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Squeezing Africa dry: behind every land grab is a water grab

GRAIN

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82903

cc J BHidden beneath today’s global scramble for farmland is a growing scramble for control over water.

Those who have been buying up vast stretches of farmland in recent years, whether based in Dubai or London City, understand that it's the access to water that they get from the land deals, which they often get for free and without restriction, that may well be worth the most over the long-term. "The value is not in the land," says Neil Crowder, whose UK-based company, Chayton Capital, has been acquiring farmland in Zambia. "The real value is in water.”

And water is abundant in Africa, according to those behind the hundreds of large farmland deals that have been signed across Africa. They say the continent's water resources are vastly under-utilised, and they want to harness them for their agriculture projects. But the reality is that a third of Africans already live in water-scarce environments and climate change is going to up these numbers significantly. A closer look at where these deals are taking place and how much water they plan to consume shows that the projects will rob millions of people of their access to water and risk to deplete the continent's most precious fresh water sources.

WHEN THE NILE RUNS DRY....

Few countries in Africa have received more foreign interest in their farmland than those served by the Nile River. The Nile, Africa's longest river, is a lifeline especially for Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda, and already a source of significant geopolitical tensions aggravated by the numerous large-scale irrigation projects that have been undertaken in the region. Back in 1959, Great Britain brokered a colonial deal that divided the water rights between Sudan (a bit) and Egypt (a lot), and no one else. Massive irrigation schemes were built in both countries to grow cotton for export to the UK. In the 1960s, Egypt built the mighty Aswan Dam to regulate the flow of the Nile in Egypt and increase irrigation possibilities. The dam achieved both, but it also stopped the flow of nutrients and minerals that fertilised the downstream soils of Egypt's farmers.

This economically, ecologically and politically fragile Nile basin is now the target of a new wave of large-scale agriculture projects. Three of the main countries in the basin, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan have, together, already leased out millions of hectares in the basin and are offering more. To bring this land into production, all of it will need to be irrigated. Ethiopia is the source of some 80% of the Nile water. In its Gambela region on the border with South Sudan, corporations such as Karuturi from India and Saudi Star from Saudi Arabia are already building big irrigation channels that will massively increase Ethiopia's withdrawal of water from the Nile. And these are just two of the actors involved. One calculation suggests that if all the land that the country has leased out is brought under production and irrigation it will increase the country's use of freshwater resources for agriculture by a factor of nine.

Further downstream, in South Sudan and Sudan, some 4.9 million hectares of land has been leased out to foreign corporations since 2006. That is more than the size of the whole of the Netherlands. And further up north, Egypt is also leasing out land and implementing its own new irrigation projects. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of all this will actually be brought into production and under irrigation, but it is difficult to imagine that the Nile can handle this onslaught.

Reliable figures on how much irrigation is actually possible and sustainable are difficult to find. The FAO, in various publications and in its Aquastat database, gives figures on 'irrigation potential' and actual irrigation by country and river basin. FAO establishes 8 million hectares as the total 'maximum value' available for total irrigation in all 10 countries of the Nile basin. But the 4 countries mentioned above already have irrigation infrastructure established for 5.4 million hectares and have now leased out a further 8.6 million hectares of land where irrigation will be developed.

THE NIGER, ANOTHER LIFELINE AT RISK

Another part of Africa targeted by agribusiness is the lands along the Niger River, West Africa's biggest river. Mali, Niger and Nigeria are the countries most dependent on the river, but seven other countries in the Niger basin share its water. It is also extremely fragile as it has suffered from man-made interventions such as dams, irrigation and pollution. Water experts estimate that the volume of the Niger has shrunk by one-third during the last three decades alone. Others indicate that the river might lose another third of its flow as a consequence of climate change.

In Mali, the river spreads out into a vast inland delta which constitutes Mali's main agricultural zone and one of the region's most important wetlands. It is here that the 'Office du Niger' is located and where many of the land grabbing projects are concentrated. The Office du Niger presides over the irrigation of over 70,000 ha, mainly for the production of rice. It is the largest irrigation scheme in West Africa, and it uses a substantial part of all the river's water, especially during the dry season.

Back in the 1990s, the FAO put Mali's potential to irrigate from the Niger at a bit over half a million ha. But now, due to increased water scarcity, independent experts conclude that the whole of Mali has the water capacity to irrigate only 250,000 ha. Yet the Malian government has already signed away 470,000 ha to foreign companies from Libya, China, the UK, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the past few years, and is offering much more.

HYDRO-COLONIALISM?

The Nile and the Niger basins are just two of the areas where land and water rights are massively being given away. The areas where land grabbing is concentrated in Africa coincide almost completely with the continent's largest river and lake systems, and in most of these areas irrigation is a prerequisite of commercial production

The Ethiopian government is constructing a dam in the Omo River to generate electricity and irrigate a huge sugar-cane plantation – a project that threatens hundreds of thousands of indigenous people that depend on the river further downstream. It also threatens to empty the world’s biggest desert lake, fed by the Omo River, Lake Turkana.

In Kenya, a tremendous controversy has arisen from the government's plans to hand out huge areas of land in the delta of the Tana River with disastrous implications for the local communities depending on the delta's water.

The already degraded Senegal River basin and its delta have been subject to hundreds of thousands of hectares in land deals, putting foreign agribusiness in direct competition for the water with local farmers. The list goes on and is growing by the day.

If this land and water grab is not put to an end, millions of Africans are going to lose access to water sources which they need for their livelihoods, as they are moved out of the areas where land/water deals have been agreed to, or simply see the access to their traditional water sources blocked by newly built fences, canals and dikes that are owned by someone else.

There is simply not enough water in Africa's rivers and water tables to provide irrigation for all of the large-scale agriculture projects that foreign companies are pursuing. If and when they are put under production, these 21st century industrial plantations will rapidly destroy, deplete and pollute water sources across the continent. Such models of agricultural production have generated enormous problems of soil degradation, salinisation and water logging wherever they have been applied.

Africa is in no shape for such an imposition. Over one in three Africans live with water scarcity, and the continent's food production is set to suffer more than any other from climate change. The advocates of the land deals and mega-irrigation schemes argue that these big investments should be welcomed as an opportunity to combat hunger and poverty in the continent. But bringing in the bulldozers to plant water-demanding crops for export can never be a solution to hunger and poverty.

If the goal is to increase food production, then there is ample evidence that this can be most effectively done by building on the traditional water management and soil conservation systems of local communities, and by strengthening collective and customary rights over land and water sources.

EDITOR’S NOTE: |Read the full text of this new report from GRAIN here.

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NATO in Libya: When protector turned killer

Vijay Prashad

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82895

cc D INATO has consistently blocked any attempt to scrutinise the war crimes it committed during the ‘humanitarian intervention' in Libya.

Back in January Faiz Fathi Jfara of Bani Walid asked a simple question, “I just need an answer from NATO: Why did you destroy my home and kill my family?”

NATO refuses to answer him.

NATO went to war in Libya to protect civilians through a UN mandate (Resolution 1973). Given legitimacy by the UN Human Rights Council and by the International Criminal Court, NATO began its ten thousand sorties. It quickly exceeded the UN mandate, moving for regime change using immense violence. All attempts to find a peaceful solution were blocked. The African Union's high-level panel was prevented from entering Libya as the NATO barrage began.

Several influential countries, including Russia and China, have asked for an evaluation of Resolution 1973 since late last year. They want to know if NATO exceeded its mandate.

A report by independent Arab human rights groups in January 2012 and a report by the UN Human Rights Council (March 2, 2012) have been largely ignored. Both show that the proposition that Muammar Qadhafi's forces were conducting genocide was grossly exaggerated, and both called for an open investigation of NATO's aerial bombardment. The UN report found that crimes against humanity and war crimes had been committed by the Qadhafi regime and by the rebels. It also found evidence of potential war crimes by NATO.

THE SAVIOURS' KILL RATE

The second finding is stark. If NATO went into the conflict with its “responsibility to protect” (R2P) civilians, what was the civilian casualty rate as a result of NATO's bombardment? Would the UN Security Council sanction further NATO “humanitarian interventions” if the kill rate from the saviours is higher than or equals that of the violence in the first place?

When the Human Rights Council began its investigations, NATO's legal adviser Peter Olson wrote a sharp letter to the commission's chair:

“We would be concerned if ‘NATO incidents’ were included in the commission's report as on a par with those which the commission may ultimately conclude did violate law or constitute crimes. We note in this regard that the commission's mandate is to discuss ‘the facts and circumstance of ... violations [of law] and ... crimes perpetrated.' We would accordingly request that, in the event the commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly state that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.”

NATO was eager to prejudge the investigation — it would not allow the investigation to take up issues of war crimes by NATO.

On March 25, The New York Times' C.J. Chivers wrote a strongly worded essay: “NATO's Secrecy Stance,” which revisited a story that Mr. Chivers had written about the August 8, 2011 NATO bombardment of Majer (a village between Misrata and Tripoli). It is clear that at least 34 civilians died in that attack. It is a test case for NATO's refusal to allow any public scrutiny.

NATO claims that it has already carried out a review of this case. Mr. Chivers is right to note that this raises an issue fundamental to democratic societies, namely, civilian control over the military. If the public and the political authorities are not allowed access to the evidence and provide oversight over the NATO command, the idea of civilian control of the military is violated.

Five days later, The New York Times editorial (“NATO's Duty”) followed Mr. Chivers, noting that NATO “has shown little interest in investigating credible independent claims of civilian fatalities.” This is strong language from an editorial board that has otherwise been quite comfortable with the idea of NATO's “humanitarian interventions.”

The next day (March 31), NATO's spokesperson Oana Langescu responded that NATO has already done its investigation, and if the Libyan authorities decide to open an inquiry then “NATO will cooperate.” There is no indication that the threadbare Libyan government is going to question its saviours.

On May 2, the Libyan government passed Law no. 38 which gives blanket amnesty to the rebels. Such a protection implicitly extends to NATO. Seven thousand pro-Qadhafi detainees sit in Libyan prisons. They have not been afforded habeas corpus. Among them is Saif al-Islam. An International Criminal Court warrant languishes. The US war crimes chief, Steven Rapp, joined the Libyans in refusing the ICC request for Qadhafi. “We certainly would like to see the Libyans provide a fair and appropriate justice at the national level,” he said on June 6.

When the ICC was created in 1998, both the US and Qadhafi's Libya opposed it. During the rush to war, the ICC was very useful to build propaganda against the Qadhafi regime. Now it is to be set aside. Libya shows how “human rights” is used as a pretext for war making and is not taken seriously when conflict ends.

FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE

A Human Rights Watch report entitled “Unacknowledged Deaths: Civilian Casualties in NATO's Air Campaign in Libya”, released on May 14 revisits the theme of an investigation. When HRW was doing its work, it wrote to NATO requesting answers to some of its questions. NATO's Richard Froh (Deputy Secretary General of Operations) responded on March 1 that NATO had already answered the UN's Commission of Inquiry (which it actually had not) and that HRW should see those “detailed comments to the Commission, which we understand will be published in full as part of that report. We encourage you to consider these comments when drafting your own report.”

It was a brush off. Because NATO refused to cooperate, HRW could only look at eight sites (out of ten thousand sorties). From this limited sample, HRW verified the killing of 72 civilians, with half of them under the age of 18. NATO's silence led HRW to conclude that: “NATO has failed to acknowledge these casualties or to examine how and why they occurred.”

The scandal here is that NATO, a military alliance, refuses any civilian oversight of its actions. It operated under a UN mandate and yet refuses to allow a UN evaluation of its actions. NATO, in other words, operates as a rogue military entity, outside the bounds of the prejudices of democratic society. The various human rights reports simply underlie the necessity of a formal and independent evaluation of NATO's actions in Libya.

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* Vijay Prashad, who teaches at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, is the author of ‘Arab Spring, Libyan Winter’ — out this month from LeftWord Books, Delhi — and a frequent contributor to Frontline. This article was first published by The Hindu newspaper.

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

Zimbabwe: Political paralysis of coalition government stalls nation

Mary Ndlovu

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82894

cc SokwaneleZimbabwe’s transition to a new democratic government remains a difficult challenge, given the current regime’s culture of corruption and military intransigence.

Although the outcome of last weekend’s SADC summit in Angola gave a finger of hope to some, many in Zimbabwe find it difficult to be optimistic about the immediate and even the medium-term future. The SADC decision has removed ZANU PF’s option promoting of calling a snap election, which everyone feared would be very bloody and at best leave us in the same position we were in at the end of June 2008. SADC has apparently saved us from the potential repetition of 2008 in 2012, but the way forward remains unclear and fraught with the possibility of either continuation of the current paralysis or the spread of violence.

Paralysis is the word on everyone’s lips – political paralysis of the Government of National Unity has brought economic stagnation and a continuation of social desperation. The inexcusably expensive, interminable constitution-making process, on which many, surely mistakenly, placed their bets, has stalled. Industry remains in the doldrums; virtually every parastatal is dysfunctional; after some promise in 2010 and 2011, mining is again beginning to slump under the threat of indigenisation; agriculture has hardly begun to recover from land redistribution, and rights abuses abound as the law is selectively applied. Behind all the disaster looms the very heavy hand of ZANU PF – a party which was clearly rejected by the voters in 2008 but has clung to power -arrogantly, cruelly, contemptuously and violently - against the will of the majority of the people but with the assistance of our neighbours, who pushed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to share power with the losers.

Zimbabweans are tired, thoroughly and irredeemably tired of the miseries that now make up their daily lives. Yes, there is a minority of professionals and business owners who can make adjustments and be comfortable, and there are those who have decided to accommodate to ZANU PF and join the patronage train, but for the vast majority there is little room for manoeuvre – no escape from the daily hours without electricity, the constant search for drinkable water, for school fees, for rent money, for bus fares, for the few dollars to buy Europe’s cast off clothing, from the sight of crops wilting in the fields, from empty bellies and diseases that they cannot afford to treat, from the daily demand for bribes from officials of all kinds.

Zimbabweans are tired, sick and tired, of politicians whose bellies swell and whose vehicles grow ever bigger, who swagger in their suits , insulting and suing each other, bickering, playing to the gallery, puffed up so far with their own self-importance that they have become a joke. But a very black joke, because Zimbabwe cannot afford to be cheated by those we elect.

ZANU PF’s coalition partners did at one time inspire some hope, but now they are so weakened in office that people still refer to them as “the opposition”. While it would be unfair to paint all with the same brush, as there are those who are competent and making an effort in an impossible situation, there are too many displays of ZANU PF-style greediness and elitism in the MDC, particularly MDC – T, as they try to look after their own interests instead of those of the people. Often they seem more preoccupied with securing vehicles or allowances for themselves than anything else, and the constitution outreach process provided many of them with a rich cash cow. They are further discredited by the rivalries now shaking their own party and the personal irregularities of Morgan Tsvangirai in “replacing” his wife, as he put it, upsetting many women.

Politicians are put in power to provide solutions to problems, and MDC have notably failed to dislodge ZANU PF or grab the ball and run with it. They appear to lose every skirmish and show no imagination whatsoever in dodging blocks or stealing bases. While the majority of voters would doubtless still vote for them in an election, it would probably be more a vote against ZANU PF than a vote for MDC, who have not even communicated effectively their policy preferences.

Of course, the paralysis in government is primarily of ZANU PF’s making. In September 2008, when the GPA was signed, there was widespread scepticism that the two MDC’s could achieve anything in partnership with ZANU PF, but with pressure from South Africa and SADC to form a GNU, they had little choice. Predictably, ZANUF PF has used the breathing space offered to it to prevent as far as possible any forward movement on the economy which might be credited to the MDCs, while restocking its war chest through control of the diamond bonanza. ZANU PF uses its patronage system to ensure that no one who is not indebted to them for favours is able to accumulate any wealth at all. No one except their own adherents will get contracts, tenders or licences. This breeds the high levels of corruption which are being experienced, and also ensures that many of the services provided are of a low standard, because they are not provided by the best candidates. Those who are successful but are not prepared to sing ZANU PF’s song have frequently been hounded into exile from where they now operate. There are ready examples in the fields of media, banking and telecommunications.

The indigenisation agenda ZANU PF is pushing has now replaced the land issue as a programme to simultaneously win support from a new constituency and frustrate the opposition. It seems dishonestly designed to further enrich themselves, consolidate their patronage lines and prevent the MDC getting credit for increased investment, rather than honestly redistributing wealth to the people. If investment comes, the economy will improve, at least temporarily, and everyone will benefit, but then MDC will have been seen to succeed, and may also identify new domestic sources of wealth to tap for its own advancement; those are the results that ZANU PF wants to prevent. Indigenisation is also being used to entice the youth and has apparently made some inroads into MDC support in that regard. That is a legitimate policy, if reasonably implemented, to balance the interests of various parties, but in ZANU PF’s hands we cannot have any expectation that it will be legitimate in its nature or its impact.

Thus, ZANU PF’s attempts to retain control of the economy are partly aimed at amassing wealth for themselves, partly to enhance their patronage capacity and also to ensure that MDC fails in government. According to their understanding, political power emanates not from the willing consent of the people but from control of the nation’s resources and economic activity. They must control everything, because if they don’t, their rivals for power will build up their own patronage system to challenge them.

But most frightening and ominous for the future is the escalation of violence against all opposition elements who cannot be enticed. The behaviour of ZANU PF backed gangs in Mbare and more recently in Epworth, trying to physically exclude those who do not support them, is clear warning that ZANU PF has no intention of playing a fair game in any election which might come, whether this year or next. ZANU PF thus continues to destroy any lingering hope that MDC could use its position in government to rebuild the economy or prepare for a meaningful transition towards democracy. It deliberately subverts the constitution-making process, agreeing on sections one week only to renege on the agreement the following week. It continues to use violence, misuse its control of the police, the justice system and the defence forces to cow the nation and harass and remove from play opposition figures.

In this context, the SADC decision not to allow ZANU PF to proceed to elections, until reforms to the system and to the security sector are implemented, stops ZANU PF from going forward with their plans to return to full control through use of violence. But the possibility for a way out of the impasse through free and fair elections is remote, given ZANU’s repeated signals that they will not permit the necessary reforms to go ahead. We seem to be at a dead end, which is the reason why the outlook appears grim..

Could ZANU’s internal power struggle to succeed Robert Mugabe provide a basis for any optimism? Possibly, but not necessarily. Mugabe’s astonishing vitality for a man of his age can be attributed to his own perservance and single-minded determination to cling to power. In spite of his failing health he may manage to carry on for more than another year. But he cannot go on forever; the day of his final physical collapse and inability to continue in office is surely not far off. Would his removal from the equation change anything? Certainly the rivalry within the party is intensifying, and being re-enacted in every province during the elections for party structures; however, any wishful thinking that ZANU PF will be incapacitated by their rivalries must be carefully scrutinised. Those who see ZANU splitting and the more “moderate” wing of the party under Vice President Joyce Mujuru joining in a new coalition with Morgan Tsvangirai after a peaceful election could be seeing a feasible way out, but unfortunately at present they appear more like hopeful dreamers.

More likely is a role for the military in intervening to stop the rot in ZANU PF and bring order to the “party of liberation”. They do not need to stage a classic coup in order to access power. Having established discipline in the party and taken control of its politburo, they would then continue to resist any type of reform and simply stay in power, with violence if an election was insisted on by SADC. Several military leaders of the second rank have joined their leaders in openly voicing their determination not to allow anyone except ZANU PF to rule Zimbabwe, and we ignore their voices at our peril. They could exercise power through gaining control of ZANU PF at the top, and some are also poised to contest elections as candidates for parliament, thus securing a strong influence in the legislature. As many as 78 have indicated their wish to become members of parliament. How the military rank and file would react to such a situation is anyone’s guess, but although it is often assumed that the majority support MDC, there is no tradition of mutiny in Zimbabwe’s armed forces, and it would surely be an unlikely outcome.

Any assessment of what might happen either before or after Mugabe’s exit from politics should not rely on ZANU PF collapsing, and must include a realistic understanding of what the military might do. It is now emerging more and more clearly that in those crucial days after the March 2008 election, it was the military who prevented a smooth transfer of power to the MDC when it was evident that MDC had triumphed in parliament and Tsvangirai had beaten Mugabe,.

Many observers suggest that an election would produce another stalemated result, leading to a second GNU. If the military allowed this, once again they would surely retain control of the entire security sector, leaving us no farther ahead. Is it not possible, however, that we could have an election in which the combined opposition swept a divided ZANU PF from power? Possible, certainly, but quite unlikely, given the determination of the military to ensure a ZANU PF victory. The violent attacks on MDC supporters in various parts of the country should warn anyone who thinks a peaceful election under ZANU PF’s stewardship is possible in the next months or even years.

So the scenario-drawing points more and more to a strong role for the military in any future dispensation, trumping any move toward genuine democracy or any meaningful economic growth which might bring relief to the millions of Zimbabweans struggling for survival. Like T.S. Eliot’s poor people of Canterbury, they feel powerless, watching and waiting , living and partly living, while the archbishop and the king play their deadly power game which will determine the fate of all.

Meanwhile, the struggle to survive continues. Queues at the borders once again lengthen, some seeking to escape the certain drudgery of survival in Zimbabwe to a less onerous drudgery in another country, while others sweat for the tiny profits to be made in cross-border trading. They must keep their families, in whatever way possible, no matter the humiliations from South Africans who despise them while taking the little money they have in bribes. Schools are mainly open, for a fee, but with large numbers dysfunctional, which contributes to the falling literacy rates. Those who complete with a certificate struggle to find a place for tertiary education and those who complete tertiary education cannot find employment. With the shambling medical services, which even in their inefficiency are unaffordable for many, Zimbabweans continue to die from treatable conditions because medications and equipment are not available. Radiotherapy, which used to be accessed in central government hospitals, is usually not available, due to mechanical break-downs and lack of inputs; the same applies to chemotherapy. Cancer patients have few options other than surgery. Those requiring anti-viral medication for HIV have begun to find that the drugs are often not available, or the right ones have run out. Privately these are generally unaffordable; hence the hope for HIV+ patients that has prevailed for the past few years is evaporating.

