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The real reasons for the coup d'état in Guinea-Bissau

Carlos Cardoso

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82234

cc WikimediaFor Guinea-Bissau to achieve stability, there must be a return to constitutional order and a conclusion of presidential elections.

On 12 April 2012 the people of Guinea-Bissau and the international community were surprised by another coup d'état in Guinea-Bissau. There have been several since the country declared its independence in 1973. While Guinea-Bissau has become accustomed to violence and tragic events (military coups in 1980, 1986, and 2003, civil war in 1998/99; and the assassination of a president and other high state officials, including several chiefs of staff of the armed forces) no one was prepared for this event. The country was a few weeks away from the second round of the presidential elections set for 29 April. With 48.9 per cent and 23.3 per cent of the total votes respectively, Carlos Gomes Júnior and Kumba Yalá had established themselves as the main contenders.

This article seeks to identify the reasons behind the political instability that has characterized Guinea-Bissau. Among diverse explanations, I seek to distinguish between those given by the instigators of the coup, and those advanced by scholars of Guinea-Bissau. Among the latter, there is consensus that there are multiple causes, some with deep historical roots. From a holistic perspective concerned with the deeper causes of a political unrest prevalent in Guinea-Bissauan society, this article highlights two types of explanations of the coup. The first is concerned with the immediate motivations, while the second refers to older and more structural causes. Although they are of different nature, function, and range, the factors that explain the coup cannot be understood separately, as they are different links on the same chain.

In terms of the immediate causes, it is important to recognize the deterioration of relations between the executive (represented by Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Júnior, in power since 2008) and the military elite. The deterioration can be traced to a stabilization mission composed of Angolan troops and known by the name MISSANG (Angolan Technical Military Mission). This mission was created during the formation of the celebrated agreement between the governments of Angola and Guinea-Bissau aimed at stabilization, peace, and support for reforms in security and defense sectors. The hotly discussed ‘special’ relationship between Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Júnior and the Angolan ruling class is related to negotiations that took place in August 2010, when Guinea-Bissauan authorities accepted the principle of receiving a peacekeeping and stabilization force in the country. The attempted coup and events of 1 April 2010 led the international community to consider sending this stabilization force. Therefore the establishment of the Angolan forces in Guinea-Bissau was rooted in the will of the international community to the Guinea-Bissauan state.

Though these forces were established legally, given the hesitation expressed by some leaders as to the adequacy, correctness, and opportunity of this decision, many have denounced Carlos Gomes Júnior for mismanagement. Along with his alleged mismanagement of the MISSANG mission, Gomes Júnior has committed (or allowed others to commit) crimes (including the beatings and disappearances of prominent political and military figures, the deaths of Army Chief Tagma Na Way and that of ex-president Nino Vieira, rampant clientalism and nepotism in public administration, etc) and that has fanned the flames of discontentment not only within the military but also the political class, including personalities from the same political establishment. The decline in relations between the government and military elite reached its lowest point when certain sectors of the same elite began to feel uncomfortable with the presence of foreign troops in the country. More than the simple presence of these troops or the alleged signature of a secret agreement between the governments of Angola and Guinea-Bissau (to strengthen MISSANG with arms and strategy) the heart of discord appeared to be the fact that such a presence voted to fail, ‘a priori’, any attempt to change the constitutional order or advance any acts contrary to the normal functioning of institutions. To add to the tension, the center of certain political and military circles has developed a certain paranoia - a mental process highly influenced by anxiety and fear, with practical consequences resulting in efforts to prevent Carlos Gomes Júnior from acceding to the presidency. The same anxiety has allowed the military elite to believe there has been a conspiracy on the part of the Prime Minister vis-à-vis military leaders.

This process deteriorated in part because of the reasons analyzed above, but also because of the deliberate effort to instrumentalize Balanta[1] ethnic identity in favor of the petty interests of one group, which can only lead to nonsensical accusations and irrational situations. The strong statements of the leader of PRS (Party of Social Renovation) and candidate for the second round of presidential elections not only reflects this way of thinking, but also reveals a desire to create a coalition between the military elite and a part of the political elite. This coalition has translated into other aspects of the contradiction between the reasons advanced by the leaders of the coup in the first days following the coup and the reasons announced and circulated days later.

Beyond this, there are three other reasons that may explain the coup as the culmination of a situation of instability and the deterioration of the conditions under which state power is exercised. The first arose in the mismanagement of the transition from the national liberation struggle to the construction of a modern state. The polices and measures implemented by the new power (embodied by PAIGC, African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde since 1973) was not likely to ensure a clear separation between civil and military affairs or permit the military contingent from the national liberation struggle to be transformed into a truly republican armed force. At the same time, for many years political life and the management of public services were dominated by the paradigm of the single-party state.

The single party PAIGC was composed of elements that once belonged to the military wing of the liberation struggle (the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces). After liberation, the party continued to be seen as a kind of eldest son, with a limited ability to act widely despite emancipation. On their side, the armed forces were more committed to the ideology and interests of the single party than to the norms and rules that should govern republican armed forces called to defend first and foremost the interests of the people of Guinea-Bissau. This resulted in a somewhat incestuous relationship between the political and military elite - a tendency that was reinforced during the mandate of Nino Vieira. It has since become one of the cornerstones in the relationship between civilian and military leaders.

Some analysts have focused more specifically on the breakdown of the hierarchical order and the political turmoil caused by the 1980 military coup. This poisoned legacy is certainly not unfamiliar to the politico-military situation that preceded the April 2012 coup. Who does not remember something funny about the recent pictures of the armed forces carrying a contingent of the public order police, during a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the National Electoral Commission? Indeed, the strong presence of the state party has constricted the space that could be filled by a civil society (which could serve as a counterweight to the excesses of a state party that became hegemonic.)

The second structural reason has to do with the mismanagement of crises and conflicts (violent or not) that have periodically developed in the Guinea-Bissauan political scene involving on one side politicians properly speaking, and on the other, politicians aligned with the military. Cycled crises recorded within PAIGC eventually undermined the foundations of leadership at the height of the challenges facing Guinea-Bissau. It would be tedious to enumerate all of the crises and conflicts that the country has seen in recent decades, but we will cite one example that illustrates the dimension of excess in order to elucidate elements of the latest coup. On 1 April 2010 there was an attempted coup. The coup failed when an intervention led by the president and international community prevented the deposition of the Prime Minister. The heart of the crisis was the deposition of the chief of state, Commander Zamora Induta (by the deputy chief of staff António Indjai) under the pretext that the first had acted in a ‘deviant’ and ‘reprehensible’ manner. Whether or not these allegations are true, we should ask why it is permissible for a republican army, in a state of law that is guided by the regular functioning of institutions, and in which military power is subordinated to a civil power, to depose its superior under such pretext. At the time, the troops under the command of António Indjai had also taken hostage and humiliated the Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Júnior. The late president Malam Bacai Sanha, against all expectations, and in power for only a few months (June 2010) appointed the same António Indjai Chef of Staff of the Guinean Armed Forces.

With this act, a dangerous and irreparable precedent was set; in the very center of the armed forces, scrupulous respect for hierarchy was abandoned, along with the knowledge that the military is subordinated to political stakeholders. Acts like this certainly serve to explain the behavior of soldiers that subvert not only the military hierarchy but also undermine the rule of law.

A third explanation for the coup has to do with the degeneration of the state apparatus, and the state itself. It is common knowledge that the embryo of the modern state, initially forged in the first years following independence, has suffered weakness without precedent in the last 20 years, especially under the reign of Kumba Yalá (1990-1993). Guinea-Bissau’s present situation resembles that of a country in which neither the law or hierarchies are respected - the combination that puts things near, if not identical to that of failed state. The trafficking of drugs did nothing more than aggravate this, leading some analysts to classify Guinea-Bissau as a narco-state. The state of affairs is compounded by the fact that the army of Guinea-Bissau is highly ethnicized (majority Balanta) and previously infiltrated by single party ideology. That is why many voices claiming to reestablish the Guinean state are premised on strengthening national unity, on reinventing the political system, and on building a functional and independent justice.

For this coup to happen exactly when the country was preparing to complete the second round of the presidential elections is, at least, an ‘unhappy’ coincidence. It was clear from the beginning that the electoral process itself would be disrupted. Then, as some analysists have suggested, there is a relationship between the [complaint] introduced by some candidates and the outbreak of the crisis; especially when you know that it has resulted in the refusal of the candidate Kumba Yala to participate in the second round of elections and threatening statements to peace and political stability.

For the country to find the path to stability again, the exit from the crisis must include a return to constitutional order. And this means the liberation of interim president Raimundo Pereira and prime minister Carlos Gomes Júnior. The country should be able to carry out the second round of presidential elections. Everything must be done both nationally and internationally to bring the military to reason. The process of building lasting peace, democracy, and the rule of law is incompatible with any compromise to those that would usurp power through a coup. It is essential that the international community does not turn its back on Guinea Bissau. We must see the coup as an opportunity to ensure that Guinea-Bissau returns to stability and a civil peace that is sustainable.

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* Carlos Cardoso joined CODESRIA in August 2004 as the Programmes Officer for the Children and Youth Programs, Academic Freedom and Human Rights and the Special Initiative for Lusophone Africa.
* Our thanks to Megan Eardley (megan.eardley@gmail.com) for translating this article from Portuguese.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES:

[1] The Balanta (same spelling in Guinea-Bissau Creole and Portuguese, balante in French transliteration), meaning literally "those who resist", are an ethnic group found in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Gambia. They are the largest ethnic group of Guinea-Bissau, representing more than one-quarter of the population. But despite their numbers, they have remained outside the colonial and postcolonial state because of their social organization. The Balanta can be divided into four subgroups, (three of which are Balanta Kentohe, Balanta Ganja, and Balanta Brassa, the largest of which are the Balanta Brassa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanta_people

Of flowers and thorns: Where has 'public' gone in public service?

Dale T. McKinley

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82198

cc Flyk3rBy the late 2000s, the bed had turned into a fully fledged forest. Not content with what were already very decent wage packages financed by the public purse, high-ranking politicians and public sector officialdom at every level were awarding themselves with super-salaries and a huge range of benefit sweeteners. Indeed, South Africa has to be one of the countries in the world where the majority of this public sector ‘cadre’ are made millionaires every year and that’s not counting what many of them make on the side.

It wasn’t that long ago, just after the 1994 elections to be precise, when it seemed almost every other South African wanted to become a public servant. For the vast majority, this was not simply because there was a job on offer but because there was a very real sense that becoming part of the newly democratic public service, in whatever capacity was the right thing to do. It was not about the self-interested or political party-centred occupation of positions of power or about using those positions to accumulate personal and family wealth.

Rather, there was the chance to replace an illegitimate and unrepresentative public sector by practically re-casting what it means to be a public servant: to place the common good over and above private interest in both collective work and individual action; to serve with the kind of humility and purpose that comes by being entrusted with working for and/or representing the public interest; and, to imbibe, the foundational ethical principles and work values of the democratic mandate that gives the public sector its legitimacy. Cumulatively, to be one of those metaphorical flowers that would sprout up on historically stony ground and overwhelm the existing and potential thorns of selfishness, arrogance, indolence, greed and corruption.

For a brief period it looked like those flowers were growing. Thousands of committed, honest and hard-working people flooded into the public sector, willingly embracing the Herculean task of revolutionising the institutional character and practical work-face of the public service. But just as had been the case with so many democratic revolutions before, there was the simultaneous growth of big and powerful thorns, whose old and new roots were quickly sunk into the body politic.

Even if most of us did not recognise or simply did not want to believe it was happening, it was public servants at the highest levels that incubated and then covered over South Africa’s biggest and most expensive ‘public’ project at the time, the arms deal. As it turned out, the arms deal was a thorn lover’s paradise, characterised by an attitude and approach that militated against everything that the new public sector and its servicing of the people was supposed to be about. No matter all the post-hoc rationalisations and excuses or over wrought slaps on the wrist, a green light had been given. In direct proportion, a bed of thorns began to grow across the depth and breadth of the public sector while the flowers gradually wilted, batho pele rhetoric notwithstanding.

Two ‘early’ examples are representative. In an attempt to defend rising corruption within Mpumalanga, newly appointed (in 1999) Premier of Mpumalanga, Ndaweni Mahlangu unashamedly stated that it was okay for politicians to lie. While this set off a justified firestorm of outrage, the fact is that Mahlangu and associates got away with it precisely because, like one of those guests at a dinner party who upsets everyone by telling the host that the food is horrible, he was simply giving verbal affirmation to the reality. Similarly, in 2006 when the ANC’s Head of the Presidency Smuts Ngonyama declared, in response to rising criticism of his own enrichment from the partial (BEE) privatisation of Telkom, that “we did not struggle to be poor”, he was merely confirming that it was now acceptable for public servants (or those closely connected) to sell off public sector property for personal gain.

By the late 2000s, the bed had turned into a fully fledged forest. Not content with what were already very decent wage packages financed by the public purse, high-ranking politicians and public sector officialdom at every level were awarding themselves with super-salaries and a huge range of benefit sweeteners. Indeed, South Africa has to be one of the countries in the world where the majority of this public sector ‘cadre’ are made millionaires every year and that’s not counting what many of them make on the side. Even in small towns like Knysna, the annual salary of the municipal manager now comes in at a cool R1,3 million while his counterpart in the neighbouring Bitou municipality has to make do with a measly R1,2 million. Meanwhile, the top management of parastatals – yes, the ones that are now driving the ‘people-centred’ infrastructural programme - are making in one year what it would take an ordinary public sector worker a lifetime to earn.

Things are now so bad in departments like Public Works that its Minister feels it necessary to inform the public that, “we have people looting and even saying 'it's our time to eat' … they act as if they own the department”. Even in the military, as the South African Security Forces Union points out, some commanders, “spend more time running their personal businesses” than they spend on the job while “critical health services have been outsourced to private hospitals which are run by current and former Generals …”

When the public asks too many questions about what their public servants are up to, the arrogance surfaces with a vengeance. We are thus told by the likes of Defence Ministerial spokesman Ndivhuwo Mabya that, “we do not have to explain to anyone the decisions which we take … we don’t owe anyone answers.” Throw in security-intelligence officials running amok behind the smokescreens of ‘national interest’ and ‘classified information’, transport authorities giving the middle finger to actual public transport or the police brass making a mockery of their own code of conduct to “act with integrity in rendering an effective service of a high standard which is accessible to everybody”, and it isn’t hard to figure out that there is precious little of the ‘public’ left in most of our public service.

At the end of his recent Freedom Day address President Zuma implored South Africans to, “put the country first in everything we do …” Besides the fact that he should have said ‘the people’, who after all are the ones that make up ‘the country’, our public sector numero uno would do well to listen to his own advice. Better yet, the President and all those who are supposed to serve the public should ask themselves the questions posed in Pete Seeger’s famous 1960s anti-war song:

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
…When will we ever learn?

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* Dr. McKinley is an independent writer, researcher and lecturer as well as political activist.

* This article was first published by the South Africa Civil Society Information Service.

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

Palestinian solidarity: the responsibility of South African intellectuals

Nina Butler

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82207

cc D DThe South African academic community should break out of its “silent and inert”, albeit sympathetic, posture toward the Palestinians and fully reject cooperation with Israeli institutions.

“I wish you empowerment to resist; to fight for social and economic justice; to win your real freedom and equal rights.”

These are the stirring words of Omar Barghouti in his open letter to “people of conscience in the West”. The prominent Palestinian human rights activist, researcher, author and commentator gave indication of the poetic ability and charisma that inspires this letter in a discussion over Skype with students and academics at Rhodes University on Thursday 3 May 2012. The newly established Rhodes University Palestinian Solidarity Forum (PSF) engaged Barghouti in an attempt to maintain the momentum in Palestinian activism established during Israeli Apartheid Week and to inspire students and academics to feel the immediacy of the struggle to our own pasts and, by extension, the power South African voices can hold in the contemporary international sphere.

There is no more powerful international voice of condemnation of Israel than that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has explicitly expressed the macabre similarities between the two regimes of apartheid oppression. For a South African to stand before a destroyed Palestinian home in the West Bank, or a checkpoint, in the process of performing racist and degrading daily rituals, to say, “I have been there, I have lived this”, holds an unprecedented significance. Knowingly, the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign have candidly based their agenda and discourse on the international anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. Palestinians are cognisant of the potentiality of the emotive cord that joins us. Professor Adam Habib, Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, in a recent conversation with me, recalled how Palestinian academics imparted the moving reflection on him that, compared to the bi-partisan stance of many academic institutions globally, and governments for that matter, Palestinians “expect more from South Africa…we expect different”

Barghouti continues:

“I wish you Egypt so you can rekindle the spirit of the South African anti-apartheid struggle by holding Israel accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights.”

One cannot help but draw from this that the individual conscience of South African academics in particular is being called upon. Public intellectual Noam Chomsky, a candid critic of the United States’ and Israel’s ‘special relationship’ that, he argues, is the poisonous vortex in the centre of the “fateful triangle” between the US, Israel and Palestine, has written extensively on the responsibility of intellectuals. Chomsky asserts that the privileged position intellectuals hold allows them to “expose the lies of governments, to analyse actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions”. Given the newfound atmosphere brought upon by political liberty and freedom of expression the SA academia resides in, we have the “leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth”, and this deems the responsibility of intellectuals to be much deeper than the “responsibility of peoples”.

Fittingly, over 400 of some of the most prominent academics and members of civil society, including nine vice-chancellors and deputy vice-chancellors, 11 deans and vice-deans, 19 heads of department, COSATU, NEHAWU, and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu, Kader Asmal, Zackie Achmat, Ronnie Kasrils and Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro, signed a petition to support the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) official termination of its relationship with Ben Gurion University (BGU) in Israel. In doing so they endorsed the evidence given by the committee in the UJ senate who argued for this motion, including Habib, Professor Steven Friedman and Salim Vally, after a ‘fact-finding mission’ to Israel. The case put forward to the UJ senate substantiated that BGU actively restricted and violated academic freedom, directly and deliberately collaborated with the Israeli Defence Force (an occupying military force in continuous violation of international law) and maintained the policies and practices that further entrench the discriminatory practices of the Israeli state. Despite attempts of varying proposals and methods of pressure asserted by Israeli lobbyists to resuscitate BGU’s relationship and moral authority, the UJ senate unanimously passed the resolution in March 2011.

Moreover, a reliable source of authority has divulged that a particular South African university was approached by BGU, shortly after UJ passed the resolution to end official ties with the university, with a large amount of funding for water research, only to be told explicitly that their association and money was not desirable.

However, the details of this very important development in the evolution of Palestinian solidarity in South Africa have not been made public, nor does it seem likely that they will be. Nor has anything further been done at this university to formalise such sentiments, or at the very least make clear the intent of the university leadership. At the same time as the aforementioned rejection of BGU advances, Wits, UKZN and UWC publically announced they have searched their databases to find that they have no official links with Israeli institutions. Dr Saleem Badat, Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, has assured me that Rhodes has no formal agreements. Beyond proclaiming innocence, South African academic institutions have remained silent and inert since then. The public signing of a petition “in solidarity with oppressed peoples” has not resulted so far in individual and institutional action.

It can be deduced from this that in the South African intellectual sphere there is a considerable amount of red tape around criticism of the Israeli state and its academic institutions, which were found to be explicitly discriminatory and prohibitive of Palestinians’ right to education by the Human Rights Watch. If one were to map the landscape of South African positioning in relation to the Palestinian struggle for human rights, it appears as though outspoken support for Israeli boycott comes from the ‘radical’ or ‘leftist’ corner. The ‘liberal centre’ of debate and sentiment views the situation as one of conflict in which both sides have a claim to sympathy. This is not only surprising given the relatively mild influence and power of Zionist lobbying and cultural persuasion (compared to the far more extreme cases in the United States, Britain and parts of the EU), but also morally incoherent, given the parallels in our history to the current system of anachronistic colonialism in Israel, both of which are in conflict with universal notions of human dignity and freedom.

AVOIDING ‘NORMALIZATION’ IN THE CONTEXT OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

PACBI have made it clear that the success of their boycott campaign is dependent upon intellectuals refraining from the promotion of “the normalization of Israel in the global academy”. Treating Israeli institutions in a manner as one would any other cog in the liberal and humane machine of the ‘free world’ creates a “false and harmful impression of normalcy in a patently abnormal situation of colonial oppression”. This is part of the process of the “colonization of the mind of the oppressed”, in which the “subject comes to believe that the oppressor’s reality is normal”. Entertaining an even-handed approach, or setting up three-way agreements with Israeli and Palestinian actors, in this light, is stamping legitimacy on the walled borders enclosing Palestinian consciousness.

However, it seems only natural, as someone who respects academic freedom in South Africa, that balanced debate and uncensored discussion is promoted. As Habib insists, it is imperative for the academia not to lose sight of this: “of course UJ is partial to oppressed people and by extension partial to Palestinians”; however, ‘normalcy’ is defined by context and the varying perspectives and roles people play. What is normal and appropriate conduct for a DVC in Ramallah is not the same for one in Johannesburg, even though they may agree in principle.

It is in traversing the complexities of the relationship between academic freedom and intellectual activism that both Habib and Badat, by drawing on the rich tapestry of their own narratives of leadership during struggle, insist that pragmatism and tactical diversification are crucial. Although a clear goal and strategy are pillars in any campaign, one needs to be flexible and inventive in how one applies them. I have been assured that there were certain agreements made in the SA anti-apartheid framework that might well have violated the boycott in the strictest sense, yet ultimately proved advantageous. Badat elaborates that one needs to extract as much support and resource as is available to you, and that includes not polarising the faction of the opposition sympathetic to your aims.

This adaptability involves remaining self-reflexive and keeping the template of boycott itself, and its effectiveness is part of the debate if one is to be able to respond to the popular reception of the campaign and to seize the ‘moments’ and ‘ruptures’ in the flow of history that spark revolutionary change. At the heart of the struggle is a delicately balanced public campaign, and this is where the academic inquiry and perception, beyond what Chomsky calls the “veil of deception” and based on an enlightened social ideology, translates into the public sphere. “What the Palestinians need to happen” in South Africa, advises Badat, “is the kind of popular mobilisation that led the brave Irish woman, Vonnie Munroe, to refuse to handle South African grapefruits” at an ordinary Dublin green grocers in 1984. Munroe’s trade union had adopted SA boycott measures and she felt compelled to carry out their political mandate in her workplace. To international observers’ eyes, the historical symmetry in popular support would be over-powering. Evoking memories of endless pamphleteering at train-stations and student unions, Badat adds that the momentum achieved from which such revolutionary tipping points erupt begins in the academy.

INVENTING PRAGMATIC AND PROACTIVE STRATEGIES THAT REVERBERATE PUBLICALLY

An absence of association with Israeli institutions is not an adequate reason for absence from public intellectual activism. If the boycott template is not possible or appropriate, this does not absolve SA universities from the moral responsibility of making a clear and public statement of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. The pragmatic and proactive response to signing the petition in support of UJ’s landmark and internationally applauded resolution of 2011 would be to campaign within respective SA institutions for positive association with and deepened support of Palestinian academia and civil society.

This can be done, most pre-eminently, through proclaiming intent to respect the strategies of Palestinians’ anti-apartheid struggle, whilst upholding the freedom and integrity of the South African academy and concretely setting in motion the reciprocal exchange of researchers, students, ideas and resources between the two countries. Moreover, the promotion of Palestinian culture through visual and performance arts, as well as the rich and progressive Palestinian literary tradition, is in itself a form of activism; the affirmation of existence by Palestinians through their cultural productions is an affirmation of resistance, and supporting this creativity is breathing life into their struggle for heritage, justice and dignity.

