasserting the good ole days. Barack Obama stated in his recent State of the Union speech, “I won’t go back! I won’t go back!” I was immediately reminded of the recurring statement amongst Republicans and Tea party members, “Let’s take our country back!” or “returning to the days of the patriots”. These statements always threw me off. Where are we taking America “back” to? These moments of patriotic nostalgia conjure up frightening images for many African Americans. For many of us “going back” carries negative imagery tied to racially intrinsic historic pains. Are we going back to the days when Black was synonymous with “the help”? Newt Gingrich’s recent comment about having children serve as janitors only makes matters worse. Are we going back to the days when we knew “our place”? Are we going back to the days when American was synonymous with White Anglo Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual? Indeed, this rhetoric is off-putting along with the disturbing imagery, which often accompanies it.

Juan Williams tried to get Newt Gingrich to answer for his racial/hate mongering statements and Williams was bombarded by heinous heckles during the South Carolina debate. Though Williams’, questions were valid and necessary, his Republican counterparts refused to acknowledge it.

Also, let us not forget presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Black people or “Blah” people statement. “I don’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn money, ” said Santorum. He later changed his tune and insisted that he said the word “Blah” instead of “Black”. This is a sad cause of nonsensical denial mixed with a blatant disregard for any ounce of respect towards African Americans. And yet, where was the outcry from well-known Black republicans?

Furthermore, the Obama is a “Black Monkey”, “Muslim, Communist”, “Welfare President” rhetoric and imagery has gone on long enough. Ever since Obama was elected president, there have been town-hall meetings with derogatory pictures of Obama positioned with a turban on his head and a bone through his nose, saying “go back to Africa”.

Even though much of this rhetoric may not come from Black Republicans, their association with the Republican Party makes matters worse when trying to connect with members of the Black community. Especially when they are trying to convince members of the Black community to join them.

If Black Republicans want more members of the Black community to learn about the benefits of their party, they are going to have to do a better job of openly and admittedly holding their party accountable for racially divisive and hatefully charged rhetoric. If they could somehow, get their party to see how off-putting this rhetoric is to potential members, huge strides could be made. However, at the moment, their counterparts appear to be having a good ole’ time basking in the warmth of racially charged rhetoric and hate mongering in order to secure votes among the waning population of America that still awaits the return of Mammy.

And it is for this reason that many members of the Black community cannot relate to the Republican Party. Thus, Black Republicans take notice. However, good your intentions maybe, the antics of your counterparts and your refusal combat them have ruined your opportunity to connect with the majority of the Black community.

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* Jessica Ann Mitchell- is the founder of BlackBloggersConnect.com. You can visit her personal blog at OurLegaci.com. She can be contacted at mitchelljessicaann@gmail.com.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Campaign for Peace and Democracy Left Forum panel

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/80212

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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Ghana, corruption and development

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/80151

cc BBCGhana is embroiled in a corruption scandal that ruling party MPs believe won't effect how people vote. Think again.

A ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament, Kojo Adu Asare, thinks a US$40 million corruption scandal that is rocking the NDC won’t affect the outcome of Ghana’s 2012 general elections and development in the country generally. Either Adu Asare just doesn’t get it or he does not understand the development project called Ghana. From the creation of the Ghana nation-state 54 years ago, corruption has been responsible for the country’s instability - until 19 years ago when genuine democracy brought stability.

Corruption affects Ghana’s progress. Monies meant for roads, food, security, health, housing, education, and other socio-economic infrastructure are stolen. Ghanaians’ life expectancy, at 64.2 years, isn’t encouraging. Poverty is still a killer. Ghana says it is poor and goes abroad begging for money to survive to support its budget, yet Alfred Woyome, an NDC financier, in collusion with other high-ranking Ghanaians, apparently received millions from the state.

Adu Asare’s NDC, which originated from struggles against corruption, is a typical African case. Corruption saw confused military coup d’états. With weak or non-existent accountability institutions, the military juntas were themselves engulfed in corruption more severe than the civilians they overthrew. Corruption saw Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, the so-called founder of Adu Asare’s NDC, violently coming to power, with the execution of some military heads of state and generals and the painful exiling of some Ghanaians. But it appears the NDC has quickly forgotten its roots and is now embroiled in a US$40-million corruption scandal that has seen some ministers and bureaucrats forced to resign and others arrested.

In all the development issues to be debated in the 2012 general elections, the central issue will be how to get money for socio-economic essentials. One cannot build socio-economic infrastructure if the state treasury is periodically looted. Adu Asare’s view that Ghanaians won’t vote based on the Alfred Woyome corruption scandal but on the image of President Atta Mills is disturbing and nonsense. Ghanaians are going to vote in the 7 December general elections based on the Woyome scandal.

Partly because of endemic corruption, Ghana ranks 135th out of 187th countries with comparable data measured in 2011 by the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The fact that Ghana is at a medium human development level should be of concern to Adu Asare. If Adu Asare has a feeble sense of the relationship between corruption and development, his fellow brothers and sisters in Botswana could teach him one or two lessons.

With an entrenched culture of accountability and genuine independent institutions, such as the judiciary and the legislature, Botswana, according to Transparency International, is the ‘least corrupt country in Africa and ranks similarly close to Portugal and South Korea’. Botswana leads Sub-Sahara Africa in development indicators. It ranks high, at 98th on the United Nations Human Development Index. Adu Asare should remember that Ghana ranks medium at 135th.

In Susan Rose-Ackerman’s ‘The Political Economy of Corruption’, an independent and honest judiciary, including lower level clerks and bureaucrats, are effective tools for containing corruption. In the Alfred Woyome corruption scandal some elements in the judiciary actually helped Woyome. Former Minister of Education Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who was forced to resign, refused to prosecute Woyome when the issue was first brought to her attention when she was then the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

When Ghanaians ‘examine their personal lives as to how that has improved under the leadership of President John Atta Mills and cast their votes accordingly’, as Adu Asare told the Accra-based Peace FM, they will be informed by the Woyome corruption scandal that has dented some aspects of their development process. Ghanaians will, therefore, vote accordingly.

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Policing freedom of assembly: gone too far?

Sarah Mount and Sanyu Awori

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/80198

cc M DDid the Tanzanian activists cause a breach of the peace or prejudice public safety and the maintenance of public order? Crucially, were the police, by prohibiting the alleged assembly and subsequently arresting the activists, using their discretion appropriately?

Recently, on 9 February, 16 prominent human rights activists were arrested in Dar es Salaam on the grounds of unlawful assembly. The human rights defenders, who included the Executive Director of the Legal and Human Rights Centre and the Executive Director of the Tanzania Media Women's Association, were arrested at the Muhimbili National Hospital following a doctor’s strike that had paralysed the provision of health services. The police authorities allege they had gathered illegally and were intending to hold an illegal demonstration, although the group maintains that they were not there to protest but to observe the dialogue between the government and health officials. The activists were detained and then later released on bail, pending confirmation of charges.

These events put the spotlight on the laws and procedures regarding freedom of assembly, and raises questions about whether the police were acting reasonably in consideration of the constitutionally guaranteed right to assemble.

Article 20 of the national constitution enshrines the right for people ‘to freely and peaceably assemble, associate and cooperate with other persons’. However, as expressed in the constitution, this right can be limited by other national legislation for certain purposes, including ensuring public order or where it is in the public interest.

The Police Force and Auxiliary Services Act forms part of the national legislation which regulates public assemblies. This Act states that notification must be provided to the police 48 hours in advance of a planned public assembly. The police are given broad powers to prohibit the assembly if they believe it ‘is likely to cause a breach of the peace or to prejudice public safety or the maintenance of public order’.