Zimbabweans have developed a reputation for “making a plan” through which means they adapt to every new reality and somehow keep going, even if it is at an ever lower level of comfort and enjoyment of life. The problem is that those plans are almost always individual, or at most family based. And more often than not one person’s survival tactics depend on squeezing the next person. Poorly paid police officers survive by tyrannising motorists, vendors, taxi drivers and anyone who they can get into their power for a moment long enough to elicit a bribe. The taxi drivers who get fleeced by the police turn around and fleece the travelling public. School teachers compensate for their low salaries by squeezing parents who earn less than they do to cough up money for school levies used to supplement their pay, and children whose parents do not pay are hounded relentlessly and frequently chased from classes. Some teachers are known to leave their classrooms in the hands of senior pupils while they go to teach at private colleges. Physical abuse in classrooms is rife, as the relationship of trust and care breaks down. Anyone in a position to prey off someone else does so – whether it be a customs official, a driving examiner, a worker in the passport office, or an employee in a shop. Thus Zimbabweans attempt to survive on an individual level while the country sinks further into ruin. Until as a society we somehow regain a sense of community, where concern for others prevails and an understanding of the need to work together rather than separately dominates, we can hardly expect to progress, whether in the political, the economic or the social sphere.

So what does the future hold? Is there any hope, then, for Zimbabweans to escape from this economic slough and social dysfunction? A few tentative investments can help to bring some economic movement, a few more jobs, and the circulation of more money. One of these is the Essar investment in rehabilitating ZISCO – if only the Minister of Mines could stop playing politics with it. Another is the dualisation of the main road from Plumtree to Mutare, which represents an enormous investment. Several other investments are on hold pending resolution of the indigenisation logjam. The diamond mines proceed to extract our natural resources, but clearly most of the profit is going into private hands of those linked to ZANU PF and is not benefitting the nation at large. Agriculture, which must continue to be at the heart of the economy, has achieved some renewal in tobacco production, but will not forge ahead until the issue of land tenure on all the redistributed land is solved. Preparatory research work has been done for land auditing and decision-making, but no decisions can be taken with a government with two heads going in opposite directions. Manufacturing, too, depends on raw materials from agriculture and mining, and on resolution of indigenisation. While a relaxation of harassment of informal sector traders would help, a renewed economy can hardly be based on resurgent informal activity, which provides some income but no security.

The key to all is of course is resolution of the political impasse. Many do believe that MDC can still win a “free and fair” election, in spite of their lack-lustre performance. But ZANU PF’s intransigence and the back-up role of the military make such an election unlikely. SADC has prevented ZANU PF from going ahead with their own strategy of the snap election, which would certainly have been very bloody. But they have no power to force ZANU PF to implement the reforms demanded by the GPA, which they say must occur in order to allow a peaceful vote. Hence the deadlock. It is difficult to see how it can be resolved any time soon by a change towards a genuine democracy through a peaceful election. We are more likely to continue with a contested political space characterised by partial compromises and outbreaks of localised violence, in which the military and ZANU PF remain key players for some time to come.

And where does that leave the majority of Zimbabweans? Waiting again, it seems, for a long slow process of evolution to bring us to a point where the economy might just grow enough to begin to benefit those not in the patronage chain. It is an unpleasant prospect, but one which more and more seems like a probability. There are not likely to be any quick fixes. Individuals will have to rely on their own ingenuity and hard work to scrabble a life by producing small amounts of wealth, and the sooner they get on with that instead of trying to squeeze each other, the sooner Zimbabwe can begin to grow again from the bottom.

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Complicit neighbours: Rwanda, Uganda and East DRC

Antoine Roger Lokongo

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82928

cc T MThe troika of Rwanda, Uganda and the international community continue to get away with destablising the east of the DRC.

The carnage that is lived daily by the Congolese people in eastern DRC is what the Congolese daily Le Potentiel calls a ‘forgotten genocide’[1] by the will of the international community. In fact, the international community has witnessed the atrocities being committed in eastern Congo by both Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi armed groups, with the complicity of some Congolese, since the UN peacekeeping mission was deployed in the DRC over a decade ago.

Britain, America and the European Union can no longer turn a blind eye to the complicity of Rwanda and Uganda in both supplying arms and soldiers to Tutsi rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda (both him and his predecessors are already indicted by the ICC) in the troubled North Kivu of the DRC. Britain, America and the European Union are now caught red-handed and cannot claim not to be aware of the plot (of annexing eastern Congo to Rwanda and Uganda, encouraged by the Sudanese experience) that is being weaved by Rwanda and Uganda in the eastern DRC.

Three official reports issued by the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo as reported by the BBC[2], by Human Rights Watch[3] and by the Congolese government (after conducting its own thorough investigation, including interviewing Rwandan fighters caught in the frontline[4] have all confirmed that Rwanda, for the umpteenth time, is yet again on the front line in eastern Congo. According to Congolese Minister of Information, Lambert Mende Omalanga:

‘200 to 300 rebels were recruited in Rwanda in order to be infiltrated in the DRC. They underwent a brief military training before being deployed against the armed forces of the DRC.’[5]

Anyway, for the Congolese people there was nothing new. A year before Rwanda joined the Commonwealth (November 2009), The Telegraph, a British daily close to the Conservative Party in Britain and therefore close to the British Crown, revealed that Congolese Tutsi rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda was recruited from the Rwandan army. Rwanda was therefore allowing its territory to be used as a recruiting ground for the rebel movement behind the DRC’s bloodshed, according to first-hand accounts and evidence gathered by The Telegraph.

A 27-year-old fighter in Nkunda’s movement said that he served as a platoon commander in Rwanda’s army:

‘There are many former Rwandan soldiers with the CNDP [Gen Nkunda’s rebels]. When I was still in the Rwandan army, I was in touch with them. They wanted me to join the CNDP,’ he said. ‘I decided to join them because fighting for the CNDP is like fighting for Rwanda.’[6]

The US Department of State is said to have issued ‘a firm statement’[7] warning governments against supporting rebel groups and mutineers operating in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo - without naming Rwanda. In a statement published on 6 June 2012 titled ‘Situation in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’, the US State Department spokesperson Marck C. Toner, said:

‘The United States is concerned by the continued mutiny of officers and soldiers formerly integrated into the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and now operating in North Kivu province as an armed group under the name M23, and by recent reports of outside support to M23.’[8]

The European Union for its part, is said to be ‘strongly concerned’ about an army mutiny in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the bloc’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

‘The EU is strongly concerned by recent developments in the Kivus and the deterioration of the security situation. The current developments require the attention of all countries in the region. Recent cooperation between Rwanda and the DRC on this matter is necessary and positive. The EU is worried by information that this dynamic might be endangered,’ Ashton said in a statement.[9]

After all these crocodile’s tears, Rwanda will simply get away with it and recommence again tomorrow -- as long as minerals need to be supplied to the West.

Kagame, Museveni and their Western backers have been uncovered. The whole world can now see that the main force driving this conflict. As Jacqueline Umurungi writes, some of Kagame’s greatest admirers are Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz. American evangelist Rick Warren considers him something of an inspiration and even Bill Gates has invested in what has been called Africa’s success story. Yes, Western liberals, reactionary evangelicals, and capitalist carpetbaggers alike tout Paul Kagame as the herald of a new, self-reliant African prosperity. Britain annually subsidizes 50 per cent of Rwanda’s national budget.[10] Now you understand why the war in mineral-rich eastern Congo never ends and why, mockingly according to the BCC, ‘there is no end to the tears in the DRC.’[11]

What Kinshasa did was to integrate all the Tutsi Congolese into the national army, even those wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity like General Bosco Ntaganda, ‘who was born in Rwanda where he fought with the ethnic Tutsi rebels who brought current President Paul Kagame to power and ended the genocide in 1994’, according to the BBC.[12] The CNDP (The National Congress for the Defence of the People or Congrès national pour la défense du people), a former rebel movement, was transformed into a political party and integrated into President Kabila’s coalition in power.

President Kabila put them in charge of military operations against Hutu militia accused of having committed the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Kinshasa even made a deal with Kigali to allow the Rwandan army to enter Congo and hunt Hutu militia. By the way, The ICC recently confirmed the dismissal of charges against Callixte Mbarushimana, a Hutu, of responsibility for atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009.[13] Then the people of Congo realized that the Tutsi continued to use the war against Hutu ‘genocidists’ as a pretext for occupying mining concessions and systematically exploiting them. That is why the Congolese Tutsi soldiers refuse categorically to be transferred to other parts of Congo to serve there. They just want to be posted in eastern Congo near the Rwandan border. But the Congolese army is supposed to be a national army, not an ethnic army. When President Kabila ordered the transfer of all soldiers from eastern Congo to serve in other parts of Congo, rumour went around that Ntaganda was going to be arrested and transferred to the ICC (Kabila has said he would be tried in Congo). He launched a mutiny known as the 23 March movement (a new name for the CNDP) because they joined the Congolese army under a March 2009 peace deal but have defected ‘complaining of poor treatment’.

Enough is enough. The well-armed and Western-backed Tutsi regimes of Rwanda and Uganda must understand that there is a saying which goes like this: ‘Lie! Lie! There will always be something left to lie about: the truth.’ ‘The international community’ will yet again confirm its complicity in the plot against the DRC if Rwanda and Uganda yet again get away with it this time. Is the ICC there just for Charles Taylor and Laurent Gbagbo, but not Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Museveni and Kagame?

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REFERENCES:

[1] Le Potentiel. 2012. Face à l’indéniable implication du Rwanda dans la guerre au Kivu, les Etats-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne, l’UE… mis devant leurs responsabilités !, Kinshasa, 11/06/2012.
[2] BBC. 2012. Rwanda ‘supporting DR Congo mutineers. BBC News Africa. 28 May 2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18231128
[3] Smith, David. 2012. Rwandan military 'aiding war crimes suspect' in Congo – Human Rights Watch. The Guardian, World News, Rwanda. 4 June 20. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/04/rwandan-military-war-crimes-suspect
[4] Groupe L’Avenir. 2012. Est de la Rd Congo : Enfin le Rwanda démasqué. lundi 11 juin 2012. http://www.groupelavenir.cd/spip.php?article45903
[5] Le Potentiel. 2012. Face à l’indéniable implication du Rwanda dans la guerre au Kivu, les Etats-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne, l’UE… mis devant leurs responsabilités !, Kinshasa, 11/06/2012.
[6] Blair, David. 2008. DR Congo rebels recruited from Rwanda army. The Telegraph. 20 Nov 2008.
http://bit.ly/MHp9pI
[7] AfroAmerica Network. 2012. US Government Warns Governments Supporting Rebellions in DRC. 8 June 2012. http://bit.ly/Kvzquo
[8] Toner, Mark C. 2012. Situation in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Press Statement. US Department of State, 6 June 2012. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/191902.htm
[9] AFP. 2012. EU 'concerned' over army mutiny in DRC. News24. 8 August 2012. http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/EU-concerned-over-army-mutiny-in-DRC-20120607
[10] Umurungi, Jacqueline. 2012. The Untold Stories: Again Rwanda is on the front line in the Congo Conflict.Who is fooling who? Inyenyeri News. NYENYERI NEWS, 28 May 2012.
http://bit.ly/OFjumW
[11] Hubert, Thomas . 2012. Havoc as Congolese flee the 'Terminator'. BBC News Africa. 11 May 2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17994753
[12] BBC. 2012. Congo warlord Bosco 'Terminator' Ntaganda 'replaced'. BBC News Africa, 8 May 2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17992994
[13] Reuters. 2012. ICC confirms release of Congo war crimes suspect.
http://yhoo.it/K46RxR

Assessing the political opposition in DR Congo

Abbot José Mpundu

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82946

cc V TIf the Congolese political opposition wants to be efficient and reach a convincing outcome in terms of bringing about change in the country, it must first unite around a common vision.

INTRODUCTION

I would like first and foremost to thank the organisers of this workshop for giving me the opportunity to speak to the gathering on “Assessment of the Political Opposition Action in the DR Congo”. This is of course a sensitive topic, for “assessing” entails some degree of “judgement”. I therefore run the risk of standing before you as someone who is in a position of censure, a Chief Magistrate. The sensitivity of the topic is also due to the fact I have to evaluate an action; and therefore I will have to speak about the actors, the real people who act, who take these actions. Without falling into the trap of providing a discourse that strives to moralise or to blame, I will try to be as objective as I can in my appreciation of the action undertaken by the political opposition in our country. Moreover, I will not limit my analysis to a critique that might appear embittered, but I will also offer some suggestions that might make the action of the opposition more constructive.

To carry out this exercise you have asked of me, I will try to answer three questions: The first question: Is there a political opposition in the DR Congo? The second question is: How do I view the action of the Congolese political opposition? And the third question: What could be prposed to the Congolese political opposition so that it plays its true role in our country?

IS THERE ANY POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN THE DR CONGO?

To answer this question, I will focus on the definition, the necessary conditions, and the functions of a political opposition.

According to the Encarta encyclopaedia, the political opposition is defined as “a platform of political forces that express important divergences vis-à-vis the ruling forces that hold powers”. These divergences, or other ways of seeing things, are not only important, they are fundamental and essential. Here we should note that the notion of an alternative differs from the concept of alternation of power that is frequently alluded to in the context of our country. An alternative means another way of conceiving and acting. The fundamental question that Congolese opposition should ask itself is: what is the alternative ideology we are proposing to the Congolese people?

I did a comparative reading of policy documents of various opposition political parties and those from the ruling majority platform; I was surprised to notice that in general “all shared equal values”, they almost said the same thing. They all opted for the same liberal capitalist ideology. The most striking example is that in the economic plan, they all want the free market economy. Having recorded this commonality in their programmes, I can therefore assert without any possible risk of being contradicted that, in our country the DR Congo, there is no ideological opposition.

It clearly appears to me that what we call the opposition and the ruling majority are breast-fed by the same ideology. They all originate from the same source: the powerful Euro-American countries known as “The International Community” which is in reality “an international political and financial mafia”. It is easy to confirm this just by observing the way both sides, the opposition and the ruling majority, shuttle between Western capital cities in the months before the organisation of elections in the country. It’s quite obvious that they seek the acceptance acknowledgement of powerful Euro-American godfathers.

In this definition of the political opposition, we are talking about “a group of political forces”. When we allude to a “group” it should mean that there is a collective action. “The opposition, continues the Encarta, is open and collective. If the struggle against the ruling political force is done in a clandestine manner, this is no longer an opposition but a simple resistance. Again, the opposition is normally not about one person critiquing the ruling power; it is rather a group of people who share the same critical views on the way the country is governed”. In our country, there is a tendency to personalise the opposition. We hear from time to time that this person is the custodian of the opposition. In fact, we have unfortunately noticed that some people have taken on the mantle and social status of eternal opposition leader. We can hear at times that this person does incarnate the opposition. However, a divided and individualised opposition cannot pretend to be a true political opposition.

Let us now see things from the angle of required conditions to acknowledge a true political opposition. I will refer again to the Encarta encyclopaedia that says: “For a political opposition to exist, the political system of the country must be organised and governed by specific rules.” I can even add that these specific rules should be accepted and observed by all. There must be what we generally call Rule of Law, a democratic state.

Then again, we have to wonder whether our country is a democratic state where there is a rule of law. Taking into account what we have gone through for decades, we cannot assert that there is a rule of law. On the contrary, we are under a totalitarian dictatorship. And yes, in our country, the power is held in a harsh totalitarian manner. Our opposition in this specific case per se, exists as a surface opposition. It is recognised by the constitution of the country, but the reality in practice is a different story. The current regime does not tolerate any opposition. One only needs to see what state security forces are doing on the ground when they deal with the members of the opposition; you then realise how they bully, intimidate, and oppress through violent repression the opponents to the regime.

If the ultimate condition for the existence of a political opposition is democracy, in our context where democracy is only visible in the name of the country ( the Democratic Republic of the Congo), we must confirm that the inexistence of democracy entails the absence of a viable political opposition.

Referring again to the Encarta Encyclopaedia, we can say that “the opposition has some indispensable functions in a democratic exercise. First of all, it provides for contradictory information on the decisions and intentions of the government. It is in the mandate of the opposition to ask questions, to critique and to interrogate orientations coined by the government in this or that policy. The opposition has to represent for the electorate a potential alternative government. This means the opposition must possess an achievable programme. The principle of alternation puts the opposition in the position of a prospective government.”

In our context, the opposition should wonder whether it is really playing its role.
It is true that from time to time we see some platform emerging as a political opposition; they formulate critiques and pose questions. However these questions are not likely to bring about expected changes in the society since they do not address the deep concerns of the country. For example, regarding the elections: have the opposition raised questions linked to the conditions in which the country can truly achieve democratic elections? Is it possible to hold democratic elections in a country where dictatorship rules supreme both internally and externally?

Once more, we have to be cognisant that as long as we are living in a country where there is no democracy, the functions of the opposition will never manage to be effective.

The principle of alternation itself is faulty; the opposition is actually not seen as a prospective government. In our country, in fact, those who have power tend to confiscate it and strive to be there eternally by use of all means including election rigging, and violent repression and intimidation.

To sum up, real political opposition does not exist in the DR Congo. There may be an opportunistic opposition that works according to the principle of: “evicting the current regime to replace it” facing a government that replies: “We are here to stay” and if necessary “by force”. We can say it in one word or a thousand words, “no democracy, no political opposition”.

How do I view the action of what is called the political opposition in the DR Congo? We all witnessed the Congolese political opposition organising peaceful marches, general strikes, sit-ins and boycotts. We have seen them issuing petitions. We have seen them denouncing shortcomings of the government in public. We all remember the famous letter written by the 13 MPs during the Mobutu regime. From all these facts, we cannot say the opposition is not active. On the contrary, to some extent it is working hard.

However, we need to recognise that the action of the Congolese political opposition lacks perseverance and endurance. In fact, most actions undertaken by the opposition do not last. They last but a brief moment.

Their action is know to ineffective in terms of an outcome, leading to the government allowing them to continue since they know the opposition action will not last.

The Congolese political opposition’s action lacks consistency in the sense that it does not reach the causes of the problems the society is faced with. Most of the time, it deals with epiphenomena, justifying the charge that it superficial. As a matter of fact, it cannot radically change anything.

In fact, the action of the Congolese political opposition lacks scope and scale. It is timid and timorous. Opposition leaders are inconsistent. This inconsistency of the leaders of the Congolese political opposition evident by the fact that they have no specific positions. Witout a political compass, they turn with the wind of events. In the morning they stand firm as leaders of the opposition, in the evening you see them with the ruling majority. They eat from all tables and it is not surprising to witness the betrayals and denouncements that characterise the Congolese political opposition.

The Congolese opposition is not capable of mobilising numerous masses at the grassroots level. So far, we haven’t seen a nationwide mass mobilisation action organised by the political opposition. This clearly shows that the opposition is disconnected from the grassroots masses. Sometimes, political opponents have tried to resort to me, a church leader, to help build a constituency! What we would call a salon opposition that has no real and deep connection with the masses cannot be expected to achieve real changes.

One of the biggest shortcomings that characterise the political opposition in the DR Congo is the lack of cohesion. In fact, we have a divided, crumbled, scattered opposition. Our opposition leaders are incapable of working together hand in hand so as to stand stronger. How is it possible to succeed while so divided?

In spite of the fact that all these opposition parties’ names start with “United” – United for Democracy and Social progress (UDPS), United for the Nation (UNC), United Forces for Change (UFC) – they have not been able to unite. They even fail to unite internally within their individual political parties.

Ours is an extroverted opposition that depends on Euro-American powerful countries, members of the so-called “international community”. An opposition that acts according to the expectations of the world masters cannot have a strong impact for the authentic change of our country’s situation.

A perfect illustration of this extroversion can be found in the workshop that gathered Congolese politicians organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. For us to sit at the same table to discuss face to face about us, to talk about our own problems, to evaluate ourselves, do we really need a foreign organisation that must invite and bring us together? When shall we learn to do things independently and avoid this shameful and childish dependency?

RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE CONGOLESE POLITICAL OPPOSITION

For me, if the Congolese political opposition wants to be efficient and reach a convincing outcome in terms of bringing about change in our country, it must first unite. This unity should not turn around power sharing that is called in the Congolese political jargon “cake”. It should rather revolve around a “common vision”. It means looking at the country with the same eye. Leaders of the opposition must agree on what type of country they will build together, the country the people of the Congo dream of, wish to see and live in. This will not preclude divergences in policies and programmes of action, but their differences would complement one another without losing sight of the ultimate dream.

The unity of the opposition is not synonymous with agreeing unanimously on every matter. It is about a diverse opposition that works as one; united for a common vision, but diverse on approaches and methodologies in the implementation of their programme.

On the other hand, I made it clear that without democracy there cannot be a political opposition. Yet, it has been proven that in our country, we have lived under dictatorship and totalitarian leadership since the reign of Leopold II of Belgium.

The only struggle therefore that should mobilise all Congolese citizens before we can talk about real political opposition, is the struggle for freedom and democracy.

We must therefore commit ourselves to struggle for a shift from dictatorship to democracy. I would like to urge all my compatriots to read the book “From Dictatorship to Democracy. A Conceptual Framework for Liberation” written by Gene Sharp. This book can be retrieved from the Internet for free in a PDF format. I also recommend you to read the most recent book written by our compatriot Françoise Mianda: “The Boom in Congo-Zaire” published by Monde Nouveau-Afrique Editions, you can buy it at any Filles de Saint Paul bookshop outlet countrywide.