Such an inventive approach addresses the problem of representation Palestinians have had in western public spaces - a problem Edward Said saw as their most challenging obstacle –and begins to build the foundations for popular appeal and mobilisation beyond universities.

The transfer of energy and ideas between SA academia and public for the sake of Palestinian freedom must not be seen as a conversation in isolation from our own post-apartheid concerns. In helping others in need, we have the opportunity to sharpen our understanding of what it means to be a democratic nation in the shifting global community; how political liberty, equality and justice, becomes social liberty, equality and justice, and what responsibilities to other oppressed peoples come with the attainment of liberty. If anything is to place SA universities on the right side of history after the deplorable complicity during our apartheid, it is not only ensuring they do not remain silent or perpetuate systems of oppression inflicted upon others, but also engaging with and enriching the society upon which they are dependent in a morally responsible and enlightened manner.

“I wish you Egypt so you can decolonize your minds, for only then can you envision real liberty, real justice, real equality, and real dignity.”

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* Nina Butler is a MA student at Rhodes University:nina.btlr@gmail.com.
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The insolvent United States banking system: lessons from J.P. Morgan Chase

Why the banks must be nationalized

Horace Campbell

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82237

cc F BAs central bankers from China to Venezuela and from Argentina to Japan are seeking ways to exit from the contagion of the speculative trading of US bankers, progressive forces must renew the call for the nationalization of the big banks, which are supposed to be too big to fail.

Since September 15, 2008 the United States economy has been like a ticking time bomb with the unregulated activities of the banks the fuse that is slowly burning. This fuse has affected the international banking system and while citizens of the United States are focused on an electoral contest, the issues of the future of the U.S banking system, the future of the dollar and the future of the Euro are bringing home the reality of the capitalist depression. Two weeks ago, Paul Krugman released a book entitled, End this Depression Now. This book sought to galvanize action by the US government to stimulate the economy based on the twentieth century Keynesian ideas of stimulating growth. Increasingly, it is becoming clearer that far more drastic political measures will be needed if the international financial system is to be protected from the gambling of the top bankers in the United States. Wealth creation and a new economic system are needed to meet the needs of human beings.

This reality was brought home last Thursday, May 10, when it was revealed the J. P Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States had been involved in the most risky type of speculative trading that was not supposed to be undertaken by a federally insured depository institution. The nature of the speculative trading is still covered up by the media but from what has been coming out there were bets placed by a derivative trader who was placing US$100billion bets that the US economy would recover. One report called the operation ’trades in the synthetic derivatives hedging business.’

Whether this is the real cause of the attention to JP Morgan Chase will only come to light when the media and the representatives of the people call for the removal of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of this bank and takes over the bank. While the information on the $3 billion loss is as opaque as the business world of the financial system, the nature of the risk that was being undertaken is reserved exclusively for the big banks and offers multi- million dollar profits in this ether world that is called financial capitalism.

JPMorgan Chase is currently one of the biggest banks in the world supposedly with $2.1 trillion in assets and more than 239,000 employees. I used the word ‘supposedly’ because JP Morgan Chase was one of the recipients of more than$26 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the American International Group (AIG) in September 2008. Troubled Assets was the term coined by the US government to hide from the world the state of the insolvency of the US banking system where the big banks had overextended themselves in the housing bubble issuing what was then called mortgage backed securities. These banks are still mired in the toxic mess from the orgy of speculation of that era and JP Morgan compounded its own risky position by taking over the bad bank, Washington Mutual.

The Bank JP Morgan Chase grew bigger and riskier after absorbing two of the failed banks at the center of the MBS debacle. JPS acquired Bears Stearns and Washington Mutual. Hence on top of its own involvement in the casino economy, JP Morgan Chase had taken on two failed banks in an attempt to save the US financial system.

The Tarp instrument was the means through which the US government had ‘bailed out the banks and investment houses in 2008. JP Morgan Chase was involved in the same credit default swaps (CDS) that was at the core of the gambling that brought down the system in 2008. The speculative activities of the Banks have increased since 2008 and now the press is seeking to lay the blame on one derivatives trader in London. According to the media, speculation by a derivatives trader in London has produced a $2 billion trading loss for JP Morgan Chase. It is still not clear the extent of the loss but we know that it is in the same category as the losses at MF Global last year. These losses add to the scandal after scandal and are supposed to be on par with the other debacles of 2008 when two major Wall Street institutions, Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. This year the progressive forces must renew the call for the nationalization of the big banks which are supposed to be too big to fail.

THE ARROGANCE OF THE BIG BANKS

The rise and impending collapse of J P Morgan Chase is a cautionary tale about the fortunes (or currently misfortunes ) of the US banking system. Older readers will remember the name Chase Manhattan Bank and the era when David Rockefeller and this bank stood at the apex of US capitalism. Today Chase Manhattan no longer exists and has been absorbed through the mergers and acquisitions of the years of neo-liberal capitalism. Then there was the other major US capitalist whose fortunes were made when there were the most brutal forms of exploitation of workers. This was the banker and industrialist, John Pierpont Morgan. The career of JP Morgan was symbolic of the merger of industrial and bank capital to create financial capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Today at the start of the 21st century JP Morgan Chase is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies over the last decade including Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Bank One, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Going back further, the predecessors of the current banking behemoth include major banking firms among which are Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, First Chicago Bank, National Bank of Detroit, Texas Commerce Bank, Providian Financial and Great Western Bank.

JP Morgan Chase is a textbook case of what happened to US banks during the era of neo-liberalism when the Glass Steagall Act was repealed separating investment banking from federally insured deposit banks. Much attention has been paid to the two poster children of the new casino type operators who claim to be bankers, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. These two are just at the top of the massive political structure that squeezes the mass of the citizens of the world for the top 1 per cent. In the book ‘13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown’, the authors Simon Johnson and James Kwak have detailed the evolution of the neo-liberal world that was spun by these bankers. According to Johnson and Kwak, the bankers created new money machines with new schemes such as securitization, high yield debt, arbitrage trading and derivatives. On top of these serial innovations we now have a new one called value at risk. Later we will be told what is synthetic derivatives hedging business. These “serial innovations created the new money machines that fueled the rapid, massive growth in the size, profitability and wealth of the financial sector over the last three decades.”

It is the accrued power of these bankers that now threatens the global system of capitalism. After the tremors of the financial markets in 2008 these same banks that called for deregulation called for bail outs because they were too big to fail. For a while, there had been word of the depth of the hole in other banks and we are still waiting for the information on Bank of America which is still under wraps with Wikileaks. Only two months ago, the Federal Reserve completed a “stress test” of the 19 largest US banks, which gave all of them a green light in terms of solvency and approved increased dividends or stock buybacks for 15 of the 19 banks. This exposure of JP Morgan exposes the fraud of the so called stress tests.

Although the banking system was propped up and we are informed in the media that these banks recently passed ‘stress tests,’ the news about the risky bets of JP Morgan is a stark reminder that the time bomb is ticking. Since that fateful week in September 2008, far from resolving the crisis of the US financial system, the bailout of Wall Street that had been orchestrated by the Federal government has resulted in a further centralization of financial assets in a handful of giant institutions that dominate American society. The further centralization now means that five of the 13 banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011. The big five have increased their viselike grip on the US economy over the past five years: in 2006, their financial holdings amounted to 43 percent of US gross domestic product. By the end of 2011, that figure had risen to 56 percent.

JP MORGAN AT THE FOREFRONT OF OPPOSING REGULATION

JP Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. He has been the most active among the bankers in manipulating the system playing both sides of the political game and arguing against the regulation of the banks. Jamie Dimon was paid over US $23 million last year and now it is coming out that it is the accounting scams that produced the paper profits that enabled the big bonuses for Dimon and the traders who were urged to make riskier bets. Dimon has been the most active in the press and in his visits to the Obama White House. He has argued for the ‘markets’ to take their course when his bank has been in operation in a world that is beyond the reach of markets. While the world of these bankers is beyond the ‘market’ these are the financiers who promote the myth that the development of a generalized market (the least regulated possible) and democracy are complimentary to one another. The same bankers who argue that the economic sphere and the political sphere are separate and that the market does not need the state are the same bankers who are expending billions to lobby so that the limited regulations proposed by the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 are not affected. The Dodd-Frank legislation included one particular clause called the Volcker rule that was supposed to ban proprietary trading by the lords of the universe.

Jamie Dimon has been described by Barack Obama as one of the smartest bankers in the United States. Obama was simply exposing the subservience of the federal government to the bankers who are the same group pouring millions into both campaigns. The bankers are ensuring that whichever party wins in November, the US banking system will be protected. Barack Obama timidly called for regulating JP Morgan while actively engaging the soliciting of funds from one of the most notorious ‘private equity’ firms in New York. The close relationship between the private equity firms and the bankers constitute the power of the top one per cent and the US government acts to serve this one per cent. After the big scare of 2008 there was fear internationally that there would be a run on the dollar. It was this fear that induced the members of the US government to pass the Dodd-Frank Legislation to prevent the obscene conflict of interest of the banks and investment houses. The expedient which was supposed to prevent the conflict of interest was the Volcker rule, named after the former Treasury Secretary of an era before financialization. The rule placed trading restrictions on financial institutions. In the 2010 legislation, the Volcker rule separates investment banking, private equity and proprietary trading (hedge fund) sections of financial institutions from their consumer lending arms. Banks are not allowed to simultaneously enter into an advisory and creditor role with clients, such as with private equity firms. The Volcker rule aims to minimize conflicts of interest between banks and their clients through separating the various types of business practices financial institutions engage in.

JP Dimon has been the leader in opposing the Volcker rule because his organization has been at the forefront of the practice where a hedge fund is operating inside a commercial bank. Commercial banks are federally insured and are different from investment banks. Under the rules of the so called market, bankers are not supposed to take deposits from customers and then use the same deposits to make speculative bets. This was not supposed to happen but when the banks became huge money machines, they operated above the law. This is how a bank such as JP Morgan controls assets that are worth 20 per cent of the GDP of the USA.

BANKS MUST BE NATIONALIZED

Jamie Dimon sits on the Board of the Federal Reserve of New York. This is the most important position of the US financial system because this is the reserve system that holds the foreign reserves of 60 per cent of the economies of the world. JP Morgan Chase is a particularly critical financial institution, since in addition to its vast holdings; it serves as one of the two main clearing banks in New York City, along with Bank of New York Mellon, handling financial transactions for all other banks. Any challenge to its solvency immediately puts a question mark over the whole financial system. Central bankers all over the world are following with interest the call for Jamie Dimon to be removed from the Board of the Federal Reserve of New York because of conflicts of interest. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York carries out foreign exchange-related activities on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury. In this capacity, the bank monitors and analyzes global financial market developments, manages the U.S. foreign currency reserves, and from time to time intervenes in the foreign exchange market. The bank also executes foreign exchange transactions on behalf of customers.

Tim Geithner now Treasury Secretary was the former President of the Federal Reserve Board of New York. It was under Geithner when billions were handed over to the bankers after 2008. Then Geithner was trying to save the US financial system so that foreigners will not pull their reserves out of the dollar. As Treasury Secretary, Geithner was reported to have had secret meetings with Jamie Dimon in March this year when news first surfaced of the synthetic trades.

Elizabeth Warren, now running for a Senate seat in Massachusetts, has called for the resignation of Jamie Dimon from the Federal Reserve Board of New York. Every citizen will understand that there is a conflict of interest between sitting on a board that is supposed to regulate the operations of JP Morgan Chase. But conflict of interest has never been a problem for the US capitalists. They changed the rules to suit themselves. However, this was before the era when other societies had alternatives. From China to Venezuela and from Argentina to Japan, central bankers are seeking ways to exit from the contagion of the speculative trading of US bankers.

Last year the world was exposed to the realities of the insolvency of the US financial system when there was the debate on the debt ceiling. Now it has been revealed that the debt ceiling will have to be raised again. This is sending shudders down the spine of financial institutions around the world.

The political struggles over the future of the US financial system are maturing. In order to pre-empt utter disaster the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has called for the big banks to be broken up. The big banks continue to act on the assumption that the US dollar will be the reserve currency of international trade, especially now that the Euro is in disarray. These big banks are of the view that the US government will continue the devaluation of the US dollar without a response from the rest of the world. It is this understanding which has influenced the bankers to believe that the US government will intervene to bail them out when they make speculative bets that the US economy will improve. Many refuse to accept that this is a depression.

Sober elements understand that the banks must be broken up and this was stated explicitly in the annual report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The letter from the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve is entitled, Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now. In this letter, Richard Fisher from the Dallas Federal Reserve argues that the situation of the bf banks is a disaster in waiting. Fisher would force the big banks to reorganize and get much smaller. And he would require “harsh and non-negotiable consequences” for any bank that ends in trouble and seeks government aid, including removal of its leaders, replacement of its board, voiding all compensation and bonus contracts and clawing back any bonus compensation for the two previous years.

It is now understood by these sober elements in the USA that the Big Banks may be not only too big to fail, but also too big to save.

The politicians in the USA are compromised and refuse to see the reality. It is the task of the progressive forces to keep the discussions on the JP Morgan losses on the table in order to educate the people on the nature of the depression. The major media houses such as the New York Times are attempting to manage this story saying that this $3-4 billion loss is a drop in the bucket. From the financial papers there is the buzz that one’s loss is another person’s gain. This is cold comfort to the poor all over the world who are suffering in the midst of this depression. In 2008 the government socialized the losses while the profits were privatized. The bailout was one of the biggest transfers of wealth from the poor of the world to the rich. These bankers now need another bail out and the US government will have to increase the debt ceiling.

For the moment the Occupy Wall Street Movement has made it impossible for the government to bail out the banks again. However, far from bailing out the bankers, speculators such as Corzine of MF Global and Jamie Dimon should be prosecuted. It is not enough to say that what JP Morgan was doing was inappropriate from a federally insured depository institution. It is time for the people to call for these banks to be taken over and the big bankers removed.

It is now time for audacity and more audacity. Nationalization and political education at the moment is more important than the elections. Bankers like JP Morgan profit from war and these forces want another big war so that the capitalists can recover. The peace and justice forces must be more vigilant. The JP Morgan Chase debacle heightens the desperation of the top one per cent in the USA.

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* Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University.

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Haïti, Africa, Aristide: The history of one humanity

Jacques Depelchin

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82223

cc E IThe story of Haiti represents that of the Africa of today: trying to stand up, to reconstruct, to rebuild, she stumbles, hesitates, and sometimes retreats in the face of threats from the watchdogs seeking to liquidate humanity and replace it with a substitute known as humanitarianism.

Since the time when the Africans, forced against their will to live in Saint Domingue (Haiti), revolted to end slavery (1791-1804) without the endorsement of abolitionists, these latter, and the allies of those who lost that battle, organised so that the emancipation of humanity would happen according to their will. In light of this, it is no exaggeration to conclude that it has always been a matter of a deadly, vengeful and predatory will that has a greater interest in the liquidation of humanity than in its emancipation. Therefore there is also an interest in the liquidation of the history of the struggles for emancipation as well.

In a context where there is an ill-disguised submission to predation as a way of life, it will be difficult if not impossible to have the curiosity to discover what it is that fuels this desire to amass power in all its forms. How does one describe the meeting between Europe and Africa? It took place in the wake of the discovery of the Americas and at the beginning of the American genocide (David E. Stannard, The American Holocaust). It is from there that the process of the accumulation of power (both military and financial) began and which continues even today. It is this process that will establish as a principle, now increasingly evident, the reduction of justice to the law of the strongest.

It is worth noting some of the more memorable events during this process: von Trotha in South-West Africa (now Namibia), organiser of the Herero and Nama genocide; Léopold II and his agents in the Independent State of the Congo (Red Rubber) ; Armenia, Nanking, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Gulag, Guantanamo, open warfare, low intensity wars, secret wars, colonial and neo-colonial dictatorships, economic and financial crises, always resolved in favour of the most powerful and the richest, who will never be punished (except in those rare cases of scapegoating to give the impression of justice).

In the subconscious of these latter the main theme of such a path can be summarised in these words: ‘We are above impunity, the worse our crimes against humanity are the greater will be our profits.’ If there is any doubt, one needs only to observe against whom and for whom those organisations, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the international financial institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Funds) function. It is true that, from time to time, qualms of conscience appear that deserve to be mentioned, such as ‘Our Major Slave-Trading Family, in the “Deep North”’1. There are other examples, often invisible, but it is questionable, taking into account the blocks in place at all levels, if these qualms are equal to the crimes against humanity that have never stopped and which appear determined to self-perpetuate.

The revolution of the Africans in Haiti for the emancipation of humanity went even further than the French Revolution of 1789. It was the Africans who helped the French’s First Republic to abolish slavery (1792-1794). This brief inversion of history seen and told by the France of Napoleon and his successors will never be forgiven by the Africans of Haiti. Once Napoleon was in power in France, the beneficiaries of slavery organised their revenge by imposing compensation payments upon the newly independent state of Haiti. In the memory of Haitians, this compensation should never have been paid. Why do the Haitians find themselves so forsaken despite its ties to Africa, despite a revolution that does honour to the history of humankind constantly struggling for freedom?

The arrival of Aristide to power coincided with a reactivation of the true history of the emancipation of humanity. The distant heirs of slave owners and of plantations reacted like the powerful and the rich have always reacted when they are caught failing in respect and in justice vis-à-vis human beings. In 2004, Aristide and the Haitian people celebrated the bicentenary of a revolution that does credit to all of humankind. Of all the African Heads of State invited, only Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa attended; while in 1989, at the bicentenary of the French Revolution organised by Mitterrand, almost all the African Heads of State were present.

The isolation, the insults, and the demonization of Haitians in the struggle for emancipation can be explained in a number of ways. However, all converge towards the realisation of a cherished objective of the powermongers: first, to present themselves as the only viable representatives of humankind and secondly, to eliminate humanity and/or reduce it to its market term: humanitarianism. Because in the name of humanitarianism, the liquidators of true humanity seek to present themselves as the virtual saviours of the human species, of the principle of life, of nature, thanks to a complete and total monopoly over all avenues to emancipation.

Therefore, in order to promote themselves, African leaders continue to turn their backs on their own history while praising that of the West. The Haitian Revolution said ‘No’ to the commodification of humanity. More than two centuries later, with the help of African leaders, the commodification of humankind has progressed to the point that instead of talking about humanity it is preferable to speak of humanitarianism, a charitable act that hides the contradiction with difficulty. On the one hand, come to the aid of human beings, and on the other hand eliminate those who are considered to be disposable since they are useless in a world in which human beings no longer give value to mankind. Now, stock prices determine the so called humanitarian interventions to be taken.

This charitable act with the English acronym ‘R2P’ kills two birds with one stone. Right to Protect is the right of military intervention which has been granted to the greatest military powers on the planet in order to protect their interests under the guise of protecting against violations of human rights. In reality, these so-called humanitarian interventions enable the sales of arms and the maintenance of arms production industries (known generically today as ‘security’, an emotionally manipulable concept of the survival instinct, but one that works well to liquidate humanity collectively.)

These military interventions enable, at the same time, the liquidation of those members of humanity considered to be superfluous. Furthermore, these wars are essential to maintain, in people’s minds, the idea that life is only possible by submitting to the law of the strongest. However, Haiti and the rebellions against slavery (later colonisation and globalisation) showed that the maintenance of humanity is contrary to the imposition of the law of the strongest. However in the political and ideological framework imposed since the end of the Second World War, the most powerful forces on the planet behave as though they are accountable to no one. In this context, it is always feasible to get rid of people like Jean Bertrand Aristide, the elected president of a sovereign state, in a world in which the only recognised sovereignty is that of the markets.

As was the case of Toussaint l’Ouverture, Aristide was sent into exile in South Africa. Among other reasons: Aristide revived the framework of a history rooted in the rebellious consciences such as Kimpa Vita (burnt alive on 2 July 1706 in the Kongo Kingdom for having criticised the king and his allies, the Italian Capuchins missionaries, for being collaborators of the slave drivers), Makandal, Boukman, Toussaint l’Ouverture, Dessalines, etc.. In the name of these heroes, among others, Aristide demanded the reimbursement of this compensation (demanded by the French State in 1825) stating that there was no question of reparations. Aristide was not alone. He expressed the bicentennial purpose, a search for truth and justice organised around, and by, Fanmi Lavalass, the distant heirs of the rebels of Saint Domingue.

The story of Haiti represents that of the Africa of today: trying to stand up, to reconstruct, to rebuild, she stumbles, hesitates, and sometimes retreats in the face of threats from the watchdogs seeking to liquidate humanity and replace it with a substitute known as humanitarianism. In the wake of this liquidation of humanity, these gravediggers are also trying to erase the history of humanity. It cannot be said often enough: the eradication of slavery in Haiti does not concern only the Haitians and/or the Africans. Understanding what happened in Haiti in 1804 followed by 200 years of vengeful impulses expressed by all means possible, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki both of which continue to be a very strong signal of the commitment to liquidate humanity.

Some will say that there is no connection between the violence of Atlantic slavery and that which happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one as in the other, the objective was humanity. Those responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bombs might argue that they did not realise it, but violence as a means to control, to subject humankind to a system founded on its systematic violation is that which leads to slavery; from its alleged abolition to a slavery even more violent, modernised, and explained by the exculpatory arguments of its beneficiaries. The arsenal of the powerful include proponents of all types ranging from philosophers to lawyers, from financiers to chaplains, from bankers to industrialists, from linguists to anthropologists, from courtesans to propagandists, from servicemen to militarists, from journalists to historians.

If Haiti, its history, its people and its willingness to carry out the revolution of 1791-1804, did not scare the greatest military power on Earth, how does one explain that, after the January 2011 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people, this same military power made use of the automatisms that have become typical since Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Because it considers itself to be the only one capable of making the distinction between the enemies and the benefactors of humankind, the greatest military power in the world relies on heavily militarised humanitarian expeditions to ensure its control over humankind through force. Inevitably a living, vibrant humanity will be perceived as threatening by a power founded on the will to monopolise and dictate to all humankind how to live life, liberty and peace.

Aristide is not a dog. How many times must we remind the watchdogs of a system that continues to torture and to liquidate humanity, that the poor of Haiti (and elsewhere) are not dogs? Aristide is not a dog. Undoubtedly, these watchdogs would have liked Aristide to disappear like a dog that has been run over, without any newspapers ever writing about it, and without any grave marker, just like what happened to heroes such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, Osende Afana, Ruben Um Nyobe and so many others whose remains are scattered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that Aristide is back in Haiti, the propaganda that had been used to get rid of him is happening once again. The accusations are the same: corruption, drug trafficking, etc. Some charges are no different from those that were made against, for example, the head of Hezbollah, Sayyid Nasrallah.

On the side of the accusers, the motivation remains the same: keep in place the system that made Saint Domingue the economic pearl of the French colonies, through the use of slavery. And there are voices rising, from Haiti, to preach to the heirs of all those who put an end to slavery, the following: ‘Look at Haiti today the poorest country in the Western hemisphere’. This poverty is part of the war organised by the rich and powerful to force any member of humankind that rejects the modernisation of slavery, to beg in order to survive.

A prominent Haitian who joined in the propaganda to demonize Aristide once stated that Aristide was not Mandela. He was told at the time, certainly there is only one Mandela just as there is only one Aristide, as there was only one Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Kimpa Vita, Harriet Tubman, etc. The list of people who have significantly contributed to the emancipation of humankind is infinitely long, too often unknown and/or misunderstood by those who should stand with these figures.