The question is, did the 16 activists cause a breach of the peace, or prejudice public safety and the maintenance of public order? Crucially, were the police, by prohibiting the alleged assembly and subsequently arresting the activists, using their discretion appropriately?

Arguably a ‘breach of the peace’ could be interpreted very broadly by police, allowing them to use their discretion to prohibit all public assemblies. This is very concerning, and is likely to be considered an unnecessary restriction in international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that no restriction can be placed on the freedom to assemble save for those ‘which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order ...or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others’. Critically it is noted that, under this international covenant, only restrictions that are ‘necessary in a democratic society’ can be placed on the fundamental human right to assemble.

Applied to these circumstances, a public assembly held to observe (or allegedly protest) negotiations about health sector issues is likely to be found as an assembly that is reasonable in a free and democratic society, and one that is not likely to unreasonably breach public order or public safety.

As officers charged with protecting the rights of citizens, the police must use their discretion to limit public assemblies wisely, and ensure that they are only placing restrictions on the fundamental right to assemble that would be deemed necessary in a democratic society. In particular, the police must be careful to ensure that public assemblies called for a political purpose, which are a common and indeed vital aspect of a healthy democracy, are not arbitrarily restricted or prohibited.

A hallmark of a democratic society is the right to peacefully assemble and voice opinions. Policing of such events should be conducted in accordance with the constitution and international principles and standards. Tanzania must ensure that they follow best practice human rights policing to cement its place as a leader in good policing in East Africa.

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Small arms and violence in East Africa

Andrew Mwangura

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/80153

cc G SA proliferation of small arms is fueling conflict and instability in East Africa.

The ongoing pre-election violence in Kenya and the ‘war on terror’ will deter domestic and international investors, business people and economists say. These fears are valid given that illicit weapons are said to be hidden in parts of Kenya, especially in the Rift Valley Province.

On 9 December 2009 and on 2 February 2010, thousands of bullets, army uniforms, thousands of litres of fuel, plane batteries, war trucks and many other weapons were discovered in Narok, Kenya. The entire Kenya media reported the discovery. Strangely, the authorities have either chosen to ignore the matter or been unwilling to investigate.

The problem stretches back decades: in 1992 more than 800 Kenyans lost their lives in less than one month in political violence. Senseless killings continued from 1992 to 2008 with heavy loss of life and property.

But in 1991, thousands of arrows were intercepted at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on arrival from South Korea. Again, the entire Kenyan media covered the story. The Kenyan government confiscated the arrows, but no investigations were carried out. One year later, in 1992, those same arrows were used in attacks.

How the arrows confiscated in 1991 found their way into the bodies of those who were killed in the attacks of 1992 is a puzzle that is extremely hard to unravel.

The weapons discovered in Narok were confiscated by the Kenyan government in the same manner as the intercepted arrows in 1991. No one was arrested and prosecuted over the arrows and no one has been arrested and prosecuted over the discovery of the weapons in Narok.

SMALL ARMS

The confiscations are linked to the problem of small arms on the African continent. About 30 million light weapons are in circulation in sub-Saharan Africa. Such weapons are Africa’s primary tools in armed conflicts. They have also contributed to a rise in the incidence and lethality of criminality, the erosion of social services and a decline in economic activity across the continent.

It is believed that 79 per cent of small arms and light weapons are in the hands of civilians, 19 per cent in police and military hands and 2 per cent with armed groups and insurgents. Sub-Saharan Africa has suffered more than any other region in the world because of illicit small arms and light weapons - about 20 per cent of Africa’s population experienced civil wars during the 1990s.

The proliferation of illicit small arms is a cross-cutting issue, stemming largely from lack of proper regulations and the inability of African governments to exercise their authority. Despite the fact that there are laws to control the influx of arms, governments are unable to enforce these laws.

Kenya has long been a major transit point for weapon shipments destined to war torn countries in the region. Arms proliferation in East Africa has reached crisis proportions and this has fuelled insecurity and crime.

To stress the point, in the year 2000 Kenyan police recovered between 1,800 and 2,000 unlicensed guns per month in the capital city of Nairobi, and about 5,000 illegal firearms remained in circulation in the capital city, according to estimates. In other parts of Kenya, in the Northern Rift Valley provinces 95 per cent of households are thought to be armed.

During the armed political violence in the Coast Province in 1997 a total of 104 people were killed in the violence, 133 injured and 100,000 displaced.

Between 1991 and 1998, politically motivated ethnic violence in the Rift Valley Province took 3,500 lives and displaced over 400,000 people.

Apart from Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, the 3,700-kilometre Somali coastline continues to be a danger area. Apart from arms smuggling, tons of illicit drugs find their way to this region through unauthorized sea points. The drug barons and arms smugglers beat security systems by using speed boats, fishing boats, yachts, dhows and foreign ocean-going FOC vessels to ferry illicit cargo from the high seas to beaches anywhere along the coast.

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Groups condemn raid on LGBTI workshop in Uganda

WLUML/VNC

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80147

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network and the Violence is not our Culture (VNC) Campaign condemn the recent police raid on a workshop for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights defenders in Entebbe, Uganda. This act is an outright violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of human rights defenders, which are guaranteed under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter, both of which the Uganda government has signed and ratified.

Reportedly, the police acted under the direct orders of the country’s Minister for Ethics and Integrity, Simon Lokodo, who personally led the raid. Minister Lokodo declared the workshop to be ‘illegal’ and gave the activists an ultimatum: immediately leave the hotel where the workshop was being held or face the full force of the police. He also ordered the arrest of Kasha Jacqueline Nabagasera, a prominent Ugandan LGBT rights defender and founder of Freedom and Roam Uganda, the country’s only exclusively lesbian organisation. Just over a year ago, Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death after being ‘outed’ (full names and photographs were printed) in a front-page tabloid story that called for the executions of “Uganda’s top homos”. Jacqueline’s name and photo also appeared in this article, along with allegations that she hosts gay orgies at her mansion. In fact, Jacqueline and her colleagues live and work in nondescript, discreet locations behind high walls so that neighbours cannot see them and report them to the police. The reasons for her attempted arrest were not immediately clear, but are ostensibly linked to Kasha Jacqueline’s attempt to challenge the Minister’s actions. Kasha Jacqueline has now been forced into hiding.

The raid took place just a week after the reintroduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament. National and regional campaigning in Uganda, and indeed throughout Africa against the initial bill in 2009 by activists and people of all backgrounds- including clergy, HIV and AIDS activists, feminists, human rights activists, writers- became in essence the largest and most varied support for LGBT rights Africa has ever seen - disproving attacks by the proponents of the Bill and the fundamentalist forces behind it that LGBT rights are a 'western' import. The international public outcry, including from aid donor countries, eventually forced the government to distance itself from that Bill.

If passed, the current Bill would impose the death penalty on those who participate in “serial” homosexual acts; increase the penalty for homosexual acts from 14 years to life imprisonment; and stipulate fines and jail terms for anyone who fails to report homosexuals to the authorities. This Bill has also been strongly criticized, in Uganda and in Africa as well as globally – by various States and civil society organisations – as explicitly anti-human rights and anti-democratic, and in contravention to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, the ICCPR and other international human rights treaties to which Uganda is a party.