It is quite obvious that the struggle for the establishment of democracy cannot be attained by simplistic strategies.

This struggle for democracy is supposed to start within opposition political parties. In fact, how can we institute democracy at large while in the microcosm of our political parties it does not exist? For example, how one can think of a democratic election while you are not able to hold your own primary election within your political parties to choose a candidate who will represent the party at the general elections?

For us to maximise all the chances for success in the struggle for democracy, we must invest in the formation of political actors and people at the grassroots level. This formation requires training and consciousness working in partnership with popular media, radio and television, that is both ideological and strategic. There is also a strong need to mobilise and organise the masses because this struggle is for them to recover the sovereignty that has been confiscated over many years by successive dictators.

Congolese political opponents must learn to develop the culture of a critical and constructive debate. Most debates we witness in the Congolese political arena are too superficial and lacking in reason. Political actors show more emotions and sentiments than expressing leading thoughts. Live on air, they expose to the people their emotional squabbles instead of addressing the actual challenges the country is faced with!

Furthermore, the debates must enshrine real, constructive substance; the should not only be limited to contesting but should also propose solutions. We wish to see from time to time formulations like: “I don’t agree with that... I suggest this...”, when political opposition leaders argue on TV or radio.

Congolese political opposition leaders must learn to pay the price of daring to institute changes like Mahatma Ghandi, the father of the Indian independence who never occupied the position of Prime Minister, but sacrificed his own life for his people. Reverend Martin Luther King of the US undertook a determined struggle against racism, and also paid the price of his life for that struggle.

CONCLUSION

If I were asked to conclude this exposé, I would say there is no conclusion. In fact, I have no intention to own the last word in assessing the Congolese political opposition. I would like to wrap up my statement by saying that the debate has just started.


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What China’s direct computer link to US Treasury means

Horace Campbell

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82947

cc Global XThe fact that China has been given a terminal to buy US debt directly, bypassing Wall Street, must be viewed in the context of the "architecture" of global capitalism which is a product of recent decades of the rise of financial-driven capitalist globalization.

INTRODUCTION

The news in May that China can bypass Wall Street when buying United States government debt in what is the Treasury’s first direct relationship with a foreign government was reported by Reuters and carried by very few of the mainstream press. This announcement came at a moment when the depth of the Eurozone crisis was dominating the headlines and creating panic in international markets. Though this arrangement has been in place for about one year, it was only in last month that Reuters revealed in its report that for the first time ever the US Treasury system granted China direct computer link to its auction system. http://goo.gl/rbNCS

I can remember the days when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sent representatives to sit in the central banks of Third World countries to monitor the operations of their treasuries. In those days of US financial and military dominance, these IMF monitors dictated to states and governments about management of their economies and used the IMF lending power to dictate whether resources were transferred to a country or not. Now it has been revealed that the United States government has given the Peoples Bank of China a direct computer link to the US Treasury. It is the equivalent of a Chinese officer monitoring the ebb and flow of US indebtedness and making decisions about buying and selling of US Treasury Bills without going through the Primary Dealers of US debt on Wall Street. This means that unlike other governments in the world, the Peoples Bank of China will not have to place orders for US debt through the Wall Street banks appointed by the feds as “primary dealers” to bid on Treasury auctions.

In our commentary this week we will reflect on this major international development in the world of high finance in relation to three aspects of the international system. First, what is the meaning of this arrangement for the stability of the international system in this period of depression? Second, what are the short term impacts on the relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China? And third, the importance of this arrangement for world peace?

In the conclusion we will note that while this arrangement for the short term is seeking to stabilize the international financial system, it is at the same time laying the foundations for the evolution of the international system towards a new financial architecture.

CHINA AND US AND STABILIZING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM

When Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world changed on September 15, 2008, the US Treasury Secretary Henry ‘Hank’ Paulson pushed through the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) but this was for domestic stability. We now know that this collapse was also being used to transfer more wealth to the very rich and powerful. We now know from the Federal Reserve Audit that the Federal Reserve provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses. Senator Bernie Sanders has been relentless in bringing this information of socialism for the rich to the public. While this transfer of wealth from poor to rich was being put in place, quietly and without major press coverage, Henry Paulson made a number of trips to China to set in motion a relationship with the Communist Party of China and the government of Peoples Republic of China to stabilize the international financial system.

It was in the context of these quiet visits by the Republican Treasury Secretary where there was broad agreement between China and the United States to coordinate the monetary institutions and the legal architecture for these institutions which flowed from international economic relations. It is the sum total of these monetary, legal and economic relations that constitute what is usually termed the ‘architecture’ of the international financial system. This international financial system up in 2008 was dominated by the United States with the dollar as the dominant currency of world trade. This dominance was effected through international financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and manifest on a day to day level by the dollar as the international reserve currency. In particular, the US ensured that oil was priced in dollars. The current international financial system emerged out of years of Anglo-American imperialism and colonial domination.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Britain dominated the international financial system and this period of dominance was reinforced after the partitioning of Africa in 1885. This period of British dominance was backed by the resources of African gold and was appropriately called the international financial system backed by the gold standard.

After the great capitalist depression of 1929-1945 there was a reorganization of the international financial system and the United States emerged as the dominant force. This was the stage of the Bretton Woods Institutions when the current multilateral institutions of imperial rule came in place. For a brief period the US dominated using the same gold standard but in 1971 the US was exhausted by its overreach in fighting against national liberation movements. Despite calls for the reform of the international system after 1971, the United States rebuffed these calls for a new international economic order and propped up the dollar by the expansion of the military. At the ideological level, the media and information complex propagated the idea that the international system was being kept alive by the prosperity of the United States. The dominance of the dollar was reinforced by the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF relationship which forced countries to purchase US Treasury Bills through specific Wall Street primary dealers.

Without democratic control over the Wall Street-Treasury manipulation of asset prices, the Wall Street firms created a neo-liberal framework for political power, one which gave them unlimited powers for speculative activities. This political power concentrated wealth in one per cent of the population but the very concentration of power was creating the seeds for the destruction of this capitalist class. Drunk with the supposed might of the US military, these financial oligarchs created new financial instruments and overextended their gambling until they brought the world to the brink of disaster in 2008. Since that time, the Chinese government has deftly and quietly worked with the US government to stabilize the international system and to work to harmonize the responses to the economic crisis. China, which by 2008 had become the largest holder of US Treasury bonds, played a central role in coordinating a sophisticated response to the meltdown to avoid panic.

With the memory of the consequences of the last great depression with the rise of fascism and competitive devaluations, the Chinese became the mainstay of stability by launching a massive stimulus program in 2009. What was left unsaid in the West was the fact that the capacity for the Chinese to play this role emanated from the fact that it was a centrally planned economy. Quietly, the leaders of China were challenging the myth of hegemonic stability theory that had been proposed by Anglo-Saxon international relations theorists. According to this theory it is necessary that there be a hegemon in the world for there to be stability in the international financial system. Drawing extensively from the imperial roles of Britain and the USA since 1816, this theory stated that a hegemonic power can impose some disciplinary restraints on international financial system and harness its ability as international lender of last resort. This argument implied the recognition of existence of a powerful central agency, which means that the performance of the global or regional system depends on the policy changes of this critical agency, just like the dependence of national economy on the work of its central bank.

China has turned this argument on hegemonic theory on its head. The Chinese have eschewed the option of the RMB replacing the dollar as the currency of international trade in the short term. The leaders of China have also opted to build up the regional economic power in the Asia Pacific region with a clear effort to harmonize economic transformation with Japan and Korea and the ten societies of ASEAN. The continued existence of high US debt and the instability generated by the uncertainties of the casino activities of US financial behemoths such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase has forced the societies of East Asia to develop novel arrangements such as the bilateral currency swap arrangements, barter arrangements, resource for infrastructure contracts, the Asian regional CMI liquidity fund, etc in order to bypass the Wall Street primary dealers. The media and the intellectuals in the United States have not yet fully revealed to the US citizens that the major cause of the financial crisis came from the irresponsible macroeconomic policy and financial regulatory practices of the US.

China had been trapped by a model of the low wage manufacturing that exported to the United States. This model that has been pursued since the era of Deng Xiao Ping led to a situation where China had large holdings of US Treasury bills. Presently China holds $1.17 trillion in US Treasuries and continues to buy some Treasuries through primary dealers (meaning Wall Street firms.)

Now China is able to buy and sell Treasuries without going through these dealers while working out a medium term arrangement to get out of the trap of being a low wage economy propping up western capitalism.

This trap of China meant that while Chinese money managers were aware of the activities of companies such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, (knowing full well that JPMorgan was losing billions on speculation on derivatives while acting as a primary dealer), China wanted to quietly sell US Treasuries without spooking the market so that there would be a run on the dollar and a subsequent devaluation of its own holdings. It was, therefore, in the interest of China to grit its teeth and to search for ways to develop international economic coordination in order to stabilize the international system while looking for the slow evolution of a new international financial architecture.

For a brief period, the Chinese political leadership had toyed with the idea of diversifying its holdings of foreign reserves by buying German debt and holding some reserves in the Euro. The depth of the European crisis took the Chinese intellectual class by surprise and slowly they are learning that the European Union and its currency arrangement called the Euro were based on an unsustainable model. It is this realization that is forcing the Chinese to pay closer attention to the operations of the US economy and to have direct access to the US Treasury and its computer link in order to bypass Wall Street. The forum for this effort to stabilize the system has been maturing through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED between the United States and China.

SHORT TERM IMPACTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US AND CHINA

When Wall Street crashed in 2008, long term imperial strategists such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski proposed the Group of Two (G-2 or G2) to reflect the special relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China at a moment of crisis. China has acted in its own interest and has been building up its economic strength within Asia while building new relationships with countries called BRICS and within the wider context of supporting a G20 formation to promote dialogue for the reform of the international financial system. It is within this new wide ranging platforms that one need to grasp the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) between the United States and China. http://goo.gl/ttJG1

It was not surprising that it was in London in April 2009 at the height of the anxieties over the future of Wall Street and Western capitalism where President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao announced the establishment of the S&ED. Henry Paulson and the Bush administration had initiated a low-key mechanism for consultation called Senior Dialogue so that the neo-cons could continue their belligerent rhetoric against ‘overvalued Chinese currencies’ while quietly pleading with the Chinese not to take any precipitate action in relation to their holdings of US Securities. President Obama and President Hu understood the need to go beyond grandstanding and established a mechanism where high-level representatives of both countries and their delegations will meet annually at capitals alternating between the two countries. This arrangement started in 2009 and the fourth session was recently concluded in Beijing May 3-4 2012. At this 2012 meeting the “Strategic Track” consisted of deliberations between Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo . The "Economic Track"consisted of deliberations between. US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan. The level of seriousness of these meetings is manifest in the fact apart from the principals there are usually over 20 officials of Cabinet-rank from each side who meet face-to-face and to discuss a range of substantive issues.

As the economic crisis deepened, in 2011 the Chinese and the Obama administration agreed on a strategic framework for “Promoting Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth and Economic Cooperation.” The agreement stated that,

“The United States and China affirm that both countries will, based on common interest, promote more extensive economic cooperation, from a strategic, long-term, and overarching perspective, to work together to build a comprehensive and mutually beneficial economic partnership, add to prosperity and welfare in the two countries, and achieve strong, sustainable, and balanced growth of the world economy.”

This agreement involved deepening people-to-people relationships and was followed by the confidence building measures inspired by the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to China in 2011 and a subsequent visit by Vice President Xi Jinping to the White House in 2012.

Despite these and other confidence building measures and the extensive plans laid out in the framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth, there were sectors of the US body politic that continued a steady invective against China. The rhetoric was on full display in the saga of the Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng. With the usual anti-Chinese rhetoric, the corporate media of the United States had a field day about the escape of this campaigner from house arrest and his arrival at the US legation in China. One could see bungling efforts of the US government to clean up the mess by dispatching Kurt Campbell to Beijing to find a solution before the strategic and economic dialogue talks began. Southern Africans will remember Kurt Campbell when he was opposed to African Liberation and wanted accommodation with apartheid.

It was this same Kurt Campbell, now Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who was sent quietly to find a solution. However, the Obama administration was in a fix. It was in China to plead with the Chinese not to sell Treasury Bills while for the home audience, the media was seeking to overshadow the mission of Tim Geithner by focusing on Chen Guangcheng.

When Hilary arrived for the meeting, the saga continued and Hilary Clinton attempted to play to the US audience. The Chinese told the US that Hilary could take Chen Guangcheng so that they could focus on the serious business of stabilizing the frayed system. In fact, the Chinese leaders had to rebuke Hilary Clinton by stating in the China Daily that she should not say one thing to the media in public which contradicted the undertakings in private. China had agreed that Chen Guangcheng could leave China and go to the United States. The way in which the Chinese handled the relations exposed a superior grasp of the risks at hand, far beyond the grasp of Hilary Clinton. Timothy Geithner who had a better understanding why the United States had to manifest more humility remained quiet in the face of the grand standing and press conferences that were being given by Hilary Clinton.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS ARRANGEMENT FOR WORLD PEACE

Hilary Clinton was a Senator from New York. This is the state where the bankers and primary dealers of the Treasury wield extraordinary influence. It is from politicians in New York such as Charles Schumer where one still hears the refrain that China is undervaluing its currency. It is from the same New York media where there is a constituency that supports militarism, war and the cascading militarization that can spread beyond the Middle East. Hardly a week passes without a major report that the United States is now pivoting towards Asia and that by 2020, 60 percent of the US Navy will be deployed in the Pacific. Last November, in Australia, President Obama announced the establishment of a U.S. military base in that country. With his eyes solely on re–election, Obama forgot the confidence building mechanisms that were being developed and played to the conservatives in the USA by stating that the United States will “continue to speak candidly to Beijing about the importance of upholding international norms and respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people.”

From this cue, writers in mainstream newspapers then carry articles about “Beijing Exhibiting New Assertiveness in South China Sea”, http://goo.gl/ll2Lw

What both Jane Pérez and the realists inside China neglect to mention is that Global Warming is a more important question for some islands in the South China Sea. What is more important than struggles over oil and gas resources under the sea bed in the South China Sea?

Despite this reality, those students who had been reared in the climate of hegemonic stability theory and “Eurocentric conception of world politics” can see no other outcome of the present international system other than war between China and the USA in order to decide who will be the hegemon in the 21st century.

It was two days ago when there was another such treatise in the New York Times where the writer was warning. “Avoiding a U.S.-China War,” http://goo.gl/xPOCz

In this missive, the readers were being notified that: “Relations between the United States and China are on a course that may one day lead to war.” Citing a forthcoming book by Australian international affairs expert Hugh White about the dangers of confrontation between China and the United States, this writer was calling for the world to avoid war by a ‘concert of power’ in Asia. We are told that in this book, Hugh White is calling for the United States to share power with China, in effect establishing the kind of G2 envisaged by Zbigniew Brzezinski. This book was written before the word was out that US Treasury Department has given the People's Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system.

This direct link between the computers of the People’s Bank of China and the US Treasury puts the entire discussion about cyber warfare with China in a different light. Why would China need to involve itself with clandestine cyber war with the United States when it has direct access to the most sensitive computer system in the US? Recently, there was a very long article in the New York Times by David Sanger that, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran.” http://goo.gl/QOZMX

What this reporting exposed was the real vulnerability of the United States in future wars because the United States of America cannot compete in the training of computer engineers with Korea, China or India in the next 20 years. To do so would require a fundamental overhaul of the US educational system.

The shortsighted elements who play to conservatives will beat the drums of Sino-phobia and warfare but those who want peace will have to follow the changes in the international financial system very closely so that the confidence building measures are kept in place; so that the dimununition of the dollar is a slow and gradual process and not one that precipitates war.

CONCLUSION

The fact that the mainstream media has kept this new arrangement from the public is not surprising. This is because the ‘mythology’ of US strength and ‘prosperity’ is needed globally at the moment in order for the system to function, especially in the face of the collapse of the Euro. The absence of media discussion and information about China getting its own terminal and the evolution of the new financial architecture (less dominated by the US and West) really helps sustain the "mythology" of US hegemony and exceptionalism in the minds of Americans and many in the world.

However, if there was a serious discussion of international economic relations in the United States, how exceptional can Americans think of themselves if they knew that underneath their "strength" is the fact that US must beg and borrow from other nations to sustain itself and hide the reality of how bankrupt and hollow the society has become over the last few decades of the neo-liberal financialization of the US and global economy which has only benefited the 1%?

Our ongoing effort to highlight the depth of this capitalist depression is to be able to keep making the linkages of the interconnected nature of the crisis. This week we can firmly link the story of China getting its own terminal to the recent report of how much "wealth" US families have lost during the recent financial crisis caused by Wall Street, http://goo.gl/VtQ5c, which actually further shines the light on how "imaginary" and "unsustainable" the actual last few decades of America's "prosperity" which Clinton and others love to reference as examples of American superiority.

The fact that the People’s Republic of China has been given a terminal to buy US debt directly and bypassing Wall Street must be viewed in the context of the "architecture" of global capitalism in the current period of history which is a product of the recent decades of the rise of "financial" driven capitalist globalization. When seen in terms of "architecture" having the terminal can be placed in the larger context of the many steps taken by China, the US and the EU to both sustain the some central elements of the current system (like US dollar as the world's reserve currency) by actually evolving it with the introduction of new features (like China getting its own terminal. Other new features which be seen as both sustaining the overall system by "evolving' it include the planned BRICS Development Bank, the bilateral currency swap arrangements, the Asian regional CMI liquidity fund, etc.
It is imperative that there are plans for the acceleration of the African Monetary Union and for the African Central Bank. What we want concerned economic planners to realize is that while the neo-conservatives focuse on individual variables which reflect sustaining the current system (like oil still priced in US dollars), people and nations should be more forward looking and understanding how the architecture (previously dominated by the US and the West) is evolving in ways (less dominated by the US and the West) which can open new opportunities for structural transformation in societies if people have the vision and desire for change.

Just as Wall Street collapsed in 2008 and the Euro is collapsing, we are witnessing the evolution of a new architecture before our very eyes. If today less than 10 per cent of Chinese trade is indexed in the RMB, what will the international financial system be like when over 50 per cent of Chinese trade is indexed in the RMB? In the short term, progressives must support the avoidance of war, but in all parts of the world a new mode of economics is needed to shape the multipolar world of the 21st century.

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

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The next phase of Boko Haram terrorism

Wole Soyinka

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82899

cc V LBoko Haram is completely political. But with the toxic element of religion infused into it, it gives them the leg to ally with international terrorist bodies based on religion, who are only too happy to be of assistance.

WOLE SOYINKA: Let me begin by reminding everyone that Boko Haram has a very long history, whether you describe Boko Haram as an army of the discontent, or even as some people grotesquely try to suggest, “revolutionaries,” or you describe them as, legitimately, this time, as marginalised or feeling marginalised.

When I say that the phenomenon has a very long history, I am talking about a movement that relies on religion as a fuel for their operation, as a fuel for mobilisation, as the impetus, an augmentation of any other legitimate or illegitimate grievance that they might have against society. Because of that fuel, that irrational, very combustible fuel of religion of a particular strain, of a particular irredentist strain; because of the nature of that religious adherence, which involves the very lethal dimension of brain-washing from childhood, all a man needs to be told is that this is a religious cause. All they need to be told is that this is an enemy of religion and they are ready to kill. No matter the motivations, no matter the extra-motivations of those who send them out, they need only one motivation: that they are fighting the cause of that religion.

People wonder, sometimes, if they are fighting the cause of religion, why are they also killing fellow religionists? It is very important for us to understand that they have a very narrow view of even their faith. Anyone outside that narrow confine, narrow definition (in this case, we are talking about Islam), is already an infidel, an unbeliever, a hypocrite, an enemy of God (they use all these multifarious descriptions) and therefore is fit for elimination. If they believe that this environment contains any non-believer in their very narrow strain of Islam, that person or that very area is due for sanitation. And if there are those who also believe, who are confined within the very narrow limit of their arbitrary religion, any chance that there are such people, they consider them matyrs, who will be received in the bosom of Allah, with double credits as having been killed accidentally.

What I am saying is not any theorising; it is not any speculation. Examine this particular strain of Islam from Afghanistan, through Iran to Somalia to Mauritania. We are speaking in fact of a deviant arm of Islam, whose first line of enemies, in fact, are those who I call the orthodox Muslims with whom we move, interact, inter-marry, professional colleagues and so on. They don’t consider them true Muslims.

So the seeming paradox is explained in that. And this mind is bred right from infancy. We are talking about the madrasas, we are talking about the almajiris. They have only one line of command: their Mullah. If the Mullah says go, they go; come, they come; kill, they kill; beg, they beg. They don’t believe in leaving their narrow religion, which teaches them that they have to be catered for either by their immediate superior as an authority or by the community or sometimes an extension of that by the town. When they go out to beg, they believe that this mission of begging is divinely ordered and it is the responsibility of the person from whom they are begging to give them alms.

They sit before their Mullah or their Emir or their chief or whatever and memorise the Qu’ran. Their entire circumscription or mental formation is to be able to recite the Qu’ran from the beginning to the end. Outside of that, there is no educational horizon. So, I want us to distinguish very carefully. If you don’t distinguish, if you don’t narrow these things down to the specifics, we are likely to be misunderstood, as people like me have been misunderstood, because I have been against fundamentalism all my life, of any religion, whether it’s Christianity, Orisha worship, Buddhism, Hinduism or whatever. Any kind of extreme in faith that makes you feel that you are divinely authorised to be the executioner of your deity or that there is only one view of the world, or that only one view exists, for me, is pernicious and it is anti-human. That is why I am making this preliminary explanation.