With World War II, a system personified by evil collapsed without losing any of its financial, mental or memorial structure. As with the abolition of slavery, the beneficiaries of Nazism were not affected. As Alain Resnais depicts very well in his film (Night and Fog), large industrial groups such as Krupp continued to prosper. The lesson of the Second World War was so well learned that those responsible for the pursuit of the liquidation of humanity and its history have proclaimed themselves to be its only defender by inventing humanitarianism and R2P (Right to Protect). In accordance with this argument, the impunity of the United States was established as a non-negotiable principle by the Government of the United States.2

Resnais’ film was made in 1955, during the war in Algeria, with the explicit hope of the director that a film about the camps would lead the French to make the connection between what happened in Nazi Germany to what was happening in Algeria, and, hence, react. We are in 2012. How many people know that the title of the film by Resnais, unknowingly reproduced the title of a decree of 7 December 1941, the ‘Night and Fog’ Decree (Nacht un Nebel Erlass)?

While reading the content of this decree, it is hard not to think about the context that led the United States not only to put itself beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court, but also to put in place a system of police control that supported its ambitions to be a global power.

In light of the message that Alain Resnais wanted to get across, it is reasonable to wonder, as did Aimé Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism and Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, if there has ever been a real awareness of the dimension of the enormity of the crimes against humanity, during, before and after the Second World War. In light of the current behaviour of the world's superpower and its allies, questions will continue to be asked, but the necessity of appropriate responses to the crimes against humanity call upon all of humankind with increasing urgency.

Humanity is all-inclusive and non-discriminatory. It does not have to be reinvented under the guise of selective humanitarian missions against individuals who are then taken before an international criminal tribunal which appears to function largely as a court of law of the strongest in order to get rid of those who defy such a situation. In order for there to be real justice for all humankind, we must eliminate the practices that make the law of the strongest an instrument of justice in the service of the strongest military power ever seen. We must finish with a court of law of the strongest that manifests itself through the media which is completely under the control of the most powerful forces in the global hierarchy.

Aristide is the voice of the Africans, the Haitians, and the cursed of the Earth who want to heal the wounds from which humankind suffers, a wound that has mutilated the consciences and the wills of those faithful to justice and truth. He also speaks for people in other parts of the world seeking to be heard above the hell of punitive wars waged against human beings who want to thrive and not just survive by being forced to accept charity from the powermongers. The more the voice of Aristide troubles their consciences the more the powerful should pay attention to him and not accuse him of invented crimes.

* This article was translated from French for Pambazuka News by Lorraine Thompson.


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* Jacques Depelchin is executive director of The Otabenga Alliance.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.


ENDNOTES

1. Our Major Slave-Trading Family, In the “Deep North”, http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2008/04/21/our-largest-slave-trading-family-in-the-deep-north/, accessed 10/04/2012 (http://bit.ly/J1RhrD)

2. See http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=bia&lang=fr, accessed 10/04/2012

Angola: Court ignores media law in journalist’s case

Rafael Marques de Morais

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82196

Something fishy is definitely going on in the belated trial of journalist Ramiro Aleixo over articles he wrote nearly five years ago. It is an extraordinary opportunity to evaluate the Angolan judicial system.

The trial of journalist Ramiro Aleixo began on 11 May,2012 at the Luanda Provincial Court in Angola. Aleixo stands accused of the crimes of defamation, slander and injury against the military justice system, namely its Supreme Court and office of the military attorney.

In September 2007, the defendant wrote two articles in the now defunct weekly newspaper Kesongo about the trial and conviction of the former director of the Angolan Intelligence Services, General Fernando Garcia Miala, exposing the judicial process as a farce. Initially, it was publicly revealed that there was an investigation of General Miala for an attempted coup.

To the journalist’s surprise, and to the surprise of the Angolan public at large, the general ended up in court accused of insubordination for refusing to attend a public ceremony in which he was to be demoted from the rank of three-star general to lieutenant-general. He was sentenced to four years in jail, while three of his closest aides were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail.

In his editorial ‘The dangerous track’, before expressing his opinion of the proceedings that led to the incarceration of the general and his aides, Mr. Aleixo rejoiced over the role of the privately-owned media’s coverage of the case. According to Mr. Aleixo, the Miala case “showed the country, and the world, the importance of private media in the country’s democratization process.”

He further stated: “In all journalistic coverage of the case, no private media outlet favoured Miala or his aides. Only facts and opinions of legal experts were expressed and even most of these were off the record, given the fear inspired by the regime.”

Without quibbling, Mr. Aleixo expressed his opinion about the case against the high-ranking officers of the Angolan Intelligence Services. According to him, “the Miala case was a mock trial because the interests of power ruled over those of justice.” He further added that, because it was impossible to prove a supposed attempted coup, “the President of the Republic José Eduardo dos Santos transferred to the military jurisdiction the responsibility of punishing his former ‘loyalist’.”

The trial of Mr. Aleixo is now an extraordinary opportunity to evaluate the Angolan judicial system. The defendant was notified through an edict published in the state-owned daily newspaper Jornal de Angola on 11 April 2012. The presiding municipal judge, Alfredo Lourenço Martins, justified the decision of publishing the edict on the grounds that the court clerks had not been able to locate the defendant over the previous three years. In fact, Mr. Aleixo has maintained the same residential address in Benguela province where the newspaper was published, and the same address was included in the edict. Moreover, Mr. Aleixo was the spokesman for the Organizing Committee of the Africa Cup of Nations in Benguela from 2009 to 2010, a post that gave him plenty of media visibility.

From a legal standpoint, the accusation against Mr. Aleixo has two serious flaws. The public prosecution, represented by Ms. Teresa Caumba, is basing the accusation solely and exclusively on the Penal Code, ignoring the Media Law, which regulates the sector, in its entirety. The prosecution claims that the defendant “committed the crime with the use of excessive power”, and therefore with aggravated criminal responsibility, based on article 13, 11, of the Angolan Penal Code. The prosecution did not present any information on the type of power used by the journalist or its excessive use.

The second flaw relates to jurisdiction. According to Article 45 of the Angolan Penal Code, provincial courts are competent to hold trials on the cases in the provinces where the crimes are committed. Mr. Aleixo’s editorial was published in the weekly Kesongo, based in Benguela, where the newspaper was printed and distributed. Therefore, as stated by the defense attorney, Benja Satula, it is the Benguela Provincial Court that is fit to hold the trial and not its Luanda counterpart.

Furthermore, neither the presiding judge nor the public prosecutor expressed interest in hearing the plaintiff, the current Deputy Attorney-General for the Angolan Armed Forces, general Hélder Pitra Gróz. The judge only asked him about his time serving as a military justice officer. Ms. Caumba excused the plaintiff, alleging that the charges had been registered in the court records and there was no need for further questions.

However, in his answers to the defense attorney about the supposed attempted coup, General Pitra Grós made revelations that could as well have been copied from the second editorial written by Mr. Aleixo, ‘A story untold’.

In his opinion piece, Mr. Aleixo stated: “I don’t know of one single case in Africa in which someone accused of an attempted coup has not been arrested, forced into exile or brutally assassinated, with or without trial.” General Pitra Grós defended the Commander-in-Chief and the regime by stating exactly the same. The only semantic difference was that the general said, instead of brutally assassinated, “or something worse, as being killed.” This last sentence was kept off the court records.

The journalist could hardly hide his shock in the face of the general’s validation of the content of his text, considered defamatory, calumnious and offensive. During the trial, the general kept looking down and upon cross-examination he mumbled, as if wishing not to be heard.

In a way, the suffocating atmosphere of the courtroom is also a symbol of the value attributed to the exercise of justice. The other judge, appeared to be suffering from the heat and fell asleep, indifferent to the trial proceedings, only to be awaken from her lethargy by the presiding judge. Of the 60 lamps in the courtroom ceiling, only 17 were working, which created a dimly lit atmosphere. The walls have long lost their white paint, so dirty they look brown now and are a good indication of the state of neglect of the provincial court. The public prosecutor, also humbled by the heat, declared herself too tired to proceed, while the defense attorney showed his vigor and willingness to present his allegations.

At the end of the hearing, which lasted for four-and-a-half hours, the judge scheduled the presentation of the defense allegations, the cross-examination, and the reading of the sentence for May 25.

The defense attorney, Benja Satula, shook his head. And then he put himself in jeopardy. He dared say that he could be punished for stating that, by scheduling the presentation of the defense allegations, the cross-examination and the reading of the sentence for one day, the judge may have already decided on the trial’s verdict.

It is chilling to note that, with one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world, the Angolan regime has no money to replace the broken lamps in a courtroom where the honour and dignity of its ranking officers are supposed to be upheld. Nor are there the meagre resources to fix the air-conditioning and maintain the comfort of the magistrates who, in disregard of the laws, defend the power-holders at all costs.

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* Rafael Marques de Morais is an Angolan journalist and writer with a special interest in Angola’s political economy and human rights. This article was published on his blog Maka Angola.

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Asia in my life

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82222

cc G PThe celebrated Kenyan writer reflects on how much India has been an important thread in his life and in the wider anti-colonial struggle in Africa, and calls for greater interaction between Africa, Asia and South America to escape the long shadow of the ‘Age of the European Empire’.

The links between Asia and Africa and South America have always been present but in our times they have been made invisible by the fact that Europe is still the central mediator of Afro-Asian-Latino discourse. We live under what Satya Mohanty in his interview in Frontline (April 2012), aptly calls the long intellectual shadow of the Age of European Empire.

In my case, I had always assumed that my intellectual and social formation was tied to England and Europe, with no meaningful connection to Asia and South America. There was a reason. I wrote in English. My literary heroes were English. Kenya being a British colony, I had learnt the geography and history of England as the central reference in my widening view of the world. Even our anti-colonial resistance assumed Europe as the point of contest; it was we, Africa, against them, Europe. I graduated from Makerere College in Uganda in 1964, with a degree in English; then went to the University of Leeds, England, for further studies, in English. Leeds was a meeting point of students from the Commonwealth: India, Pakistan, Australia, and the Caribbean. We saw each other through our experience of England. Our relationship to England, in admiration, resentment or both, was what established a shared space.

After I wrote my memoir of childhood, Dreams in a Time of War, published in 2006, I looked back and saw how much India had been an equally important thread in my life. I had not planned to bring out the Indian theme in my life: but there it was, staring at me right from the pages of my narrative. The thread starts from home, through school, college and after.

I did not grow up in a Christian home, but we celebrated Christmas, everybody did, it was a time of carnival, with children, in their very best, trooping from house to house to indulge their fancy in terms of food. We were vegetarians throughout the year, though not out of choice, and to many, Christmas day was the first time they would taste meat. For me Christmas meant the occasion for eating gĩtoero, a curried broth of potatoes, peas, beans, and occasionally a piece of lamb or chicken, but the centerpiece of the dishes was cabaci sometimes called mborota. Even today, Christmas and feasts in Kenya mean plentiful of cabaci, thambutha and mandathi, our version of the Indian chapati, paratha, samosa. The spices, curry, hot pepper and all, so very Indian, had become so central a part of Kenyan African cuisine that I could have sworn that these dishes were truly indigenous.

It was not just Christmas: daily hospitality in every Kenyan home means being treated to a mug of tea, literally a brew of tea leaves, tangawizi, and milk and sugar, made together, really a massala tea. Not to offer a passing guest or neighbor a cup of tea is the height of stinginess or poverty; and for the guest to decline the offer, the ultimate insult. So African it all seemed to me that when I saw Indians drinking tea or making curry, I thought it the result of African influence. Where the Indian impact on African food culture was all pervasive, there was hardly any equivalence from the English presence; baked white bread is the only contribution that readily comes to mind.
This is not surprising. Imported Indian skilled labor built the railway line from the Coast to the Great Lake, opening the interior for English settlement. Every railroad station, from Mombasa to Kisumu, initially depots for the building material, mushroomed into towns mainly because of the Indian traders who provided much needed services to the workers initially but in time, to the community around. If European settlers opened the land for large-scale farming for export, the Indian opened the towns and cities for retail and wholesale commerce.

Limuru where I come from had a thriving Indian shopping centre built on land curved from that of my maternal grandfather’s clan. The funeral pyres to burn the bodies of the Indian dead were held in a small forest that was also under my maternal grandfather’s care. Cremation is central to Hindu culture: it asks Agni, the fire god, to release the spirit from the Earthly body to be re-embodied in Heaven into a different form of being. The departed soul travelled from pretaloka to pitraloka unless there were impurities holding it back. My mother did not practice Hinduism, but to her dying day, she believed and swore that on some nights, she would see disembodied Indian spirits, like lit candles in the dark, wandering in the forest around the cremation place. She talked about it as a matter of regular material fact and she would become visibly upset when we doubted her.

It was not all harmony all the time. The Indian community kept to itself, there was hardly any social interaction between us, except across the counters at the shopping centre. Fights between African and Indian kids broke out, initiated by either side. The Indian dukawalla, an employer of Africans for domestic work and around the shops, was, more often than not, likely to hurl racially charged insults at his workers. Some of the insults entered African languages. One of the most insulting words in Gĩkũyũ was njangiri. A njangiri of a man meant one who was useless, rootless, like a stray dog. Njangiri came to Gĩkũyũ from Jangaal, the Sanskrit/Hindi word for wild: it would have been what the Indian employer was likely to call his domestic help. In the colonial times, in my area at least, I do not recall the tensions ever exploding into inter-communal violence,

The post-colonial scene presents a different picture. Time and again Indians and Indian owned stores have been targets of violence especially in times of crisis, mostly victims of looting. I am not sure if it’s the fact of their Indianness or the fact of their being a most visible part of the affluent middle class. In such a case the line between the racial and class resentment is thin. Different in that sense is the case of Idi Amin’s Uganda, where hundreds of Asians were expelled from a country that had been their home for almost a century. In both the colonial and post-colonial era, social segregation, forced in the case of the colonial era, or a consequence of habit and history, has exacerbated tensions.

The colonial school system segregated Asian, European and African from each other and it was not until Makerere College that I had social interaction with Indians. Makerere was an affiliate of the University of London in Kampala, Uganda, where, until the advent of Idi Amin, racial relations were benign. Before its college status, Makerere used to be a place of post-secondary schooling for African students from British East Africa, but as Independence approached, the college opened its doors to a sizeable Indian student presence. That is when we started learning about each other’s different ways of life on a more personal basis. We shared dorms, classes, and the struggles for student leadership in college politics and sports. Leadership emerged from any of the multi-ethnic and multi-racial mix. Doing things together is the best teacher of race relations: one can see and appreciate the real human person behind the racial and ethnic stereotypes.

The lead role of an African woman in my drama, The Black Hermit, the first major play ever in English by an East African black native, was an Indian. No make up, just a headscarf and a kanga shawl on her long dress but Suzie Wooman played the African mother to perfection, her act generating a standing ovation lasting into minutes. I dedicated my first novel, Weep Not Child, to my Indian classmate, Jasbir Kalsi, probably as homage to our friendly but fierce intellectual rivalry in our English studies. Ghulsa Nensi led a multi-ethnic team that made the costumes for the play while Bahadur Tejani led the team that raised money for the production.

It was not simply at the personal realm. Commerce, arts, crafts, medical and legal professions in Kenya have the marks of the Indian genius all over them. Politics too, and it should never be forgotten that Mahatma Gandhi started and honed his political and organizing skills in South Africa where he spent 21 years of his life from 1893, leaving for India in 1914. The South African scholar, Masilela Ntongela, places Gandhi squarely as one of the founding intellectuals of what Masilela calls the New African Movement. The honorific Mahatma, the great soul, was first applied to him in South Africa for by the time he left for India, he had already developed his Satyagraha and Ahimsa ready for use in his anti-colonial struggles that eventually led to Indian independence in 1947, an event that had a big impact on anti-colonial struggles in Africa. What India achieved could be realized in Africa! Gandhi kept in touch with politics in Africa, Kenya in particular, and wrote a letter of protest when the British imprisoned one of the early Kenyan nationalists, Harry Thuku, in the 1920s. Gandhi created the tradition of South African Asians at the front line of struggle in South Africa. Ahmed Kathrada was one of the ten defendants in the famous Rivonia trial that would lead him to Robben Island where he spent 18 years alongside Mandela and others. What Gandhi started Mandela completed. When I met Mandela in Johannesburg soon after his release and becoming President of the ANC party, I came out from the hour-long one on one conversation, struck by the charisma of his simplicity, reminiscent of what people say about Gandhi.

The birth of Trade Union Movement in Kenya was largely the work of Gamal Pinto and Makhan Singh. Imprisoned by the Kenya colonial authorities repeatedly, Makhan Singh would never give up the task of bringing Indian and African workers together. He was the first prominent political leader to stand in a court of law and tell the British colonial state that Africans were ready to govern themselves, a heresy that earned him imprisonment and internal exile. Kapenguria is usually associated with the trial and imprisonment of Jomo Kenyatta but Makhan Singh preceded him. There have been some Indian political martyrs, the first being the Indian workers executed for treason, by the authorities in the very early days of colonial occupation. Gamal Pinto, a hero of the anti-colonial resistance, would be a prominent victim of the post-colonial negative turn in Kenyan politics. Though under a fictional name, Gamal Pinto, has been immortalized in Peter Nazareth’s novel, In a Brown Mantle one of the best literary articulations of the political drama of the transformation of African politics from the colonial to the neo-colonial.

The recent explosion of Chinese interest in African might obscure the fact that there has always been a small but significant migrant Chinese presence, in South Africa mostly, but also in Zimbabwe. Fay Chung whose grandparents migrated to Rhodesia in the 1920s became an active participant in the anti-colonial struggle, at one time running for her life into exile in Tanzania, was a big player in the founding of Zimbabwe. She founded Zimfep which invited Kamĩrĩthũ theater to Zimbabwe, a visit was scuttled by the Moi regime by simply banning the theater group and forcing one of its leaders, the late Ngũgĩ wa Mĩriĩ, to flee to Zimbabwe, and under Zimfep, launched the Zimbabwe community theatre movement1 ensuring that the continuity and expansion of the Kamĩrĩthũ spirit.

Mao Tse Tung never visited Africa but his thought has been part of the intellectual debate in the post-colonial era. His class analysis of Chinese society was seen as providing a more relevant model for analyzing African post-colonial social realities than the European Marxist model, and Kwame Nkrumah’s book, Class Struggle in Africa, has the Mao’s marks all over it. The notion of the Comprador bourgeoisie dependent and serving foreign capital and hence contrastable from the national bourgeoisie with its primary reliance on national capital has become an analytic model in political theory and development studies.

The intellectual history of the continent would be the poorer without the journal, Transition, now based in Harvard, but founded by Rajat Neogy way back in 1962. Neogy, a brilliant and creative editor, was Ugandan born and educated: he believed in the multi-cultural and multifaceted character of ideas, and he wanted to provide a space where different ides could meet, clash, and mutually illuminate. Transition became the intellectual forum of the New East Africa, and indeed Africa, the first publisher of some of the leading intellectuals in the continent, including Wole Soyinka, Ali Mazrui and Peter Nazareth. Transition published my short story, The Return, a turning point in my literary life. The story that captured what would later become so central a part of my aesthetic explorations in my novels, principally A Grain of Wheat et al, was the sole basis of my inclusion in the 1962 conference of African writers of English expression.

Peter Nazareth and Bahadur Tejani, early contributors to Transition would later set the tradition of Afro-Indian writing with their novels, a tradition taken to new heights by Moyez G Vassanji. More than even black African writers, these three have been among those who have explored extensively and intensively the often problematic African-Indian relations. My own work, Wizard of the Crow, published in 2006, in which I tried to bring in Eastern philosophies into imaginative discourse with African realities was following in the footprints already made by these writers on the sands of the cultural scene in Africa.

It may be argued that in the specific cases of East and South Africa where there has always been a sizeable Asian immigrant presence, Afro-Asian dialogue was inevitable. But, in general, Africa and Asia, have met through the political entities like the Bandung conference; the non-alignment movement; the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization; and at the intellectual practice, the long years of the Afro-Asian writers movement which staged conferences in various capitals of Asia and Africa.

I have always felt the need for Africa, Asia and South America to learn from each other. This South-to-South intellectual and literary exchange was at the centre of the Nairobi Literature debate in the early 1960s, and is the centrepiece of my recent theoretical explorations, in Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing. The debate brought about a literature syllabus that centred the study of Indian/Asian, Caribbean, African-American and South American writers alongside those of the European tradition. The result was not to the liking of the neo-colonial regime in Kenya who accused me and my colleagues of replacing Shakespeare with Marxist revolutionaries from Asia, the Caribbean, Afro-America and Latin America, among them being Lu Xun, Kim Chi Ha, VS Naipaul, George Lamming, Kamau Brathwaite, CLR James, Alejo Carpentier, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. Shakespeare was of course safe but we had committed the crime of placing him among other writers and changing the name of the department from English to Literature, which we thought the more appropriate designation of the study of literature without borders.

As the editor of the Gĩkũyũ language journal Mutiiri, I have published the Gĩkũyũ translations of some of the poetry of Ariel Dorfman and Otto Rene Castillo. Professor Gĩtahi who did the translations directly from Spanish into Gĩkũyũ did his doctoral work on the Latin American literature. Gĩtahi was a product of the literature syllabus of the reorganised literature department of Nairobi University. His translation has facilitated direct Spanish-Gĩkũyũ language conversation.

I would like to publish numerous translations from the languages of Asia and South America and you can call this a challenge to African, South American and Asian translators. More important I would like to see similar efforts at enabling conversations between African, Asian and South American languages. This also calls for new category of literary scholars who have studied a combination of languages from Asia, Africa and South America.

It is time to make the invisible visible in order to create a more interesting - and ultimately more creative and meaningful - free flow of ideas in the world. Satya Mohanty is quite right when he points out that: ‘One of the many advantages of the present moment is that the long intellectual shadow of the Age of European Empire seems to be receding a bit, and we have remarkable opportunities to work across cultures to learn from one another.’

Mohanty’s call for cultural interaction and interchange across borders - beyond the Eurocentric campus and our current notions of Comparative Literature - echoes in a forceful way and fresh manner the vision assumed and contained in the call for the abolition of the English Department made in Nairobi in 1969, the first steps in what would later become post-colonial theories and studies. Mohanty’s call for cross-regional comparative literary studies is a necessary and timely intervention on the path towards a genuine world literature.
This essay by the eminent writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o was inspired by the interview with Satya P. Mohanty, ‘Literature to Combat Chauvinism’, published in Frontline in April2. It was written for the new ‘Global South Cultural Dialogue Project’ that has been initiated by writers and scholars from the global South, in particular Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenya, USA) and Prafulla Kar (India).



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* Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of numerous books of fiction and theory including Wizard of the Crow and Globalectics.

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END NOTES

1. It’s the subject of a book by L. Dale Byam, Community in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa.

2. ‘Literature to combat cultural chauvinism’, Frontline, Volume 29, Issue 06, 2012

Nawal al Saadawi and the sky over Egypt

Annar Cassam

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82221

cc P A LDr Nawal al Saadawi’s continued hope, after decades of persecution by the Egyptian political and religious authorities, and the as yet unfilled promise of Tahrir, offers inspiration to everyone challenging the violence and abuses of patriarchy and capitalism.

There are some metaphors that are so striking and so unusual that they instantly transform one’s way of thinking about the subject matter. Consider, for example, this saying from China: The women of the world hold up half the sky.

This sentence conveys a unique picture of the human female condition, one that is miles away from the legend of Adam’s spare rib or from the Freudian cry of exasperation and impatience : ‘What do women really want?’. In China itself, the saying would have made no sense in traditional, pre-revolutionary times when foot-binding was imposed for purely aesthetic reasons on women of a certain class, making it virtually impossible for them to walk.

The metaphor does not question or suggest; it merely tells the whole story about where and what a woman is. It places her not in the male’s shadow but in the world; it refers to her status in the universe, not in the home or the kitchen or the field. Above all, it does not define women by their body or their biological functions but shows them expressing their purpose on Earth, which is to use their strength to hold up half the sky…which otherwise could come crashing down on all below.