OUR DEMANDS

We urgently call upon the Government of Uganda to use its power and authority to:

1. Protect its citizens against threats, violence and harassment based on their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity;

2. Pay particular attention to the security of Ugandan LGBT rights defenders; promptly act against all threats or hate speech that are likely to incite violence, discrimination, or hostility toward them; and guarantee their fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly;

3. Reaffirm its stance against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and call for its complete withdrawal.

21 February 2012

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Russia's cultural capital plans gag on LGBTI

All Out

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80175

Dear friend,

Did you know that lawmakers in Russia's cultural capital of Saint Petersburg are about to pass a law that would make it a "crime" to write a book, publish an article or speak in public about being gay, lesbian, bi or transgender - labeling it "homosexual propaganda"?

I just joined thousands in signing a powerful message to the Governor, who has the power to veto the bill, letting him know that if this law advances - I won't be spending a single cent as a tourist in his city. And I'm telling my friends and family to do the same.

Major governments have condemned the bill, and a grassroots surge of calls and petitions hasn't been able to stop it's advance. But with Russia spending $11 billion in the next five years to attract international tourists, and Saint Petersburg's reputation as the cosmopolitan "window to the west," together we will make sure that the powers that be in Russia will hear our people power - and pocketbook power - loud and clear.

Sign this letter to the governor, and ask your friends and colleagues to do the same. We only have a few more days until the final vote - and every voice counts.

For more information on how to join the campaign, visit: St Petersburg don't go.

Stop the plunder of Africa's Oceans

Add your voice to our call for fairer fishing

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80148

Background information
24 January 2012

‘Make Fishing a Priority Now!’ 6,000 Senegalese make the call

On 14 January, we launched the ‘My Voice, My Future’ caravan which toured through the main cities and villages in Senegal to talk with local fishermen and women about sustainable fishing along the West African coast.

The fisheries are a vital aspect of the economy as fishing provides income to many communities in Senegal. Almost one million people are employed by the country’s fishing sector, including fishermen, processors, wholesalers, carriers, and vendors. However, despite the importance of fishing, ‘the sector has never been subject to proactive policies that promote preservation, and protect the interests of coastal fishing communities,’ said Raoul Monsembula, Greenpeace Africa Oceans Campaigner. An effect of this has been that many foreign fleets have been overfishing African seas and exporting their catch back to Europe and Asia. Unfortunately this overfishing often persists thanks to the complicity of dishonest civil servants.

So, just weeks before the next presidential election, our tour was an opportunity to meet with fishing communities to discuss the threats facing the fishing sector. The message we heard from each and every group was the same: future leaders must provide guarantees that fisheries will be better managed.

We illustrated this message by asking each person we met with to make a handprint on a giant banner in support of sustainable fishing. We hoped to collect 3,000 handprints during the tour, but after touring through nine cities, an astounding 6,000 signatures were collected. Eager to make their voices heard, fishermen and women responded to our call from all over Senegal, some coming by canoe from 6 - 8 km away, just to add their handprint to the banner.

The ‘My Voice, My Future’ tour ended with a beautiful human banner in the shape of a fish, formed by 400 schoolchildren. The giant banner with all the handprints ran down the fish’s side. ‘It is high time for policy-makers to make sustainable fisheries a priority - not only for survival of the fishing sector, but also for the well-being of current and future generations,’ said Monsembula.

Greenpeace and small-scale fishermen urge presidential candidates to stop issuing fishing authorizations to foreign vessels, and to support the local fishing sector.

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South Africa: Call for budget justice

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80188

As the Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan prepares to give his 2012 Budget speech let him remember that the wealth of South Africa belongs to all. Government must collect taxes and spend money to ensure that everyone lives the life of dignity promised in our Constitution.

We dream about a South Africa of full employment, non-violence and equality for all women and men. We dream about a South Africa where everyone can afford quality health care. We dream about a South Africa where everyone has a home and no one is evicted. We dream of a land where those that grow our food have enough to eat. We dream about a South Africa with a government that takes the threat from climate change seriously and realizes that millions of new jobs are needed to protect our environment. We know that this can be achieved. We know that everyone who wants a job can get a job if wealth and income are distributed differently and if priorities are set right.

The budget of the state is one of the most important tools we have to make these dreams reality. Our country’s resources and productive wealth are to a large part put to work in the wrong places, or just taken out from the country by the business elite, something the government every year responds to by one more relaxation of capital controls.[1] At every workplace the distribution of newly created income is extremely skewed, and the skewed pattern of the primary income distribution has become worse.[2] There is therefore a tremendous space for taxing the rich and the big corporations. There is money for service delivery, public jobs, a National Health Insurance, more teachers in all schools and expanded measures to support our children, the elderly, and woman who bare the burden of inequality and the violent effects that unemployment has on everyday life.

TAX THE RICH

We welcome the successes of SARS in detecting tens of thousands of super-rich South Africans who don’t pay personal income tax. Collecting this tax from their previously hidden incomes could give close to R100 billion more in tax revenue every year. [3]

The progress made by SARS must however not be another excuse for new tax reliefs to the high-income earners. The rich have already been given too many tax breaks: Since 1999, the government has compensated tax payers ‘for inflation’ at about double the inflation rate through the adjustment of tax brackets. On the top of this, the top tax rates have been lowered.

When conservative economists present the ‘problem’ of the ‘narrow tax base’ they not only ignore the fact that everyone pays VAT of 14% when they go to the shop. More importantly, they disregard the fact that the Low Wage Regime inherited from apartheid is vigorously defended and enjoyed by those same people who are complaining about the tax pressure. We have an economic order where one third of the employed work force earns less than R1000 per month and half of it − close to 7 million employees − earn less than R3000 per month. Those who complain about high taxes often enjoy an income that is ten or even hundred times higher. So the relatively small number of people able to pay personal income tax (PIT), are merely the result of an income distribution that is incredibly unequal. This minority is not ‘suffering’ from a narrow tax base: they are extremely favored by the Low Wage Regime and by inequality in the first place!

In addition, large corporations have been making massive profits during the last decade. They are today hoarding hundreds of billions of rand in bank accounts. [4] They don’t need the R20 billion tax relief gift announced by President Zuma in his 2012 State Of The Nation Address.

The government must stop the yearly routine of giving unnecessary tax relief to the rich. There are no visible political pressures on the government to pursue this policy. We fear that the government continues to be guided by the infamous GEAR policy document, which stated that tax revenue as a share of the national income (GDP) must not be more than 25%. We call on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to publically declare that this neoliberal policy rule has been abandoned and to increase corporate and income tax on the wealthy.

The tax revenue must be – and can be − large enough to meet the demands for public service, jobs and investments without putting the government into too large and dangerous debt. If there is to be tax relief, it is to be given to the poor: The Minister must reduce VAT on food. VAT is a huge tax burden on all who spend most of their income on food. Especially in times of price increases on food that presently are heading towards 20 percent per year.

The price increases on food point to the need for building up our local food production, and cutting down on food import. To this end, the government ought to subsidise the small farmers who grow food in a way that are friendly to nature and our long term health, not the large scale farmers. The budget for land must be increased, so that the land-redistribution crisis in the rural areas can be addressed.

PAY FOR DECENT SERVICES, BASIC NEEDS, PUBLIC JOBS, AND CONFRONT CLIMATE CHANGE

If we are to realise the promise of our democratic Constitution, then the government must stop the almost systemic under spending. They must roll back the years of neo-liberal corporatization, privatization, and the resulting under capacity in the public sector. A democratic government must have the capacity to deliver decent services that meet basic needs to enable the Constitutional guarantee of dignity and to confront the epic threat of climate change. The government must create the many thousands of public sector jobs required to meet these demands and put a moratorium on all tenders that drain the budgets and corrupt our officials.