The second elaboration I want to make is that I have never liked the expression, “the core North”. We are talking about North because the North is very much identified with Islam. And for one reason, there is no core South. I don’t know about the core East, I don’t know about the core West. So why that expression? For me it is too general, too loose and it confuses the dramatis personae of our political life.

I, however, identify hard-core northerners, as in hardcore pornography. There exist hardcore northerners. They may be in the minority, but they believe that they are divinely endowed to run any society.

They are hardcore Northerners, whether you are talking about Sheikh Gumi and others. For a character like Sheikh Gumi, politics fuses with religion. A man who said Christianity is nothing, who said a Christian would rule this nation over his dead body. So, we have hardcore northerners, hardcore northern Islamists like the late Sheik Gumi. Among those that I describe as the hardcore northerners, (note I didn’t say Islamists), are people like Sani Ahmed Yerima, the former Zamfara State governor, who is now a legislator. There are hardcore northern Islamists. Why do I use Yerima? Because in him, you also encounter the fusion of a credo in Northernism and at the same time in Islamism. So you can see somebody like him as an opportunist. And I say this, you know, because he himself admitted to some of our people in NALICON during the immediate post-Abacha era, when he was asked why he decided to turn Zamfara into a theocratic state in a secular dispensation. He said, and I dare him to deny it, that it was the only weapon he had to snatch power. He said the PDP machinery was so strong that he needed something which would appeal to raw emotions, to mobilise and get the governorship.

If, periodically, I refer to this individual, it is because he represents to me, the opportunistic face of Islamism. And, of course, he had to deliver after he became governor. He is not the only one. I distinguish between him and Gumi because Gumi never sought political power. He was just a raw believer in raw Northernism and Islam. The two tributaries fuse in a personality like that.

In the case of Mr. Yerima and a number of others, Islam is just an instrument. I don’t consider them genuine Muslims. For them, however, they are willing to go the full length of Islam because it pays them politically. Having said that, I do not say for a moment that he is responsible for Boko Haram or that he has any hand in it. But I say that his school of thought and his school of opportunism is responsible for the birth of a movement like Boko Haram.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Read the full interview at The News Africa.

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Congratulations Nigeria: your war boat has arrived

Fidelis Allen

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82934

cc WikimediaNigeria has a war boat, but it raises numerous questions in the minds of the inquisitive.

Congratulations Nigeria. Your war boat has arrived. I have always known that carving a war boat would be your first achievement in your march towards prominence in the technology and manufacturing world. I knew this years ago, when you killed your iron and steel company that would have made you a manufacturer of civil equipment instead of war vessels. I knew it many years ago when in my village, local intelligent men carved war canoes against hunger and poverty as they used them for transportation of local agricultural produce. The boats had smaller versions of canoes used, even today for fishing and other ventures.

Hello Nigeria, the story of your success came to me with excitement and disappointment altogether. Can I ask you where you got the Engine to mount the war boat? What about the other parts? What percentage of imported materials do you have on it? What is your dream about the industry? Becoming an exporter of war vessels? Or an exporter of marine vessels to other countries? More boats to serve civilian populations on the shorelines? To answer the first question, you probably need to contact your sibling in a Nigeria University where the first Nigerian-made car was reported a couple of weeks ago. I also asked about where the manufacturer got the Engine?

To answer the second question, you need to consider which will be more profitable in the short and long term, fixing the marine transportation gap or the celebration of a war vessel to serve more than 160 million people? Think about where in Africa the risk of war is most likely in recent times? Like many European countries specializing in searching for war prone zones to sell guns and war machines to. What about jet fighters? Needed to fight terrorists from the air? What about long- range missiles? Needed to tackle them from convenient and safe positions.

Congratulations Nigeria. Surely you need to invest more in the manufacturing of war equipment. I was thinking about likely errors in your trail blazing entry into the war-boat manufacturing world. Is it actually a war boat if it is not different from the ones carved in my village and others in the Niger Delta? The error is in your failure to consult those who have been doing this job since Adam in Ijawland. They-mostly Ijaw youths -are not engineers but have the skills that match those of trained engineers, at least at the level of vocational cognition. Their boats can travel as far as the Bakassi Pennisula. What about establishing a boat building company that can provide employment for these people?

Congratulations Nigeria. Will your war boat be able to fight existing corruption near you? Corruption has got many constituencies around you. It has reproduced its kind such that several points of abode and maintenance have been created. Check, the story of your success may also be connected to it. Hello Nigeria, not that I am pessimistic and paranoid. I am optimistic that you will move beyond war-making tools to poverty alleviating tools. I am hopeful, that celebration of minor achievements will not blindfold you from the real challenges facing your constituencies. I am optimistic that your members soon should be able to say that you have stopped collecting oil rents for sharing. I am optimistic that someday soon, oil rents would have been converted to productive concerns that can provide employment for your teaming members.

Congratulations Nigeria. Your war boat can only carry guns and uniformed men and women. They will protect the oil facilities in the coastal and offshore areas. They will sail for recovery of oil company properties and oppress. They will carry oil giants or provide security for effective development of new fields. Hello Nigeria, make sure the boat is not used to protect stolen oil and their owners. It can be used to attack young people trying to cope with the pain of living and seeing an oil industry that does care about their water, air and farmlands. But only conditions that such attacks will not result in the same offense by the attacker.

Congratulations Nigeria. Can I ask you some more questions? Have you considered manufacturing civilian transport boats that can travel from Port Harcourt to Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Maidugiri, Kebbi, Jos and so on? Is anything not possible in Nigeria? Dear Nigeria, what more can I say? Your achievement is glorious. Can the boat serve the interest of all or a few? Can the boat remove tears from the eyes of those stranded on the other side of life? Can the helpless majority 99 percent of Nigerians have a chance of a ferry across the side of succour? I will wait for the next boat if your answers to these questions are in the negative.

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* Fidelis Allen, Ph.D is currently with the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Durban.

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New film sows seeds of freedom

African farming voices challenge the GM myth

Teresa Anderson

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82940

© The Gaia Foundation
© The Gaia FoundationAt the heart of the film “Seeds of Freedom” is the story of seed and its transformation from the basis of farming communities’ agriculture to the property of agri-business.

© The Gaia Foundation“Global agriculture has changed more in our lifetime than in the previous 10,000 years. But as with all change, conflicts of interest have arisen. Nowhere is this conflict more poignant than in the story of seed.”

A new film from the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) and the Gaia Foundation, narrated by actor Jeremy Irons, is set to explode pervasive myths about agriculture, development and Africa’s ability to feed herself. At the heart of the film “Seeds of Freedom” is the story of seed, and its transformation from the basis of farming communities’ agriculture to the property of agri-business.

Africa is under growing pressure to turn to hybrid seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Only last month, President Obama launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which will see the combined forces of agribusiness giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, DuPont and Yara investing $3 billion into creating new markets in Africa, amidst claims that this will solve hunger and malnutrition.

© The Gaia Foundation
But amidst the pressure to “modernise” agriculture, the enormous wealth and diversity of locally-adapted seeds and farmer knowledge is ignored, undermined and eroded by policy makers. Increasing biological and agricultural diversity has been at the centre of food production, culture and spirituality for every traditional culture on earth, since the beginning of human history. Our ancestors had good reasons: they knew that greater diversity in their crops gave them better nutrition and resilience to the many challenges of farming, from weather, pests and soil variations. As Muhammed, a traditional farmer from Ethiopia says in the film, “Seed is our life. Our livelihoods depend on it. One variety is not enough for us. If we lose that, we are lost.”



© The Gaia Foundation“Seeds of Freedom” shows how powerful interests are destroying that diversity, and the resilience and food security that have been bequeathed to humanity by our ancestors. As the global food supply becomes dependent on just a few seed varieties, owned by a handful of corporations, our future is increasingly vulnerable as a result. The film notes that agrochemical fertilisers and pesticides emerged from the development of explosives and nerve agents in two World Wars, and these violent origins underline the contradiction between agribusiness’ message and their actual ethos. What becomes clear is that industrialised and GM agriculture is increasing hunger and malnutrition, not solving it.


© The Gaia FoundationGathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the ABN says: “We wanted to make a film that gave Africa and the South a global voice against GM. As the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta and Bill Gates’ Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) all forge ahead into Africa under the mantra that GM is the only way to feed the population, African farmers are shouting “No!” - but their voices are being drowned out. GM technology has not been developed to aid farmers or to feed hungry people, it’s to create new markets for patented seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and commodities.”

While many claim that GM crops are needed to feed the world, the film looks at the concrete experiences where they have been grown. The evidence is shocking, and yet continually under-reported.

In Argentina, hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers have been forced to leave the land to make way for the aggressive expansion of GM Roundup-Ready soya plantations. Indiscriminate spraying of the powerful Roundup herbicide from planes, has further driven farmers, their crops and livestock from their lands, and turned Argentina into a “green desert” of GM. While some hail the growth of Argentina’s soya exports as a success, the rights and voices of those displaced farmers, and their families who have ended up hungry in the slums of the cities, have been utterly ignored.


© The Gaia FoundationMeanwhile, the term “tragedy” does not even begin to describe the experience of Indian farmers growing GM cotton. GM seeds can cost three or four times that of conventional cotton seeds, require specific and steady amounts of fertilisers and rainfall, and yet they frequently fail to deliver the pest resistance promised. Thus GM cotton crops often fail to produce the yields needed to pay back costs and loans for seed and chemicals. Farmers are spiralling deeper into debt. An epidemic of farmer suicides has gripped the Indian cotton belt, with farmers drinking the very pesticides that they were supposed to no longer need.

Where hybrid seeds began the process of agribusiness control over seed, the patenting of the genes in GM crops means that corporate control is absolute. With GM, farmers are forbidden from saving the patented seeds. Not only this, but if cross-pollination by wind and insects brings the patented genes into unsuspecting farmer’s seed, those farmers are also liable for patent infringement. Across North America, hundreds of farmers have been sued for so-called “seed piracy”. The threat of such bankruptcy has effectively transformed North American agriculture, as farmers realise that the only way they can avoid being contaminated and sued, is to purchase and grow GM crops themselves.


© The Gaia FoundationAs Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN points out “What are we supposed to do with these GM seeds? Seeds are supposed to be planted, multiplied, exchanged, further adapted, and so on. That’s exactly what is not allowed from the corporate mindset. The corporations sell or license us the seed to be used in a specific way – the way that they are interested in. Full stop.”



Even Zac Goldsmith MP, who has watched in frustration as the UK government has stated its aim to be the most pro-GM government ever, says “It’s nothing to do with feeding the world. It’s nothing to do with tackling some of the huge issues we’re facing today. It’s about control of the food sector, of the food economy. We need to radically change course and return to diversity.”

Seeds of Freedom takes a profound look at the wider context in which GM is promoted as a supposed solution to global hunger, and concludes that farmers in the South already have the tools, knowledge and potential to ensure their future food. Liz Hosken, director of the Gaia Foundation says “Seeds of Freedom brings together a chorus of voices from around the world, asserting that in spite of the corporate drive to control our food systems, small farmers are still providing 70% of the world’s food. We are at a critical turning point now, as the global food sovereignty movement builds momentum to reclaim control of ecologically sane and socially just local food systems, which celebrate and enhance diversity and hence resilience.”

© The Gaia Foundation

British actor and UN Food & Agriculture Goodwill Ambassador Jeremy Irons has put his distinctive voice to the film. “I’m delighted to have been asked to narrate this important film. I think that it carries a critical message, at a critical time. We are on the brink of losing a vast wealth of diversity in our food system, and we’ll lose it to the hands of just a few corporations, who give us only the illusion of choice on our shelves.”

As Agnes, a farmer from Kenya explains, “When I farm my indigenous food, I know for certain I will have a harvest. And so I know my children will eat.” Instead of top-down, technical solutions imposed by rich countries to eke out profit from the poorest, farmers can and must reclaim their seeds of diversity, their seeds of freedom.



© The Gaia FoundationThe 30-minute film is a co-production of the African Biodiversity Network and the Gaia Foundation, in collaboration with local Ethiopian partner MELCA Ethiopia, and international partners Navdanya and GRAIN.

“Seeds of Freedom” is online for international audiences to watch and download for free at http://seedsoffreedom.info

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Women and property: some insights from African history

Ng’ng’a wa Muchiri

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82930

cc E DAlthough the overarching view that Africa is a hyper-masculine society with no social space for women persists, numerous examples show how resilient and innovative women reacted when faced with patriarchal hegemony.

The more things change the more they remain the same. I’m intrigued by the global decline in children per family - since parents no longer wholly rely on their offspring during old age. Presumably, pension funds and nursing homes have taken over the task of caring for our elderly parents. But as the following two incidents show, perhaps this change is more illusory than real; children are still largely shouldering the burden of caring for aging parents across the world. This is especially important to think about since women generally have a longer life expectancy than their male partners. What happens to a woman once her husband passes on? How does she ensure she can comfortably take care of herself? And what implications arise for how we should empower women to relate with, acquire, and accumulate wealth?

I love reconnecting with my friends Judy and Dan Bauer. In their early seventies, they’re both warm, positive people who have increased their thirst for knowledge. They inspire me to learn more, travel more, cook more, and meet more people. Their comfortable way of life gets me thinking that perhaps there IS something like ‘enough’ wealth. Judy’s career in corporate America culminated successfully in retirement and a few years later her mother moved in to live with them. Judy cared for her single parent - driving her to art classes, organizing birthday parties, and generally being a best friend. In many ways, her experience as daughter-turned-mother was quite similar to my mom’s.

My grandmother moved in with us after battling lung disease for a year or so. Our Ngong’ home was closer to her doctor in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. More frequent doctor visits sought to ensure her quick recovery. Unfortunately, this was not to be. My mother footed the largest part of hospital bills and transportation costs, even though she had two brothers and a widowed sister-in-law. Her supposedly better socio-economic position not only left her stuck with the health expenses but also ensured her dis-inheritance by siblings and my grandmother’s relatives after grannie’s death.

Judy and my mom represent two points on a spectrum of women’s relationship to wealth. In many parts of the world a minority of women is able to climb the corporate ladder, momentarily break through the glass ceiling, and even earn dollar-to-dollar what their male counterparts make. More often, however, a woman’s salary is only a fraction of what a male colleague with similar duties, or even less, takes home. Other women are marginalized from their parents’ and husbands’ property.

Presumably, this is not a recent phenomenon and has been happening since time immemorial. Thus the question, how have women reacted to counter this prejudice? In particular, I’m interested in specific actions taken by African women to overcome the sexist bias that keeps them alienated from land, capital, and other forms of wealth.

As it turns out, African women have not been silent victims of marginalization. They have repeatedly risen up to challenge social bias even as they as remain entrenched in communal ties. Women have used marital ties to raise capital, paralleled patrilineal inheritance with matrilineal bequests of land, and repeatedly subverted gender boundaries and enacted ‘masculinity’ as a route to property. Furthermore, an appreciation of women as more than proverbial ‘beasts of burden’ in pre-colonial African hamlets enables us to review their mundane domestic chores as alternative mechanisms of material acquisition.

Women in Anlo-Ewe, a pre-colonial West African society, despite being primarily wives and mothers, had created a system through which they could pass on land to their daughters. A daughter’s capacity to inherit her mother’s lands gave her access to another crucial resource: material for weaving baskets.[1] The importance of this mother-to-daughter endowment can be further appreciated when we consider that land used for food cultivation was not available to women for re-distribution as they wished. This was purely a male domain. However, the lands on which a woman cultivated and acquired reed and wicker material for her basket work were considered her private domain and she could offer them to her desired heiress.

Although mother-to-daughter bequests of land were only a fleeting moment of success in women’s relationship to property, marriage was a permanent social entity that women also occasionally deployed to their advantage. Women in pre-colonial Africa subverted male demands for the ideal wife and created opportunities for material acquisition. Patriarchy is dependent upon marriage not only as an institution through which to produce more male figures, but also as a space to ‘enact’ masculinity.

Often, a man’s status in society rose appreciably if his wife was beautiful, hardworking and liable to increase his wealth in food stocks and/or livestock. In pre-colonial Yoruba society, just as much emphasis was placed on a young woman’s integrity as on her ability to trade. A woman’s prowess as a merchant at the Onitsha market was the mark of a good potential wife that many men sought. In the same way that the mother-daughter relationship was important in pre-colonial Anlo-Ewe, this same familial network endowed young girls with the trading skills desired by their future husbands.[2] One of the major challenges faced by women traders was access to capital. Taking advantage of men’s interest in a woman’s trading ability, wives sometimes got start-up capital from their husbands. A successful woman trader not only boosted a man’s social status, but also his self-worth.

Women’s initial trading money could come from multiple sources: saving societies or even extended family networks; however, many relied on their husbands for that first injection of resources to launch their trading ventures.[3] Unlike in Anlo-Ewe where women eventually lost access to land rights, Onitsha women could never be dispossessed from their husbands’ farm - even in the case of separation.

The mother-daughter link also proved to be very useful in Africa’s pre-colonial pottery industry. This relationship helped to pass down skills and know-how from older women to their younger protégés.[4] As a result, pottery and its associated benefits in food processing and/or preparation evolved into another avenue via which women could attain property. Although patriarchy sought to circumscribe women’s activities and achievements around the hearth, it is vital to appreciate that the kitchen evolved into a space from within which a woman could transcend such gender bias. Thus, the kitchen eventually became a sanctuary in which women could accumulate property.[5]

Items collected inside the kitchen - such as crockery and pots - became essential markers of a woman’s motherhood as well as helping ‘define her social pride of place.’[6] Pots were a major part of any woman’s assortment of kitchen technology and their production was usually restricted to a select group of women. That female members of Africa’s pre-colonial societies could endow such skilled work to their chosen heiresses was a key factor in enabling material acquisition. It is worth noting that in certain societies, when a husband and wife separated, the woman walked away with all cooking utensils. This, coupled with social taboos against a man preparing his own food effectively rendered a divorced man helpless and unable to feed himself!

In pre-nineteenth century Africa, property consisted of various items including consumer goods such as textiles, instruments of production such as hoes, slaves, and land, but also most importantly: agricultural produce. In some pre-colonial societies, women dominated not only the food processing industry - especially once the food got to the home - but also its production in the farms. In many cases these two economic ventures went hand in hand and combined they offered women access to various tools of production: pots, mortars, and small plots of land; these should all be viewed as important material items. Furthermore, success in food production and processing often led women to diversify their wealth; women who excelled at selling processed food items e.g. beer, were able to accumulate capital to launch their careers as market traders.

In this regard, women’s involvement in food production offered them a chance not only to profitably dispose processed food and drinks but also excess raw food and any small animals - rabbits, chickens, and goats - they would have raised to ensure their family’s food security. All profits raised from such exchange could have been used as starting capital for women traders. Thus it is easy to see that agricultural food production served a dual purpose in pre-colonial Africa: a route to financial and individual well-being. Especially in cases when women were capable of disposing of the products of their agricultural labor as they wished, agriculture had important socially transformative potential some of which helped to transcend male-sanctioned material deprivation of women. Cassava, for example, when harvested successfully could significantly increase a woman’s food surplus thus freeing her from time-consuming child-bearing activities and enabling her to bargain for increased economic power.

Finally, women occasionally crossed socially-ordained gender boundaries as a way to secure their access to property and material wealth. Such transgression offered the twin fruits of wealth and power, two arenas of social life that have suffered from a dearth of female figures in parts of Africa. It is important to neither overestimate nor overlook the challenges women faced.

Although the overarching view that Africa is a hyper-masculine society with no social space for women persists, numerous examples show how resilient and innovative women reacted when faced with patriarchal hegemony. This dominance, expressed in cultural wisdom such as the following proverb from Kenya’s Kikuyu community, still persists and women have not lost their agency to seek for material and social independence. ‘Aka na ng’ombe itirĩ ndũgũ’ can be roughly translated to mean that women and wealth (in the form of livestock) do not get along.

This is one example of socially-sanctioned sexism. Kikuyu women, however, have devised several ways of combating this bias. Women-women marriages have been discussed in relation to communities in Western and Southern Africa - the Yoruba and the Zulu, respectively. As it turns out, Kikuyu women deployed the same mechanism to acquire not only wealth in the form of cows, goats etc. but also land and children: two key signifiers of male prosperity and superior masculinity. Overall, a willingness to view customs as flexible ways of life periodically revised by adherent communities is key for our continued analysis of Africa, Africans, and the complex ways in which these two interact.

In our contemporary, the legal sphere is one arena that affords women redress from sexism. The African Union’s 2003 Protocol on the Rights of Women categorically asks for the rights of women to access their deceased parents’ and husbands’ wealth. Implementation, of course, is the key to this legislation’s success. Thus, theoretically, my mother could pursue legal proceedings against her siblings for their unfair sharing of my grandmother’s wealth. I would support her for the symbolic significance of this act. It is vital that unfair processes of wealth re-distribution are halted. If my mother is the victim today, surely my sisters, nieces and female cousins will receive similar treatment tomorrow?

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REFERENCES:

[1] Greene, S. E. (1996) Gender, Ethnicity, & Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe, London, James Curry
[2] Osagie, J I. (2002) “Women in the Economy of Pre-Colonial Benin”, in Njoku, O. N. (ed) Pre-Colonial Economic History of Nigeria, Benin City, Nigeria: Ethiope Publishing Corporation
[3] Akinwumi, O. (2002) “Women & Economic Activities in Yorubaland in the C19th”, in Njoku, O. N. (ed) Pre-Colonial Economic History of Nigeria, Benin City, Nigeria: Ethiope Publishing Corporation
[4] Hardin, K. L. (1996) “Technological Style & the Making of Culture: Three Kono Contexts of Production”, in Arnold, M., Christraud M. G., & Kris L. H. (eds.) African Material Culture, Bloomington, Indiana UP
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.