The questions then follow: Who holds up the other half of the sky? Is it held up at all? If so, is it held up by the men of the world? If so, is it the same sky that both women and men are holding up, over the same planet , for the same purpose , the same dharma?

Nawal al Saadawi, Egyptian writer, doctor, psychiatrist, political analyst and fighter for the human rights of women, was born in rural Egypt in 1931. At the age of 6, she underwent an experience which most women readers of this article will never know but which was - and still is - commonplace in Egypt, namely, the ritual genital mutilation of little girls.

This is how she described the experience in a Guardian interview: ‘The daya (midwife) came along holding a razor, pulled out my clitoris from between my thighs and cut it off. She said it was the will of God and she had done his will’. The ordeal left its mark; apart from the bleeding and the unimaginable pain, she was left wondering, at the age of 6, ‘what other parts of my body there were that might need to be cut off in the same way’ (Guardian interview with Homa Khaleeli, 15/04/2010).

This happened to Nawal in 1937. According to Unicef’s Global Data figures for 2008, female genital mutilation (FGM) was performed on 95% of girls in rural Egypt and this despite the introductionin 2007 of laws against the practice. The World Health Organisation has also found that legislation in itself has made no impact; what is needed is a nationwide campaign specially designed to negate the cultural and psychological legitimacy that this form of violence and abuse has obtained in Egyptian society since time immemorial. The practice is a pre-Islamic ritual and is nowhere mentioned in the Koran.

In April 1997, the WHO, Unicef and UNIFEM made a joint appeal against this custom which affects 140 million women worldwide. The appeal said FGM constitutes ‘violence against womens’ rights and against their physical and psycho-sexual integrity’. The procedure is ‘dangerous and potentially life-threatening’ and its physical and psychological effects impact on ‘womens’ health and well-being for the rest of their lives’.

The entire network of UN agencies regularly draws attention to this problem measured with reference to the various specialised fields of competence (health, education, labour, etc). The UN has even instituted 6 February as the annual International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM. But the practice continues, on a massive scale in Egypt, Sudan (89%) and Somalia (98%).

It can be safely predicted that this hideous and criminal custom will continue to be practiced for centuries to come unless the public health, educational and religious authorities of Egypt take responsibility for its elimination. Legal instruments cannot, on their own, wipe out such deeply held and tradition-bound aberrations, especially in societies where 44% of the female population is illiterate, and where nearly half the population lives on two dollars or less a day, as is the case in present-day Egypt (UNESCO/World Bank country profiles).

The young Nawal survived this abuse and went on to fight another pernicious custom prevalent in her village in rural Egypt at that time, childhood marriage. It was normal for families to marry off their daughters at the age of 10 or 11 but Nawal refused and fought to continue studying. Her ardent desire was to study medicine and this she was finally permitted to do so by her parents. She went on to do further studies in public health and psychiatry, in Cairo and at Columbia University, New York.

She joined the ministry of health and rose to become its Director of Public Health in Cairo where she concentrated on the task of freeing her fellow-citizens from the tyranny of FGM, the ravages of which she saw on a huge scale among rural and urban girls and women. Given her medical training and her own first-hand experience, it was only natural that she also considered the social, cultural and essentially patriarchal context for this ancient, barbaric custom. These and other considerations she put down in a book, Women and Sex, the first such work in Arabic on the subject, published in 1969.

In any halfway self-respecting country of the developing world, such a person would have been given all the support of the state,even in those early days, in order to solve a major public health problem affecting half the total population. Not so in Egypt where the narrow-minded establishment considered the book to be so scandalous that she was dismissed from her post as Director of Public Health in 1972. The military and religious authorities were so outraged by the very mention of FGM in the book and the links she made between female sexuality, male-domination and economic and political oppression that they banned the book and also the magazine Health which she had founded and edited for three years. They in effect banned her from working in public service altogether.

From this event onwards, Egypt’s religious-military ruling circles have heaped their outrage and anger not on obscurantist and harmful customs such as FGM, but on Dr.Nawal as a woman who uses her training, her brains and her pen to denounce this and other violations against women. According to the distorted logic of patriarchy, it is the messenger of change who must be attacked, especially if she is a woman, for daring to suggest that things need to be changed. The fact that generation after generation, millions of little girls are forced by their mothers to have their private parts butchered by adult women for no good reason seems to be of no consequence whatsoever...in a man’s world.

After the first book,she continued to write on the situation of women from different angles, publishing titles such as Woman is the Origin ( 1971), Men and Sex (1973), Women and Neurosis (1975) , The Hidden Face of Eve. She also wrote novels, including a most important one on the effects of FGM, Woman at Point Zero (1973), which has become a classic and has been translated into some 30 languages.

In the 40 years since 1972, Dr. al Saadawi and her homeland have existed in two separate and parallel planes. Her own career and life have been marked by a relentless programme of persecution, harrassment and exile at the hands of Egypt’s military authorities and fellow-male citizens, some of them religious fanatics. In patriarchal structures, the military and the religious constitute two faces of the same mysogynist, anti-women coin.

At the beginning of the Sadat regime, in 1972, she was kicked out of her post at the health ministry and towards the end of his disastrous rule, in 1981, she was imprisoned for three months together with 1,500 other intellectuals by the paranoid Sadat for ‘crimes against the State’. In the end, it was not an intellectual but one of his own soldiers who assassinated Sadat, on the parade ground in October 1981.

After their release in November, many of the fellow-intellectuals kept silent, but not Dr. Nawal who founded the Arab Women's Solidarity Association in 1982 and co-founded the Arab Association for Human Rights in 1983. And she began to write, book after book after book, fiction and non-fiction.By now she has written some 50 books , translated into over 30 languages.

Her books on and about women in Egypt and the Arab world so disturbed the religious circles that her name began appearing on the death list of several fundamentalist organisations in 1988. In 1991, the government authorities forcibly closed down the Arab Womens Solidarity Association and handed over its funds to one of its own creations called Women In Islam. In 1993, fearing for her safety, she left to live in the US where she taught at several universities.

On her return, she found the country even more in the grip of religious fundamentalist attitudes encouraged by Saudi and Gulf influences and further mired in poverty, especially in the countryside. In both these circumstances, it was the women, as usual, who were the worst hit; here, as elsewhere, poverty and religious extremism work hand in hand to victimise women and their children. She continued to write and to criticise this situation and in June 2001 made some factual comments about so-called religious customs in a newspaper interview which once more made the Cairo mullahs furious.

The comments concerned the sharia rules of inheritance under which women are accorded only half of what men inherit. She said this rule was unjust and should be abolished (as has happened in Tunisia, for example). Secondly, she said there was nothing in the Koran requiring women to wear the veil and thirdly, that the pilgrimage to Mecca is a ritual dating from pre-Islamic times. These last statements are concrete facts, not mere opinion.

The Mufti, however, condemned her for breaking Islamic laws, a ‘fault’ which allows any private citizen to start legal proceedings against a person so condemned on behalf of the community. So a lawyer duly brought a case against her for apostasy, a medieval notion about wrongfully ‘abandoning religion’.The punishment demanded for this so-called crime was equally medieval- forcible divorce from her husband! Her husband of 45 years, Dr Sharif Hatata, declared he would do no such thing! She fought the case and won.

In 2007, it was her daughter, Mona Helmi, writer and poet, who faced trouble for writing about her mother on Mother’s Day. She wrote a poetic piece about choosing a gift for her mother on this day. ‘What shall I give her, shoes , a dress? No, I will give her the gift of bearing her name’. And she signed herself Mona Nawal Helmi. For this she was taken to court for ‘heresy’ because ‘it was written in the Koran that a woman takes the name of the father, not the mother’.

Both Mona and her mother were interrogated by the General Prosecutor in Cairo but in the end they won the case. This case also led to change in the law in Egypt; children born out of wedlock now have the right to be named after the mother. Soon afterwards, Dr. Nawal left the country once more, to live in exile in the US.

In the same year, 2008, another case was brought by a lawyer who wanted the courts to deprive her of her nationality because of her ‘controversial ideas and thoughts’. This charge was too ridiculous even for the Egyptian justice system which rejected the case.

In another incident, a fundamentalist lawyer was so upset at her play, God Resigns at the Summit Meeting, that he brought two cases against her. In the first case, he demanded that her nationality be revoked and that she be refused entry back to the country; in the second case, he wanted all her books to be banned by the culture ministry. These cases were also rejected by the Higher Administrative Court in 2009.

Dr. Nawal returned home to Cairo to her husband and her family in 2010 and in January 2011, she was in Tahrir Square with thousands of citizens, old and young, women and men, to see the fall of Mubarak. ‘I have been dreaming about this revolution since I was a child of 10 years’ she said (Guardian, July 2011). She is now over 80. It may be that she will now be able to live in peace in her own country for Egyptian society, in some ways and in some quarters, has finally caught up with her and is able to understand what she has been saying and writing about since 1970.

She is called a feminist writer, but in writing about Egypt’s women in over 50 books, fiction and non-fiction, she has also been describing the mental states of the men who have ruled over them and the political choices these rulers have made over the past 40 years. The denigration of women, starting with FGM practices against the vast majority of girls, does not take place in isolation; the violence done to women is a reflection of the violence that prevails in the society in general. It reflects above all what men think of women and of themselves in a society built on patriarchal and phallocratic ‘religious’ notions, some of them passed down from the dark ages.

Similarly, the persecution and harassment aimed at women like Dr.Nawal did not occur by chance; the context was the military regime’s suffocating control over Egyptian society for over 40 years. The country’s defeat in the 1967 war with Israel and the death of Nasser three years later in 1970 delivered devastating blows to the morale of the army leadership from which the ruling clique has never quite recovered. As a result of this defeat and humiliation, Sadat chose to capitulate completely at the American led talks at Camp David in 1979. Many Egyptians felt betrayed by the Camp David Acccords with Israel signed by a servile Sadat, as did many Arabs. Mubarak chose to go even further by collaborating in the promotion of American-Israeli interests and objectives in the region at the cost of neglecting the political, economic and social needs of millions of Egyptians.

In return for two billion dollars a year of US aid, Egypt’s dictatorial military rulers handed the country’s sovereignty over to the paymasters and their allies in the region. Egypt, once the the cultural and progressive centre of the Arab, African and Non-Aligned worlds, retreated into purdah and,with astonishing speed, became the headquarters of US interests and strategies for control over the entire Arab oil producing region.

As Samir Amin, the Egyptian political thinker puts it :

This period of retreat lasted almost another half-century. Egypt, submissive to the demands of globalised liberalism and to US strategy, simply ceased to exist as an active factor in regional and global politics. In its region the major US allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, occupied the foreground. Israel was then able to pursue the course of expanding its colonisation of occupied Palestine with the tacit complicity of Egypt and the Gulf countries (Pambazuka News, Issue 534).

In 2009, Wikileaks found a cable sent from the US embassy in Cairo which put it this way: ‘President Mubarak and other military leaders view our military assistance program as a cornerstone of our military relations and consider the 1.3 billion dollars annual aid as ‘untouchable compensation’ for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits are clear; Egypt remains at peace with Israel and the US enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and to Egyptian airspace’ (quoted in Wikipedia).

Looking back, the period under Nasser (1952-1970) was a short parenthesis, a brief period - after independence - of nation-building, social development through mass education and health programmes and basic strategies for industrialisation and employment. It was followed by a complete policy turn-about in internal and external affairs under Sadat and by the gradual collapse, over three decades, of the national and nationalist projects under Mubarak.

As regards the education of girls, it is instructive to consider the statisticsthat prevailed before and after 1952 when the Free Officers took over. The illiteracy rate among girls was 90% at that point. Soon after the officers’ coup, free education for all was introduced by the state; the budget of the ministry for education doubled between 1952-1962, spending on secondary school construction increased by 1,000% and doubled in the case of primary school construction between 1952-1976. The rate of women in pre-university education increased by 300% and the rate for women in universities increased by nearly 600%. (Source : Library of US Congress as quoted in Wikipedia).

However, since 1976, the situation has regressed dramatically; state education for girls has been abandoned and responsibility for the entire education sector has been given to the religious authorities. Thanks to this and to the introduction of the policies of privatisation , 80% of the ministry of education budget is now spent on salaries. Today, the illiteracy rate for girls is 45% and there is an acute and a chronic shortage of teachers, especially in the rural regions.

The Sadat-Mubarak military regimes opened the door to so-called free market economic ideas and the results have been catastrophic for the general public. The stability of the country much praised by the US and the World Bank is based, to quote Samir Amin again, ‘on a monstrous police apparatus amounting to 1.2 million men (the army numbering a mere 500,000) free to carry out daily acts of criminal abuse’ under a regime of emergency rule.

The Western powers claim they supported army rule because it was ‘protecting’ Egypt from the threat of Islamism, but in reality, reactionary political Islam, of the local homegrown variety and of the imported wahabi school, was incorporated very early into the central power structure by the army. The soldiers gave the mullahs control over education, the justice system and the information media, especially television. The regime’s ‘de facto support of political Islam has destroyed the capacity of Egyptian society to confront the challenges of the modern world’ (Samir Amin, Pambazuka News Issue 534).

Political islam not only believes that women be subjugated to men in the social order by being under the authority of fathers, brothers and husbands, but that this subjugation is of divine origin. Sharia is universally considered to be the law of Allah, unchanging and unchangable, and thus providing men with the unquestionable power to oppress women and to deny them their human rights.

This ideology, however, must be placed in its historic and cultural context, says Fatima Mernissi, the Moroccan sociologist: ‘The assumptions behind the Muslim social structure such as male dominance, the ‘dangerous‘ nature of female sexuality, and so on, were embodied in specific laws which have regulated male-female relations in Muslim countries for fourteen centuries’ (Fatima Mernissi, Beyond The Veil).

It is unlikely that, after 14 centuries of unchallenged rule, the mindsets of such men can change during the course of a single Arab spring. Besides, the oppression of women has had its impact on the men who oppress them as is shown by their hysterical and violent reactions when faced with women who question their ideas. Such is the emotional disturbance caused to their core identity that they resort to violence rather than coherent argument.

As Dr Nawal herself explains, ‘We live in a very religious, patriarchal and capitalist world. They burned my book in Egypt; the publisher himself burnt it (under police pressure). But if I said everything I wanted to say, it would be me they would burn at the stake’ (Guardian Weekly, 06/03/2009).

The same damage can be seen in the military mind. The men who have ruled Egypt during the last 40 years have taken the veil, to use another metaphor. The military regimes are headed by soldiers in drag; in reality, they have over the years become faithful handmaidens of US-Saudi-Israeli interests while pretending to be strong and powerful at home. While they and their religious counterparts have been punishing Dr. Nawal for writing her books, which they do not comprehend, they have systematically humiliated their own populations and ignored their economic, social and educational needs. With champions such as these, the dayas (midwives) in the countryside can continue to sharpen their razors as ever.

The women who were in the forefront of the Tahrir Square events last year are furious, understandably, at having been side-lined since then by the powers that are in charge. They should not be surprised at this development; it is a classic pattern in all such revolts. But here, two factors are to be considered. Firstly, the army ruling clique can be counted on to make a mess of the election process which it is manipulating and distorting quite transparently. The aim of the military authorities is to preserve their financial and elitist privileges in the new political structures being negotiated during the current period of transition. In this effort their main partners are the religious factions and parties, not the young women and men who led and who suffered in the mass mobilisation for change last year.

Secondly, despite the contributions of the women in driving Mubarak and his family from power, they are and will remain invisible to the soldiers and to the religious parties; in a man’s world , men only talk to men. This is a universal truth. The only way to become visible is for women to take the intiative in identifying the main agenda for change in the social order.

The main priorities of the social order during the last four decades have centred on an obsession with womens’ bodies, their hair, their ankles, their faces, their skirts; which bit of fabric to cover which bit of the female body is the main existential dilemma in Egypt and in other Muslim societies. In this process of regression, Muslim women bear full responsibilty for they have internalised and made their own the contempt of the male for the female. If women want to change this state of affairs, they will have to take on the task of defining the isues and then fighting for them. They could start with a concrete strategy for the eradication of FGM from their society, for example, instead of waiting for the failed state to ‘do something.’

They could also try reading Dr. Nawal’s books. ‘My books are relevant today ; they deal with issues of gender, class, colonialism, FGM, Male GM, capitalism, sexual rape, economic rape...’ (Guardian Weekly). Her aims for women are not about achieving equality with men; given the current order of values, it is hardly worth having. Hers are higher goals which women must set for themsleves and for their men if they are to free their societies from all forms of subjugation, starting with the sexual.

She is not an easy read; her books come from a source of searing lucidity, born of rage and unshakeable dignity, the result of personal experience, struggle and survival. She writes from an inner core which cannot be touched by brain-dead machos stuck in the past. Her creativity is what preserves her and gives her the strength and the desire to continue. She describes herself as ‘like a horse, jumping obstacles, obstacle after obstacle. But I am a winning horse; I insist on this; winning brings me energy’ (Guardian Weekly, 06/03/2009).

If her books are now read all over the world, it is because they make sense to women and men of many different cultures who see beyond ‘feminism’, and ‘radicalism ‘, who understand that the violence and abuse aimed at one half of the human race demeans and degrades the other half in equal measure.

Nawal al Saadawi’s voice is recognised all over the world, but not yet in her own country, there she is still censored in the official media; she still cannot teach in its universities, even after Tahrir. A new political map is being negotiated by the army for itself and the religious blocks, with a little help from their respective foreign friends. Those who brought down Mubarak are not consulted. But we will win, she says, ‘because we are millions and we have hope and hope is power’.

And where there is hope, the sky is the limit.

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* Annar Cassam, a Tanzanian, is a former consultant at UNESCO/PEER Nairobi and former director of the UNESCO Office, Geneva.

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Our ugly secret: abortion in Zimbabwe, illegal but thriving

Sokwanele

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82195

cc P K MMore than 70 000 illegal abortions are carried out in Zimbabwe every year, with Zimbabwean women running a 200 times greater risk of dying of abortion complications than their counterparts in South Africa, where the procedure is legal.

"Today you're going to cry." The doctor, prodding Grace roughly with his nicotine-stained fingers, is matter-of-fact, there's no malice in his voice. And, afterwards, when she begs him not to let her see the foetus, he's considerate enough to cover it with a paper towel as it lies in a bloody puddle at the end of the examination table, before helping her to her feet. When he returns to the leather armchair in his consulting room, she notices that he doesn't bother to wash his hands before lighting a cigarette, blowing smoke in her direction as she leans over the desk to hand him his money.

"Be careful not to tell anyone about this," he says as she turns to leave, his eyes slits through the blue blur of cigarette smoke, "the jails are full of women like you."

He was right. That day she did cry. And for many days afterwards. There was clotting and cramps that had her balled up in pain in a corner of the sofa for the next two days, but, mostly, she cried because of the agony of an infection which festered where the doctor's unsterilised equipment had torn at her private parts.

The series of events that led to Grace finding herself in the deserted surgery that late Saturday afternoon once all the regular patients had gone home is irrelevant. She could have been a teenager who fell pregnant the first time she had sex with her boyfriend. But, as it turned out, she was a mature single mother unable to face the birth of a third child she had no means of supporting. Whatever her circumstances, Grace, like many other Zimbabwean women, found herself risking her life and her freedom to terminate a pregnancy she believed impossible to sustain.

She is hardly an isolated statistic. According to a report by the UN Children's Fund, Unicef, more than 70 000 illegal abortions are carried out in the country every year, with Zimbabwean women running a 200 times greater risk of dying of abortion complications than their counterparts in South Africa, where the procedure is legal.

Grace was one of the lucky ones. The infection cleared after a series of antibiotics, followed by a D&C. The doctor who treated her for the infection was discreet and, for her, luckily so. A hospital or doctor which treats a woman for complications which have evidently arisen from an abortion, are obliged to report the patient to the police. Both the woman, and the doctor who performed the procedure, can be arrested and sentenced to a minimum of five years imprisonment.

A largely Catholic society, abortion in Zimbabwe is condemned by both the church and the state:

"As a Christian, there's no grey area: abortion is murder," said a local priest. "The foetus, from conception, has a life, a soul, and we, as human beings, have no right to kill it."

Neither does the law allow for any ambiguity. The termination of a pregnancy, according to the current constitution, is a criminal act, and is dealt with as such. But there are those who believe the law is out-dated and no longer relevant to Zimbabwe's modern society.

"If society is to condemn mother/child care, where does it begin to pass judgment?," asked a local advocate for legalising abortion in Zimbabwe. "Does it begin with the woman who aborts a foetus within the "safe" period of 12 weeks; or with the mother who gives birth and dumps the new-born in the cistern of a railway station toilet? Or, perhaps it should begin with a health care programme that does not offer women free access to contraception and sexual education."

"How can the pro-lifers boast that we are protecting the rights of the child, when the newspapers are full of horrendous stories of infanticide and baby dumping? It's obvious there's something very, very wrong," she said.

Norma and Themba are testimony to the resilience of the human body. Early one winter morning, when the babies were around two months old, their mothers – presumably sisters, possibly prostitutes – decided to pack up and leave their squalid one-bedroom shack and seek new opportunities. The babies did not feature in their plans. So, without a word to anyone, the women left them in the apartment, already cleared of all its contents, locked the door behind them, and disappeared. Some time later, neighbours grew concerned by the endless crying coming from the house, and the fact that the women had not been seen going in or coming out for at least two days.

They broke into the house and found the pair, smeared in their own feces and close to starvation. By the time they reached them, little Themba was too tired and weak to cry anymore and was lying completely motionless. The neighbours alerted social welfare which placed the babies in a city orphanage. Today, aged around one year old, the children are doing well. Norma has just taken her first steps, toddling unsteadily along in her baby-grow, arms outstretched to anyone who passes. When you reach down to lift her, she clings to you like she'll never let go. Themba is more reserved, less trusting, but his big, bright eyes follow you wherever you go.

While tragic, the cousins' story is hardly the worst that Mary, who runs the orphanage, has heard. There are, of course, the ones who don't make it, who are dead before they can be rescued, drowned in pit latrines, left to starve in city dustbins. Others who come to the home so emaciated and near to death their abdomens are hollowed out like a kettle drum, their ribs sharp spears protruding from their pathetic chests, eyes too big for their skeletal faces. They've been either abused, neglected or abandoned to within an inch of their lives.

Mary points to the wall, to a "before" and "after" picture of a little boy called Daniel, three years old when he came to them, and weighing just five kilogrammes.

And, as the economic conditions in Zimbabwe worsen, so does the desperation that provides the fuel for these and countless stories like them.

Orphanages in the country, overseen by a struggling social welfare system, are full of children like Daniel, with little or no means to support them.

"With no money available locally, we seek most of our funding from outside the country," says Mary, whose institution offers shelter to teenage girls who fall pregnant, largely through incest and rape, and takes in their babies if they feel unable to do so.

"While, in the case of rape and incest, we would not stand in their way if they wanted to terminate the pregnancy, the girls who come to us have all chosen to give birth to their babies, not a single one has chosen to have an abortion. A large number of the girls choose to care for their babies themselves, sometimes not immediately, but after a year or two, when they feel ready, they come back and get them."

Women who do choose the abortion route say that although a "safe" legal abortion is exorbitant – around $350 – it's still a lot cheaper than the cost of giving birth to a child in a city hospital. And the birth is only the start of the expenses that begin to mount when a baby is born.

There are those who can not afford the "safe" option and resort, instead, to consulting traditional healers.

A concoction of pungent herbs sold by traditional healers plying their wares from a seedy-looking market in one of Zimbabwe's major cities, sells for around US$40 a dose.

A woman posing as a potential customer, was initially told the "medication" would cost her $100 to abort her pregnancy. When she quibbled over the price, the traditional healer she consulted immediately dropped the price to $50, promising "instant, safe results".