We would like to draw the government’s attention to some examples of necessary interventions and required public expenditure:

The yearly R6 billion under spending of the Unemployment Insurance Fund − projected for years to come in the 2011 Budget Review − must come to an end. The government must obviously be reminded by the people that the UIF is not a tax. The workers have paid for insurance, not for the money to be hoarded or used for other purposes. Pay out the insurance money to those insured!

The excessive surplus of over R40 billion unduly accumulated in the UIF to date can be used to create decent jobs. The 70000 people who applied for the 329 vacant posts at the Khayelitsha’s new hospital illustrate the employment crisis. The government should expand the successful Community Works Programme to a massive public works programme that pays at least the minimum wages for a 40-hour working week. The public works programmes must create public assets that protect our environment − like building and retrofitting environmentally sound houses, providing safe and reliable public transport, etc.

The government should develop this infrastructure that will directly benefit the majority of those living in South Africa. Unfortunately our government has other plans. The infrastructure investments announced in the State of The Nation Address are public investments that meet the needs of big business – most notably mineral extraction, dirty coal power, dangerous nuclear power and export facilities. This programme conserves the colonial patterns in our economy. It will hold back the manufacturing industry and continue the destruction of our environment.

This is not what we have in mind. We need instead a massive investment programme for decent housing, school buildings, health centres and local clinics, meeting peoples’ needs for quality health and education. To spend on health and education is to invest in the future. Instead of increasing electricity prices 25% every year in July – effectively another tax on the poor - the government should budget to ensure every household receives 200kWh free electricity. For sure: Workers who have a home and not a shack to live in and can afford to put food on the table for the whole family will be productive.

We need libraries and schools equipped with books and qualified staff. Age restrictions on learnerships must be taken away so that people can catch up on what they missed in schools or when loosing a job. Completely unrealistic registration fees demanded everywhere by public schools, whether legal or illegal, make a mockery of the promise of free education for all children. Such fees keep thousands of children away from school. Indeed, free school uniforms in public schools, would both put learners on more equal footing, lift a heavy burden from the budget of poor households and give work to our textile industry.

FOR ACCOUNTABLE, EFFECTIVE, DEMOCRATIC AND PARTICIPATORY GOVERNMENT

Last but not least, we demand a shift from vague promises to action plans with deadlines for each year. Now is the time to deliver. Listen to the people! Don’t tell us about “five million jobs in 2020”, tell us how many new decent public sector jobs will be created before next year’s Budget Speech. Government must abandon their elite organisational culture. The people must be involved in our own development. We are citizens of a democracy and not passive ‘consumers’ who wait for corporate services. But it is the corporate culture of government that has seen ridiculous remuneration of public servants and allowed the plundering of government resources by greedy officials. We need clear mechanisms to deal with corruption. There must be serious consequences for those who steal public money from the people.

In this regard we recognise that currently South Africa is one of the world leaders in budget transparency with respect to the public availability, timeliness, and comprehensiveness of its national and provincial budget reports[5]. However, the same cannot be said for the availability of more disaggregated budget information. In particular communities struggle to obtain specific budget information about their local clinic or school. We demand greater transparency across our budgeting process. People have the right to know and we are deeply concerned that the Secrecy Bill − currently before the National Council of Provinces − may limit our access information vital to shaping the spending priorities of Government.

South Africa does not have a poverty problem! We have a wealth problem! We call on Parliament to reassure us that we do not also have a Democracy problem! Parliament must pass a just budget!

ENDORSED BY THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONS

To date the Call for Budget Justice has been endorsed by the following organizations:

1. Abahlali baseMjondolo
2. Africa Center for Biosafety
3. Alternative Information Development Centre
4. Blikkiesdorp 4 Hope
5. Anti Eviction Campaign
6. Cape Cultural Collective
7. Cape Metropolitan Health Forum
8. Centre for Civil Society Economic Justice Project
9. Communities for Social Change
10. Delft Integrated Network
11. Democratic Left Front
12. Earthlife Africa Cape Town
13. Ecopeace
14. Engender
15. Environmental Monitoring Group
16. Get Up Stand Up Africa
17. Groundworks
18. Gugulethu Backyard Dwellers
19. Informal Settlements In Struggle
20. Institute for Zero Waste in Africa
21. Mawubuye Land Rights Forum
22. Mandela Park Backyarders
23. New Womens Movement
24. PASSOP
25. Peoples Health Movement
26. Progressive Youth Movement
27. Right2Know Campaign
28. Sikhula Sonke
29. Socio Economic Rights Institute
30. South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
31. South East African Climate Consortium Student Forum
32. Tafelsig Community Forum
33. Trust for Community Outreach and Education
34. Timberwatch
35. World Aids Campaign


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END NOTES

[1] A study at Wits made by Ashman, Fine and Newman (2011), estimates that illicit capital flows out from the country amounts to hundreds of billions of rand, each year since the ANC government began liberalising financial controls. The illicit flows since 1999 can be estimated to between 5-20% of GDP depending on year. The latest year examined in the study is 2009. Illicit flows that year are estimated by the researchers to 10% of GDP. That equals R230 billion.
[2] Reference to the increase in profits as share of GDP: See The South African Reserve Bank (SARB), Quarterly Bulletin to which the National Accounts are attached: The falling wage share of the national income (and the corresponding increasing profit share) is reported in “Key Information” tables, the table “Ratios of selected data at current prices”; Column : “Compensation to employees…”.
[3] See for example: The MoneyWeb: “Sars uncovers 1000s of missing rich tax cheats” URL: http://moneywebtax.co.za/moneywebtax/view/moneywebtax/en/page259?oid=64640&sn=Detail&pid=1 (2012-02-15).
[4] In August 2011, the investment company Stanlib reported that big business in South Africa sits on a R479 billion mountain of cash. This corresponds to nearly half of the budget that Pravin Gordhan will present. According to Stanlib, a wait-and-see practice of simply depositing excess profits in the bank, has reached the same levels as in 1995.

[5] The International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey ranked South Africa first out of 94 countries in 2010.

One song, three years imprisonment

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80149

In his song ‘Constipated Constitution’ de Mbanga criticised President Paul Biya for changing the constitution in his own favour. The song became an anthem for demonstrators in Cameroon in 2008 and in order to silence de Mbanga false charges were made against him. The singer was charged for inciting demonstrators to burn down a banana plantation.

Freemuse and other freedom of expression organisations launched several international campaigns for his release and in 2009 initiated a partnership with Freedom Now, a US based advocacy organisation. The communication from the UN expert group comes in response to a petition filed by Freedom Now and a team of lawyers with the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.

The UN Working Group, a panel of independent human rights experts from around the world, calls for the government to pardon Lapiro de Mbanga and to pay him compensation. Its legal opinion is dated 1 September 2011 but has only now been released. The expert group says that ‘the song Constipated Constitution can only be seen as a political proclamation, without any incentive to violence, which coincides with all of Mr Lapiro de Mbanga’s personal and political background.’

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Notified by the Media Foundation for West Africa, Freemuse launched its first international campaign for the release of de Mbanga in April 2008 and developed several campaigns in collaboration with PEN International, Mondomix and Vigier Guitars, Lapiro de Mbanga’s guitar provider.

Freemuse nominated and received on behalf of Lapiro de Mbanga the Freedom to Create Imprisoned Artist Prize in 2009. The International Music Council discussed the imprisonment of de Mbanga with the Cameroonian Minister of Culture and even UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon has discussed the imprisonment with President Paul Biya.