Forty years of ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’

Nigel Westmaas

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82937

© Pambazuka PressWalter Rodney’s seminal work remains a compelling and persuasive living history and totem of critical resistance to the exploitation and underdevelopment of the African continent.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Every now and then in history a scholarly enterprise emerges that breaks new ground and provokes an impact that exceeds the confines of narrow academia. Walter Rodney’s seminal work in combination with his other projects performed precisely this function for Africa and beyond. Its publication and reception exemplified the strains and fissures in the scholarship focused on the continent at the time. It would go on to become one of the most influential books in the ‘Third World’.

When it emerged in 1972 the book was hailed in Dar-es-Salaam as ‘probably the greatest book event in Africa since Frantz Fanon’. Wole Soyinka, the African novelist went further. He suggested that Rodney was one of the first ‘solidly ideologically situated intellectuals ever to look colonialism and exploitation in the eye and where necessary, spit in it’.

The book’s publication led to a veritable revolution in the teaching of African history in the universities and schools in Africa, the Caribbean and North America. Its content became contagious and was an element in the developing world historical sociology stream in embryo in the USA in the 1970s – more specifically the ‘world systems analysis’ framework. Rodney’s doctoral thesis – A History of the Upper Guinea Coast had earlier set the parameters and standard for this later decisive intervention in African historiography.

Rodney compiled How Europe Underdeveloped Africa from extensive archival research systematically identifying causes and outcome of the historical turbulence on the African continent. In doing so he identified the world capitalist system, both mercantile and modern, as the principal agency of underdevelopment of the African continent for over five centuries.
The book covers a wide range: an introductory discussion on the concepts ‘development and underdevelopment’; the state of Africa prior to European entry; Africa’s contribution to capitalist development; the effects of colonial education and impact of missionary activity; the collective nature of African organisation; and of course the exploitation of African resources during the colonial era and consequent ‘underdevelopment.’

AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPEAN CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT

According to Rodney, Europeans went through several phases of desire in Africa: first it was gold, through ivory and camwood to human cargo (slavery). He sketches the slow conquest and penetration due to shipping superiority and the slow breakup of African kingdoms and states in the 16th-17th century leading to the Portuguese slave trade and decision-making role for Europeans in Africa. While dissecting the slave trade he drew parallels between the rise of the European seaport towns of Bristol, Liverpool, Nantes, Seville and the Atlantic slave trade.

In a passage that vividly explains the impact of Europe on Africa and its subsequent underdevelopment Rodney asserted that: ‘the European slave trade was a direct block, in removing millions of youth and young adults who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs. Those who remained in areas badly hit by slave capturing were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in production’.

Rodney pursues the notion that colonisation gave Europe a technological edge and addresses the exploitation of African minerals important for making steel alloys, manganese and chrome, including columbite – critical for aircraft engines. Significantly, in the course of this orbit of exploitation there was incessant African resistance. But European firearms, after reaching a certain phase of effectiveness, as in the use of the Maxim (machine gun) against the Maji Maji and the Zulus and others, in concert with the use of Africans in colonial armies tipped the military balance in favour of Europe and subjugated a continent.

UNILEVER, FIRESTONE AND THE EXPLOITATION OF A CONTINENT

Throughout the text Rodney provides compelling evidence of European greed, naming traders and businessmen whose titles would later became associated with global conglomerates. David and Alexander Barclay were 18th century slave traders who Rodney said were ‘engaging in the slave trade… and who later used the loot to set up Barclays bank’. Today Barclays is one of the most powerful banks in the world yet its website sanitises its past role with little or no acknowledgement that its founding profits stemmed from the African slave trade. Contemporary corporate culture with its beneficent public relations outlook took generations to perfect. As Rodney eloquently describes, there was a point in time when colonialists and settlers held nothing back in their language of domination. Colonel Grogan, a white settler in Kenya, bluntly said of the Kikuyu: ‘We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. Compulsory labour is the corollary of our occupation of the country’.

Rodney also attacks the notion, which unfortunately still persists, that there is some universal nexus or equal relationship between ‘hard work’ and great wealth, a myth peddled in the West today. In his tome Rodney swats away this ‘common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through hard work can became a capitalist’.

In like vein Rodney connects America to the exploitation of Africa, especially with the links between the Firestone company and Liberian rubber. According to Rodney, ‘between 1940 and 1965 Firestone took 160 million dollars worth of rubber out of Liberia; while in return the Liberian government received 8 million dollars’. He traces the evolution of companies like Unilever as major beneficiaries of the exploitation of the African continent. Beginning with soap, William Lever began to produce Lifebouy, Lux and Vim and margarine. A merger in 1929-30 resulted in Unilever taking its current title and expanding with the material coming from products such as copra, groundnut oil, palm oil, and oils and the fats of animals. Today Unilever is one of the biggest corporations in the world now responsible for everyday indispensable brand name products such as Dove, Closeup toothpaste, Lipton’s tea, Q tips, Vaseline, Cutex, Slimfast, Klondike, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Ponds, Sunlight, Breeze, and Vim of old.

CRITICISMS

Even as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa struck a chord among many academics, students and general readership on several continents it has been subjected to several critiques over time. It is certainly evident that the text is short on gender analyses and the role of women – only a few pages bear on women in Africa and the context of their exploitation and resistance.

One critic suggested that despite its pretensions to be Marxist analysis the text actually fails on that count. This critique explains that How Europe Underdeveloped Africa ‘fails because it tries to persuade an African audience of the relevance of dependence theory by making it mesh with the simplistic version of the past already popularised by nationalist historians’. Another critic Caroline Neade, argues that Rodney identified Africa as ‘passive victim’ of European colonisation. But there is a lot in the book which would render this criticism unfair. Rodney quite conspicuously emphasised African technological development at a given point in history prior to European intervention and African resistance to European penetration is given vigorous treatment and agency in the text.

Other scholars generally sympathetic with Rodney nonetheless find fault with some of his other arguments. Lansine Kaba for example, whilst hailing the importance of the work for African scholarship, is critical of the ‘sweeping generalization’ and placement of Sudanic kingdoms as feudal states and Rodney’s description of traditional African economies as subsistence economies. Similarly, others have decried Rodney’s 1972 book as too ‘polemical’. Yet Rodney was the non-traditional historian and ‘polemic’ that reached a wider, popular audience was essentially his goal. In his own words Rodney declared that the main purpose of the text was to ‘try to reach Africans who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation rather than to satisfy the “standards” set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world’.

LIVING HISTORY AND RODNEY’S METHOD

One of the more important themes that distinguished Rodney as an historian with a difference was the issue of ‘living history’ a concept apparent in the methodology of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Rodney explains:

Many historians are afraid to deal with living history and I can understand why, because sometimes it is dangerous, especially in Africa. The moment that the social scientist begins to reflect too closely on the present, he or she is subversive in the Third world. It is safer to be with the mummies and the bones.

Rodney’s productive and activist zeal for history is well established. Andaiye reflected on his propensity for writing: ‘He wrote everywhere – in the car if he wasn’t driving, standing on the street corner, on the stelling waiting to board the Berbice ferry, waiting for public meetings to begin in Linden, on the Corentyne, in Leonora, in Buxton, often surrounded by police’. This anecdote gives an indication of the type of historian Rodney was: a living breathing embodiment of the seamless collusion between work and activism, people’s causes and the use of history as clarification and intellectual armour and not restricted to an inert academic excursion.

This makes Rodney one of the main critics of the positivist tradition in historiography. The positivists consider humanities or the natural and social sciences as solely derived from sensory experience. Consequently, the logical and mathematical treatment of any data is seen as exclusive and authentic. Positivism, which prevailed in the humanities, and in the social and natural sciences, remained dominant until historians like Rodney, the feminist movement and oral history advocates among others punctured its limitations and pretensions.

RODNEY’S BOOK TODAY

After Rodney’s assassination in 1980 his work continued to grip the imagination of Third World and Pan-African scholarship. Evidence of the book’s lasting value is the fact that at least eight editions have been published over time. Furthermore it is still widely utilised, even with academic challenges to its content, as a critical reference point on the historiography of Africa.

But there is still difficult road ahead as memories are short even in the age of express communication. More and more we are hearing from young people in Guyana, the Caribbean and Africa, who, on being introduced to his life and work typically come up with the refrain: ‘Who is Rodney?’ Issa Shivji, Professor of Law at Dar University placed this amnesia in context as he reflects on today’s reality. During Rodney’s time, he said, ‘we swore by wafanya kazi na wakulima (workers and peasants); now we all aspire to become wawekezaji na walaji (investors and consumers). Or more correctly wakala na wawekezaji (investors’ agents or compradors)’.

In the final analysis, for the Guyanese historian, writing and activism was a strategic and heartfelt response to the need for history, while maintaining academic rigour, to break with certain conservative traditions. In other words, history was a liberating tool. Like Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains one of the most compelling and persuasive books to emerge from the bowels of critical resistance to the exploitation of small countries.

If Rodney were to rewrite How Europe Underdeveloped Africa he would doubtless, given the scholar within, reconfigure sections, tighten certain arguments and perfect the narrative. But his overall thesis would stand. The overt fangs that slave traders and corporate giants like Barclays, Unilever and Firestone openly displayed in early profiteering and exploitation of the continent have been replaced by charming corporate public relations smiles and handouts. Yet the profits sequestered from Africa over several centuries, as effectively argued by Rodney, still stand as a foremost if not exclusive source and substance of Africa’s underdevelopment. In short, Europe and North America assisted substantially in the rape and underdevelopment of a continent rich in human and natural resources.

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* Nigel Westmaas is assistant professor of Africana studies at Hamilton College, New York state. This article was first published by Stabroeknews.com.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Malawi: Right decisions, wrong reasons?

Sokari Ekine

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82938

cc ComSecPresident Banda’s recent decisions seem honourable and pragmatic. But we should be concerned in the way Western aid is being used to keep Malawi under donor colonization.

In just a few weeks, Malawi’s new president, Joyce Banda, announced she would decriminalise same sex relationships, disposed of the excesses of her predecessor (the $13.3million presidential jet and fleet of 60 Mercedes), embarked on an austerity drive to end a shortage of foreign currency and refused to invite President Al Bashir of Sudan to the AU summit in Malawi over his indictment by the International Criminal Court, forcing the AU to move the summit to Ethiopia.

Should we cheer at her courage to defy the rest of the continent, stand up for sexual rights and against rampant corruption? No African country came out in support of her government’s decision on Al Bashir or welcomed her stance on LGBTI rights. However, the word is Malawi has sold itself to the West in return for continued and possibly increased aid and has become the “darling of the West”.

The UK Guardian newspaper reported Banda’s meeting with the British minister for Overseas Development as follows:

“Mitchelle reportedly said Banda’s decision “sends an enormously encouraging signal to British taxpayers and the international community about the seriousness President Banda is applying to overturn bad decisions taken under the previous government”. She suggested that the “proceeds can be used to provide basic services to Malawi’s poorest people who urgently need help following the vital devaluation of the currency”. Which is true and a noble thing to do. [ http://bit.ly/Lcl7YE ]

Put more kindly, Malawi is “balancing principles with national interests.”

“Banda's administration initiated early moves to rehabilitate Malawi's battered reputation for the promotion and protection of human rights.” [http://bit.ly/Lm2AH3]

These are honourable and pragmatic decisions and I have no doubt as to the sincerity of Joyce Banda. Nonetheless we should be concerned in the way aid conditionality is being used under the ruse of “Malawi’s best interest” - is that to remain under donor colonisation? It’s always more powerful to know choices are made from conviction rather than under threat.

AFRICAN WOMEN BLOGGING

President Joyce Banda is a successful business woman, identifies as a feminist and is an advocate of women’s rights, stating: “I’m carrying this heavy load on behalf of all women”” and early this year she marched with thousands of other Malawian women against sexual violence on the streets. [ ]http://bit.ly/Kmm1h2]

There is much evidence of African women’s resistance during the colonial period and subsequent period of nationalist movements towards independence . Two recent posts by Minna Salami on [Ms Afropolitian - http://bit.ly/KQyWuR ] discuss African feminism and pre-colonial matriarchies in Africa - defining feminism broadly as a resistance to patriarchy...

“In much of premodern Africa, there were women who possessed economic, political and spiritual power. To name only a few there were warrior women like the Amazons or Fon women of Dahomey. Or royalty who used their powers to demand justice like Makeda of Ethiopia, Nzinga of Angola or Mnkabayi of Zululand.”

It is undeniable that African women resisted the conditions which oppressed them and continue to do so without necessarily naming the resistance as ‘feminism’ or ‘feminist acts’. The presence of radical feminists in African politics may well be on the increase. In Senegal Fatou Kiné Camara who identifies as a radical feminist is running for a parliamentary seat under ‘Beuss Du Niakk ‘a human centered Islamic party which promotes women's rights’. [http://bit.ly/K2c0q4].

In 2005 I wrote a post on my blog Black Looks asking the question: ‘Where are all the African women blogging?” [http://bit.ly/K2e6Gu] Some like Mshari and Kenyan Pundit no longer blog though KP is prolific on Twitter. Others such as Molara Wood [http://bit.ly/K2eyEW] and Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman [http://bit.ly/rpwX6K] remain active. In addition to the excellent Ms Afropolitan mentioned above others worth reading are Egyptian Chronicles, Ugandan blogger, Rose Bell [ ]http://rosebellkagumire.com/] Nigerian romance novelist Myne Whitman [http://bit.ly/K2fiK7] whose dedication to encouraging writings by younger Nigerian women should be acknowledged; the hugely popular tabloid blog Bella Naija which focuses on fashion, music and popular culture, [http://www.bellanaija.com/] and finally the group blog Her Zimbabwe run by a group of young Zimbabwean women...

“At Her Zimbabwe, we want to listen to as many women as we can. And we’ve realised that the Internet is not something freely accessible to all of us. This is why we have our SMS line; in case someone out there realises that we could help some women who have no access to new media, but who needs us.

“Our other firm conviction is that no one intervention can impact every single woman. If Her Zimbabwe does its part, and other players become more involved in empowering different communities of women, then the collective energy of our efforts will reach far and across the terrain of the mentality that dictates that one size fits all.”

NIGERIA - JUNE 12. REMEMBERING M.K.O ABIOLA

In the week Nigerians chose to celebrate democracy, they also remembered the late Chief Mashood Abiola who was elected president on June 12,1993 in what was described as Nigeria’s “freest and fairest election”. However the election was shamefully and illegally nullified by then military ruler General Ibrahim Babangida. M.K.O. Abiola was later arrested by the new military ruler General Sani Abacha, imprisoned in solitary confinement for four years for refusing to renounce his presidency. Abiola died under suspicious circumstances on the day of his release July 7, 1998.

In an act which has outraged Nigerian students, President Goodluck Jonathan recently renamed the University of Lagos [UNILAG] Moshood Abiola University. Within hours of the announcement, students of UNILAG took to the streets, Twitter and Facebook condemning the renaming. Why the outrage? Nigerians Talk [http://bit.ly/M2wm2h ] suggest the anger was due to the failure to consult with students, faculty, alumni or the university council.

“This action feels like a reversion to the military era, where the military leaders took any decision they deemed fit and forced it down the throat of the populace. A democracy, which is what we claim to have, should work through a dialogue in which the government and the electorate arrive at the best decision for everyone.

“Additionally, as the Federal Government was attempting to honour Bashorun MKO Abiola with the name change, it also took that honour away by referring to him as the ‘presumed winner’ of the 1993 elections. I believe that the starting point on the path to honouring Bashorun Abiola will be to declare the winner of the 1993 elections, and move him from being ‘the presumed winner’ to ‘the President-elect’, even though he has passed on and will never occupy that office.”

I suggest the anger was as much an expression of frustration by particularly youths over the government and the failure of the Occupy Nigeria movement to sustain itself much beyond 7 days. The suddenness and lack of consultation with the students can be seen in conjunction with the January 1 announcement of the removal of fuel subsidy. These military-style declarations mock the notion of democracy.

President Jonathan has become a figure of ridicule as he stumbles from crisis to corruption like a man trying to find his way out of Amos Tutuola’s ‘Bush of Ghosts’. Boko Haram continue their murdering spree and unknown gunmen slaughtered 27 people across two villages in Zamfara State in a reprisal attack. [http://bit.ly/KF3xJn]. A series of tweet exchanges by myself and @rmajayi highlights the sense of insecurity and fear felt by many Nigierians.

“I'm not angry yet, just terribly sad & scared! Trouble sleeping too!.....I feel like govt’s going to scr*w me over!

Political activist, Kayode Ogundamisi, remembers the 1993 ‘heroes’, the Niamey 4, who in an act of desperation, hijacked a Nigerian Airways plane in protest over the annulment of the June 12 election. [http://bit.ly/LJjAev]

“The hijackers [Richard Ajibola Ogunderu, Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi & Kenny Rasaq-Lawa] had issued prepared statements, which they distributed in the plane calling on the Nigerian government to actualize the June 12 election and swear-in the winner, Chief M.K.O Abiola. Negotiations began with the hijackers after some few days of lull and indecision by the local authority, which was unaware of the hijackers’ military capacity, or whether they had explosives that could blow up the plane. The Nigerian authorities offered to release the hijackers provided that they would not harm the passengers, but while that was on going, Richard revealed, high level security meetings were in top gear with the chief aim of storming the plane and freeing the passengers, and if possible, kill the hijackers.”

Ending on a Nigerian depression note, the government announced today it will be deploying “civil defence’ personnel as part of its strategy to end Boko Haram’s terror campaign. Neither the supposedly highly trained army or the paramilitary police have been in any way successful so its hard to imagine what he expects from a civil defence unit except of course more deaths and destruction.

For an excellent historical and political analysis of Boko Haram read Wole Soyinka: “Next Phase of Boko Haram Terrorism” in this issue of Pambazuka News.

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The turning point for Internet freedom

Jane Duncan

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82907

cc S E LMedia freedom in South Africa has been receiving bad press recently, although most of the attention has focussed on threats to print and broadcasting freedom. Little attention has been paid to creeping censorship of the supposedly most democratic medium of all, namely the Internet.

Over the past ten years, the government has developed a complex web of controls that has made Internet censorship much more possible. Many legislative measures lie dormant, only to emerge when they are needed to curb controversial content.

In developing these controls, the government has relied on two of the three most popular reasons for curtailing internet freedom, namely protection of children, national security and protection of intellectual property. Unfortunately, governments often abuse these reasons to legitimise an internet control agenda.

Internet freedom is a hot topic globally. In the wake of the Wikileaks diplomatic cables saga and the North African uprisings, governments are recognising the power of online media and moving rapidly to control it. While portraying itself as a champion of internet freedom, the Barack Obama administration has been leading an assault on Internet freedom at the behest of an entertainment industry that wants express guarantees for its intellectual property.

Private companies are also enclosing the internet, erecting ‘walled gardens’ where users cannot access non-approved content. Social media users’ data is being mined to ‘sell’ them to advertisers, and procedures to opt out are often not user-friendly. These trends are all eroding the free and open nature of the internet. As a result, the internet of today is no longer the democratising, transformative medium that it promised to be ten years ago, in its pre-market formation phase.

Internet freedom has become topical in South Africa too, after the Film and Publications Board - a portfolio organisation of the Department of Home Affairs - used a section in the Film and Publication Act to classify disturbing or harmful or age-inappropriate material for children, to ban ‘The Spear’ painting for children under sixteen years of age. As the Goodman Gallery has taken the painting down, this classification now applies to online versions of the painting.

According to the Board’s judgement on applications for classification of the painting, ’younger people and sensitive people may find the themes [in the exhibition] complex and troubling’. In announcing the decision to classify the painting, the Board’s Chief Executive Officer, Yoliswa Makhasi, argued that the painting was not being classified simply because of the exposure of genitals, but because the artwork ‘…has forced society to revisit its painful past’.

The painting and exhibition as a whole are not without their problems. The exhibition is an important critique of the growing culture of self-enrichment in the ruling party. But it is also at times didactic, simplistic and flirts dangerously with racial stereotypes. However, even problematic art should have its place in the sun, but the controversies around the painting have worked perfectly to the advantage of South Africa’s internet control proponents.

The Board’s attempt to prevent children from accessing the painting to shield them from South Africa’s social divisions, past and present, is deeply misguided and in fact dangerous. If these divisions are hidden away, then children will be denied important opportunities to understand the true nature of the society in which they live. They will not develop the coping skills necessary to deal with these less savoury aspects of South African society when they experience them in everyday life.

There are also inherent dangers in a government agency deciding what children can and cannot see, as this can easily lead to publications that are critical of the government being censored. The Board's reasons for classifying the painting strongly suggest a ‘nanny state’ mentality and an underlying moral conservatism, rather than a legitimate concern with protecting children from harm.

Creeping censorship of the internet should be of as much concern as media censorship, as the internet is likely to become ubiquitous in the future. The government’s decision to ensure internet-enabled set top boxes for digital terrestrial television will extend access, as will its plans to ensure universal access to the internet by 2019 via a national broadband network. Mobile internet coverage has also greatly increased internet access, and the licensing of Long Term Evolution networks will continue this trend.

With the passing of the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, the government developed the capability to spy on Internet users. In the case of content originating outside the country, they can do so without an interception direction, which creates space for wide scale abuses of the government’s extensive monitoring and surveillance capacity. Government appointed cyber-inspectors enjoy overbroad powers to inspect any website for evidence of cyber-crime, although this provision has not been enacted yet.