When the Termination of Pregnancy Act, in what was then Rhodesia, was amended in 1977, it was, compared to its predecessor, considered positively revolutionary.

The archaic Roman-Dutch common law permitted an abortion to be performed solely to save the life of the pregnant woman. The new law extended the grounds under which a legal abortion could be obtained, permitting the performance of an abortion if its continuation so endangered the life of the woman, or posed a serious threat or permanent impairment to her physical health.

In addition, the grounds covered pregnancies in which there was a serious risk that, if the child was born, it would suffer from a physical or mental defect of such a nature as to be severely handicapped, as well as pregnancies in which there was a reasonable possibility that the fetus had been conceived as a result of unlawful intercourse, including rape, incest or intercourse with a mentally handicapped woman.

But the question which begs answering in all of this is what do women in Zimbabwe want? It's a question legislators and human rights advocates have been grappling with for many years.

The problem, explains a lawyer who specialises in women's issues, is that women aren't speaking up:

"Traditionally, in Zimbabwe, women have not been called on to voice their opinions, so the concept of saying what they want is foreign to them," she said. "Human rights organisations will advocate for women's issues, such as the legalisation of abortion, and the government will say, let's ask the women what they want. And, of course, no-one will say a word."

The issue, she continued, presented a three-pronged dilemma: moral, human right and societal. Few women were going to be brave enough to stand up and be the isolated voice that went against the moral and societal foundations on which the country had been established:

"It would be suicide. Instead they choose to stay silent…and then risk a back-street abortion."

Her viewpoint is backed by a survey on the constitution, carried out recently by an advocacy group.

The results show a very small majority of those interviewed (40 percent) are in favour of the constitution preserving full rights for women to have an abortion, while a few less (39 percent) believe it should be preserved only in certain instances, which must be clearly stated by law. Only 19 percent, however, were completely opposed to the constitution preserving any rights for a woman to have an abortion.

Most telling of all, however, was the fact that, when separated into gender groups, more men than women were in favour of full rights for women to seek an abortion, 46 percent as opposed to 39 percent.

But even those who support the legalisation of abortion in Zimbabwe, are watching the situation across the border, in South Africa, very carefully.

The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act in South Africa was changed in 1997, providing abortion on demand to any woman of any age if she was less than 20 weeks pregnant, with no reasons required. Women were encouraged, but not obliged, to seek pre-abortion counseling, while those under 18 years of age or in a committed relationship were, once again, advised to seek parental consent or consult with their partner, but not obliged to do so.

The result is a woman like Thandi, who has already had three abortions…and is only 17 years old.

The government, which says it is aware of the rampant practice of illegal abortions, claims the only solution is the promotion of safe sex, but a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare admitted this was a huge challenge due to the unavailability of – and cultural resistance to – contraceptives.

Said a local medical practitioner: "In a country where safe, effective and affordable sex education and contraception are not widely-available, we can not suddenly start offering abortions to anyone who wants one, or we run the very real risk of it becoming the birth control method of choice. And that's not something any right-minded person would support," he said.

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* This article was first published by [url= Sokwanele]http://www.sokwanele.com/]Sokwanele[/url][/url]
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Somalia: No justification for ratifying the Draft Constitution

Mohamud M Uluso

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82205

cc OCHAWidespread opposition to the document stems from the way it was formulated in secret without public mandate or the input of Somali civil society, intellectuals and constitutional experts.

In due consideration of the widespread opposition to the draft constitution, the international community and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) should honour the opinions of the concerned Somali stakeholders and desist from its crooked ratification. The 1960 Constitution and the Transitional Federal Charter (TFC) provide sufficient legal basis for the formation of a new national interim authority under the control of credible people’s representatives, the Council of Elders and Council of Experts, before August 20, 2012 with the specific tasks of setting up sustainable and durable legal, political and institutional foundations for the Somali State. The admirable role of the international community would be to facilitate a process that celebrates a new trajectory, which completely ruptures with the present approach based on taking advantage of Somalia’s misfortune.

There is no justification for the ratification of the draft constitution at this juncture. Besides the controversial Articles on human rights, citizenship, borders, religion, Mogadishu status, the election of president and constitutional amendments, a review of the Articles related to representation, structure and relations between various levels of government, and territory, illustrates further fatal flaws in the draft constitution.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed of TFG publically expressed his personal reservation on some Articles of the Draft Constitution. But for self-preservation, he denounced other opponents for rejecting the draft constitution for the same reasons he held.

On May 4, 2012 Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Umal, a well-known Somali Islamic scholar, delivered a powerful speech about the unacceptability of the draft constitution. His critique centered among others on three defects: (1) the secrecy surrounding the constitution-making process and the submission of the draft constitution to the traditional leaders and Constituent Assembly without prior broad based public consultation and scrutiny; (2) exclusion of the Somali Islamic scholars from the drafting and consultation process of the constitution; (3) the lack of opinion of trusted Somali constitutional experts on the text of the draft constitution.

On the same day, President Dr. Abdurahman Mohamed Farole of Puntland State come out forcefully against the draft constitution in a letter he sent to the key actors of the international community- UN, US, UK, AU, and IGAD- in the constitution making process of Somalia. Subsequently Puntland Administration submitted detailed amendments superseding the April draft constitution.

In asking an urgent meeting to be held in Addis Ababa or in Nairobi between the “roadmap stakeholders” renamed “Somali Principals,” with the participation of key actors, President Farole cited the following four reasons:

a. The Draft Constitution is not suitable for a war-torn fragmented country like Somalia. It is highly confusing, contradictory and based on a centralized government system.

b. It does not distribute power, resources and competence in service delivery fairly between federal and state institutions.

c. The drafting process was not inclusive, participatory and transparent. There was no wider public consultation. TFG unilaterally appointed members of Independent Federal Constitution Commission (IFCC) and Committee of Experts (CoE).

d. The ability, expertise and representation of the members of the IFCC and CoE are unsatisfactory. The lack of participation of constitutional experts blemished the draft constitution.

e. For self-acquittal, he lashed out against other opponents of the draft constitution for not seeing and reading the April draft constitution he had seen, read and disliked because the latter draft was only in the possession of the six roadmap stakeholders. He expressed his support for the final warning of AU, UN and IGAD for punitive actions against those labeled spoilers. This typifies classical hypocrisies marring the credibility of Somalia’s leaders.

In a nutshell, statements a, c, and d summarise the main reasons for the popular objection to the draft constitution with regard to the legitimacy and integrity of the constitutional process and with regard to the substance. These flaws cannot be redressed in a meeting in Addis Ababa or Nairobi.

In separate note, the call of President Farole for a meeting in Addis Ababa or Nairobi shows the level of distrust among Somalis. Some of the guiding principles of Puntland leaders on the restoration of Somali State are: (1) The status of Mogadishu should remain undecided; (2) Regional States (Puntland State) and Federal Government are equals; (3) The Federal Constitution must conform to the Puntland Constitution which is adopted and permanent; (4) Issues of citizenship, land, and natural resource are matters of local responsibilities.

CHAPTER 6 ON REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE

In contrast to Article 11(3) of TFC, the Draft Constitution does not mention the requirement for a national census before undertaking national or local elections or distribution of national resources.

ARTICLE 58 ON INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS

Despite paragraph 3 of Article 58 states that the federal government shall regard itself as a guardian of the interests of the regional states, paragraph 1 requires consultation with and participation of the regional states on the negotiations in connection with foreign trade, treaties or other major issues of international agreement.

Article (59) authorizes the federal government to pass laws setting a framework and guiding principles for local government. At the same time, Article 56 (g) and Article 68 prescribe that disputes between federal government and regional states should be resolved on the basis of mediation, negotiation and the spirit of cooperation as two neighbors by establishing special committees or boards. Puntland argues for two levels of Government- Federal and State only, while the Draft Constitution prescribes three levels-Federal, State and Local Government.

In accordance with Article 66, the federal government cannot give directives to the Regional States for compliance with the constitutional provisions unless the House of Regional States passes a resolution on the subject.

ARTICLE 69 ON STATE BOUNDARIES AND ARTICLE 70 ON THE CREATION OF A NEW STATE

Article 69 (3) establishes that state boundaries shall be based on the boundaries of the administrative regions as they existed mainly before the 1990 civil war. In accordance with Article 69 (3) and Article 11 (2) of the TFC, Puntland loses the legitimacy of a Regional State. Theoretically, Puntland comprises 5 regions but practically it has excluded part of Mudug region like South Galkaio, Hobyo and Harardere districts while it has annexed Buuhodle district which belongs to Togdheer region.

For the creation of new states, compliance with four conditions is required:
(1) A minimum of two regions joining together with their free will. This condition presumes the existence of a mechanism for the determination of the free will of the people before undertaking the creation of new state. In addition, regions can remain as regions not mentioned in the Constitution.
(2) The new state is not against the national interest; this national interest is not defined.
(3) The new state shall not jeopardize the national federal unity of the Somali republic.
(4) The new state must have the capacity to discharge the functions and responsibilities of a State within the federation, including the protection of the rights of all citizens with the state economic self-sufficiency and the delivery of basic services.
(5)
These conditions are stumbling block for the imposed creation of new regional states. This is a vicious circle. Thus, the persistence of confusion and bickering is assured.

ARTICLE 71 ON ADMISSION OF THE NEW MEMEBRS TO THE REPUBLIC

Article 71, like Article 172 reflects the presumption that the territory of the Federal Republic of Somalia falls between Mogadishu and Galkaio, while Puntland, Azania, Bay-Bakol-Lower Shabelle (South West State), and Somaliland will be additions to the federation in due course. As paragraph 1 of this Article makes clear, Federal Somalia (Central-Mogadishu) will negotiate with other regions on their conditions and terms for joining the federation.

THE NATURE OF THE PRESIDENCY

Article 94 paragraph 1 says that in order to strengthen the unity of the nation the two houses of parliament shall endeavor to ensure that the office of the president is rotated between different groups in society.

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

As per Article 128, only the House of Regional States selects one of the candidates proposed by the Judiciary Service Council as Attorney General and the president shall appoint that person without reference to parliament or to Council of Ministers.

REGIONAL STATE INSTITUTIONS

Under Article 140, Regional State Constitutions will establish the legislative and executive bodies of the governments of the regional states. The state constitutions developed after the adoption of the draft constitution will be referred to the Constitutional Court for compatibility, while the federal constitution must conform to the existing regional constitution of Puntland. No Federal Government can exist and function before all regional states with their constitutions, parliaments and council of ministers are established and the House of the Regional States is in place.

The outcome of the constitutional process which was murky and outside the public radar from the beginning is unlikely to foster peace, stability, and development in Somalia. Given the immense complications for implementing the federal system in Somalia, one inevitable scenario could be that Somalis abandon the formation of national government representing Somalia and allow local states to represent their people at all levels. However, a National Unitary Government with decentralized functional integrity and reliable checks and balances is the best option for all Somalis. The past should be a lesson for a bright future.

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* Somalia analyst Mohamud M Uluso can be reached via mohamuduluso@gmail.co
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UN threatens the Somali democratic movement

Abdi Ismail Samatar

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82236

cc C MIs the authority of the UN and regional bodies divine, such that it cannot be challenged by the Somali people? The only ‘crime’ the Somali democratic movement has committed is to dare dream of freedom in the land of its birth.

On May 1, 2012, the UN Special Representative (SR), the African Union Special Representative (AUSR) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Facilitator (IGADF) for Somalia distributed a press release threatening those they call “spoilers” of the Somali political process with sanctions. Here is how they articulated the threats to those who might interfere with the process, including sanctions and other unspecified measures:

“… the United Nations, the African Union [AU], and IGAD are jointly issuing this unambiguous warning to all potential spoilers: Non-compliance with or active obstruction of the Road Map for Ending the Transition in Somalia will be referred to the IGADF Council of Ministers with our recommendation for immediate imposition of specific measures and restrictions. Moreover, requests for further sanctions against spoilers may simultaneously be referred to the United Nations Monitoring on Somalia and Eritrea in order to open an investigation under the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1844 (2008).”

What is the Road Map for Ending the Transition in Somalia? Does the RM have any legitimacy among Somali people? Who are the “spoilers”? Is the authority of the SR, AUSR and IGADF divine, such that it cannot be challenged by the Somali people whose political fate is to be determined by the RM if the SR has his way? This essay probes these questions.

THE ROAD MAP

The engine driving the Road Map is an agreement in Kampala made between the president of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the former speaker of the TFG Parliament and a former prime minister in the summer of 2011. These three individuals were brought to Kampala under the auspices of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda with the SR’s participation.

The purported purpose of the meeting was to reconcile the conflict between the three Somalis over the nature of the transitional period and distribution of political power among these three during the remaining days of the transition, which was supposed to end in August 2011.

Somalia’s transitional charter, which governs the transition, has been set aside by the SR in order for his group to have their way in determining Somalia’s future. Without any consultation with the Somali Parliament or the Somali people, the hosts forced the three TFG personalities to agree in Kampala. Since then the Kampala Accord has become the force behind the Road Map.

For all practical purposes the Kampala Accord has empowered its three major players and several of their self-selected participants to determine the way out of the transition. The SR, AUSR and IGADF and their Somali clients manage this process, completely shutting out the Somali people and the TFG Parliament.

The Road Map is currently structured to allow the TFG president, the former prime minister and the former speaker of Parliament (the latter is still considered by the SR, IGADF and the AU as speaker although Parliament removed him from that post several months ago) to pick the traditional leaders who are slated to select members of the post-transition parliament, and the congress that will approve the UN-drafted post-transition constitution. In other words, the SR, AUSR and IGADF wish to enable the very TFG president, former speaker and the former prime minister, who failed to deliver any results during their tenure, to determine the future of the country as well as allowing them to reappoint themselves to power.

Given that there has been no open and sustained public debate and discussion about the terms of the Road Map, the UN and a small group among the TFG are its sole owners. Reflecting the famous American liberation motto “no taxation without representation,” the Somali democratic movement’s response to the UN Road Map is “no legitimacy without autonomous Somali ownership and input.”

THE SPOILERS

Who are the spoilers? Nelson Mandela was a “spoiler and a terrorist” in the eyes of Apartheid governments and their allies. So were Gandhi and Ben Bella. In Somalia, the likes of Mandela were the members of the Somali Youth League (SYL) and Somali National League (SNL) during the Italian and British colonial eras.

In a style reminiscent of colonial times, the SR, AUSR and IGADF consider the democratic movement, the new political parties and the independent Muslim ulema — who are all engaged in peaceful political activities — to be “spoilers.” These groups have carefully studied the UNDP-drafted constitution and found it to be opposed to basic Somali and Islamic values. They have openly rejected the UN-drafted constitution without resorting to violence and have begin to mobilize the population.

Not only do these civilian groups find the constitution anti-Somali; but they view the entire Road Map, which is supposed to lead to the post-transition political order, as utterly illegitimate. Somalia’s democratic and peace movements are challenging the authoritarian operation of the UN, AU and IGADF. It is this non-violent and unarmed movement that the UN and its partners dub as “spoilers” and threaten to punish. Apparently, the UN, AU and IGADF consider good Somalis to be either childlike figures on whose behalf they can act politically, or terrorists and spoilers who should be sanctioned and punished using AU/ IGADF and UN instruments.

The history of liberation movements in Africa and elsewhere provides ample examples of democratic movements and liberation leaders who were vilified and persecuted by colonial and imperial powers. But the determination of the African people and their pursuit of justice and democracy ultimately prevailed.

It is ironic that the UN and AU, who supported the liberation movements in those years, are now acting as instruments of Somali subjugation. Further, the UN has been vocal about the rights of people in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab World; however, the UN considers the rights of the Somali people to peacefully mobilize themselves in order to determine their destiny a criminal affair that must be sanctioned and punished.

The use of threats by the SR, AUSR and IGADF demonstrates how these institutions are used for undemocratic and unjust political ends. Such behavior reinforces the established idea that the three groups do not have the Somali people’s interests at heart and that the UN Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea is a partisan organization set to subjugate independent Somalis who dare to stand up for their rights and their sovereignty.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

The SR and his African counterparts at the AU and IGADF have presided over a political project in Somalia that has delivered nothing but failure and misery over the last decade-and-a-half.

About three years ago, a UN-led international coalition concocted another TFG for Somalia which has now been accepted by all parties to be frighteningly corrupt and incompetent. Most recently, the SR, AUSR and IGADF were caught sleeping at the switch as tens of thousands of Somalis starved to death and millions were devastated by the recent famine; meanwhile the monitoring group has been implicated in worsening the famine.

Given this record, it is reasonable to conclude that the SR, AUSR and IGADF think of Somalia as their colony rather than as belonging to Somalis. Their latest effort to cower the Somali civic movement into submission is set to install another incompetent and illegitimate political order that does not respect the dignity of the people and the integrity of the nation. This agenda is as audacious as any former colonial scheme and will destroy the Somali Republic if it is not stopped.

Finally, the only “crime” the Somali democratic movement has committed is to dare dream of freedom in the land of its birth. By demonizing the Somali democratic movement as spoilers who must be punished, the UN and the AU are behaving like the very autocrats in the Arab world which the Arab Uprising has been trying to flush out of political power. They can try to impose an apartheid-like political order on the Somali people because the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which is not accountable to the population and is funded by the United States and Europe, controls Mogadishu.

The hope was that AMISOM, as African brothers, would defeat al-Shabaab and give the Somali people a chance to rebuild their country, but that hope has been dashed as the UN and the AU try to suffocate Somalis’ democratic aspirations. Fortunately the Somali democratic movement will endure the latest humiliation and shall prevail sooner or later as they seek freedom, justice and democracy in their own home.


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* Abdi Ismail Samatar is a professor of geography at the University of Minnesota and a research fellow at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
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Biafra group files complaint against Nigeria at ICC

Osita Ebiem

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82197

cc A AJust as secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu moved in 1967 to declare the independence of Biafra to protect his people from genocidal killings, the group is asking ICC to intervene on their behalf before they are completely exterminated.

Igbo ethnic people of Southeastern Nigeria number 50 million. They are predominantly Christian and believers in African Religion. The majority of the other Nigerians are Muslim. Culturally, religiously and ethnically the Nigerian society has remained incongruous and violently conflicted. Nigeria like most other Black African countries is an artificial state entity that was cobbled together without recourse to the existing fundamental ethnic/religious or cultural differences. As a result very deep-rooted hatred and intolerance has bedeviled the country’s population and led to the endemic killing of the ethnic Igbo people and others from the area called Biafraland by the rest of Nigerians.

Beginning from 1945 Igbo/Biafran people have suffered innumerable genocidal killings of their kind as members of the Nigerian union. This is 2012 and the killings have continued. So, here we are talking of 67 years of consistent and unremitting persecution, oppression, murder and looting of a people; in other words, crimes against humanity. Starting from 1966 the pace and scope of the killings increased, widened and became alarming. The people were killed in tens of thousands. And millions of others were internally displaced. It reached the breaking point when the leaders of Igbo ethnic people under the leadership of Emeka Ojukwu led the rest of the ethnic peoples within the Eastern Region to secede from the Nigerian union in 1967. Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967.

Secession for the Easterners was a last resort effort to try and secure the lives and properties of their people. Biafrans fought a bitter war of independence from 1967 to 1970 and were forced back to rejoin Nigeria. But that was not before they had lost allegedly 3.1 million people. Biafra War is officially regarded in many quarters as an ethnic/religious cleansing embarked on by the Nigerian state. Nigeria then and now is predominantly Muslim while Biafra then and now is entirely made up of Christians and believers in African Religion.

The reunion was viciously achieved because the bulk of the oil that sustains Nigeria’s economy is located in Biafran territory. When the war ended the victors were unwilling to address the fundamental cause of the endemic problem which is the irreconcilable tripartite evil of ethnic/religious/cultural conflict. So the ethnic killings of Igbo/Biafrans have continued even 42 years after the war. A total of 5 million Igbo/Biafrans have allegedly been killed by this method of ethnic cleansing in Nigeria in the last 67 years.

Today, the pace of suicidal bomb attacks of Igbo churches, homes, business places and town hall meeting places has increased. The Islamic attackers who have at various times manifested with different names presently go by Boko Haram. Boko Haram is an Islamic terrorist group that has vowed to use jihad to Islamize Nigeria and turn it into a theocratic state. The group has continued to target the Igbo/Biafran ethnic people whom they consider the obstacle to their goal. The Islamic Boko Haram kill Igbo and other Biafrans in churches, marketplaces and any other place they can find them while the Nigerian government continues to demonstrate unwillingness to protect Igbo/Biafrans’ lives and properties within Nigeria.
It is this state of hopelessness in the Nigerian government to provide them with security that has driven a group of Igbo/Biafrans known as Biafra Liberation in Exile (BILIE) to formally send a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands. Just as Ojukwu was moved in 1967 to declare independence to directly assume the responsibility of protecting his people from the genocidal killings, the group is asking ICC to intervene on their behalf before their kind are completely exterminated in Nigeria. BILIE through their legal representatives from Brimstone and Co. of Washington DC in the United States is requesting the Chief Prosecutor at ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to initiate investigations into the Islamic/ethnic/cultural killings of Igbo and other Biafrans in Nigeria. Anyone can follow the news by visiting BILIE’s website at www.bilie.org and click on genocide. This request by BILIE compares with the recent declaration by Moreno-Ocampo while visiting Misrata, Libya. During the visit he announced that ICC would commence investigations into the alleged violent sex crimes (rapes) committed by forces loyal to the former Libyan leader Gadhafi against civilians during the Libyan conflict of 2011.

Many analysts are following closely this case filed by BILIE against Nigeria as it will prove to be historic and significant in many ways. It will be the first time that such a case will be entertained by the world’s highest criminal court against Nigeria. This is so in spite of the several incidents of crimes against humanity that are committed daily in Nigeria and reported by various human rights bodies. But it is alleged that over the years the Nigerian state has used bribes and other corrupt practices to prevent any move that would have exposed the atrocities committed by Nigeria and its agents against Igbo/Biafrans. Some people also believe that if the case is handled properly it will serve to deter the people who in the past 67 years have acted with impunity from causing more harm. Others think it will help focus the attention of the world community on the need to dismember the Nigerian union and end the killings once and for all time.

Igbo/Biafrans maintain that genocides and other crimes against humanity are continually being committed against them in Nigeria and that the government has never shown any desire to protect them or punish those who hurt them. They claim that Nigeria has failed them by not just being unwilling to secure their lives and properties; it has put in place certain official policies that make it impossible for them to have a future within the Nigerian union. As a result Igbo/Biafrans have continued to agitate for separation from Nigeria through the process of Self Determination. They cite the 2011 Sudan Solution as a recent reference.

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A new constitution: Let Zimbabweans decide

Dewa Mavhinga

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82217

cc SokwaneleIt is unfair for a small group of individuals to disenfranchise Zimbabweans through a premature campaign to abandon the constitutional review process without affording the people an opportunity to engage directly with the draft.

The recently published first Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) draft constitution has generated intense debate across the country with some within Zanu PF led by Professor Jonathan Moyo and Tafataona Mahoso attacking everything about the draft, including Zanu PF representatives in COPAC. This small group of very vocal individuals with access to acres of state media space is essentially advancing two mistaken views, namely that the draft constitution should be abandoned now because it ostensibly does not reflect the views of the people and that the next elections should be held under the current Lancaster House constitution. I seek here to demonstrate that this noise around the constitution is both unjustified and unnecessary.