On 8 April 2011, the singer was released from detention after serving his full prison term. Despite his release from prison, de Mbanga remains under pressure from authorities to pay fines totalling over half a million US dollars. Attempts to appeal his conviction and penalty in Cameroon have been unsuccessful so far.

Freemuse Executive Director Marie Korpe says: ‘The case against Lapiro illustrates how far a government will go in order to silence an artist, who voices the frustrations of a whole nation. The government of Cameroon and the court system has taken away three years of Lapiro and his family’s life and should not prolong this painful process further, but compensate Lapiro in dignity. The case further illustrates that national and international campaigns can make a difference and Freemuse would like to thank all individuals and organisations who engaged in the campaign for his release.’

* Click here for the the UN’s legal opinion.

* For further information: Call Freemuse Programme Manger Ole Reitov, phone: +45 2323 2765

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Invitation to Afrikan History Month 2012 Seminar, Freetown.

Pan-Afrikan CommUnity Movement

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/80195

Invitation to Afrikan History Month 2012 Seminar, Freetown.

The above named organisation, wishes to invite you to our first public seminar to commemorate Africa History at the Sierra Leone Library Board, on Wednesday 29th February 2012, starting at 4:00pm prompt. This years seminar is held under the theme: Africa History Month 2012: Resisting the New Scramble for Africa, Organise to End Land Grabbing in Afrika.

The importance and relevance of this burning topic in Africa and Sierra Leone in particular cannot be over-emphasised. This year marks 127 years since the infamous Berlin Conference heralding the first Scramble for Africa in 1884/85. We are now also faced with a new scramble for Africa – the mad rush by European countries and multi-national companies to loot African resources and re-occupy our land. The recent unwarranted NATO attack on Libya, the establishment of Africom bases around Africa and large scale land grabbing in open collaboration by African leaders to name but few.

The looting and exploitation of our resources has taken different forms over the past four centuries. First was the wholesale destruction of our human resources through the enslavement of millions of Africans during the Slave Trade. This was followed by colonialism - when European powers divided up and organised large-scale systematic and brutal exploitation for the benefit of Europe and European industries. Now they are doing it in various ways - through privatisation, land grabbing and exploitation of natural resources including oil, diamonds, gold, rutile and iron ore to name but a few.

The meeting will hopefully lay the foundation of how grassroots organisations can resist the present rate of massive exploitation of our resources and land grabbing with the open connivance of the African ruling elites.

For further information, contact: Bro Malik Kamara Tel – 077 500 649 or Mohamed Koroma – 088 878 273. Or via email - pacm1898@yahoo.com

Yours In the struggle for African Liberation


Malik Kamara

Mining Deep

Morley Nkosi

Yash Tandon

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/80140

David Philip Publishers, 2011

Some things do not change. For 350 years from 1657 to today the labour structure in South Africa has remained substantially the same. The origin of this ‘structure’, which is found in all South Africa’s industries, can be traced back to the mining industry. In this well-researched and well-documented book, Morley Nkosi shows how from the colonial past to this day successive regimes protected this labour structure and assured its longevity and perhaps perpetuity.

The essential features of this structure were laid out in the gold mines. The forced labour system, the brutal and violent suppression and regimentation of African mine labour, job classification according to race and colour, and the system of rewards and punishment - all of which Nkosi documents in minute detail - were meticulously built into the labour system in the mining industry and then replicated in the other industries. Nkosi quotes from Sampie Terreblanche, ‘A History of Inequality in South Africa 1652-2002’, that South Africa's history over the past 350 years has been ‘exceptionally violent’.

The violent suppression of African labour had not gone unnoticed, however. In 1927, the Dutch Reformed Church with the support of the Carnegie Corporation in New York undertook research into this problem. The findings of this research resulted in a publication in 1932 in Stellenbosch called ‘The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission’. The report touched the hearts of a humanitarian minority, but it failed to change the system.

Apart from the labour structure, which forms the core of the book, Nkosi also analyzes the critical role played by South Africa's gold in the international financial system based on the gold standard. ‘The labour structure in the gold mines of South Africa,’ he writes, ‘had to be retained, maintained and buttressed in the interest of the world’s financial system, in which the City of London was the centre.’

How much of this has changed since the end of apartheid? The author does not go into this in detail since this is a book based on his Ph.D. thesis covering a particular historical period. The brutality of the apartheid period is probably not as severe now as before, but the ‘structure’ remains intact. Says Nkosi, ‘The consequent inequalities (born during the apartheid period) are evident in where and how South Africans are born, raised, educated, work, save, retire, enjoy themselves and die.’ That structure endures in its essentials.

Finance capital continues to rule South Africa through the IMF and neoliberal ideologies that come with donor aid and corporate capital. Nkosi is critical of the abandonment of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) brought out by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1994. Its preface says that the ‘document is the result of many months of consultation within the ANC, its Alliance partners and other mass organisations in the wider civil society’ and that ‘[t]he process now underway is that of developing the detailed policy and legislative programme necessary to implement the RDP.’

The RDP, however, was abandoned. It gave way to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macroeconomic strategy. ‘When some economists began to interrogate this strategy, they were severely taken to task and summarily dismissed.’ GEAR, says Nkosi, ended up leading to a dead end 15 years into the new democratic dispensation. ‘The costs of this failure are almost incalculable.’ Nkosi is more hopeful of the ‘The New Growth Path’, the framework announced in June 2009, but he does not give reasons for his optimism.

The book is an excellent addition to the vast literature that has emerged since independence on the economic history of South Africa. Given his scholarly and meticulous approach to research, Nkosi might now turn his attention to the contemporary, post-apartheid, period. Finance capital is no longer what it used to be 100 years ago. It has degenerated into a new phase of the dominance of speculative over productive capital. In recent years, for example, derivatives are having a large negative impact on South African mining and industrial sectors, including the losses at a number of gold mines that hedged their risk exposures on, ironically, the price of gold.

Nkosi might also explore the impact of the outrageously generous concessions that sub-Saharan African governments have been making to mining companies, so that even at the peak of commodity prices in 2007, relatively small tax revenues from the export sector accrued to Africa. Is this the case with South Africa too? Also, what is the impact of the global recession on the mining sector in South Africa, especially on the employment and welfare of workers? The other area worth exploring is the impact of the entry of China and India on the South African mining industry and the structure of labour and labour unions. These are questions for the present and the future, but with the hindsight knowledge of how the mining industry developed in South Africa from its early days to the present times, Morley Nkosi is best placed to answer some of the more recent challenges facing South Africa and the continent in our own times.

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Dispatch from Dakar: The people are determined

Akwasi Aidoo

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/80186

Dear colleagues,

Yesterday, I decided to go get first-hand experience of what the incessant mass demonstrations in Dakar, Senegal, look like. So I went to town in the afternoon and stayed till about 7.30pm.

It was unbelievable. Young men, young women, old women, old men – people of all ages and genders were there. There were lots of foreign journalists too.

On one of the main roads to Place de l'Indépendance, there was a long stand-off between the demonstrators on one side and the security forces on the other. Quite an experience, full of many human stories... I went around on foot, and then ended up at Sandaga where the real action was happening. Unbelievable…

The demonstrators were quite organised and civil. One young man engaged the leader of the security forces at the stand-off toward the Place de l'Indépendance in a debate. It was in Wolof, so I didn't directly follow it, but a student standing next to me later said the young man had asked the security officer: ‘What has that thieving President Abdoulaye Wade given you to protect him?’, and the security officer said he was only doing his job as a patriot. Then the young man said: ‘If you are a patriot then you will let us go and get rid of the man who is stealing our future.’ A Chinese journalist standing next to us was very amused.