But the most significant setback to internet freedom occurred when the Film and Publications Board was given jurisdiction over internet content. This is in spite of the fact that internet service providers also self-police internet content through a notice and take-down procedure run by the Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa.

A controversial amendment was introduced to the Film and Publications Act requiring any publication, with the exception of a newspaper publisher recognised by the Press Ombudsman’s office, to be submitted for classification if it contains the following material: sexual violence which violates or shows disrespect for the right to human dignity of any person, degrades a person or constitutes incitement to cause harm; advocates propaganda for war; incites violence; or advocates hatred based on any identifiable group characteristic and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.

In the case of hate speech and sexual violence, the provisions are broader than the Constitutional limitations on freedom of expression, which makes them unjustifiably censorious.

The published materials falling within these categories would either be age restricted or banned entirely. Materials that would ordinarily be banned under this section would be age restricted if they were found to contain public interest content, or had artistic or scientific merit. This was a significant departure from the initial Act, which maintained that public interest or artistic content should not be restricted at all.

The main problem with these provisions is that they give the government the power to exercise prior restraint over published material, and even censor material critical of its own performance.

There is disagreement over whether these provisions apply to the internet. What adds to the confusion is that the Board has failed to set out classification guidelines for internet content, which implies that they do not consider these provisions to apply to the internet. However, the definition of ‘publication’ in the Act explicitly refers to the internet, which suggests that these provisions do apply.

If they do, then online publishers have a mess of massive proportions on their hands. These provisions are un-implementable in the online environment, yet failure to implement them is a criminal offence.

For one thing, the provisions would discriminate against online publishers, as the Act would subject them to a pre-publication classification procedure that other media are not subjected to. Broadcasters and newspaper publishers are not required to submit controversial material for classification, mainly because they resisted attempts to make the Act apply to them. If they publish unethical or unlawful material, then they are subjected to post-publication judgements and sanction. This means that the government has the power to censor the internet much more easily than other media.

A further problem is that there is no practical way for online publishers to restrict access to age restricted material, especially material hosted by sites outside the country. Attempts to do so are a fool’s errand, given the distributed and global nature of the internet. Unlike traditional publishers, online publishers cannot wrap their publications in plastic wrappers.

If age-restriction measures cannot be applied easily to the internet, then arguably the Act requires the material to be prohibited outright; even it is of a public interest nature or has artistic or scientific merit. This cannot be allowed to stand in a democracy.

Thankfully, the constitutionality of this section of the Act is being challenged in the Constitutional Court. Public interest law clinic Section 16 has intervened on an amicus curiae basis to make the Internet freedom arguments. Hopefully, they will succeed.

What is the alternative to government control of the internet? An analysis of the take-down procedures and acceptable use policies of major internet service providers reveals that self-regulation is often as, if not more, censorious than government regulation because private companies tend to be risk-averse, implementing terms of service that serve them rather than internet users.

As media theorists James Curran, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman have argued recently, ‘…if we are to realise the dreams of the internet pioneers, then we need to challenge the context and demand a fresh set of proposals to empower public oversight of and participation in online networks…[This], then, is a critical moment in the internet’s history…the internet is at a turning point’.

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* Professor Jane Duncan is Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society, School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.

* This article was first published by SACSIS.

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Malawian sex workers fight forced HIV testing

Chi Mgbako

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82936

cc S RForced HIV testing of sex workers violates their rights to privacy and dignity, can lead to stigma, discrimination and violence, and produces bad public health outcomes.

Greece has been a mainstay in the international press as it endures harsh austerity measures in the face of the global economic crisis. But recent news reports have also focused on another disturbing reality. [1] At the end of April, Greek police began systematically arresting sex workers, forcing them to undergo HIV testing, and posting the names and photographs of those who test HIV-positive on official police websites. The sex workers face criminal charges of intentionally causing serious bodily harm, even though there is no evidence they were aware of their HIV status.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Amnesty International, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, have all condemned the Greek authorities’ actions as incompatible with human rights and discordant with proven public health measures to prevent HIV transmission. State-sanctioned forced HIV testing of sex workers also occurs elsewhere, including in the southern African country of Malawi. But in Malawi, something inspiring has happened – sex workers are fighting back.

It began in 2009, when police officers in southern Malawi raided a bar, arresting male patrons and female sex workers. The police later released all of the men but took the women to the district hospital where they forced them to undergo HIV tests without their consent. The sex workers who tested HIV-positive were charged with ‘spreading disease dangerous to life’, and before sentencing, a judge read out their HIV status results in open court. During this period, other Malawian sex workers reported similar instances of forced HIV testing to human rights groups.

The Malawian sex workers involved in these cases could have returned to their homes and swallowed the bitterness of these indignities. Instead, 14 sex workers decided to sue the government and challenge the constitutionality of forced HIV testing. [2] The legal case, among the first of its kind, is making its way, slowly but hopefully, through the Malawi courts.

The human rights organisation representing the Malawian sex workers requested help from the human rights legal clinic I direct; my students and I contributed to the case by conducting international and comparative law research on the human rights implications of forced HIV testing. The results were clear: because forced HIV testing is physically invasive in nature, it violates the right to bodily integrity and security of the person. Because it's a coercive and stigmatising measure that discourages people from seeking voluntary counselling, testing, and treatment, it violates the right to the highest attainable standard of health. And ‘outings’ of individuals’ HIV status without their consent, as was done in open court in Malawi and on police websites in Greece, violate the rights to privacy and dignity, especially because such revelations can lead to stigma, discrimination, and even violence.

Greek officials have attempted to justify the forced HIV testing of sex workers by stating that they’re protecting public health after an increase in AIDS cases in the country in the past year. This logic feeds into the stigmatising notion of women as the main source of sexually transmitted infections and the misguided idea of female sex workers as ‘vectors of disease’ from whom we must protect the general population. Rights-based public health measures should seek to protect all people from HIV infection, and provide those who are HIV-positive with the tools to live healthier lives.

As UNAIDS and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have argued, coercive measures in the fight against HIV/AIDS, including forced HIV testing, produce bad public health outcomes by alienating at-risk groups. Mandatory HIV testing breaches medical confidentiality and facilitates stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, therefore discouraging vulnerable groups from seeking out what we know works to stem the tide of HIV transmission – voluntary and confidential counselling, testing, and treatment. Discriminatory state action like the forced HIV testing of sex workers drives further underground some of the people most in need of public health services that facilitate HIV prevention. It also alienates groups, like sex workers, who make fantastic peer educators on HIV.
Our eyes should remain on Malawi as this band of defiant sex workers takes a brave step to affirm their rights and the rights of all people, especially the marginalised, to live free from coercive practices that do not safeguard public health.

Sign the online petition to Greek authorities to stop the forced HIV testing of sex workers.


ENDNOTES

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/greece-prostitutes-hiv-arrests_n_1473864.html?

2. http://www.thebody.com/content/64730/malawi-sex-workers-sue-government-after-forced-hiv.html


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* Chi Mgbako is clinical associate professor and director of the Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School in New York City. She writes on sexual and health rights, access to justice, and women’s rights in Africa. Follow Chi Mgbako on Twitter, @chiadanna.

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

Homosexuality and the great African identity heist

Aubrey Masango

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82896

cc S E L‘It is not too long ago that being African was ignorantly believed to be an aberration, an abnormality, in much the same way that some Africans are choosing to label African homosexuality an aberration today.’

What does it mean to be an African? What is traditional African culture? Does it really condemn homosexuality, though it exists throughout Africa? And if it doesn’t, why are certain individuals and institutions clamouring for legislation against homosexuality?

The recent utterances by the president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA, Inkosi Phathekile Holomisa, about the need to review the constitutional protection of gay rights is indicative of questionable institutions clamouring for relevance and survival. It further raises questions about the legitimacy of such institutions as they claim to be the “custodians and protectors” of the cultural identities of the indigenous people of South Africa and the rest of Africa. Are we witnessing, through such utterances, the hijacking of the identity of millions for the benefit of illegitimate aristocrats?

At the beginning of May, amidst heated discussions about the tolling system and police corruption, another debate was raging. This was the debate about the constitutionally guaranteed rights of same-sex relationships. It was sparked by a submission by Contralesa, a traditional leaders’ trade union of sorts. This organisation submitted a proposal to the Portfolio Committee on Constitutional Development in the National Assembly, requesting a review of the portion of the Constitution, namely section 9, which guarantees the rights of same sex relationships.

Explaining Contralesa’s position in an interview with a Sunday publication, Holomisa said: “The ANC knows that the majority of South Africans do not want to promote or protect the rights of gays and lesbians.” Holomisa explained that homosexuality was a “condition which occurred when certain cultural rituals had not been performed but when these rituals are done they (the gay people) behave like other people in society.” He confessed, however, that he “did not know how it works for people in other cultures or people in urban areas.”

I’m not sure what “it” refers to. He failed, however, to explain the existence of homosexuals in rural or ancient African societies, despite these rituals since time immemorial.

It is important to mention Holomisa is an ANC Member of Parliament and he is also the chairman of the Portfolio Committee, to which Contralesa made this interesting submission. Oh, and did I mention that he, the inkosi, is also president of the very same Contralesa that has made this submission...to his committee...?

It is a submission from which the ANC has “distanced itself”, saying through its chief whip, Mathole Motshega, that “the ANC has noted with concern the utterances of Holomisa and will be meeting with him to discuss this issue”.

Motshega insisted in his response to these utterances that “section 9 of the Constitution was one of the core values of the Constitution and at no stage was this issue up for debate in the ANC’s caucus.”

Interestingly, in the same interview with the Sunday newspaper, Holomisa also revealed that there was contention about other issues within the ANC’s caucus and named the Protection of State Information Bill, better known as the Secrecy Bill, as an example of such disagreement. Yes, if your head is spinning at what seems to be a convoluted mess of confusion, incongruence and organisational incest, I can’t blame you. The ANC really needs to get its house in order. Broad church or not, this is getting ridiculous!

What is more disturbing than Holomisa and Contralesa’s position on what he calls the “condition” of homosexuality is that this bigoted ignorance is peddled as somehow representative of the traditional values of the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa and perhaps Africa. It is conveniently presented as an authentically “African” worldview, to cunningly suggest that any other understanding of this issue is somehow “unAfrican”. This is nothing less than subtle cultural extortion by a band of aristocrats clamouring for relevance and survival. They use the lack of education and exposure of their “subjects” to steal the identity of millions for personal gain.

In his Sunday Times column, Mondli Makhanya brilliantly expresses the same frustration on yet another issue hijacked by cultural gangsters. He writes: “There is this very strange thing that happens when someone dies. Their sins, shortcomings and weaknesses suddenly vanish. They become paragons of virtue and get turned into valiant heroes. Thieves, murderers and whores (of both genders) become saints. While this is not specific to any culture, in our country we are told that it is ‘unAfrican’ to speak ill of the dead. In this way culture is used to blackmail us all into whitewashing the legacies of those who did bad things while they lived.”

It is this suppression of truth by aristocrats who wish to impose a convenient identity on the masses which must be exposed.

The African identity has become hotly contested terrain in recent years. It has graduated from being the most undesirable of identities, in the old SA and before, to being the most powerful political currency in the hands of skilful pundits in the new SA - particularly those who have appointed themselves “custodians and protectors” of this identity.

Perhaps it would be useful to explore the reasons for this situation. I contend that it has come about largely because of the blatant oppression that Africans have endured throughout history, for no reason other than their African-ness. The absurdity of the reasoning for so venomous and prolonged a hate for Africans, by different oppressors of every colour, including Africans themselves, is in fact the reason why African-ness has been elevated to a position of mystery and wonder. More importantly, it is the relentless, irrepressible resilience of this identity that has overcome and vanquished racism through the different struggles of African people and others, which has rendered African-ness in and of itself a noble and desirable identity. It is this trajectory and history of struggle and triumph, like a refined precious stone, that has given African-ness untold value. This value, this precious, fragile and yet rugged value, has in many instances been the very source and reason for the abuse of African-ness.

Africans, more than anyone, should understand the terror of oppression and discrimination. It was not too long ago that being African was ignorantly believed to be an aberration, an abnormality, in much the same way that some Africans are choosing to label African homosexuality an aberration today. It was politically convenient for those who labelled Africans as mistakes of nature because they could then continue unabated with the exploitation and abuse of Africans. The same is being done by the likes of Holomisa, in that they refuse to seek relevant information about homosexuality and educate themselves and those whom they claim to represent in order to keep them in the dark ages of superstition and lies.

It is convenient for them to do so in order to keep their questionable positions in dodgy institutions such as those represented by Contralesa. It is important for them to continue to blackmail all of us with this false notion of a “majority” that does not want to promote nor protect the rights of gay people. This is a red herring if ever there was one, or perhaps I should say it is a “dead snake”.

The truth is, what we should be afraid of is ignorance and those who promote it as truth, not the “majority”. It is convenient for the Contralesas of this world to keep us afraid so that we can perpetually pay a “protection fee” to them. This is a “shakedown” of huge proportions. This is nothing less than the theft of a people’s identity for personal convenience.

What have homosexuals done to you or me that they should not be protected under our Constitution or law? What would Contralesa have happen to homosexuals in order to give expression to their submission to the portfolio committee? Who do the members of Contralesa really represent, politically? Who elected them as traditional leaders? Why do my taxes and those of homosexual South Africans pay for institutions such as traditional houses when I do not subscribe to notions of tribalism and aristocracy? Surely, those who believe in these institutions should fund them, not the national fiscus? What is their real duty other than ceremonial appearances here and there? Do these traditional leaders really deserve the huge salaries they earn when their so-called “subjects” are subjected to such poverty and repression? Why do we continue to support enclaves of outdated systems of oppression within a democratic, progressive and egalitarian society?

It is the right of anyone in this country to have an opinion on any matter, however uninformed and offensive it may be. That is the freedom of a constitutional democracy. What is wrong and reprehensible is the presentation of that opinion as though it is divine fact, universally representative of a people when it is clear that a selfish political agenda is being pursued.

I am an African, I owe this identity to no one accept Providence. As such I do not need to be told how to be an African by dubious entities and individuals. My identity as an African is not determined by their presence or absence. It is inalienable, like being human or gay. I take exception to the thought that Africans are doomed to remaining hostages of archaic ideas and superstitions by such groups as Contralesa. These ideas facilitate the oppression and enslavement of Africans to obsolete “traditional” ideologies, which are out of sync with modern realities.

I take serious exception to the use of the African identity by unscrupulous aristocratic thugs and ruling classes to oppress homosexuals, many of them Africans, throughout the continent.

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* Aubrey is a talk show host on Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape talk. This article was first published by Daily Maverick.

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Western Sahara : Realpolitik to the rescue of colonization?

Malainin Lakhal

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82897

cc C CIs it possible to cure cancer with aspirin? Can we do justice in a murder by relentlessly “assaulting” the victim's body looking for excuses to the murderer?

It may sound strange, yet it seems to be the remedy recommended by the UN, some powerful governments and "experts" when it comes to the question of Western Sahara.

How many times have we heard about the "need to find new ideas" to resolve the conflict or "a solution of no winner no looser"? And so, instead of applying international law, we are advised to tolerate abuses committed by powerful states or "protected" regimes, such as the Moroccan and the Israeli, so that they can get away with their crimes and get on top of it some benefit in hand.

In an analysis of the latest report of Ban Ki-Moon, published on the website "Affaires stratégiques.Info", dated May 29, the researcher Khadija Mohsen-Finan believes that "Morocco is deprived of the benevolence of the UN". She presented in effect the criticism this report addressed to the Moroccan position, accusing Rabat of being the source of obstacles hindering the resolution of the last conflict of decolonization in Africa.

The report indicated in fact that Rabat spies on the UN mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO; hinders the work of the UN mission and puts administrative constraints in front of its efforts; continues to violate human rights and maintains MINURSO in a position of incapacity to fulfil its initial mandate.

The report said Mrs. Mohsen-Finan "rightly wonders what is legitimate and what is legal in the action of Morocco in the Sahara, as it challenges us on the credibility of the UN mission..."

All this is true, and one can even say that this "sudden awareness" of the UN is very late, if we take into account the statements and criticism made since the 1990s by US Ambassador Frank Ruddy, Mr. Johans Manz (cited in the analysis of Khadija Mohsen-Finan) or Mr. Francisco Bastagli and other ex-officials and soldiers of MINURSO, who denounced those obstacles put by Morocco but fail to get any kind of response or reaction from the international organisation.

But this is not the purpose of this article. What seems really vague, just to avoid saying "fishy", is this new tendency of developing "new ideas" and introducing new “terminology” and “propositions”, which certainly do not help to find the solution of the conflict, or may even make it more complicated, because they are turning attention away from real problems and seek to heal a "cancer of occupation" with "aspirin" that aim to calm the claims of an occupied and oppressed people.

BOUNDARIES OF THE MANDATE OF THE POLISARIO

The first of these ideas that began to appear in analysis and even in UN reports is nothing less than the attempt to propagate that the question of Western Sahara is a "sovereignty issue". This is a misconception, if at all innocent, since sovereignty over Western Sahara is "the exclusive competence of its people."

International law has recognized the people’s exclusive right to exercise sovereignty over their territories and recognized them as the ultimate authority holding this competence. Since 1963, Western Sahara was recognized as a “Non-Self-Governing territory" where the "people of Western Sahara” alone have this right to sovereignty over their land. Furthermore, all the claims of Morocco in Western Sahara have been denied by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1975, by the General Assembly of the UN and by other international bodies when all of them recognized to the Sahrawis the “inalienable right to self-determination".

On the other hand, we should remember the legal opinion of the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Counsel, Hans Corell, according to whom Morocco "does not even have the status of administering power in Western Sahara". That is to say that the Moroccan presence in this territory is a simple and bold act of illegal occupation following a military aggression.

Normally, the Saharawi question should be treated under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, if it was not the opposition of France that is keeping it debated under Chapter Six.

The second dangerous idea is nothing other than proposing "to associate the components of the Saharawi people in the negotiations" on the future of Western Sahara! This is a very attractive idea, as attractive as the repeated quote of "Arab Spring" in current UN documents, in the Security Council or the Council of Human Rights; even dictatorships start talking about Arab Spring!! The idea of associating “other components of Saharawi people” with negotiation was first proposed by Van Walsum, and then used by Ban Ki-moon in his latest reports, but also by Morocco, which is the last to be concerned about enabling peoples’ participatory democracy.

The aim of this idea is nothing more than trying to question the legitimacy of representativeness of the Polisario Front to the Saharawi people.

Moreover, it seems that the UN is not very “comfortable” in its mediation because Polisario refuses to give up defending the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination. The liberation movement is even accused of being rigid in this position! But the real question should normally be whether it can be less rigid when it comes to defending a people’s right to freedom.

The Polisario Front was created by the Saharawi people in 1973 as their legitimate representative and was mandated (by this people) to struggle by all possible and legitimate means for the liberation of the Saharawi territory. It is not mandated to ensure that the aggressor gets out of this expansionist "adventure" with a part of the cake, to simplify the so-called "realist" analysis of "experts" who keep advising the Sahrawis to be reasonable, pragmatic and play by the rules of “realpolitik”.

The task of the Polisario Front is not just to exercise a political mandate on behalf of its people, but also, and most difficult, to focus on the defense of international law and legality, and to fight for the respect of international humanitarian law. Because in the end, the right to self-determination is initially “a human right” and a constituting principle of the UN Charter, and if Polisario looses this fight, other people will loose it tomorrow when stronger regimes decide to break international law and invade smaller peoples, as Morocco is doing now in total impunity.

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* Malainin Lakhal is a Sahrawi journalist in exile in Algeria. He is the Secretary General of UPES: Sahrawi Journalists and Writers Union. The UPES website – in Spanish, English and Arabic – is available at: http://www.upes.org

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South African youth wage subsidy a false solution

Democratic Left Front press statement, 9-11 June 2012

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82929

cc K TA meeting of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) in South Africa discussed a proposed youth wage subsidy, the crisis of democracy, organising women and building the movement.

Gathered in Johannesburg for the 2nd National Steering Committee Meeting of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) for 2012, representatives from different parts of the country met from 9 - 11 June and assessed the current global situation, the political and economic challenges facing South Africa, grassroots struggles and progress in building the DLF.

The meeting highlighted South Africa’s unemployment crisis as a national emergency. As a direct result of our colonial and apartheid past as well as post-apartheid capitalism, this unemployment crisis is leaving a trail of hunger, poverty, anger and misery. ANC policies sustain the capital intensive development path and guarantee massive profits for employers. As data from the Reserve Bank shows, between 2000 to 2010 workers have lost R480 billion in income. This income has gone to the bosses and has not resulted in more jobs being created. Much of it has been exported out of the country in dividends and profit. The wealthy elite refuse to concede a single inch to the urgent needs of the majority. Yet, the ANC government fails to put forward transformative economic policies that can systematically and structurally transform the economy and create sustainable decent jobs. The public infrastructure programme announced by the Zuma government is an example of ANC policy failures as it is based on sustaining a mining-dependent, export-oriented and financialised economy that exploits and marginalises the majority. The infrastructure projects will have extremely limited outcomes when it comes to social benefits, job creation and transition to a low-carbon economy. We cannot continue on this path. We need solutions that address the deep systemic and structural causes of unemployment.

OUR RESPONSE TO THE YOUTH WAGE SUBSIDY

The emotive DA propaganda for a youth wage subsidy fails to address the real causes of unemployment. It takes attention away from the required action to address unemployment. It is part of the continuing neoliberal onslaught against decent work. The youth wage subsidy proposal scapegoats labour for the crisis of unemployment. It is a deliberate move to divide the formally employed and unemployed. It is a false solution to the crisis of youth unemployment. It is a direct insult to the unemployed.