To begin with, COPAC is not pretending that the first draft is the final document, but only a draft subject to several more steps of validation by Zimbabweans including a second all stakeholders conference and ultimately a national referendum whose precise function is to give Zimbabweans an opportunity to accept or reject the draft. One therefore wonders why a few individuals within Zanu PF including Professor Jonathan Moyo and Tafataona Mahoso would purport to speak for the people of Zimbabwe and seek to pre-empt a process that is underway. If it is indeed true, which it is not, that the views of Zimbabweans have not been captured in the draft constitution, then surely it is up to Zimbabweans themselves through the national referendum vote to indicate that their views were indeed omitted.

It is unfair for a small group of individuals to disenfranchise Zimbabweans through a premature campaign to abandon the constitutional review process without affording the people an opportunity to engage directly with the draft document. The first draft constitution has been widely circulated, including through publication by the Herald, it is now in the public domain. But there has been no public outcry over the draft constitution except from the usual suspects who appear to be using the draft constitution to address matters internal to Zanu PF. Zimbabweans know what they said they want in a new constitution – they must be given a chance to decide on the draft constitution at the right time using the right platform on a national referendum.

After investing so much time (over two years) and resources (in excess of $45 million) into the constitution-making process led by parliamentarians from both Zanu PF and the two MDC formations, it is only fair that the process be taken to its logical conclusion as we are now covering the last mile in the process. There is a real danger, however, that we may drop the button while covering this last lap, or in shona, kuputsa chirongo tasvika. Various voices are now emerging from the shadows, including from the army, displacing Zimbabweans and purporting to speak for them. It is not for the army, or any single political party or group of individuals to decide and prescribe what Zimbabweans want – that must be left to the ballot.

A fundamental tenet of democracy is that citizens must be able to express their wishes directly, usually through a vote, either on a matter of governance or on who should represent them in government. This tenet is now in mortal danger as a small group of individuals campaign vigorously to have Zimbabweans forego their basic right to vote on this important matter. It is necessary to examine possible reasons why there is this desperate attempt to stop the new constitution and push Zimbabweans to go for the next elections under the current Lancaster House constitution.

In my view, the truth of the matter is that there is a real fear of positive political change that will be brought about by a new constitution. Already, the first COPAC draft has triggered panic by its proposals for such reforms as the stripping of the presently politicized office of the Attorney General of prosecuting powers to vest those powers in a new Independent National Prosecuting Authority, the imposition of strict terms limits on the president and security chiefs, widespread electoral reforms, the creation of a Constitution Court that will pave way for a revamp of the currently compromised judiciary, the strengthening of Parliament to improve checks and balances on executive power and the development of a comprehensive Bill of Rights with stronger rights of women clearly and specifically including the right to paid maternity leave, right of guardianship of minor children, equality with men and recognition of affirmative action. Additionally, the principle of devolution has been acknowledged, although its functions and mechanics are still being worked out.

These reforms, although not as sweeping as some of us would have wanted, are sufficient to permanently alter Zimbabwe’s political landscape and to generate new election campaign issues for the next election. It is this potential for real change of the political and electoral landscape that seems to have triggered the shrill calls for the process either to be abandoned or to be separated from the next elections in order to hold those elections under an uneven political field and under conditions of militarized violence. There is need for a strong pushback against attempts to prematurely derail the constitution-making process by taking away the right of Zimbabweans to decide on their future and putting that power in the hands of a few individuals who think they can sit in their lofty offices and prescribes what is good for us all.
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* Dewa Mavhinga, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Regional Office
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Neither devil nor angel: The role of the media in Sino-African relations

Li Anshan

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82194

cc C ZThe Chinese government is eager to balance the international media coverage of Chinese image and this approach is becoming more and more urgent for Beijing’s strategy of engagement in Africa.

On April 23, 2012, an article written by Mohamed Keita was forwarded to a Google email group called 'Chinese-in-Africa, Africans-in-China,' of which I am a member. The article was formerly published in New York Times on April 15, entitled 'Africa’s Free Press Problem.' [1] The title itself is fine, raising a question regarding a problem in African society. Yet, if you read the article from beginning to end, you will find another message: China’s influence on African press freedom. This article has caused some discussion among the Google email group, with some for and some against this message..

As a Chinese person, I think the viewpoint is very interesting and needs some discussion. Obviously, the Chinese government is eager to change the image created by the coverage of the West media, and therefore spends a lot of effort on the construction of a positive image.

There are three points concerning the article, which I would like to address. First, according to the author, there is a linkage between the increase of the Sino-African economic activities and the increased repression of the media in Africa. Yet the author offered very thin support for his argument. This is really quite contradictory to the fact since the increase of media freedom goes hand in hand with economic development in China. He stated, 'The prisons in Ethiopia, like those in China, are now filled with journalists and dissidents, and critical websites are blocked.' I am not sure whether his accusation holds the water. Yet as a Chinese person, I enjoy a free life. There are various human rights problems in China for sure, as in other countries, yet we can hear different voices and various opinions in many fields, and I can criticise the policies of the government in my class. I am not saying that there is no press control in China (as in other countries), but press freedom has been greatly improved since the opening up of the country. This fact is acknowledged by many international scholars, including John Thornton.

Keita also argues that the suppression of Africa’s press freedom is intentionally due to the Chinese government by claiming that 'powerful political and economic interests tied to China’s investments seek to stamp out independent reporting.' This is again illogical. I do not want to argue whether it is China’s fault for Rwanda’s previous problem of free press. Frankly speaking, it is a great problem for the Chinese government to control its own press since there are more than 2200 newspapers in the country (as of 2006), and about 10.000 now, and more than 580 (as of 2009) publishing companies, more than 500 television stations as well. What is more, there have appeared a network of “tweets” or “microblog”. One popular actress named Yao Chen has 15 million fans. Even more than the readers of People’s Daily, an official newspaper. There are an increasing number of published journals year by year. How could it be possible for the Chinese government to exert influence on Africa’s press freedom, in addition to controlling the press in China?

There is also a problem with the methodology of Mr. Keita’s argument. As pointed out by Dr. Yoon June Park, his article tries to 'generalize about the press in all of Africa.' There are more than fifty African countries and accordingly the situation differs across countries. China has the strongest economic ties with South Africa, how is the press freedom there? The author blames China for the problem in Rwanda. 'The volume of trade between Rwanda and China increased fivefold between 2005 and 2009. During the same period, the government has eviscerated virtually all critical press and opposition and has begun filtering Rwandan dissident news Web sites based abroad.' I am not sure whether his criticism of the situation in Rwanda is correct, yet I would like to ask this question: Is press freedom problem really directly linked to the increase of trade volume between China and Rwanda? The Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei have invested a great deal in Africa, and have been working hard to build information networks in African countries. Would this contribute to communication and press freedom or lead to a blockade of expression of ideas?

Obviously there are some insights in Mohamed Keita’s article as well. As the Africa advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, he correctly points out the positive role of free African press, which could serve as 'a key institution of development, a consumer watchdog and a way for the public to contextualize official statistics about joblessness, inflation and other social and economic concerns.' Yet we also have to realise that press freedom could develop healthily only with certain social and economic conditions such as social responsibility, sufficient education standards, a sense of citizenship, and basic economic needs being met.

I would also like to analyse the difference between popular misunderstanding and rumour. The first is by accident because of lack of aknowledge, while the second is intentional and spread through media or by mouth. In 2008, we paid a visit to Kenya to attend the 'China-African Civil Society Dialogue' organised by Boell Foundation. During the conference, I gave a public speech with two of my colleagues, Dr. Xu Weizhong and Dr. He Wenping. Chinese Ambassador Zhang Ming also made a speech. [2] During the question-and-answer of my speech, somebody raised the question, 'Are all the Chinese labourers in Kenya prison laborers?' We were quite surprised. My answer was of course definitely no, since it is almost unthinkable for the Chinese government or companies to use prison labor outside the country. Yet there are news reports about this fabrication. After the study of the pattern of the Chinese labor in African countries, I realised the reason of the misunderstanding of the local African people.

The first reason is their appearance. Chinese labourers are mostly peasants who go abroad the first time to make money. They are dressed in their working clothes, and their expressions are usually less figurative. The second concerns segregation. The peasants know very little about the country where they are working, care less about the surroundings, and show no interest in the outside world. What is more, few of them know the local language. Therefore, they have neither the will nor the interest to communicate with the local people. To add to this, the factory is usually in a compound surrounded by fences or other obstacles and the workers seldom go out. The third concerns the workload. Usually the contracted Chinese company works to a very tight schedule since the contract takes much longer time to issue than expected, and the time period for work is not enough. [3] Therefore, the Chinese labourers have to work by three shifts, e.g. every shift works eight hours a day. Yet outside the worksite, the local people only hear the machines running and see the Chinese labourers working. This increases their speculation: those Chinese really are not the same as the other whites, and their look and behaviour are quite unique judging from the standard of the whites they have met. Who are they? They work hard, are dressed in shabby way and are locked in a compound; they must be prisoners. That is the local people’s speculation and misunderstanding, and it is natural and understandable.

Yet there is another way of explanation - vicious rumour and groundless accusation as early as 1991, spread through American media by a former American official. A letter to the Editor of the New York Times appeared on May 11, 1991, which started the rumour. “The Chinese not only export goods made by prison labor, but they export prison workers too. While living in West Africa a few years ago, I learned of the case of a Chinese construction company building a road in Benin using prison labour. 70 to 75 percent of the construction workers were known to be prisoners. They were laboring on the Dassa-Parakou road in central Benin under a broiling sun and exposed to malaria and other tropical diseases. The company was the Jiangsu Construction Company, which also built a sports stadium in Cotonou, Benin's capital, and won a $3.5 million contract to build a hospital and mosque in Porto Novo. The company was able to underbid all its competitors by a wide margin because its labor costs were so cheap.” [4] Who is the author? The author was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the Carter Administration. Where did she get the information? Does she have any evidence? If yes, she would definitely indicate as much. If not, is this a rumor with vicious intention?

It us interesting that BBC, TV5 of France, and CNN have existed for a long time in Africa, usually occupying prime-time slots . Then the convenient newspaper stands spread in almost all African cities with French and English newspapers, magazines and journals such as Guardian, Time, Jeune Afrique, etc., transported from European metropolitan countries. Moreover, there are African newspapers which copy news or opinions about China from European counterparts, either for the shortage of money, or channels or sources of news. This is a natural phenomenon with the historical heritage of colonial linkage, as well as in the period of globalisation.

As for China, it is another story. There has been a great criticism from the West that China only emphasised summit diplomacy, or governmental contact, while neglecting contact in other fields and especially the exchange with African local people. Yet when China just started to set up its stand in Africa, began to express itself in its own way, there is again criticism. It is right that with more and more economic cooperation, exchange of other fields gets more and more frequent. Now there is an African Students Association in Peking University, and an African diaspora in Guangzhou, and I even once had a personal interview by a South African TV reporter in Beijing. Cultural exchange is getting more frequent, and we should encourage this media exchange.

China has long been painted as a human rights abuser. During the 2000s, there were so many negative pictures in the Western media regarding China-African relations, such as 'scramble for Africa,' 'neo-clonialism,' 'economic imperialism', etc. And China has been described as a authoritarian monster years ago and is still criticised today by the West who likes to be the master and preacher, yet China is still progressing with its own pace.

On May 13, 2000, The Economist published a special issue on the African situation with the humiliating title 'The Hopeless Continent.' [5] Yet this bad press could not hinder the progress of the Africa, and the continent has been going forward with its own speed and rhythm. The situation in Africa changed the tone of the press, so that at the end of last year, The Economist published another article entitled 'The Hopeful Continent: Africa Rising.' [6] Therefore, it seems that the effect of the media is not that important, and it could be changed by the situation.

There is no doubt that the Chinese government is eager to balance the international media in the coverage of Chinese image, as correctly pointed out by Yoon June Park and Deborah Brautigam in their letters to the Google email group, and this approach is becoming more and more urgent for Beijing’s strategy of engagement in Africa. Yet is the issue that important? In an early article, I once pointed out that the most important is to do the right thing. If you are doing the right thing and take responsible action, you do not have to worry about what others talk about you. [7] Yet the strategy of public diplomacy becomes an important tool in the creation of a positive image of China abroad, 'soft power,' a concept coined by Joseph Nye, started to spread. Later, it is introduced into the government document and many articles are published on the issue. [8] Yet I am opposed to the usage of the expression by the Chinese government.

First, the word 'power' itself used in the context of international relations is usually linked with the meaning of coercion, threat, and militarycontrol. This does not quite fit China’s traditional philosophy of peace under the heaven or peaceful co-existence. Secondly, Joseph Nye developed this concept at a time when the U.S. military power, that is the hard power, is declining. It is an imperative for the U.S., a superpower, to find another kind of power to exert its influence, thus to develop the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce and rather than using force or money as a means of persuasion. It is natural for a big power which is used to controlling the world with force. Yet China is pursuing a policy of peaceful rise and calls for the building of a harmonious world. To use the concept of 'soft power' would be contradictory to its principle. What is more, to encourage or seek 'soft power' may scare away the old friends of developing countries, especially those small and weak nations.

Therefore, the conclusion is that the press is neither the devil nor angel. Although we cannot neglect its role, we should not care too much for its coverage. If we do things according to our own determination and strategy without too much caring for what others say, we can achieve our goal. As an Arabic proverb goes, 'Dogs are barking, yet the camels are heading forward.'


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* Li Anshan is based at the Center for African Studies, Peking University
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END NOTES

[i] Mohamed Keita, “Africa’s Free Press Problem”, Op-Ed contributor, New York Times, April 15, 2012 , http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/opinion/africas-free-press-problem.html?_r=1

[ii] “Speech by Ambassador Zhang Ming in the Public Lecture on China-Africa Relations”, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zwjg/zwbd/t429480.htm 2012/3/12.

[iii] Interview in a meeting with Chinese State-owned companies, Nairobi, Kenya, May 23, 2009.

[iv] Roberta Cohen, “China Has Used Prison Labor in Africa”, New York Times, May 11,1991. I got this source from Yan Hairong and Barry Sautman. I would like to thank them both for sending me their unpublished article which will appear in the forthcoming issue of China Quarterly.

[v] “The Hopeless Continent”, The Economist, 13 May, 2000.

[vi] “The Hopeful Continent: Africa rising”, The Economist, 3 December, 2011, p.13.

[vii] Li Anshan, “In Defense of China: China’s African Strategy and State Image”, World Economy and Politcs, No.4, 2008, pp.6-15.

[viii] I searched “ruan shi li”, the Chinese translation of “soft power”, in the Chinese search-engine Baidu, the number of the expression reaches 19,000,000 entries.

Reflections on the Lagos state government’s onslaught on doctors

Kola Ibrahim

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82235

cc DavidA recent crackdown on doctors in Nigeria is symptomatic of a wider state attack on the working class.

The recent mass sacking of over 788 medical doctors by the Raji Fashola/ACN-led Lagos state government clearly underlines the high level of contempt which pro-free market ruling elites in Nigeria of all shades hold for the poor and working masses. In order to break the fighting spirit of the doctors, the government went ahead, in an action reminiscent of military jackboot absolutism, in ejecting the doctors from their quarters – an action that runs contrary to government’s own tenancy law. This action of the Fashola government is a direct affront to the working and poor people, who have borne all the anti-poor, pro-rich policies of the Fashola government and its big brother, the Federal/PDP government.

Consequently, all genuinely progressive forces, including the labour movement, pro-labour organizations, civil society groups and other professional groups must intervene in the current struggle of doctors in Lagos State. This is not the struggle of the doctors alone, but indeed that of the soul of social service. If the Lagos state government is allowed to have its way, aside from this opening of the floodgate for a massive onslaught on the working and poor people, it will definitely lead to collapse of the health service, which is already in a precarious state in Lagos State, while engendering brain drain and further destruction of social service across the country.

Merely looking at health statistics in Lagos State alone will reveal the shameful character of Nigeria’s ruling elite, in particular the Fashola/ACN government. The total population of public sector medical doctors is around 800. If we add an extra 700 private practitioners and those on federal government employment, then there are around 1,500 medical doctors in the state. Given the average population of 15 million, this will mean a doctor to more than 10,000 persons. This is ten times the WHO average. We should not even mention other comparative statistics like the number of medical beds. Thus, when a supposedly progressive government embarks on mass sacking of doctors, not because they committed murder, but for seeking a modest improvement in their circumstances; then we should start to examine many things about governance in Nigeria.

The government and its town criers in the media have premised this ignoble action on the so-called flouting of the Hippocratic Oath of the medical profession. But for a government that claims to be ‘guided’ by rule of law (please read rule of pocket), one expects it to refer such to the appropriate professional regulatory bodies to decide on or go to court; and not to turn itself into the accuser and the judge at the same time. In the real sense, this is just a pretense, the reality is that the Fashola/ACN administration aims to divert public funds away from public use for the pecuniary interests of the ruling cabal in power. It is the hypocritical government officials and politicians, who continue to line their pockets with public resources, who are making the provision of safe public health a mirage in the country. It is on record that the doctors have used all known administrative, friendly, and even conciliatory means to resolve the issue for the past two years, but the Fashola/ACN government has always met these initiatives with threats and brutal repression. One of this is the sacking of the leader of the Medical Guild two years ago and physical repression of other members of the guild. Thus, it is highly hypocritical for anybody to claim that workers have no right to use all democratic and civil means at their disposal to protect their welfare and interests against the recalcitrant and irresponsible ruling elite.

According to the Medical Guild, what they were simply asking for was the reversal of the obnoxious and undemocratic demotion of its members under the guise of paying salaries. This means that the majority of the doctors will see as much as a four-year demotion, with the government’s contemptuous and treacherous implementation of the wage scale for medical doctors. Correcting this will only cost the state around N10 million a month, a tiny fraction of what the state spend on frivolities such as salaries and emoluments of political officers, shows, festivals and wasteful spending on shindigs of party bigwigs.

The other demand is the payment of teaching allowances for medical personnel on house jobs. These are graduates, who undertake work in hospitals, but are paid like casuals. While it is true that they are learning through such processes, the reality is that based on the collapse of the health infrastructures and the huge deficit in medical personnel as highlighted above, these young minds have become the casualty of the irresponsibility of the political class in uplifting health infrastructures. This has made the working environment frustrating for upcoming doctors. It is only just for a responsible government to remunerate these young professionals adequately, at least if only to mitigate the huge brain drain in the system. It is a known fact that past governments, despite earning lesser revenue than current governments, utilized incentives like bursaries, scholarships and improved allowances to attract more people to professions that are vital to society.

The excuse that state government cannot be stampeded to pay a wage policy of the federal government is most cynical. Why has the same principle not applied to the salaries of public and political office holders in Lagos State, who are consuming the same obnoxious and fraudulent emoluments as their federal colleagues? How can this set of people claim that workers who do most of the work for which they get the credit should not demand a minimal improvement in their conditions? The excuse that there will not be enough resources for development if workers are adequately remunerated is blatant falsehood. In the real sense, the so-called development is elite oriented. For instance, the so-called road construction projects of the Fashola government have been at best one-sided.

While some roads are constructed, the fact is that, on the basis of the fraudulent contract system that ensures multiple inflation of contracts, such projects do not correspond with the huge wealth at the disposal of the state for the past five years (over N3 trillion). In addition, the projects are lopsided, with most of the community and local roads abandoned by the state and local governments.

Aside from this is the bankrupt concession/public-private partnership policy which hands over public properties and infrastructures procured with public funds to private big business to make huge profits. The Lekki-Epe toll road and the BRT projects are immediate examples. Take the housing policy; it is the same fraud: building public housing that an average worker cannot dream of purchasing in years, which are then handed over to middlemen and bankers, at public expense.

We have also seen the bankruptcy of the Fashola government in the education sector. The story of Lagos State University (LASU), the only state owned university, where fees were hiked by over 750 per cent is still fresh. For several months, the academic staff in the institution had to take on the state government for a minimal increase in their wages, leading to closure of the campus. The recently displayed media picture showing the Lagos state governor, Raji Fashola, casting a vote at a dilapidated public primary school depicts clearly the manner of ‘education reform’ the government is undertaking.

Therefore, the current attack on medical doctors for demanding proper implementation of the agreement is part of the holistic policy of the Fashola/ACN government to undercut funding for social and public services with a view to handing the resources to a handful of big businesses and party bigwigs. One of the ways of achieving this is by attacking strong sections of the organized working class.

While leaderships of most of the workers’ unions have been cowed or bought over, the Lagos State government feels that it can isolate leaderships of some unions that stand up to it in order to prevent others from waking up. If this attack is successful, it will embolden the Fashola/ACN government to launch a full-scale onslaught on workers and poor people. This will not be limited to Lagos state but will cut across all the states of the federation, as governors are competing vigorously in setting the pace for anti-poor, anti-worker policies. Indeed, there is no fundamental difference among the ruling pro-big business political parties (PDP, ACN, CPC, LP, APGA, etc). They are all anti-poor and corrupt.

The Medical Guild in Lagos State, while it must be commended for its steadfastness, must take the struggle beyond the realm of a mere administrative strike; they must engage the state government in direct social struggle. This will mean a mass campaign amongst the masses of Lagos through educative materials and mass rallies (in conjunction with genuine pro-labour and labour activists). This should also link the struggle with a call for massive improvement in health facilities in the state. For instance, from a conservative estimate, committing two billion naira to the health sector in the state will employ and pay annual salaries of over 200 new medical doctors and over 400 medical staff. An extra one billion naira, if judiciously utilized, will expand health infrastructures (more hospital beds, functional hospitals, etc). This is merely three billion naira, which is less than 15 per cent of Lagos monthly revenue. If the Fashola government had done this in the past five years, the health system in Lagos would not be in its current mess.

Moreover, the Medical Guild and NMA must also reach out to other unions in the state, especially in-house unions in the health sector. A newspaper recently reported a plan by other medical workers in the employment of the state government to embark on strike over non-implementation of CONHESS – the health workers’ salary scale. Also, federal government health workers in the state are currently on strike. These struggles need to be coordinated, especially among state employed health workers and medical doctors. This is vital in order to avoid the divide-and-rule policy of the Lagos state government. Quoting one the leaders of the Medical and Health Workers’ Union (MHWUN), Mr. Rashid Bamishe in an interview:

‘Nobody should see our action as sympathy to doctors’ strike. We have issues that are known to the world, and which even the doctors are aware of. But they (doctors) have not included our issue in their strike. How will anybody think of sympathy?’ (Guardian, May 12, 2012).

This is unfortunate. Agreed that the leaders of the Medical Guild did not include other health workers’ demands; that is not enough reason to try to isolate the medical doctors. The proper thing for the health workers’ union leaders is to, while fighting for their own demands, show solidarity with the medical doctors. More than this, they should have called for joint action of the unions to win collectively.

The Medical Guild and the NMA should also raise the demands of other health workers. While the doctors were correct to have issued educative materials on May Day, they need to take this forward by openly calling on the generality of workers and the poor in the state to intervene in order to save public health, which the Fashola/ACN government does not care a hoot about. It is unfortunate that the labour unions, especially the leaders of labour centres, have kept their lips sealed. Working class activists and ordinary workers must compel them to act in the long term interests of workers and the poor in the state, who have been at the receiving end of the Fashola government’s irresponsibility.

Ultimately, what the Fashola government has displayed is a reflection of the cynical attitude of Nigeria’s retrogressive, pro-rich and anti-poor capitalist political class, to the welfare of working and poor people. What the Fashola/ACN government is doing is no different from the anti-poor policies of the PDP and other ruling parties in Nigeria. It is thus no accident that most of the bourgeois political parties at best kept their lips sealed. The ranting of the PDP has nothing to do with the party being pro-poor, but is a mere opportunistic attempt to gain from the political backlash against the Fashola government, as the PDP, wherever it holds the reins of power implements the same, if not, worse policies. The basic reason why all these parties undertake these anti-poor policies is that they represent the class of the rich and the exploiters. The more they spend on working and poor people, the lesser the wealth they have to loot. Yet, the working and poor people continue to vote for them every four years, as if there is no alternative.