Another human story: At about 6pm, suddenly there was some commotion in the crowd, and it turned out somebody was allegedly trying to steal a cellphone. The surprising thing was that there was no mob justice meted out to the alleged thief. Some people started yelling that he was a ‘PDS-thief’ (PDS is President Wade's party). The real humane side of the story was that some Senegalese journalists got hold of the man and led him to the security forces on the other side of the stand-off to be arrested. The security forces didn't know how to respond initially (they were there on a different mission), until one of them finally took the alleged thief aside. He was let go after some conversation and he disappeared quietly...

Another unforgettable moment was when an old woman who looked like at least 80 years old said: ‘Abdoulaye Wade is much older than I am; he must go home and rest with dignity!’ Somebody else screamed: ‘Dignified Wade is a contradiction in terms!’ (It was in Wolof and my interpreter neighbour gave me what she said). The crowd went wild. And when Youssou N'Dour, Idrissa Seck, Maître El-Hadj Diouf came around, there was so much excitement.

I didn't stay long enough to see the drama fully unfold or be hurt by the ensuing violence.

My takeaway observation: There is no way President Wade can hang on to power for very long. Chances are the politicians will work out some deal. The masses are way too organised and determined against business as usual. We will see... The DECK is splintering! DECK is an acronym I recently learned, and it stands for the deck that's been stacked against citizens: Despotism, Exploitation, Corruption, & Knowledge-deficit.

The struggle for social justice is alive!

To be continued...

Homage to a humble man

Jacques Depelchin

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/80139

My sense is that there are texts that one should be able to see (right away) that need wider audience. I think the obituary written by Hirji on Henry Mapolu is one such text…if one is going to agree with what is said by Hirji.

What is crucial, it seems to me, is that people beyond Tanzania, beyond sociologists, beyond academics, must hear/learn about what someone like Henry stood for. One of the things that stands out, among the many things, is how he refused to go for the job of district commissioner. A presidential appointment.

In this day and age very few people know what ‘principled values’ mean. Hirji's obituary of Henry conveys that in a very clear way.

Defenseless, exploited, abused, and ignored

Elyas Mulu Kiros

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/80141

Defenseless

Am a maid, a disempowered servant. Or call me a slave, a modern slave; more often am nothing but that!

Am one of those unlucky maids who end up with cruel masters, 
their cruel sons and their cruel wives. The lucky ones meet decent families 
who fear Allah’s watchful eyes 
and are neither immoral nor racists.

I left my home to improve my life, to work, to sweat, but not to grieve. And here I am a Hyena’s feast: Defenseless victim of abuse and immoral act.

I wake up at four, I clean the house, and all the dirt; 
I wash clothes, and take care of kids, 
but all I get is hurtful insults and brutal punches. 
I cook their food, and I barely eat, 
and if I eat, perhaps once a day, 
depending on madam’s moods. There are days I wouldn’t taste tiny crumbs. Even back in my land, I was not ill-fed, 
but here I am so malnourished!

In one of those horrible days, 
the husband crosses his boundaries 
to humiliate and to disgust
 every part of my existence. 
My dignity, my pride 
means nothing for this bulldog of the house.


It can get worse: in some cases, 
am a chess board for the father and the sons. 
Add to the mix, the jealous and barbaric wife
 who would whip, kick, slap, torture my fatless meat;

Burn or boil my soft skin, insult my kin, 
and throw me out of her windowpane. 
Not to mention, the police force, 
and the shadowless cruel stalkers
 that satisfy their male egos
 by treating me like animals.

I came here dreaming of good, 
but I now go home paralyzed, 
my flesh raped and my spirit dead. A nightmare I never dreamed!

I am ashamed of being a human!

NOTE TO THE READER (especially to those who are from the Middle East): In every society there are good and bad people, people who are fair and people who are unfair, people who treat others with dignity and people who mistreat others and stomp on their dignity, people who are moral and people who are immoral. And I wrote this poem in reaction to those who are cruel to their fellow human beings. I wrote it because I am disgusted by what happens to foreign domestic workers in the Middle East. Women from Ethiopia, Nepal, Philippines, and many other third world countries are exploited, raped, and abused by their employers and by others left and right.

And there is no law in most of the Middle Eastern countries (such as Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) to guarantee their human rights are protected. As foreign workers they get no legal protection from the host governments. And I am not making this up. You can read this Human Rights Watch report.

Just recently, on 7 February 2012, it was reported that a maid was snatched by two men and raped in Kuwait. In the same country, on February 1, 2011, the same news channel reported that a policeman raped a female inmate in front of her inmates. On 2 September 2012, the Economist magazine portrayed this grave situation in the Middle East as something ‘a little better than slavery’. I believe the magazine acted quite generously because for some of the women what happens to them is nothing but pure slavery.

According to the Human Rights Watch, as quoted in the Economist article, ‘at least one domestic worker died every week in Lebanon between January 2007 and August 2008.’ I find the cruelty disgraceful and heartbreaking.

You can read many other horrendous stories, which often are ignored and fall on deaf ears. There is little pressure put on those countries that resist protecting the human rights of domestic workers. And the countries where these women come from have done little to guarantee the safety of their citizens. My country doesn’t even have diplomatic offices in some of the countries. And government officials are mainly concerned about attracting Middle Eastern investors who can lease and develop land cheaply.

Most of the women are misinformed about the benefits they get and the money they make when they go to the destination countries as domestic workers. Often they leave their countries illegally, dreaming of a better life, only to witness their dreams becoming nightmares.

So I wrote the poem out of frustration, and disappointment. I used raw, plain language on purpose. I do not believe in sugarcoating the truth. Some of you may find it unpleasant, you may be offended, but I am not here to apologise. In fact, my intention is to prick your consciousness, to shame the people who mistreat, abuse, and humiliate these helpless women - an immoral act that completely contradicts the teachings of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.

If you are from the Middle East, and truly a believer in Allah or God, I wholeheartedly challenge you to please do something for the maids, whatever you can, either individually or organised as an advocacy group for the sake of your consciousness. You have a moral duty to demand your governments enact laws that protect the rights of foreign workers. Obviously, advocacy groups from outside can only have a small impact on your governments.

You may think I am acting too emotionally or am biased, but the reports and facts on the ground can speak for themselves.

I must acknowledge again that not all domestic workers are mistreated. There are God-fearing families who treat their domestic workers with respect and dignity, paying them fair wages as per the contracts they have signed. For example, when I was in Ethiopia, I had heard stories about employers who often covered airfare tickets for their domestic workers so they could go home and visit their families during holidays, giving them extra money to buy gifts for their siblings and/or parents. In my small town, there are many girls who have traveled to places like UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. Some were lucky to find decent families and to live successfully, but others were unlucky to come back home paralyzed for life.

In short, all I want to say is this: stop exploiting, abusing, and ignoring domestic workers.
I would like to add that the unfair mistreatment of maids also exists in Ethiopia though the brutality is not comparable to what happens in the Middle East. Most girls and women who work as maids in Ethiopian households hail from rural areas and from small towns, usually running away from early marriage proposals, domestic violence, or tough economic conditions that also push many of the city girls to leave the country for places like the Middle East.