As ILO research shows, youth wage subsidies reinforce increased profitability and do not result in any job creation. In essence the youth wage subsidy scheme is nothing more than a subsidy to capital for cheap labour. It will not restructure the economy away from capital intensity and towards labour intensity.

The DLF calls for the sustained mobilisation of unemployed youth and other unemployed people to expose the youth wage subsidy as a false solution and to demand effective programmes for employment, quality education and skills development. As a direct outcome of the DLF’s current Listen to the People Campaign, the DLF is working with various unemployed people’s organisations to build an effective mass campaign against unemployment and for the Right to Work. We call on all progressive forces in South Africa to join this mass campaign. Concretely, this campaign is being built around these demands:

1. Scaling down of South Africa’s carbon-intensive economy through the creation of 1 million clean, renewable energy-climate jobs;

2. Provision of a guaranteed basic living income for the unemployed;

3. A proper public works programme to address the massive backlogs in housing, health, and infrastructure;

4. The filling of hundreds of thousands of vacancies in the public sector;

5. An ecologically sustainable mass public transport system for all;

6. Free basic services and decent housing for all;

7. Return ownership of the land and resources to the people to ensure control of food production to end hunger and build the solidarity economy; and

8. Free, quality education up to university level for all.

To start this sustained mass campaign, the DLF will use the June 16 Youth Day to hold mass events that will mobilise young people in Khayelitsha, Robertson (Western Cape), Soweto, Umlazi, and Grahamstown.

SOUTH AFRICA’S DEEPENING CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY

As if the economic crisis, South Africa’s young democracy is increasingly under threat by ANC rule. Increasing state violence against civil society, ANC factionalism, ANC manipulation of the judicial services commission, power struggles to control the state security apparatus, massive corruption (the most recent being revelations about ANC politicians involved in kickbacks for the Gautrain). Revelations are also emerging about the involvement of the ANC’s investment arm in Shell’s proposed fracking scheme for the Karoo and the nuclear energy programme. In this context, there are increasing moves to tighten control of COSATU through ensuring COSATU is locked into the NEC of the ANC.

Instead of the SACP taking up more fundamental transformative challenges facing the working class and poor, it is actively unleashing authoritarian populism as demonstrated by how it rallied against Brett Murray’s painting of President Jacob Zuma. This ‘cheer leader’ role of the SACP for Zuma is a diversion from real working class struggles required to change this country. Beyond these, other attacks on democratic rights have come from socially conservative forces as can be seen in the call by traditional leaders for the removal of the protection of gay rights in the country’s constitution.

Part of the answer to South Africa’s crisis of democracy is a vibrant mass movement and civil society. This is reflected in various grassroots struggles on service delivery, ongoing struggles to secure a ‘public interest’ clause in the infamous ‘Secrecy Bill’, opposition from communities to the anti-democratic Traditional Courts Bill, NGO action to secure education resources for schools and COSATU’s opposition to e-tolls. As the DLF we stand in solidarity with these struggles and call on all South Africans to strengthen these struggles.

THE GLOBAL SITUATION

The unemployment crisis in South Africa is part of a broader crisis of global capitalism that is worsening as reflected in the on-going turmoil in the Euro-zone, economic slowdown in China (including the real possibility of the China bubble bursting), and the impacts of its secondary effects register in other parts of the world. Despite this the global ruling classes are not willing to surrender their dogmatic faith in neoliberal globalisation, including its ‘social democratic variants’, as the way forward to solve this crisis. Their responses continue to look for new ways to sustain profits for a few and misery for the majority. Africa in this context is merely another site for a greater scramble for its mineral and other natural resources.

Hence the emergence of resistance from the streets in different parts of the world starting with the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. This resistance has now extended to mass protests in Nigeria and Malawi, student rebellions in Chile and Quebec, and significant left challenges to the political system in Greece. The emergence of Syrizia, a new left political coalition in the Greek political scene rooted amongst the unemployed, holds out the prospect of challenging the project of neoliberal Europe. We stand in solidarity with the progressive forces at the forefront of intensifying opposition to suicidal neoliberal capitalism including citizens of Greece, Syrizia and the wider European Left as they attempt to move beyond neoliberal austerity and attempt to open the way for a post neoliberal Europe to emerge. We note at the same time the emergence of a new right wing in Europe and hence applaud efforts for greater unity amongst the Left and as reflected in the recent conference of the Left Party in Germany, the largest institutional left party in Europe.

ORGANISING WOMEN

South Africa has made great strides in advancing the role of women in leadership in society and around the rights of women. However, despite this the conditions facing women are worsening. Sexual assaults, violence, inadequate health care, poverty and unemployment amongst other factors increase patriarchal control and gender oppression. The rise of social conservatism also worsens the position of women. Homophobia is also strongly related to women’s worsening conditions. This deepening oppression of women is a direct consequence of the economic and social crisis in our country. The DLF is therefore actively using the mass campaign on unemployment to advance women’s struggles.

BUILDING THE DLF

The DLF is a year and half old. While it has a growing footprint in all parts of the country, this is uneven and in some instances not deeply rooted. Various grassroots affiliates are engaging in struggles around service delivery, for land, against electricity price increases, against pollution and for jobs. As we build the DLF we seek to build capacities, campaigns and intensify our efforts to advance a strategic democratic left politics. A key moment in this will be the holding of the next DLF national conference in the first quarter of 2013. We call on all progressive South Africans to join the DLF in order to reclaim our democracy and make another South Africa possible.

ENDS

FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:

Brian Ashley – 082 085 7088

Mazibuko K. Jara – 083 651 0271

Vishwas Satgar – 082 75 3420

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India and her Afro-Indians

Okello Oculi

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82935

cc K NA glimpse of the African side of India shows people with severe psychotic problems apparently related to their poverty and intense subjection to racist contempt.

June 3, 2012 brought much grief in the awareness of Nigerians about India. An Indian- owned aircraft carrying 153 passengers and crew fell from the sky, only eleven kilometres from the runway. About twenty minutes after it had hit a tree and a house and dove into the ground below, it burst into flames. All those inside the plane died from injuries and the fire. Although these deaths came after a series of bomb blasts by urban guerrilla units known as “Boko Haram” (or education has not ensured us employment), had killed over one thousand victims blown up in churches, mosques, markets, and along roads, across northern Nigeria, the vulnerability and speed of air travel gave it high visibility and immediacy. Profiles of passengers such as the family of nine who died on their way to a wedding; a top executive mother who died with a son she was accompanying to sit a university entry examination; a mother who died holding on to her baby, have fanned pain in the hearts and minds of the general public.

This tragic crash has come just as Nigeria’s media has moved away from reporting a war by the National Drug agency against a flood of fake pharmaceutical drugs coming into Nigeria from India, Pakistan and China. That association of India with a chemical invasion on the lives of Nigerians has competed with the massive arrival of three-wheeled scooter motor cycles with tarpaulin shelters from rain, sun and wind-which poor urban trekkers find most valuable as a cheap means for getting around. A torrent of angry accusations about the technical raggedness of the aircraft that crashed and wasted so many lives has echoes of India being a land of criminal pharmaceutical trade with Nigeria.
On 6 June, I went to commiserate with a man who has lost his wife and a teenage son. On entering the compound, I was met by a raucous group seated under a mango tree, bantering away. They were all men in their mid-forties; almost certainly members of what the Igbo people call an “age grade” to which the man belonged. Such groups spring into a mutual aid team to support one of their own emotionally and with financial support during moments of grief, marriages and business needs. The man himself sat in the middle of his sitting room surrounded by a brother-in-law, women who are close family relations. A Quantity Surveyor who had left government work to do personal business, he looked emotionally drained but not wrapped in a shawl of self-pity. His age-mates walked in a spirit of “life-must-go-on and we must all be strong and face the task of building the future”. An elderly man who sat to my left focused his look on the bereaved man’s face and seemed to be looking for signs of strength and possible bending. He had no time for showing grief. A clergyman who had left from an all-night prayer vigil over this family tragedy and travelled by road for over seven hours from Ekiti State in the southwest of the country, read from sections of the Bible to give guidance. I liked the part where he said that in times like this the best form of communication was sitting in silence.

The following day I went to sit with a friend whose unmarried daughter had died while rushing to attend a meeting of a company that had recently employed her after graduating as a Quantity Surveyor. She was a twin. Her grieving mother would say that they should have known that danger lay ahead when her twin sister would not drive her to the airport, pleading a fatigue. In despair the young lady had considered travelling by taxi. The Guardian newspaper would carry scores of faces of lively young career women like her. As I sat with other friends who had come to show solidarity and call up regular Muslim prayers, I came upon a reflection.

It went back to my attendance of a Rockefeller Foundation residence fellowship in Bellagio Castle above Lake Como in Italy. I had asked a military general from Pakistan why of three countries (India, Nigeria and Pakistan) who shared a common British colonial memory, a rich population diversity and a strong Muslim religious culture, Pakistan and Nigeria had known pandemics of military coups, while India had enjoyed uninterrupted democratically elected governments and generations of military officers proud to live, swagger and fight wars inside their uniforms. His answer was telling. India, he said, was benefitting from its ancient caste system which gives the military their historic honour as warriors for the state for whom assuming the role of “philosopher kings” would be a historic abomination. As he talked I recalled crowds of Baganda carrying away equipments from government offices after the fall of Milton Obote’s government. Like the times of Ancient Pharaohs in Egypt, prosperity by individuals comes from the power of the reining ruler. When he or she dies, that wealth must also be spread out to all. They were bringing their world view to modern governance. Pakistan and Nigeria had no equivalent native ideology to keep at bay colonial military conquest of power.

In section 2.8 (d) of a 2009 February Draft White Paper on a report by an electoral committee in Nigeria, there is a call to emulate India’s “requisite professionalism, decency, honesty and neutrality in the management of elections”. India seems to be working well. Yet in 1975 a series of 14 documentaries filmed by a French crew had also shown another India. With each episode lasting three hours, the series had, among other wonders of India, shown the vast numbers of black African Diaspora that may have either broken away from the African continent’s landmass or, like Chinese and Portuguese travellers, sailed with monsoon winds to the Indian sub-continent. For those familiar with East Africa, similarities of ethnic types was clear. As Charles Drekmeire suggests in his book on India’s civilization and polity, the Aryan minority group in northern India had, like later racist rulers of apartheid South Africa, invented a belief system which denigrated the black colour of the African majority in order to make them weak in mind and will to seize political power.

In 2008, a series of imaginative documentaries on India by the BBC followed the Aryan line. A glimpse of the African side of India showed people with severe psychotic problems apparently related to their poverty and intense subjection to racist contempt. That episode recalled a brutal lyricism in a novel by an Indian author on the untouchable individual whose mission in life is to clean public toilets. He is in perpetual risk of being physically beaten to death for an act that makes a higher caste person and location unclean. India’s film industry, Bollywood, totally excludes the black Indian –of whatever hue – from presence, let alone stardom from the horizons of camera lenses. It is a clear case of cinematographic cultural genocide.

As Nigerians grieved from a disaster brought upon them by an airline owned and managed by citizens of India, I came to wonder if their pain could be comprehensible to a people from a culture of political and economic power that rests on the non-humanity of black skinned people. During a post-Cold War moment when Brazil, China, Russia and India are perceived as alternative hands for shaking in global economic diplomacy, it is deeply incongruous that a vast festering wound at the heart of India’s population of one billion remains untreated. South Africa’s rulers are struggling to overcome the economic costs of impoverishing their black majority. Former President Lula of Brazil touched on the matter under his programme of taking income to the poor. The diplomacy of the African Union has been derailed by a terrorism invented and fed by the Republic Party under the two George Bush’s as anti-Islamism. Accordingly it has taken pressure off the drive against colonialism and racism. The fate of the African Diaspora in India, Australia, the United States, the Caribbean and South America remains untouched, and like history, waits. As Nigerians weep and curse Danna Airways, her foreign policy warriors and “human rights activists” should also lift their eyes and ears to see and hear groans of hundreds of millions of the wretched of India’s earth or Afro-Indians.

And as Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem would say, do not agonise overt it, take action about it.

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How Africa can raise money through diaspora bonds

William Gumede, David Monyae and Kamo Motshidi

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82906

cc A RThe idea of issuing diaspora bonds should be considered a viable alternative to raise finance for Africa’s development.

Africa’s development plans are ambitious, but the continent and individual countries lack the money to finance them. Research by the World Bank for example shows that the funding gap to meet for Africa’s infrastructure needs only is around US$93 billion per year alone. Where is Africa going to get such finance?

In spite of the usual promises of forthcoming large trunks of development aid to Africa by industrial powers, as repeated again by G8 leaders last week, the continent must accept that this will never be forthcoming and plan accordingly. The truth is that it is unlikely that Western powers would finance Africa’s development in the same way the US financed Western Europe’s post-Second World War reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, or the US’ post-Second World War financing of East Asian reconstruction as part of its strategic objective to secure these countries against Communist influence.

Neither can Africa realistically expect that former colonial powers will compensate individual African countries for the negative impact of slavery and colonialism, in the same way that Germany after the Second World War compensated Israel for Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.

The global financial and Eurozone crises mean that industrial nations are likely to continue to dramatically cut development finance to Africa and re-channel the funds for their own internal economic reconstruction.

The collective savings of individual African citizens within African countries are also wholly inadequate to finance the continent’s development. The urgent challenge for Africa is how to innovatively diversify the way in which it raises finances for development. World Bank and International Monetary Fund figures put remittances from Africans abroad to the continent at between US$25 billion and US$34 billion a year. Unrecorded informal flows of remittances were most probably at least a third of this amount.

However, there is a need for the continent to leverage African diaspora money, including savings in the hands of African Americans in the US or Brazilians of African descent, more aggressively and innovatively for development.

The idea of issuing diaspora bonds should be considered as a viable alternative to raise finance for Africa’s development. Some of these remittances from Africans abroad could be channeled into buying such diaspora bonds, which can then be specifically used to, say, finance Africa’s infrastructure development. The great advantage of diaspora bonds is that they are sources of finance that are long-term in nature and therefore less volatile: it is usually long-dated securities redeemed only upon maturity.

Africa is perpetually perceived as the continent with the begging bowl in hand – which both locals and diaspora communities resent. A diaspora bond will be able to counter these ‘begging bowl’ notions, which reduce Africa to rely on Western or Eastern ‘charity’. Diaspora bonds may also allow Africa to circumvent the conditionalities that accompany development and investment finance from both old industrial and new emerging powers.

Israel has shown successful diaspora bonds can be leveraged as an instrument for development finance. When it issued its diaspora bonds in 1951, the Israeli government established the Development Corporation for Israel (DCI) as the authority that would issue and administer the bonds. Although the diaspora bond was targeted at the Israeli diaspora, it was not limited to them alone.

The DCI was registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), meaning that the bonds could be traded like any other listed securities. Israel’s diaspora bonds were relatively flexible, providing different investment offerings, depending on what the market required or dictated at the time.

Through the DCI issuance of the Israeli diaspora bonds, over US$32 billion has been raised for development in Israel, particularly for infrastructure development in the transport, energy, water and telecommunications sectors. The Israel diaspora bonds issued by the DCI were fixed, floating rate bonds and notes with maturity periods ranging from 1 to 20 years with bullet repayment.

The Israeli diaspora bonds presented a large patriotic discount, and other financial incentives included Israel making its interest rate slightly higher than US Treasury-bills. To make the bonds more accessible, the DCI established a selling agency of the bonds in the US (considering that of the 7.5 million Jewish diaspora, 6 million reside in the US) and in selected other countries.

India is another example of the successful use of diaspora bonds. The Indian diaspora bonds differed from the Israeli model in that the bonds were issued to support India’s balance of payments in 1991, 1998 and 2000. Through the State Bank of India (SBI), bonds known as the India Development Bonds (IDBs - $1.6 billion), Resurgent India Bonds (RIBs - $4.2 billion), and India Millennium Deposits (IMDs - $5.5 billion), an estimated total of $11.3 billion was raised. India chose to make these fixed rate bonds with a five year maturity also with bullet maturity.

The India diaspora bonds were strictly only issued to Indian diaspora and sales were limited only to investors of Indian origin and heritage. India chose not to register its bonds with any securities’ exchange, contrary to what Israel did with theirs. It is estimated that there are 20 million Indian diaspora communities with strong religious, cultural, professional and political networks. The Indian government created a body that would focus specifically on liaising with the Diaspora. To incentivize the purchasing of bonds, India made their bond interest rates two percent higher than US Treasury-bills. In addition, there were tax exemption provisions made from Indian income and wealth tax.

Lastly, a number of Middle Eastern countries have recently issued Islamic bonds, which target people of that religion, rather than specific country diaspora. Such bonds are typically structured as asset-backed securities, with medium-term maturity. Investors share the profits of the proceeds. Islamic laws (Sharia) prohibit receiving or paying interests. An example of an Islamic bond is the Bahrain Monetary Agency bond issued in 2001, which had three- and five-year maturities.

What would be the key obstacles to successfully issuing an Africa diaspora bond for development finance purposes? Firstly, generally poor governance, lack of democracy and appalling incidents of mismanagement by individual African governments mean potential African diaspora investors may be wary. This will clearly have to change.

Early efforts by the African Development Bank to explore African bonds that would be guaranteed by African central banks have also met with little success, precisely because many individual African central banks are poorly governed and lack credibility.

Furthermore, in spite of the rhetoric African countries have generally not banded together at a continental level for common development purposes – this will have to change. Yet, credible individual, regional and continental development finance institutions, such as the Mauritius Development Bank, Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the African Development Bank, are institutions that have successfully issued bonds – and can club together to issue and guarantee an African diaspora bond.

* This is an extract of a policy briefing paper for the 1st Global Africa Diaspora Summit in Johannesburg, 25 May 2012, in Johannesburg.

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* William Gumede is Honorary Associate Professor, Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand. David Monyae and Kamo Motshidi are independent development analysts.

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Soccer, an expression of love and hope

Ayanda Kota

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/82905

cc S MThe president's address to the Makana Local Football Association, Zondani Townhall, Grahamstown, Saturday 9 June 2012.

James Kiawoin, a Liberian first-year student at Colorado College, recently wrote:

“George Weah and his colleagues represented hope for Liberia during the peak of the civil war and bragging rights for Liberians whose identities were pegged to the brutal scenes relayed on the international media. Despite the financial hardship that plagued the nation, Liberians would flood the national stadium to watch their team play and many people were glued to their radios on the weekends to join in the spectacle that occurred in Monrovia.

“After every match, the city would not sleep because people would be up all nights in bars celebrating the unending victories. There were countless songs and T-shirts made to celebrate the team’s heroic performances and every Liberian (no exaggeration) knew the structure of the team. The team made it possible for Liberians to put aside their differences for ninety minutes and proclaim the greatness of their nation. The players received grand welcomes every time they came for international duties or won an away game.”

Football has a great capacity to lift the spirits of the people. Around the world oppressed people have taken great heart from their football teams and the sport has some of its most dedicated participants and supporters amongst oppressed communities. There are many men and women from very poor communities, like the shacks of Rio and Sao Paulo, who have made their mark on the global game.

We all know how important football was to the activists imprisoned on Robben Island. It was about exercise, about keeping their minds and bodies sharp and, we are told, a way for the different political factions to learn to work together.

Football is also played in Palestine. Mahmoud Sarsak was a rising star of Palestinian football until his arrest by the Israeli state. He has since been held without trial or charge. He is one of a handful of Palestinian prisoners who have rejected a deal that ended a mass hunger strike on 14 May. Under the deal, Israel agreed to end solitary confinement for 19 prisoners – held in isolation for up to 10 years – and lifted a ban on family visits for prisoners from Gaza. He is still on hunger strike and is reported to be close to death. Tonight we remember Mahmoud Sarsak. Tonight we condemn SAFA for their silence on the heroic struggle of our comrade in Palestine.

I found this biography of Diegeo Maradona on the internet:

“Diego Armando Maradona was born on October 30, 1961 in Villa Fiorito, Argentina. During his childhood in the shacks of Villa Fiorito outside Buenos Aires, Maradona dreamed of becoming a great soccer player. His family was poor. His father, a bricklayer and factory worker, struggled to provide for three boys, five girls, and his stay-at-home wife. Poverty was not a deterrent to success, however. Maradona was given his first soccer ball by his cousin, Beto Zarate, on his third birthday. Young Diego slept with the ball that night. By the age of nine, he had learned to play soccer, and came to the attention of Francis Cornejo, coach of the Cebollitas or Little Onions - the youth team of Argentinos Jrs. While he was with the Little Onions, they won 140 straight games. In 1972, he led Los Cebollitas to a junior championship. The team gave him a high compliment - jersey number 10 - the same number worn by the legendary soccer star, Pele. From 1976 to 1980, the teenage Maradona played for Argentinos Juniors. Before the end of the first season, the team became Maradona's team, and the stadiums were always full. The Argentinos Juniors were winning against the best teams, and his future looked limitless.”

Maradonna was not the only boy born to a working class or poor family who found that football opened his world. Carlos Taves was born in shack in Argentina to a poor family. Benni McCarthy was born on the Cape Flats in Cape Town. The Cape Flats is associated with drugs and gangsterism. It is one of the dumping places that are used to turn poor people into waste and rubbish in a racist and capitalist society.

But look what has come out of such places! Look what has come out of these places because of love and hope! Look how these boys have flourished because of the love and sacrifice of their families, because of local football clubs and their own will to make something of their lives!

It is a great tragedy that SAFA fails to properly support families and communities as we use football to build our communities and to give our young people something to look forward to and to be part of. Football has been captured by capital in South Africa. We need to resist this. The beautiful game should belong to the people. The money that comes in must go to development and not private profit.