This underlines the fundamental task before the working and poor people in Nigeria – the building of an alternative political platform, run and controlled by the working and poor people, with the sole aim of committing public resources to public services and infrastructure. This will mean putting the huge natural, mineral and monetary resources of the country under the democratic control and management of the working people -organized from the factories, workplaces, grassroots and communities to the national level. This will mean public officers will earn the salaries of average skilled workers and their family members will utilize public facilities like every other citizen. This is the only way to end the regime of gangsters in power. The working people at all levels must put pressure on their union leaders to take this road.

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* Kola Ibrahim is a writer and activist. (kmarx4life@gmail.com)
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

GRAIN’s groundbreaking research published for RIO+20

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/82239

Press release
Pambazuka Press and GRAIN
17 May 2012


Pan-African publisher Pambazuka Press in collaboration with GRAIN, a small international non-profit that works to support small farmers, is to launch a vital text in the studies of food, land and climate, The Great Food Robbery: How corporations control food, grab land and destroy the climate. Available worldwide in May 2012, this publication marks the five-week countdown to Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

After the failure of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Durban last December to formulate a united response strategy, there are mixed feelings on what Rio+20 will be able to achieve. But what is clear is that all participants will need to be well informed. ‘Everyone should read The Great Food Robbery – every citizen, every political leader – to understand how agribusiness, which has created hunger and disease, is now contributing to the biggest resource grab since Columbus,’ said Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist, internationally renowned activist and founder of Navdanya International. Shiva is one of many high profile academics from around the world who have endorsed The Great Food Robbery. Others include Dr. Hans Herren, Naomi Klein, Eric Holt-Giménez, and UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter.

Henk Hobbelink, of GRAIN, in his speech to the Swedish government upon receiving the Right Livelihood Award stated the latest trend in global land grabbing for outsourced food production is just one facet of a much greater attack. ‘Land grabs for mining, tourism, biofuels, dam construction, infrastructure projects, timber and now carbon trading are all part of the same process, turning farmers into refugees on their own land.’

The Great Food Robbery is an advocate for the rural communities that have fed the world for millennia. It examines how agribusiness is driving today’s global food crisis and highlights the culpability of the industrial food system regarding the climate crisis, revealing how land grabbing is being fuelled by a financial industry unconcerned by its exploitation of the world’s poorest.

GRAIN has collected materials on topics ranging from agribusiness and food sovereignty to land grabbing and the climate crisis to produce The Great Food Robbery. It is an essential introduction to understanding the powers that are controlling our food system and crucially offers the means to challenge the status quo. It will be of interest to activists, academics, students, journalists, development and NGO professionals.




FOR INTERVIEWS:

Contact

- Aaron O'Dowling-Keane (Ms.)
Publishing and Marketing Coordinator, Pambazuka Press
Tel: +44 (0)1865 727006 x204
Email: aaron@fahamu.org
www.pambazukapress.org

- Dexter X
Information worker, GRAIN
Tel: +1 (0) 514 585 3987
Email: dexter@grain.org
www.grain.org

NOTES TO EDITORS:

GRAIN supports small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. In 2011, GRAIN was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Peace prize) for ‘its worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests’.

BOOK DETAILS

17 May 2012
9780857491138
Paperback
GB pounds 14.95 / US dollars 24.95 / CAN dollars 24.95
216 x 279 mm
164 pp



http://fahamubooks.org/book/?GCOI=90638100007280
https://twitter.com/pambazuka
www.facebook.com/Pambazuka

https://twitter.com/GRAIN_info
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GRAIN/107084339242

ENDS.

High-level colloquium

Democracy, governance and the Pan-African idea: Whither Africa?

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/82238

Women’s Rights Movement Building Boot Camp

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/82192

Building restorative international justice

The ICC of the future

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/82199

Commemorating Empire: A personal reminiscence

Marian Douglas-Ungaro

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/82233

Quiet as it was kept, 14 May 2012 was the 405th anniversary of the 1607 trans-Atlantic arrival of a hundred English settlers to the coast of the land soon-to-be colonised by the English as “Virginia”.

Over the years, Queen Elizabeth II has visited here a number of times, including her quadricentennial return in 2007 and fifty years earlier, in 1957.

2012 also is the second year of a ten-year cycle which the UN has declared the “Decade of People of African Descent.”

Now, personally, as a slavery descendant of the Americas, and, more specifically, from the USA, I really would like the decade internationally recognised as the Decade of Afrodescendants.

Even more specifically, I’d like this time to be commemorated as the “Decade of Afrodescendants of the Americas.” Is this asking too much? And if it is, considering the significance of key events of the past half-millenium to globalisation, then why?

I find myself marking these dates as if they were personal milestones because they are two of many landmarks, not only for the entire modern world, but for my own family and, literally, for who I am – this descendant of enslaved and self-liberated Africans turned Afro descendants of the Americas, and also descended from Europeans, and from Native Americans.

I note these dates: May 14, 1607, and the decade 2011-2020, and dare to utter them and their connectedness precisely because there seems to be such a conspiracy to ignore them. Perhaps it’s just a form of ‘forgetfulness’; or maybe a kind of spiritual, political, social and economic attention-deficit disorder.
I pick a day in September 2004 to illustrate my point. My husband and I stand, a bit perplexed, in Lowndes Square, London SW1.

On that day in Lowndes Square, SW1, London, I may have been the first Black Lowndes descendant- for some time, at least – to experience how a globalised Lowndes heritage continues to be commemorated and reflected by a tony, exclusive neighbourhood in southwest London. And the rest of we Black Lowndes, scattered everywhere we may be, have little idea and no sense of belonging.
Is there a connection? Is there a connection between William Lowndes of Lowndes Square – he, Exchequer to Queen – and slavery and the slave trade? And if so, what are these connections, and within those connections, where is my family?

At the center of Lowndes Square, SW1, is a small park, quite leafy and green. In my life never before had I witnessed a park with a locked gate, requiring possession – in this case of a key. That conveyed sense and reality of belonging, and of not belonging.

Nearby a sign declaims: Residents of Lowndes Square have access. And I think to myself, I am a Lowndes descendant and a descendant of Britain through its empire. Yet I have no key and no entree.

Thus this encounter became a metaphor for my own predicament vis-à-vis Britain and British society, and also Africa, and even my existence and that of my people – the Black Americans - back home in the USA. Places to which I am connected through undeniable roots, yet though I come from this history and its various peoples, I have little or no entrée – no real place.

For better or worse, I am a descendant of Britain, and Africa, and North America. I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like visiting and discovering this UK branch of my families and our heritage. I need to know Britain, and to challenge Britain, precisely because I, too, am her descendant. And, quite obviously, because Britain and her empire have been products of my people’s lives and of their involuntary sacrifices.

To date, as far as I can tell, virtually all my family names are of British origin. The same is true of most U.S. Afrodescendants, and of most native English-speaking Afrodescendants from across the Americas.

Lowndes is my grandmother’s grandmother’s family name. Yet for the life of me, decades on, as I grow older, and my parents are now elderly, I am still having a horrible time seeking the pieces of history that would help these mysteries begin to solve themselves, reconcile themselves, and help the past, present and future to truly make sense.

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* Marian Douglas-Ungaro is founder of the AFROAMERICAS Network, on Facebook.

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Rising tribalism in South Africa: A rejoinder

Andrew M Manyevere

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/82214

The efforts of William Gumede in the last issue of Pambazuka News to enlighten the masses on the possible danger of tribalism rising in South Africa’s infant democracy are commendable. One has to be aware, though, of the following facts:

1. Tribalism is always alive as a tool sharpened by contenting leadership than for its own sake or people prosperity generally.

2. Democracy is as old as when people existed anywhere except that western written democratic procedures tend to reduce our own efforts (the black people of African origin) as none existent, which I refuse to accept.


3. Corruption is an aspect of poor governance than necessarily a brainchild of tribalism, which tends to suggest that where there is no tribalism corruption does not exist: Not entirely a true reflection on dynamics of social change and governance.

With the above observation as contribution to the dialogue I offer further input that tribe politics will emanate from insecurity first and foremost than from power control. Power quest in African has been based on the realization that we have been oppressed and therefore now need to correct the past. Correction is based on the fact that racism and discrimination are evils any community need overcome in order to achieve meaningful development. But to also accept the fact that race and discrimination are realities of life; we need device solutions through well thought and digested strategic planning. If we succeed in business because we invest time and resources to get the best mode and methods, we need not underestimate the role in developing tribalism in order to transit into the next phase: To harness development than negate it.

Patronage based society is another reality of life that we need to isolate as far from being primitive or backward. All societies have some degree of patronage. The difference is whether patronage is used to foster community values or to aggrandize an individual and poise them for acquisition and exploitation of others using the privilege of people granted power (votes through elections). Parent-child patronage cannot be viewed as negative, else we advocate for a future fraught with uncertainties on respect and values of “Untu” in a person. So should also be community based values based on patronage except as they cut across simple human rights laws.

What we are contending with is the evolution of power management by many who now exercise governance through democratic processes today. First, do people believe in elections as the best way to choose a representative? Second, is the electorate well educated to understand how to use the voting power and are they safe from abuse or otherwise by those who control the machinery of power process? Third, do we have a precedent where authority has been taken to task by either the news media or law enforcement agency for violating electoral processes? If these cases are far and too wide spread apart, what evidence is there to render electoral processes the best alternative from the traditional chieftain values where ‘elections’ were run from a birth and linage stand point?

We have taken democracy for granted and developed nothing to develop further the processes of people transitioning into fully developed democratic processes. Insecurity has taken control of many people on the African continent where people have died and none has commented or even taken action for correction. All these things have involved common people, who also in time have known the reality of being abused by those in authority.

We need develop our systems in order to accept demonstrations from people who wish to express views against what they do not want and not to look at them as a negative process which needs to be resisted and punished by those in government. We need money spent on building institutions which will equip people with skills for negotiation using a give and take methodology to settle differences than impose dictatorial political sloganeering. Our perceptions as leaders or even as people to opposition as a concept need elevation so we can acknowledge tolerance to handling disagreements in politics. We need not refer to thinking process as always belonging or being influenced by the west, since this defeats the whole purpose of education and thinking.

When faced with insecurity we all behave irrationally. This is what many governments in Africa are doing. The irrationality comes from failure to acknowledge tribe as nothing but species of human life. Any human species when feeling insecure will trigger an action of irrationality in the hope to secure self-defence. Alliances whether on racial or tribal grounds comes from the fact that those in power show lack of moderation in acts relating to appointments and distribution of resources equitably. Cliques and the ‘them and us’ syndrome comes from and is created by uncaring avarice by those who administer justice. Justice encompasses all areas of human life and when it is visibly open to all, people feel secure.

There is no much difference between many of our politicians because none has yet learnt the full extent in sacrifice, giving and being a Stewart. In South Africa Zuma and Mbeki cannot be measured by their eloquence but by their performance in government translated programs on deliverables and services to people. There has been little transformation from what the economy was in the 1980s and what it is now except for having created a few rich blacks and more poor blacks. The doctor per person ratios and income per family may be now worse than in the 1990s.

Institutions must be created in rural areas to teach people ownership and running of business successfully in order to reduce the battle over the meagre resources. Creative management is necessary to reduce rural-urban migration by making the rural life reasonably good, efficient with simple amenities like good wells for water and access to food through green cash generating cropping systems. Ownership and empowerment improves the political articulation on interests and choices, making political contestants elected on merit and visible past achievements in working and helping people and the country improve generally.

No one suggests this is easy. A lot is required in terms of people education in order to breed a mentality of do it yourself than that of dependence syndrome. Gumede is right in his conclusion that people will seek refuge in tribalism when democratic institutions are made to fail. I need to make further proposals that when we invest in education at different levels, so will be the levels of people mentality improving towards innovations on dealing with conditions and situations.

Dependence taught us to run into ruin by collaborating with initiators of dependence than to grow a dependence free mentality. We need more vocational educational services to help in skills that deal with our environment, our conditions and think answers from situations on the ground. We will learn to elect people who are relevant to our environment and not necessarily connected to a system that make us suffer. The road is long subject to focused determination. That we attained independence means very little as many of us have learnt by and by from the rule of aggrandizement and greed from those that courted power into their hands.

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* Andrew M Manyevere is Executive Drector of the Multicultural Association of Fort McMurray in Canada.

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

Time for radical action on the unemployment crisis

Ayanda Kota

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/82228

The new statistics on unemployment are out. There are two very serious problems. The first is that the way that these statistics are compiled counts begging, hawking and all kinds of things that people do just to survive as 'employment'. This is nothing but sleight of hand. The second problem is that unemployment has been getting constantly worse since the end of apartheid.

Those of us who are old enough remember the posters in 1994 that said 'Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!' Those jobs never came. In fact millions of people lost their jobs. What has happened is that a predatory elite has seized control of the economy and made themselves hugely wealthy in the name of the nation. COSATU has struggled to protect the wages of the formally employed. But no one has stood up for the interests of the poor and people working informally.

Unemployment is a massive social crisis. It is the most serious crisis confronting our country. But every night we see the share prices on the news. We don't see the unemployment statistics being discussed every night. Profit is more important than people.

We are told that the 'macro-economic' fundamentals are in place and some people even say that the ANC has done well with the economy. But what kind of economy is considered to be good when, even with the doctored statistics, it still admits that it leaves four million young people without a future?

We need an economy centred on people and not on profits. People and not profits must be the measure used to determine progress.

We need a society where corporate price-fixers and politicians and government officials that plunder the public purse are treated as criminals.

We need a society where the right to work is in the Constitution and where the state, if it fails to give each person a job, must give them a guaranteed income of at least R2 000 per month.

We support the occupation and self-management of work-places where ever this is possible. We also support the development of co-operatives from the ground up. But at the end of the day we can't let the state off the hook. The predatory elite need to be dislodged from their perch and we need a state that puts the people first.

We call on all poor people's movements and organisations to stand together, to reject co-option and manipulation by NGOs and to also ignore the fights within the ruling party and to build the struggle of the poor across the country. Our only hope is in our unity. We cannot prevail if we are not a well organised force.

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* Ayanda Kota is the UPM Spokesperson 078 625 6462.
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An open letter to President Obama on the eve of talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at Camp David

Oakland Institute

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82241

MAY 17, 2012, OAKLAND, CA: On the eve of upcoming meeting at Camp David on May 19, 2012, with four African leaders to discuss food security, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), call upon President Obama to address what may be the single largest man-made contributor to food insecurity on the continent today: large-scale land investments by foreign investors.

In an Open Letter to President Obama, the Oakland Institute and SMNE are delivering a petition signed by over 8,000 supporters of the indigenous and local communities of Gambella, Ethiopia - 70,000 people in all - who are being forcibly relocated to make land available for investment in agriculture. There are plans to relocate an additional 150,000 people, most of whom are subsistence farmers who have been able, until now, to feed their families without receiving government or foreign aid over the last twenty years.

The letter points out that in addition to the many problems surrounding forced relocations and human rights abuses, the loss of ancestral lands where people farm equals the loss of their ability to feed themselves. Farmers and pastoralists are being turned into plantation workers with false promises that result in menial seasonal jobs that do not put food on the table or provide for their basic needs.

The Oakland Institute's field research in Ethiopia revealed a grim picture of violence, coercion, and unrealized benefits by relocated communities. These findings are confirmed by Human Rights Watch's independent study involving 100 interviews and sixteen site visits this year.

The burden of the Ethiopian government's objective of economic growth is being borne by the indigenous and local people of Gambella and the Lower Omo Valley, where a half million will lose their lands. This is too great a cost. As Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of US aid (more than $1 billion a year since 2007), the US bears responsibility on matters of such grave consequence. The letter cautions that something has to be done to ensure that the United States is not an unwitting partner in this current tragedy.

The Oakland Institute and Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia are urging President Obama to look beyond the charade of so-called responsible investment that will supposedly benefit all in the long run, and instead, calls for the US to reassess the terms of its support to the Ethiopian regime.

Our hope is that President Obama will take leadership in responding to an international call asking him to put the brakes on this impending and present-day catastrophe.

###

Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank, bringing fresh ideas and bold action to the most pressing social, economic, and environmental issues of our time

www.oaklandinstitute.org

info@oaklandinstitute.org

Artist Zanele Muholi's photography of LGBTQI Africans stolen

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82224

May 15, 2012
Photographer Zanele Muholi is devastated after more than 20 external hard drives were stolen from her Vredehoek flat. She believes her work in which documents the lives of black lesbians, may have been targeted because little else was stolen.

Loss, lost, violated, ripped, stripped, ransacked... ngilahlekelwe.

On the 26th April I returned from Seoul, Korea where my documentary Difficult Love was shown at the 14th International Woman's Film Festival.

All went ok until I got home only to receive bad news from Liesl about burglary at our flat on 20.04.2012.

I've lost all the work I produced from 2008 - 2012. Also backups were stolen.

I thought of the day I spoke with another friend about alternative storage. Now it is too late.

I feel like a breathing zombie right now.

I don't even know where to start. I'm wasted.

I've sent out a note to friends to tell them about the incident.

The person/s got access to the flat via the toilet window, broke the burglar guard and got away with my cameras, lenses, memory cards and external hard drives, laptop, cellphones...

Whoever ransacked the place got away with more than 20 external hard drives with the most valuable content I've ever produced.

I am hoping that a few of my good friends are willing to go to pawn shops or to other places where this type of equipment is sold. I do not even want to know who the thief is.

I need the hard drives: ranging from toshiba, Western, Samsung at 320GB - 1TB each--these are the brands and sizes of hard drive I am looking for.

They would have gone into the pawn shop since 20 April. I am willing to pay a reward for the return of those ext. hard drives.

I certainly would pay more than the pawn shop can sell them for.


Thanking you in advance.
ZM

"In Solidartiy with Zanele we would like to galvanise support from the global community to help replace her equipment. We know there is nothing we can do from NYC to recover the works stolen, but we can make sure that her future work continues to be produced and shared. Please read Zanele's words below and help out however you are able."
~ Palm Wine, NYC

"We are LGBTQ Nigerians who believe that human rights and dignity are our birthrights. We have created this space to collect and document our individual and shared stories in the hope that we can build authentic relationships with ourselves and each other, heal from our generational cycles and patterns of isolation and oppression and envision a future that embraces us all."

Campaign link

Call for the World Social Forum Free Palestine

29 Nov.-1st December 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82203

Occupied Palestine is part of every free heartbeat in this world and her cause continues to inspire solidarity across the globe. The World Social Forum Free Palestine is an expression of the human instinct to unite for justice and freedom and an echo of the World Social Forum’s opposition to neo-liberal hegemony, colonialism, and racism through struggles for social, political and economic alternatives to promote justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples.


The WSF Free Palestine will be a global encounter of broad-based popular and civil society mobilizations from around the world. It aims to:


1. Show the strength of solidarity with the calls of the Palestinian people and the diversity of initiatives and actions aimed at promoting justice and peace in the region.


2. Create effective actions to ensure Palestinian self-determination, the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the fulfillment of human rights and international law, by:


a) Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

b) Ensuring the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

c) Implementing, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.


3. Be a space for discussion, exchange of ideas, strategizing, and planning in order to improve the structure of solidarity.


Exactly sixty-five years after Brazil presided over the UN General Assembly session that agreed upon the partition of Palestine, Brazil will host a different type of global forum: an historic opportunity for people from all over the world to stand up where governments have failed.


The world’s people will come together to discuss new visions and effective actions to contribute to justice and peace in the region. Participation in this forum will structurally strengthen solidarity with Palestine, promote action to implement Palestinian’s legitimate rights, and hold Israel and its allies accountable to international law.


We call on all organizations, movements, networks, and unions across the globe to join the SF Free Palestine which will take place from 289 November to 1st December 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.


Together we can raise global solidarity with Palestine to a new level!


World Social Forum Free Palestine Organizing Committee



Contact of the executive secretariat:

Brazil: secretaria.fspl@gmail.com

Palestine: samahd@pngo.net

Darfuri activist imprisoned, deportation feared

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82200

PRESS RELEASE, 11 May 2012

CAIRO, EGYPT: Menem Suliman Atron, Director of the Sudan Center for Contemporary Studies and Development (SCC) in Cairo, Egypt, remains under imprisonment at Qanatar Prison, north of Cairo. He was arrested on Sunday, 6 May 2012, when he reported to the National Security Police for an interview. The arrest is primarily in response to the SCC’s advocacy on behalf of refugees in Cairo.

The Darfuris became refugees in recent years, due to genocidal attacks on their region by the Omar Bashir government of Sudan. Bashir has been indicted for war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court. Members of the Sudan Center provided testimony to the ICC about their experiences of the Bashir government's attacks on their people, as well as their persecution, imprisonment, and torture in Sudan for opposing actions by Bashir's government.

On 30 December 2011, Kamal Hassan Aly, Ambassador from Sudan to Egypt, requested that the Egyptian National Security arrest 30 members of the Sudan Center and deport them to Sudan for "defaming the Arab Nation" by their advocacy work, according to a report broadcast on the Sudan Nile Center for News.

A 10 January 2012 article in Sudan Online, an online news service, reported that leaders from the Sudan Center (SCC), including Menem Suliman Atron, Bashir Siluman, and Abdalla Hanzal were slated for deportation from Egypt by the Egyptian National Security Police. Refugees believe the current Egyptian government is closely allied with the Bashir government and intends to deport them for their continued advocacy for the rights of refugees in Cairo and their criticism of the Egyptian government's treatment of refugees. Although Egypt is a signatory to international refugee conventions, it refuses to allow refugees to work in Egypt, often denies them residency, imprisons them without due process, and harasses their community leaders.

On 18 April 2012, Mr. Aly Ahmed Karte renewed Khartoum’s request for the extradition of these refugee leaders in a conference on security between Sudan and Egypt. The governments regularly exchange criminal prisoners; however in this case, the human rights activists have not committed any crime, but the Sudan government demands their arrest and deportation.

The SCC human rights activists fear that Menem will be secretly deported to Sudan, in violation of that most basic of refugee rights, the right of nonrefoulement (the right to not be returned to the country where one fears persecution). "At least one of our organization members has been killed after being deported to the Sudan," said SCC Coordinator Bashir Suleiman, "while we know of two others who are currently being threatened by Sudan's secret police." The members of SCC said they fear that Menem will be imprisoned, tortured, or even murdered if he is returned to Sudan, due to his advocacy for the rights of Darfuri people.

Egyptian police have similarly threatened members of the Nuba Mountains Association (NMA) of Cairo with deportation, according to Abdel Bagi Ali Dida, the Foreign Relations Representative for the NMA. The NMA offers community support, education, social services, and advocacy for refugees from Sudan's Nuba Mountains. Menem, age 30, is an internet journalist and human rights defender. He currently has no children, but his wife is currently 7 months pregnant with the couples’ first child. Menem has committed no criminal act. He is strictly being persecuted for using his rights to free speech.

The international community is asked to advocate for the release of Menem and the protection of all refugees in Egypt, as the right to nonrefoulement (not to be returned to the country where they were persecuted), is the primary right of refugees under international law. Further arrests of other members of the Sudan Center are feared. Your advocacy can help prevent the further violation of their rights.

Please write to the Embassy of Egypt in your home country, demanding that Menem be released or he be safely resettled to a neutral third country where his rights will be protected. A list of Embassy addresses is below.

WHERE TO WRITE:

Please write to Egypt’s Ambassador to the country in which you are a citizen. Below are some of the addresses.