These maids encounter unfair employers who exploit and abuse them. Often times, women employers (especially hotel owners) and terrible housewives happen to be the vicious ones who mistreat them as house slaves (depressing and ironic to see women abusing other women). Some of the privileged women don’t even need maids; they mostly decide to have one as a status symbol, to show off to their friends and foes that they have a servant, which I believe is a result of ignorance and a superiority complex, and a reminder of how humans can be callous when they have power regardless of their gender, racial or cultural background; certainly racism makes such experiences worse since for the racist mind the other is nothing but a subhuman. And, of course, here too, there is the bulldog that crosses his boundaries to humiliate these vulnerable women. One of my readers wrote me, ‘sadly, I have heard of domestic workers in Ethiopia also being exploited by their employers - getting pregnant from the young men or the father in the house and being cast out,’ which I completely agree with and it has always broken my heart. However, today, there are local NGOs that more or less deal with such cases and most of the women who suffer under their employers are not left ignored - at the very least, they can sue their employers. But in general there is still a lot of work that has to be done to protect the human rights of maids (not to mention the human rights of all Ethiopians who oppose those in power, who advocate for social change, and who demand greater freedom in the country).

* A must watch documentary: Nightmare in Dreamland
* Elyas Mulu Kiros blogs at www.kweschn.wordpress.com

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

Africa: Anti-apartheid activist Prexy Nesbitt interviewed on Africa Today

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/80278

http://bit.ly/xFw25G

Kenya: KPFA FM Interviews Onyango Oloo

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/80276

http://bit.ly/wh11Pz

Senegal: Politics and music in Senegal

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/80303

http://bit.ly/zn3pIy

African leaders and their wealth

Gado

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/80211

Hatching season

Gado

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/80209

Nigeria's Boko Haram

Gado

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/80207

Robert Mugabe at 88

Gado

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/80208

Zimbabwe: Electoral support network analyses human rights in ballot report

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/80270

http://bit.ly/wUc8tY

Zimbabwe: Mugabe warns he can fire Zuma as chief regional mediator

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/80125

http://wapo.st/wZqX9e

Zimbabwe: Rhodes exhumation blocked

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/80123

http://bit.ly/yqYayz

Africa: UN report on sexual violence names worst offenders

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80283

http://bit.ly/AsNsvQ

Cameroon: Women push for equality

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80293

http://bit.ly/y7tYcD

Global: How to Reverse the 'Feminisation of Poverty'

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80291

http://bit.ly/wPRNc8

Global: Urban prosperity doesn't automatically mean gender equality

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80132

http://bit.ly/yTzkfg

South Africa: Traditional Courts Bill out of step

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80127

http://bit.ly/wa7YcF

Zambia: Unsafe abortion on the rise

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/80120

http://bit.ly/wNZWUJ

Burundi: Anti-graft activist freed from prison

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80204

http://bit.ly/zVmCxP

Ethiopia: Opposition figure injured in prison cell attack

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80158

http://bit.ly/zfahUd

Liberia: Rights body 'to sanction' President Sirleaf

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80170

http://bit.ly/zQSxKM

Nigeria: Nigerians too poor to sue over corporate abuse

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80201

http://bit.ly/xpgEi2

Senegal: Human rights bodies denounce torture

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80284

http://bit.ly/wxNmoS

South Africa: Court asked for order on housing provision

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80169

http://bit.ly/zraDbP

Togo: UN human rights office welcomes report on Togo detainees

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/80282

http://bit.ly/wlyiCO

Africa: European Court censures Italy over African migrants

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80287

http://bbc.in/AgbNgv

Angola: Angola is the third-biggest source of emigrant remittances to Portugal

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80171

http://bit.ly/yLdQw3

Kenya: Government denies plans to close Dadaab

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80166

http://bit.ly/zA6kyl

Libya: Displaced people barred from homes

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80269

Authorities in and around Misrata are preventing thousands of people from returning to the villages of Tomina and Kararim and have failed to stop local militias from looting and burning homes there, Human Rights Watch has said. The abuse mirrors the treatment of roughly 30,000 displaced people from the nearby town of Tawergha, who have also been blocked from returning home for at least five months, Human Rights Watch said.
http://bit.ly/xq5BzV

Mali: Clashes displace nearly 130,000, UN warns

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/80289

http://bbc.in/weZPEu

South Africa: Second death at strike-hit platinum mine

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/80126

http://bit.ly/w5YYnP

Latest edition: emerging powers news roundup

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/emplayersnews/80295

1. China in Africa

Analysis: Chinese investors to tread more carefully in Africa
China's oil and commodities firms are set to tread more carefully in Africa after being stung by kidnappings, seizures of cargo and, most recently, the expulsion of a chief executive. But they won't pull back. If anything, China will broaden its exposure to the region, home to some of the world's most resource-rich but unstable countries, as it scours the globe for resources needed by the factories and businesses of the world's fastest-growing economy.
Read More

China calls for int'l efforts to address transnational crime in W.Africa
A Chinese UN ambassador on Tuesday urged the international community to take effective measures to help West Africa and countries in the Sahel region in addressing transnational crime. Addressing a Security Council open debate on peace and security in Africa, Wang Min, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said the rise of illegal drugs and arms trafficking, piracy and terrorist activities is seriously threatening peace and stability, endangering the economic and social development and negatively impacting the humanitarian situation in the region.
Read More

Zambia-China trade zone marks the fifth anniversary of founding
Since its inception five years ago, the Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone has attracted 17 companies and a total investment of nearly $1 billion. Its resident companies have generated nearly $500 million in taxes and sales revenues of $4.35 billion, officials said during a ceremony on Feb 3 in Beijing to mark the zone's fifth anniversary. Founded by China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co Ltd (CNMC), the zone is another milestone in ties between the two countries following the Tazara Railway built by China 40 years ago to link Zambia with Tanzania, said China's Vice-Foreign Minister Zhai Jun.
Read More

2. India in Africa

India signs cooperation pact with Burundi
Building upon initiatives unveiled during the second Africa-India summit last year, India has signed a crucial cooperation agreement with Burundi, a landlocked country in eastern Africa, and agreed to accelerate key capacity building institutions in that country. During her visit to the capital Bujumbura, Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur called on President Pierre Nkurunziza and held wide-ranging talks with Burundi's Foreign Minister Laurent Kavakure.
Read More

3. In Other Emerging Powers News

Africa: Brazil to fund food purchasing in 5 countries
The Brazilian government is providing US$2,375,000 for a new local food purchase programme to be set up by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to benefit farmers and vulnerable populations in five African countries – Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal. Under an agreement signed here, Brazil will fund the project as well as share expertise drawn from its own national Food Purchase Programme (PAA), the UN agency said in a news dispatch Tuesday.
Read More

BRIC member-nations, South Afrcia Mull Own Multilateral Bank
Amidst a global financial pandemonium, the group collectively known as BRIC - the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China - in a show of collective strength is contemplating pooling resources and funds together to create a multilateral bank, but only by and for the exclusive use of developing nations such as theirs. Media reports circulated that India thought of the proposal and that the other countries have agreed to discuss the possibility and potential of the scheme. Delegates from the four nations are scheduled to meet at the Group of 20 meetings this weekend in Mexico City.
Read More

Russia will continue to partake in anti-piracy operation – official
The Russian Navy will continue to take part in an international anti-piracy operation off Somalia, but Moscow will not launch strikes on pirates’ ground bases, Mikhail Margelov, the Russian President’s special representative to Africa, told an international conference on Somalia on Thursday.
Read More

Mena-Russia trade set for major growth
The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) trade flows will grow fastest with Russia, India and China between 2012 and 2020, according to Ernst & Young. Beating the global average of trade growth set at 9.4 per cent per annum, Mena trade with Russia will grow at 14.4pc, with India at 13.5pc and with China at 12.5pc through to 2020.
Read More

4. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

China and the West in Africa
Stronger cooperation with Africa could increase China`s sphere of influence and bolster its attempts to redefine its relations with the rest of the world. This would be a dramatic change in the traditional patterns of Western dominance over African affairs and would diminish Western political and economic leverage over the continent, thereby constituting a major challenges to Western hegemony over the political, economic and development discourse in Africa and internationally.
Read More

Angola: Leader of MPLA faction arrested

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80118

http://on.wsj.com/wtyQOK

DRC: Congo embassy workers claim asylum in UK

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80155

http://bit.ly/A9F1tH

Egypt: Deadline set for constitutional panel

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80299

http://bit.ly/AxnsQq

Senegal: Opposition rejects AU's pre-election deal

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80292

http://bit.ly/ygIWG3

Senegal: Results awaited after tense vote

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80298

http://n24.cm/zbboou

Senegal: Wade booed at voting booth

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80297

http://huff.to/yjx2e0

South Africa: We will die with our boots on, vows Malema

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/80294

http://bit.ly/xNCSTd

Angola: Halliburton faces subpoena over Angola operations

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80117

http://on.wsj.com/A7QefZ

Egypt: Mubarak trial verdict 2 June, says judge

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80180

http://bit.ly/wbdFFr

Egypt: Rights group slams law allowing settlement with corrupt investors

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80181

http://bit.ly/xaIS55

Equatorial Guinea: Teodorin's Troubles

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80190

http://bit.ly/zE5YPK

Ghana: A bellyful of scandal

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80133

http://bbc.in/yrxFgG

South Sudan: Implementing austerity

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80200

http://bit.ly/yFRVBU

Zambia: Kenya and Zambia set for diplomatic clash

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/80119

http://bit.ly/xYQ38g

Africa: EU opens door to 'debt relief' for north African states

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80206

http://bit.ly/wySSqM

Africa: Free trade area planned by 2017

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80184

http://bit.ly/xblJ6g

Africa: Illegal money transfers hurting Africa’s growth

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80302

http://bit.ly/wi7MDe

Africa: Is Africa really urbanising rapidly?

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80130

http://bit.ly/yq9E7O

Global: Greeks want radical change

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80174

http://bit.ly/xEYrkQ

Malawi: Inflation hits double digits

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80173

http://bit.ly/zwtP2o

Swaziland: Meltdown 'imminent'

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80172

http://bit.ly/zyaexm

Zimbabwe: Zim-EU trade rises

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/80187

http://bit.ly/wMOR9I

DRC: Cholera spreading

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80163

http://n24.cm/xOSuyK

South Africa: Global Fund monies finally released

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80300

http://bit.ly/xcQme8

South Africa: R1bn pumped towards NHI

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80167

http://bit.ly/zRRHdz

South Africa: SECTION27 welcomes increases in the health care budget, but concerns remain

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/80203

http://bit.ly/wfMLa7

Cameroon: Three charged with practising homosexuality

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80288

http://bbc.in/A6ff75

Global: Stop anti-gay censorship in Russia

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80277

http://bit.ly/ySf2OC

Liberia: 'Kill the Gays' Bill spreading

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80286

http://bit.ly/AuigMT

Libya: Gay activist responds to Libyan UN rant

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80185

http://bit.ly/yijT1B

South Africa: Traditional Courts Bill 'discriminatory'

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/80199

http://bit.ly/zQP4BP

Africa: Tintin isn't racist, Belgian court rules

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/racism/80154

http://bit.ly/xccMtQ

South Africa: Zulu king lashes out at Congolese migrants

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/racism/80290

http://bit.ly/Ao4rCd

Madagascar: Experts question bid to tap wind energy

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/80189

http://bit.ly/xEsVra

Nigeria: Chevron gas well fire 'may burn for months'

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/80164

http://bbc.in/yclsAm

Somalia: Rich maritime resources being plundered, report says

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/80156

http://bit.ly/zBjeYi

South Africa: SA ready to roll out R300bn nuclear stations

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/80296

http://bit.ly/zZDIf7

Southern Africa: SADC climate change and the water sector report available

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/80157

http://bit.ly/AeuuwX

Africa: Rush to acquire African farmland risks countries bearing costs of global resource scarcity, says study

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80281

http://bit.ly/zUX4yJ

Global: La Via Campesina urges UN action on land grabs

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80182

http://bit.ly/A77jkY

Global: Latest global land grabs documented in new data set

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80280

http://bit.ly/yUBawm

Nigeria: Dominion Farms Ltd and Nigeria sign agreement

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80279

http://bit.ly/vZFP96

Uganda: Nature reserve dispute turns deadly

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/80162

http://aje.me/yEsOT9

Global: Attacks on the press in 2011

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80160

http://bit.ly/yS5yZN

Zambia: ‘Shutting down journalists is shutting us down’ says Zambian farmer

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/80168

http://bit.ly/yiuUD3

South Africa: Youth unemployment a ticking bomb

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/80128

http://bit.ly/zXJ3Ia

Zambia: 45% of children chronically malnourished

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/80121

http://bit.ly/zvYK0R

Africa: Guns more common in the U.S. than much of Asia, Africa

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80135

http://lat.ms/zgdi7E

Africa: Sweden, oil and the 'medium size dog who believes he's a big dog'

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80136

http://bit.ly/yRNHil

Africa: US troops deploy in four countries

2012-02-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80165

http://n24.cm/xWUuWq

Djibouti: US spy place crashes

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80137

http://bit.ly/zuuiq2

Madagascar: Cyclone Giovanna struck with little warning

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80122

http://bit.ly/wvxO7D

Madagascar: South Africa was transit point for weapons to Madagascar

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80134

http://bit.ly/wXHQ0t

Mozambique: Soldier demonstrations likely

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80124

http://bit.ly/xaF3zu

Somalia: Blasts in Somali town seized by Ethiopia from rebels

2012-02-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80202

http://bit.ly/A9Gvkm

Somalia: Britain leads dash to explore for oil in war-torn Somalia

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80271

http://bit.ly/yKnJWT

Somalia: Why the world helps

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/80129

http://bbc.in/zz3qR4

Africa: Basel Convention secretariat publish report assessing state of e-waste in Africa

2012-02-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/80131

http://bit.ly/xU126Y

Global: Events listing at farmlandgrab.org

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/80272

http://bit.ly/A8mxFO

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

Application for the Wanjiru Kihoro Fellowship

2012-02-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/80301

The Wanjiru Kihoro Fellowship Programme aims to contribute to the development of a new generation of African women leaders who are dedicated to utilizing their voices and experience so as to further women's central role in peace building and development work in their country, region and continent. Currently, Femmes Africa Solidarité is offering a position
within the Fellowship Programme to commence in 2012.
This position requires an ambitious individual, coming from and living in an African country, committed to gender equality, peace and human rights in general. FAS especially encourage women and men interested in gender and peace building who would not otherwise have the opportunity to gain international work experience. Preference will be given to those working in an NGO.

The Fellowship further aims to attract applicants who have substantial experience in local community work and who wish to gain international experience to enrich and enhance their skills.

Applications for this position must be received by 18:00 on 28th February 2012. Applications should be sent to the following email address: adfinance@fasngo.org Or: info@fasngo.org

Pan-African Professional in Residence

Oxfam

2012-02-27

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/571/4th Secondment.pdf

Fahamu