Egyptian Embassy in Australia
1 Darwin Avenue
Yarralumla, Canberra, ACT 2600
Tel: (62) 273-4437/8

Egyptian Embassy in France
56, Avenue d'Iena
75116 Paris
Tel: (1) 47 20 97 70 / 47 20 75 97

In the USA:
His Excellency Ambassador Samey Shoukry
Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt
3521 International Ct. NW
Washington DC 20008
• TEL: +1 202.895.5400
• FAX: +1 202.244.5131
• Email:Embassy@egyptembassy.net

Embassy of Egypt in the UK
2 Lowndes Street
London SW1X 9ET.
Tel: 020 7235 9777 - Fax: 020 7235 5684
Link to email Embassy of Egypt UK:
http://www.egyptianconsulate.co.uk/Contact_us.php

Embassy of Egypt in Canada
454 Laurier Avenue East
Ottawa, Ontario KIN 6R3
Tel: (613) 234-4931 / 35/58

Embassy of Egypt in Germany
Konprinzen Str 2
Bad Godesberg, Bonn
Tel: (228) 364000/8/9

For addresses of Egyptian Embassies and Consultates in other
countries, please see:
http://www.touregypt.net/usconsulates.htm

For more information, please contact: SCC Coordinator Mohamed Matar at matar_m@yahoo.com or in phone in Egypt at +2, 0111-281-8909 or Abdalla Hanzal, Director of SCC Middle East at abdalahanzal@yahoo.com, or in phone in Egypt at +2, 0128-284-7656.

Nigeria: MASSOB condemns imprisonment of members

Okodili Ndidi

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82202

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has condemned the conviction of its members by a Magistrate’s Court, sitting in Asaba, the Delta State capital.

Six MASSOB members were sentenced to six months imprisonment by Magistrate S. C. Ehikwe for wearing the regalia of the defunct Republic of Biafra.

Speaking with reporters in Onitsha, Anambra State, MASSOB’s Director of Information Uchenna Madu faulted the judgment. He said it was influenced by sentiments, rather than the rule of law.

Describing the judgment as “a violation of the fundamental rights of the affected persons”, Uchenna said it was unimaginable to jail someone for wearing a particular regalia. He alleged that the magistrate allowed his “personal and deep seated hatred” for MASSOB to influence his judgment”.

Uchenna said: “The magistrate’s pathological hatred for Biafra was not supposed to manifest in the judgment. We demand that Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan and the state’s Attorney-General intervene and ensure that the judgment is set aside.”

MASSOB’s Regional Administrator, Onitsha Region 4, Chief Arinze Igbani, said members were directed by their leader, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, to wear Biafra regalia as a symbol of identification.

He said: “As a Movement, we are not violent and are not armed like other militia groups across the country. Our only symbol of the peaceful struggle is our regalia.”

Igbani argued that Uwazuruike has never been convicted by any court for his open stand on Biafra and the adoption of the regalia.

He said many people wear clothes with symbols of their bodies and nationalities without harassment.

Igbani said no amount of convictions, killings, imprisonment and harassment will deter MASSOB members from the struggle.

Palestinian prisoners score heroic victory

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82204

15 May 2012 - Nearly a month into the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, a historic victory has been achieved, as Israeli authorities were forced to comply with the prisoners’ main demands. Coinciding with the Palestinian commemoration of the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing that uprooted most Palestinians from their homeland around 1948, the prisoners’ victory has heightened hope about the prospects for Palestinian freedom, justice, self determination and the return of refugees.

This important triumph for the Palestinian popular struggle could not have been reached without the unwavering resolve of the prisoners themselves, grassroots mobilization in their support in Palestine, and the immense wave of effective solidarity and calls for holding Israel accountable that the strike has triggered around the world.

More than a thousand people around the globe have pledged to undertake a 24-hour hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners, to take place this Thursday. While the solidarity hunger-strike has been called off, due to the prisoners' victory, injustice and illegal repression continue in Israeli prisons.

Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against the Palestinian people, Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations have called for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action to be taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

Please click here to demand G4S ends its involvement in the Israeli prison system and its complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights.

Signed:
Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)

Trans Support Initiative - Uganda commemorates the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia(IDAHOT)

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82225

Today the 17 th of May 2012, Trans Support Initiative Uganda (TSI-U), a Transgender and Intersex organization in Uganda joins the rest of the world to commemorate the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia. We take this day to remember all the injustice, violence, discrimination and murders that have already occurred to colleagues, relatives and friends.

It has not been long since we lost our very own David Kato because of homophobia, Aunt Victoria from Tanzania because of transphobia, the denial to access of medical services more especially HIV/Aids drugs to people like Beyonce and the closure of human rights workshops denying already marginalized
people access to information.

It is unfortunate and unbearable that Uganda still has political leaders who do not value or understand humanity and human Rights. It is sad that religious and cultural leaders have already forgotten the pillar of their calling LOVE and now promote HATE.

We know that denying human rights to transgender people in Uganda just because they are different is a clear breach of the Constitution of Uganda, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other regional and international human rights instruments that Uganda has ratified all of which protect the
rights of every Ugandan.

Therefore, we call on the government of Uganda to respect and put in practice the protection and equality provisions of the Constitution and regional and international human rights instruments by protecting all marginalized groups, without discrimination. Transgender and intersex people in Uganda face physical and verbal abuse, are denied access to health services, are victims of blackmail and extortion as well as unlawful arrests and mob justice. It is the responsibility of the Government of Uganda to protect them.

We call on cultural and religious leaders to promote love, respect and unity as pillars enshrined in our cultures and religions and not hatred and dis -unity.
We call on human rights organizations and sexual minorities groups to mainstream Trans and Intersex Rights. This group does not want special rights, but the protection and respect of their basic human rights.

For further inquiries please contact:
Ssalongo Nikki Mawanda
+256 701 82 1010
salongomusotta@gmail.com
Aunt Cleo. K
felipekyne.tsiu@gmail.com
,
Plot 1873, block 220, Naalya Kyambogo Road, next to Bavana Hostel, P.o Box 70116, Kampala, Ug Tel: +256 312 108 164 / +256 772 855 000. Email: programmes@tsi-ug.org, tituganda@yahoo.com Website: www.tsi-ug.org

We support KNHRC's recommendations on gays, sex workers

Release Political Prisoners Trust press statement

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82201

Release Political Prisoners Trust, a human rights organisation, wishes to register its unqualified support for the position taken by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in regard to the rights and status of Lesbians, Gays, Bi-sexual and Transgender people as well as commercial sex workers. We oppose any attempt by sections of the religious sector to stifle informed, open and honest public debate on this important issue on the basis of their own perceptions and beliefs on private morality. Indeed, we call upon the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) to take a keen look and possibly investigate these religious groups for promoting hatred and discrimination against non-heterosexuals and commercial sex workers in their recent utterances.

RPP notes that the constitution protects all Kenyans against any form of discrimination. We further note that the bill of rights guarantees all persons, non-heterosexuals included, all rights and entitlements under that Chapter. These rights include the right to health and education. We note that a significant number of new HIV infections in Kenya, up to 15 percent, are attributable to gay men and 6 out every 10 gay men are in heterosexuals relationships. This calls for all concerned to ensure that non-heterosexuals have access to information and preventive services just like heterosexuals. Even when they get infected, non-heterosexuals rarely have access to treatment and are discriminated against by health providers.

RPP notes several incidences in the recent past where non-heterosexuals have been threatened and attacked while seeking medical support for HIV treatment. The incident in 2009 in Mtwapa at the KEMRI facility stands out. In this incident, gay men were attacked and prevented from accessing the facility to seek medication and counselling. This is the situation that sections of the clergy are promoting. If we note any further incidences of physical attacks or threats on non-heterosexuals, we shall hold the clergy responsible.

RPP calls upon all Kenyans to ignore the attacks on non-heterosexuals by the clergy and their conservative stooges such as the Kenya Christian Professional Forum. The report by the KNCHR requires of all Kenyans a genuine reflection on its recommendations, not the bigotry and homophobia being spewed by some clergy. The consistent attacks by the clergy on the KNCHR are an attempt to intimidate any voices that go contrary to their perception of morality. The clergy must be told that Kenya is secular state and Kenyans will not accept the kind of quasi-theocracy they are now attempting to create.

The full KNHCR report is available here.

Odhiambo Oyoko
Ag. Executive Co-ordinator
RPP

Release Political Prisoners Trust,
PO Box 4636-00200,
Nairobi.
Tel. 020 – 269 2071/2
0717 – 431 738
Email address: rpprights@gmail.com

All love begins with seeing

Poetry and justice for all

Shailja Patel

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/82240

UAACC Heal the Community Tour 2012

Charlotte Hill O’Neal

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/82193

Open letter and response to Uganda Human Rights Commission

Vincent Nuwagaba

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/82220

I read with utter amazement, shock and consternation the 10 April 2012 response to my article in Pambazuka News, titled, “As a Ugandan citizen, I demand justice or death”, purportedly written by Florence M. Munyirwa, Public Affairs Manager for the Uganda Human Rights Commission. Indeed, she is doing her job as a propagandist but she must not do it at the detriment of my name.

I have taken relatively long without responding because I never wanted to respond with emotions. Ms Munyirwa alleges that because I have been in and out of Butabika Hospital therefore I have a mental illness. In what laboratory has she together with her partners in my destruction from Butabika ever tested me to prove that I have a mental illness? We are under an abnormal establishment, how would she expect me to behave towards an eccentric establishment that has turned its citizens into subjects and fleeces them without any consideration?

Assuming I am mentally ill, does that guarantee anybody a right to torture and traumatise me? Is mental illness different from other ailments such as malaria or a headache? How come I am only labelled a person with mental illness whenever I am involved in any political and human rights activism? Sadly, the police and now the UHRC use mental illness as an excuse to gag me.

I have taught many people who have in the past served and are currently serving in Museveni’s government. I taught Ronald Kibuule, minister for youth and children affairs, Christine Anite, spokesperson for the NRM parliamentary caucus, Sylvester Wanjusi Wasieba, former minister in the NRM regime, among others. Can they say they were taught by a lunatic? I have written several articles for mighty publications, can my publishers state that the writer is a lunatic? I have done consultancies even for the United Nations. I doubt whether I could do a good job if I were a lunatic.

If people with mental illness can decipher injustice in our society where institutions such as Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) mandated to promote social justice are blind, then mental illness is good and all the staff at the UHRC should be detected to prove whether they are mentally ill and if not they should be shown the exit.

Our society is naked and it would be better if all of us losers exposed our society’s nakedness by walking nude on the streets. If all 4GC members including myself can walk naked to state house, they would overthrow Museveni and Musevenism which has infected all institutions including UHRC without using a gun.

If I have a mental illness, how come each time I come out of that hell called Butabika people who see me feel I am on my way to the grave? When I came out of Butabika on 26th April, a lady from whose shop I do shopping told me I was looking like an AIDS patient who’s on his or her deathbed. When I went to the village virtually everybody who saw me cried. So, why should one think “Butabika Doctors” are healers not killers? In 2008, I escaped death by a whisker at the hands of the now late Tom Onen. Hadn’t I gone to Ishaka Hospital by now I would be the late Vincent Nuwagaba.

How scientific are the doctors in Butabika since they don’t use laboratory tests to assess one’s mental state of mind? Like they say, inability doesn’t mean disability; mental illness doesn’t mean uselessness, normlessness, frustration and hopelessness. I know of people with Bipolar Disorder who are making a huge contribution in this country. Visit Heart Sounds or Mental Health Uganda and see for yourselves.

Do I have a right to a fair hearing? Do I have the right to freedom from torture, inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment? Do I have the right to live in dignity as a human being? That’s what I demand.

Dr Onen is dead – quite unfortunate but many others are following him if they don’t refrain from touching God’s anointed ones. If they cannot listen to my prophetic messages let them refrain from torturing me. Let them label me mad if they wish but know that I have the right to live in freedom even if I am mad because Uganda is my country. If a mad man pays taxes, he needs accountability for his taxes; he needs to see drugs in health centre IIIs, he needs to see health centre IIs, he needs to see community polytechnics in his sub county for they were promised in the 1996 campaigns; the mad man wants scholarships for his siblings, neighbours and relatives on the basis of meritocracy. At least I am not demanding too much – let the truth be told. Who says, if I am mentally sick the above is not the cause of my sickness and who says mine is a medical condition which has to be addressed by CPZ and Haldol? If you want to prevent malaria, you begin by clearing the bushes and stagnant water which are breeding places for mosquitoes. Like Norbert Mao has always argued, you cannot treat a cancer using Vaseline. Indeed, I need to see promises fulfilled. If that makes me a mentally ill person, so be it.

Sadly, rather than promoting mental health rights, the UHRC is promoting stigma against the mentally ill. For Florence Munyirwa and Roselyn Karugonjo to think they are paid by the taxpayers to do exactly what they are doing is a big insult to the Ugandan taxpayer. And an apology should be given. I have in the past discovered a case of Gaudence Tushabomwe who was fleeced of her huge sums of money and later dumped into Kampala Central Police Station cells and thereafter dumped in Butabika Mental Hospital. Had it not been for my intervention they would kill her with drugs. I have saved so many people who spend months in police cells. Rather than awarding me a medal for being an excellent human rights defender, the Uganda Human Rights Commission now labels me a person with mental illness but the purpose is to gag me.

Finally, I want to insist that the Uganda government including the UHRC must either give me justice or death. As a human rights defender, I know I have a right to a fair hearing and I have a right to live in dignity. By merely writing statements responding to my article, the UHRC has not given me justice which I fervently long for. If I don’t get justice, I will mobilise journalists and strip naked from the Uganda Human Rights Commission premises so that I can expose the NRM government and UHRC nakedness and madness. For God and my country.

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!
* Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender and can be reached via email on vnuwagaba@gmail.com
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Angola: Luxury cars selling fast in Luanda

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82158

http://bbc.in/JiLD2E

Global: A debate on the Angolan 3

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82306

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/80376

Mozambique: President Armando Guebuza on Renamo threat

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82162

http://bbc.in/JdAItk

Africa: Gender, poverty and environmental indicators on African Countries, 2012

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82231

http://bit.ly/L2IUXW

Algeria: Women claw their way into parliament

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82312

http://bit.ly/KqAFWy

Cameroon: Ethnic group denounces matrilineal inheritance

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82174

http://bit.ly/J7zGxv

Egypt: Women keep showing power in protest

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82182

http://bit.ly/JcAbXB

Global: Birthing justice - water and the global commons

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82308

http://bit.ly/LafQxJ

Global: UN Women announces members of Global Civil Society Advisory Group

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82302

http://bit.ly/LkHbwN

Uganda: Drop-in centre of Ugandan sex worker organisation raided

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82176

http://bit.ly/Kvszy2

Botswana: Security forces return to the Kalahari

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82191

http://bit.ly/JvrI2q

Mali: Amnesty cites rights abuses in north

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82170

http://aje.me/JuN6op

Morocco: Jailed Morocco Islamists on hunger strike

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82172

http://bit.ly/Jc0oWn

Niger: NGO urges compensation for Areva's Niger staff

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82173

http://bit.ly/JuOKGH

Somaliland: Army court sentences 17 to death

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82229

http://bit.ly/Kb6PFv

Africa: Saudi Labor Ministry began steps to abolish sponsorship system, paper says

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82209

http://bit.ly/KSbuOm

Ghana: Ghana says it will get tough on immigrants

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82299

http://bit.ly/JJGqDg

Global: Asylum seekers mapped

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82311

http://bit.ly/KByX44

Haiti: Families at risk of forced eviction

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82210

http://bit.ly/J9xCVZ

Liberia: Fisherman returns to lost family as refugee status deadline looms

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82190

http://bit.ly/JSNUBJ

South Africa: SA urged to deal with ‘chaos’ at Zim border

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82188

http://bit.ly/Jj9ZoB

Zimbabwe: Group threatens SA crimes unit with international legal action

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82159

http://bit.ly/JskQ5Z

Algeria: Government repression provokes union hunger strike

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/82316

http://bit.ly/J867Y5

Malawi: Uranium workers strike

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/82161

http://bit.ly/JWO7kd

South Africa: UPM statement on the Youth Wage Subsidy

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/82304

http://bit.ly/JJK3ZI

Algeria: Islamists challenge election results

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82186

http://bit.ly/JSEK8l

Angola: Thousands march in Angola after rare court victory

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82313

http://bit.ly/KbVA1l

Egypt: 6th of April movement starts election monitoring campaign

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82323

http://bit.ly/K7gRsi

Egypt: Disappointment at first presidential debate

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82218

http://bit.ly/JQVOKu

South Africa: Street brawls or social democracy

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82227

http://bit.ly/J22KDg

Uganda: Opposition in crisis?

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82314

http://bit.ly/KEYttn

South Africa: Zille 'must stick to her pledge and resign'

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/82156

http://bit.ly/Mfi97y

Africa: Brazilian group targeting more African opportunities

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82298

http://bit.ly/JhNVjm

Africa: EU's first EPA with an African region goes live

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82167

http://bit.ly/J66zLe

Africa: Plan for $1 trillion trade bloc on track

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82322

http://bit.ly/MzRr9Z

Africa: Spectacular growth jeopardised by rising inequality, new report warns

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82307

http://bit.ly/KKenPj

Southern Africa: EPA talks at crossroads

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82166

http://bit.ly/KcePno

Swaziland: IMF walks away from the kingdom

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82317

http://bit.ly/JfGnu6

Uganda: National Oil Company may share in Tullow Oil production

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82211

http://bit.ly/LVqElw

Africa: New treatment could reduce sub-Saharan Africa newborn deaths

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82185

http://bit.ly/KsDABE

Global: Global Fund has more money

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82208

http://bit.ly/Kt5FZE

Global: WHO warning on non-communicable disease

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82215

http://bit.ly/Kvk87l

Kenya: Primary schooling in Kenya, a parent’s dilemma

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/82178

http://bit.ly/JKc1kO

Swaziland: Newspaper hate speech slammed

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/82160

http://bit.ly/JWMLWI

Uganda: Call to protect intersex people

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/82183

http://bit.ly/JSxSaP

Uganda: International day against homophobia celebrated

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/82305

Africa: Africa may struggle to extract groundwater, experts say

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82175

http://bit.ly/JHB6fU

Global: How the world's wildlife vanished

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82169

http://ind.pn/L9CrjI

Global: Transnational land deals for agriculture in the Global South

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/82181

http://www.landcoalition.org/publications/transnational-land-deals-agriculture-global-south

Peoples of the world against the commodification of nature

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/82226

http://bit.ly/KhO6aw

Africa: Economic growth equals ongoing food security

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/82189

http://bit.ly/KOrnp4

Gambia: Small country with a big crisis

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/82318

http://bit.ly/MzwtYX

South Africa: False 'made in Israel' labeling to be banned

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/82303

http://bit.ly/KJQNlR

Angola: Trial of journalist begins

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82157

http://bit.ly/Kjafph

Egypt: Al-Alam Channel raided; equipment seized

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82216

http://bit.ly/KC2mxW

Ghana: Incidence of indecent expression on radio goes up

2012-05-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82290

http://bit.ly/K8zsVD

Mali: Journalists accuse military authorities of tapping their telephones

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82232

http://bit.ly/J0mBRX

Morocco: Rapper sentenced to one year in prison for criticising police

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82165

http://bit.ly/K1cpdt

Rwanda: Radio presenter held pending trial

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82164

http://bit.ly/JdHejL

South Africa: Tambo daughter tells Zuma to get over it

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82320

http://n24.cm/KF7HGa

Swaziland: New bill will 'close down the press'

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82212

http://bit.ly/Jw4Td8

Uganda: Video director gunned down

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82179

http://bit.ly/L9JEAe

Zambia: Hope for media freedom protection as draft constitution is launched

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82163

http://bit.ly/J65BP6

Africa: AU gears up for African Diaspora summit

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/diaspora/82309

http://bit.ly/KBya3k

CAR: DDR moves forward

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82219

http://bit.ly/KSiWt2

DRC: 50 civilians killed

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82213

http://bit.ly/Kgo4EC

DRC: New fighting erupts in east

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82315

http://bit.ly/Jw7Cip

Libya: Militias rule ahead of the big vote

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82310

http://bit.ly/JJRobV

Libya: Uneasy calm in Sebha after clashes

2012-05-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82168

http://bit.ly/KckN7U

Mali: Five months of crisis

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82187

http://bit.ly/Jviao9

South Sudan: Country to get anti-aircraft missiles

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82206

http://bit.ly/K8sHAA

Africa: Explore the media habits of consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/82177

http://bit.ly/Jc3lGm

Africa: Research coalition to boost internet access

2012-05-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/82230

http://bit.ly/JRCE7t

Global: The destruction of privacy

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/82319

http://bit.ly/Jr9hfH

Africa: Wiki farming is live

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/82184

http://bit.ly/KO7rTs

Ghana: Kilombo 2012

24 - 26 August 2012

2012-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/82300

The event, which is also a festival for the ending of neo-colonialism in Africa, will take place at the Woezor Hotel, Ho, Ghana from 24th to 26th August 2012.

Participants should register through kilombo.education@gmail.com or phone 00233241498912.

Registration fees are 20 US Dollars or 15 Pounds Sterling.

There are very limited spaces.

Get in touch early so that you can make necessary visa arrangements.

Below is the content of the programme:

Friday 24th August - Opening Rally - The Challenges of Post-Colonial Africa

Saturday 25th August

- Discussion on the book African Awakening - The Emerging Revolutions
published by Pambazuka Press
- Sudan and the Sahel Zone Conflict: Myth or Reality
- Crisis of Anti-Colonial Liberation Movements in the Post-Colonial Era
- Women in the Struggle for Social Justice in Post-Colonial Africa
- Philosophy of Social Justice and Decolonisation
- The Post-Colonial State and the Crisis of Petit-Bourgeois Experiments
- Culture as a facilitator of African Unity
- Spirituality and the Struggle for Social Justice
- Media and the Struggle for Social Justice

Suday 26th August

- The Challenges for Internationalism Today
- Panafricanism : the African Continent and the Diaspora

Closing Plenary : Ways Forward Out of Africa's Post-Colonial Crisis

Explo Nani-Kofi
Director, Kilombo Centre for Civil Society and African Self-Determination
P.O. Box CT 2007
Cantonments - Accra
Ghana

Campaign Coordinator (x2) – Slums

Amnesty International

2012-05-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/82180

One permanent and one fixed term contract of 18 months in duration
London
£41,124 per annum

Focusing on some of the key areas that keep people poor, Amnesty International’s flagship Demand Dignity campaign will help us achieve our overall goal: an end to human rights violations. We’re currently looking for two Campaign Coordinators to make the contributions crucial to our success on the Slums and Informal settlements theme.

About the role

As Campaign Coordinator you will be working in a team in the creation and delivery of key projects and integrating campaigning with communication and activism. You’ll design, develop and implement high profile, international campaign strategies that are central to our success. , It’s all about working together to raise awareness of slums and housing rights issues. So you’ll not only lead, manage and coordinate the campaign actions, you’ll also support, liaise and provide expert advice to other programmes within the International Secretariat, the AI movement and outside networks – bolstering support, ensuring maximum impact of the campaign and helping to reach our global objectives.

About you

An enthusiastic campaigner with substantial experience of developing campaigns at national and international level with innovation and impact. you’ll be thoroughly familiar with the issues that surround this work. Your proven knowledge of leading and implementing campaigns at the national and international level will help you to deliver to the needs of the campaign and while you will use your innovative and creative campaigning and communication techniques to inspire existing activists and appeal to new audiences across the globe, especially in the global south and east. You will also need to have sensitivity to different cultures. But just as important are your excellent communication skills and the ability to build strong relationships both throughout Amnesty and externally.

About us

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

For more information and to apply, please visit www.amnesty.org/jobs

Closing date: 7th June 2012.

CVs will not be accepted.

Fahamu