Tonight we celebrate football in Grahamstown. We celebrate each of the 24 teams in our local league. We celebrate our unity. We celebrate our organisation. We celebrate all the young people that have committed themselves to their teams, all their hard work and all their energy. We celebrate the love and hope and dedication that has bought you all this far.

The great African revolutionary Frantz Fanon said that: “Every generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” Our mission goes beyond building and sustaining a vibrant football league in Grahamstown. Our mission includes building a Grahamstown, and Eastern Cape and a country in which every young person can flourish and grow. Football is just one part of this. I salute you all. Let us enjoy tonight, enjoy our football and strengthen ourselves for the struggles ahead.

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* Ayanda Kota is the spokesperson for the Unemployed People’s Movement, Grahamstown.

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Bringing the U.S. before the International Criminal Court

Amadi Ajamu

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82933

On June 18, a Pan-African delegation will deliver a petition to The Hague, Netherlands, demanding that the International Criminal Court prosecute the US, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and NATO for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This delegation maintains that the ICC has become another weapon in the Western countries' campaign to recolonize Africa and African people.

According to human rights attorney Roger Wareham, “The crimes we are charging them with were committed during: the NATO invasion of Libya and the overthrow and assassination of Libya's Col. Muammar Gaddafi; the US-led overthrow of Haiti's duly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004; the French military intervention that resulted in the capture and arrest of President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast; the institutional racism the US inflicts upon its Black population, particularly reflected in racial profiling, stop & frisk, and incarceration rates; the sanctions campaign designed to punish President Robert Mugabe for returning the land stolen by white settlers to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe.”

This campaign to the ICC began on May 19, 2011 when the December 12th Movement and several organizations (the Nation of Islam, CEMOTAP, WADU, AAPRP) which had gathered to celebrate Malcolm X's birthday pledged to hold a "Millions March in Harlem" rally to protest US/NATO bombing of Libya, attacks on Zimbabwe and the racist US assault on Black folks. The hugely successful rally was held on August 13 and was followed up with an historic International People's Tribunal at Columbia University Law School on January 14, 2012. The judges at the IPT, attorneys Lennox Hinds, David Comissiong and Rosemari Mealy found that the evidence presented made a prima facie case of crimes committed. It is the IPT findings which serve as the basis for the papers which the delegation will submit to the ICC on the morning of June 18.

That afternoon the delegation will hold a conference, "The ICC and the Task of Ending NATO's Immunity for War Crimes," at Erasmus University in The Hague. It will look at the institutional racist bias of the ICC – in its 10 years of existence the only cases being prosecuted are against Africans - and how participants can push forward the campaign to prosecute the NATO countries for their international crimes.

December 12th Movement Chairperson Viola Plummer said, “at the conference we will address the key role which the demand for reparations plays in our battle to defeat the Western campaign to recolonize Africa and Africans.” Presenters at the conference include, attorney David Comissiong of the Clement Payne Movement (Barbados), Baffour Ankomah, editor of New African Magazine, Mireille Fanon, President of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and expert on the UN Working Group on People of African Descent (France); attorney Richard Harvey, international law specialist (UK); Min. Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam; Viola Plummer, Chair of the December 12th Movement; and attorney Roger Wareham, International Secretary General of the International Association Against Torture and December 12th member.

Again Viola Plummer, “This campaign continues the task Malcolm X left us to take our situation to the international arena. Upon the group's return from the Hague, we will, as usual, hold a community report back on what occurred and which way forward.”

Call for coordinated international protest against restart of Ohi nuclear power plant

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/82912

Dear Friends,

Japanese Prime Minister Noda has announced his decision to order the restart two nuclear reactors in the town of Ohi in the prefecture of Fukui in Western Japan. He also claimed that nuclear energy will remain an important source of energy for Japan in the future, thereby reconfirming Japan’s nuclear energy policy.

Despite all our efforts, despite the strong resistance in the region of Western Japan surrounding Ohi, and despite the fact that majority of the Japanese people are against nuclear power, the Japanese government is bowing to pressures of the nuclear lobby in Japan. We have tried hard on our own, but now we believe that coordinated international pressure on the government is essential to bring on real and substantial change. We believe that the Japanese government and the Japanese public will react very sensitively to international pressure, so we wish to ask you for your support to initiate and coordinate international protest against the Japanese government.

Specifically we suggest the following action within the following days (preferably on Wednesday to Friday this week / June 13~15, 2012):

1. Please assemble in front of the Japanese embassies in your capital to voice your protest against the decision and policy of Prime Minister Noda

2. Please try to submit a letter of protest -addressed to Prime Minister Noda- to the Japanese Ambassador in your country and request the Japanese Ambassador to forward this letter of protest to the Japanese Prime Minister

3. Please try to seek coverage of this action by your local and international media, especially Japanese media, as well as on the Internet

4. Please give us notice about your planned action, so we can organize a press event in Japan to reinforce your message to the Japanese government.

Please note that we wish these protests to be absolutely civil and peaceful, and to fully observe the sovereign rights of the Japanese embassies abroad.

Call for Coordinated International Pressure: http://goo.gl/PHbEc

Protest Letter to Mr. Yoshihiko Noda: http://goo.gl/5Slun

We thank you for your support.


Japan, June 11th, 2012

Hideyuki BAN, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC)
Kanna MITSUTA, FoE Japan
Aileen Miok SMITH, Green Action
Daisuke SATO, No Nukes Asia Forum
Akira KAWASAKI, Peace Boat
Kaori IZUMI, Shut Tomari

Perseverance, and survival against the odds: with relevance and success?

John Saxby

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/82932

‘Against the Odds’ is a searching tribute to an important Zimbabwean non-government organization (NGO). Mary Ndlovu writes as a sympathetic critic, and her account does justice both to a complex and eventful organizational history, and to the people who made that history.[1]

The book tells the story of the Zimbabwe Project Trust. Commonly known as ZimPro, it was founded in London in 1978, and ‘came home’ in mid-1981. Its original mandate was to provide hu-manitarian and educational assistance to Zimbabweans living in camps in Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana, refugees who had fled the country as the liberation war intensified. Early in 1981, after considerable internal debate - one in which external actors weighed in as well - its trustees and staff agreed that ZimPro would relocate to Zimbabwe, to assist with the pressing task of reset-tling and reintegrating former guerrillas[2] into their new country. The book charts ZimPro’s life over the three decades which followed. It explores the evolution of its governance and management; its programs, especially its work with ex-combatants and the co-operatives they founded; its relation-ships with its funders and other supporters; its continuing negotiations with Zimbabwe’s govern-ment and political parties; and the people who made this history, those within ZimPro and those outside it.

‘Against the Odds’ is an important contribution to Zimbabwe’s current history, a case study of a central actor in civil society and a story which both commands and rewards the reader’s attention. Its primary audience will obviously be Zimbabweans at home and in the diaspora, and other read-ers with experience and interest in the country and its people. Beyond this audience, however, the book deserves to be read by a wider public of activists and development workers in Africa and elsewhere. For these, it offers thoughtful insights on broader themes. This commentary is drawn from experience which has sometimes been painful - Zimpro’s immersion in the often problematic interplay between government and civil society, for example, and in the tricky relationships be-tween civil society organizations (CSOs) from the North and the South.

The book is well-written, its language clear and accessible. Measured in tone, it nonetheless con-veys the intense feelings and convictions and the strong personalities within and surrounding Zim-Pro. It is the history of an organization, obviously, but the author offers the reader a close apprecia-tion of the personal stories tied up with the institutional account. These cover an enormous range, from the heroic to the bizarre. They include the energy and commitment which so many staff mem-bers brought to the organization; the urgent and distressing problems faced by the ex-combatants to whom Zimpro was trying to respond, and their often remarkable achievements; and the actions of an array of external intervenors, both supporters and meddlers.

It is a complicated story, with an extensive cast of actors - the list of acronyms alone covers a page and a half, and more could have been added. ZimPro has gone through a welter of organizational phases, plans, and shifts in strategy since 1981, often overlapping and sometimes divergent. Any-one lacking a fairly detailed knowledge of the organization might have difficulty keeping it all straight. The story is presented in 26 compact chapters in chronological sequence; of necessity, these occasionally overlap. Each is built around a theme or issue, and covers a short span of time, usually two or three years. This helps the reader considerably by making the story manageable. Even so, a few graphic timelines would be useful additions - perhaps including one with an overall periodization, from 1978 to 2011, and others presenting shorter phases of the story in more detail.

The author’s initial note on sources highlights the uneven documentary record. Most of the docu-mentation from the years in London (1978-81) appears to have been lost. Key sources of aggre-gate data and related analyses, such as final reports from evaluations, are also often absent. In some cases, these might have been obtained via a search of donor files; but this would have been time-consuming and expensive, with no guarantee of success. In most instances, Ndlovu has been able to assemble a thoughtful commentary by augmenting a partial documentary record with per-sonal records and interviews. This reader found, however, the absence of financial summaries made it difficult to form a clear picture of the overall scale of ZimPro’s work, and the ebb and flow of its finances. If the records are available, the book would benefit from tables in the main text or an annex with summary information on ZimPro’s overall annual revenues (including contributions from key donors) and its programming and administrative expenses.

LIFE IN THE SPOTLIGHT, AND THE BIG ISSUES CONFRONTING A PROMINENT CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATION

‘Against the Odds’ unpacks a particular Zimbabwean experience in compelling fashion - but also, as suggested above, it is a case study both informed by and illuminating wider themes of contem-porary civil society. Several examples[3] show something of the immediate context and content of the book, as well as its broader relevance.

Preserving organizational independence in a highly politicized setting

Within a year of its establishment in Zimbabwe, ZimPro found itself engulfed in a bitter conflict over its political independence and relations with the national government. At issue was its distance from, or alignment with, the ZANU government of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe or ZAPU, the op-position party led by Joshua Nkomo.[4] It was a highly charged time, and any organization closely involved with ex-combatants (as was ZimPro) would have found it extremely difficult to maintain a non-partisan position. Ndlovu devotes a chapter to a storm that nearly sank the organization. Members of its steering committee, a body located between the Board of Trustees and the staff, argued that Judith Todd, ZimPro’s Director, was a ZAPU sympathizer and a security risk. They sought to remove her as Director, and to reconstitute the management committee to include repre-sentatives of government ministries. The account describes behind-the-scenes conversations with government ministers, and a clutch of ministerial messages to ZimPro about Ms Todd’s position. The question was finally resolved in her favour early in 1983 by none other than Robert Mugabe himself, who confirmed that she was not a security risk.

ZimPro was able to draw on some formidable resources to see it through this crisis - Chapter Five of ‘Against the Odds’ details these - but as Ndlovu rightly notes in her conclusion to this episode, the political pressures on, and within, civil society at this time were ‘harbingers of things to come’ in the 1990s and beyond. The issue has if anything been sharpened, and the stakes heightened, and not only in Zimbabwe. CIVICUS’ recent ‘State of Civil Society 2011’ points to diminishing political space in many countries - even a state backlash against social movements and activists - in the wake of that year’s extraordinary civic protests which shook and even toppled authoritarian re-gimes.[5]

What does effective governance look like?

The human drama of this crisis, and its resolution at the highest levels, both exposed and - be-cause of the profile of the actors - obscured another issue. This was the quality of governance in ZimPro. ‘Against the Odds’ explores this issue at some length, both in the chapter immediately fol-lowing the 1982-83 conflict, and across the ensuing years. The book’s examination of the question addresses organizational governance at the level of the Board of Trustees, as well as its executive dimension, the management of ZimPro. Numerous sub-issues arise from its three decades of ex-perience. A few of these serve to highlight their complexity and the risks they may pose.

Through much of the story, ZimPro’s Board of Trustees - the body legally responsible for the orga-nization - seems to live a shadowy existence, emerging from time to time and then receding from view. ‘Getting it right’ in defining and implementing the proper roles of a Board, and its relationship with staff members, especially the Executive Director, is of paramount importance; and in the case of ZimPro, both Trustees and staff appear to have left matters unattended for too long. The pres-ence and actions of the management committee show the problems which can arise from ill-defined or undefined roles and powers, especially at strategic levels. The role of the management committee vis-à-vis both trustees and staff appears to have been informal-advisory, but with no clear boundaries or weight. It seems incredible that members of an advisory committee should be in a position to use informal power to make critical shifts in the position and purpose of the organi-zation and to change its Director. As it turned out, the Director’s reserves of informal power - her tenacity and her personal and political connections - trumped those of the committee members.

Informal power always exists within an organization, and it can be used to positive or destructive effect. The point here, surely, is that in the absence of an active board with a duly negotiated and clearly understood role, and a similarly clear division of responsibility with management, informal power and personal agendas are likely to prevail. When this happens, organizational transparency and accountability - as difficult to achieve as they are imperative - can be seriously compromised.

Peter Drucker has argued, persuasively, that managing a voluntary organization is much more challenging than managing a for-profit corporation.[6] This is because a non-profit organization has multiple constituencies to which it must answer, without a widely accepted measure of successful performance (comparable to profit.) For a service organization such as ZimPro, structural ‘discon-nects’ in governance are all too common. Board members may not represent or engage in any sys-tematic way with those served by its programs. Its funders, ‘those who pay the freight’, may be physically and organizationally distant from both the organization and those served by its programs (in this case, Zimbabwe’s ex-combatants). In such circumstances, staff members’ operational power will typically determine the position, direction and profile of an organization. Organizational accountability may be unclear or incomplete in such conditions, or skewed towards one group of stakeholders (such as funders) at the expense of others. In these circumstances, personal connec-tions and commitments may hold an organization together - ZimPro’s experience shows the real force of informal power - but it will remain vulnerable to internal and external shocks, its longer-term sustainability jeopardized. In the event, Ndlovu’s account shows that it was not until the end of the 1990’s that ZimPro’s board really assumed the power and presence appropriate to its role as prin-cipal steward of the organization. (pp. 289-95)

Complicating ZimPro’s story is the fact that these questions of organizational governance and in-dependence overlapped with its relationships with its funders, and that these relationships in turn were embedded in the North/South power dynamics of the aid industry. As noted above, ZimPro’s management committee was at the heart of its early political crisis. A key member of that commit-tee was the country director of a major donor, an international NGO. To this reviewer, this appears to be anomalous, even extraordinary practice - on the part of the donor and the individual, obvi-ously, but also ZimPro. Did no-one see a potential conflict of organizational loyalty and responsibil-ity? How and to whom can an individual in such a position be held accountable, especially in a set-ting where the role and membership of the committee is ill-defined?[7]

A different type of donor relationship - more common, less fraught and on the whole less conflict-ual, but in the final analysis also profoundly unhealthy - is woven through the book as well. From its earliest days in Zimbabwe, ZimPro counted the Dutch organization NOVIB[8] as one of its most loyal donors and supporters. For nearly two decades, NOVIB regularly contributed substantial fund-ing to ZimPro’s core costs and its programs.[9] During the early 1990s, as the organization sought to respond to severe cost/revenue pressures by creating its own revenue-generating projects, NOVIB under-wrote this risky and ultimately problematic strategy.[10] Indeed, NOVIB had both en-couraged ZimPro to pursue this approach, and loaned it the substantial investment funds required. Like so many other aspects of this story, there were overwhelmingly difficult extenuating circum-stances at work here (not least among them the structural adjustment programs of the International Financial Institutions of the time, which drove Zimbabwe into a deep recession.) Nevertheless, ZimPro’s investments were too often poorly conceived and managed, and were a drain on its fi-nances, rather than a support. Ndlovu observes that the relationship with NOVIB, open-ended and fruitful for both for many years, even vital to ZimPro’s survival - had by 1999 become an unhealthy dependency (pp. 285-86). By this point, NOVIB was questioning ZimPro’s decisions and directions in a way that it had not done before; ZimPro in turn resented what it saw as criticism and pressure. Ultimately, the relationship reached an impasse, and NOVIB withdrew as a donor, with several is-sues and claims unresolved.[11]

Two sub-issues stand out here. One is the difficulty facing any civil society organization which seeks to build an independent revenue base in a poor country - a challenge made vastly more diffi-cult by Zimbabwe’s prolonged economic disaster. In such circumstances, secondly, a service orga-nization such as ZimPro is likely to be substantially dependent on the tax base and gift economy of the North.[12] The task then becomes one of managing one’s place in the aid industry, its rhetoric of partnership uneasily sharing the podium with its non-negotiable logical frameworks and condi-tionality.[13] ‘Against the Odds’ shows that ZimPro has struggled to come to terms with this latter challenge. This is especially so in the last ten to fifteen years, as donors have made more stringent demands for planning, results and reporting, while reverting to the shorter-term funding practices of 30 and 40 years ago.

Finally, what does ‘Against the Odds’ say about ZimPro’s effectiveness? Answering the ‘So what?’ question also requires scrutinizing the quality and relevance of ZimPro’s programming. The short answer to our question is that there is no short answer. From the mid-1980’s, ZimPro regularly as-sessed its three-year plans. The book identifies eight major evaluations organized by ZimPro and its funders. These included both reviews of specific programs and more comprehensive institutional assessments. Most were initiated by ZimPro; others reflected donors’ own obligations, or their pre-occupations with ZimPro’s strategic direction and financial circumstances. The documentary record here is unfortunately quite uneven, with several final reports unavailable in full.[14] Nonetheless, key elements of a picture do emerge.

A blunt summary assessment of some of ZimPro’s key programs and strategies in the 1980’s and 1990s would not be very positive:

- Its education and training programs reached thousands of ex-combatants. ZimPro’s efforts pro-vided literacy, academic and practical education to men and women who were hungry for learning, but often had had very limited schooling. And, they did so at a time when ZimPro was often the only available source of such support. Yet it has not been possible to assess the longer-term bene-fits of all this activity to the individuals involved, their families and their communities. This is due to the fact that by the mid-1990s, most of those who had taken part in ZimPro’s education and training programs were no longer members of their co-operatives, or the co-operatives themselves had folded.

- By 1987, when ZimPro commissioned an evaluation of its Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) for the co-operatives, many were in dire economic straits, and those borrowing from the Fund were very much in arrears. So, the RLF was not replenishing itself, and many co-operatives were on the verge of failure; the effects of the Economic Structural Adjustment Program in the early 1990’s would mean the end for most of them. The RLF, intended to be a self-sustaining financial tool to promote self-reliance, fell short on both counts.

- ZimPro’s own revenue-generating strategy of the 1990s showed few successes. Most projects lacked effective management, and some were ill-conceived from the start. The investment portfolio as a whole was a drain on ZimPro’s resources, diverting money and energy away from its social programming. Institutional evaluations in the 1990s highlighted this serious problem, and it eventu-ally proved to be the rock on which ZimPro’s relationship with NOVIB foundered.

Evaluators typically challenged ZimPro to respond to such assessments by focusing its programming more clearly and narrowly, being more selective and rigorous in its criteria and choices, and clearer about its objectives and expected results. These messages were not new. A US-based NGO, PACT, had highlighted such questions as early as 1983. And indeed, by the early 2000s, ZimPro had managed to set out a more limited thematic focus for its programming - working with marginalized rural and urban communities to promote food security and public health and hygiene, and integrating into all its programs a response to the continuing HIV/AIDS pandemic. At the same time, the organization had mastered the Results-Based Management (RBM) language and scrip-ture sufficiently to satisfy both NGO and official donors.

Yet, these summary assessments and prescriptions are surely too blunt. All of this commentary -valid enough as far as it went - never seemed to pose or answer a deeper question: what would be an appropriate objective and measure of success for ZimPro? That is, what could ZimPro, an NGO, reasonably expect to achieve in a policy environment which was at best unhelpful, sometimes ac-tively hostile (with respect to ex-combatants in the 1980s, for example); or in a nationwide reces-sion which was triggered by ESAP and extended into the economic implosion of the 2000’s; or in-deed within a global pattern where small businesses fail more often than not? What might ZimPro reasonably hope to achieve with only the limited money, people and skills of an NGO to deploy in such circumstances? ‘Doing less’, or ‘Concentrating rather than dispersing efforts and resources’, may seem like self-evidently wise counsel, but there are precious few examples of successful prac-tice against which to compare Zimpro’s shortcomings.

It is also fair to say, however, that ZimPro itself seems not to have really asked and answered these questions. It developed a strong practical and cultural reflex of responding to incessant de-mand and unpromising circumstances with ‘all hands to the pumps’, rather than by proposing and negotiating clear, modest and achievable ends with its constituencies. Thus, the 1987 evaluation of the RLF observed that the co-ops saw ZimPro as a welfare organization, and that the organization saw itself in that light as well. That said, it is always easy for a consultant or a donor representative or a book reviewer to say, in effect, that ZimPro simply had to learn to say ‘No’ - certainly easier than it is for the staff of the organization to do so. In the event, other forces made the critical deci-sion: Ndlovu points out (pp. 250-252) that ‘focusing and narrowing’ ZimPro’s programs became a much easier task in 1997. In that year, its historic constituency, the ex-combatants of the liberation war, suddenly was no longer ZimPro’s primary responsibility but rather the responsibility of the na-tional government.

Ndlovu’s last chapter ends the book on a note of measured hopefulness: against the odds, ZimPro has survived, mainly because enough people within Zimbabwe have had the necessary commit-ment and smarts, and friends outside the country as well, to ensure its survival. For them, Mary Ndlovu’s book will be invaluable. More than a tribute, it is a reservoir of lessons learned and to be learned. If we know who we are and where we’ve come from, that knowledge can only help us on the road ahead.

* John Saxby (Ottawa, Canada) can be contacted through jsaxby@magma.ca

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REFERENCES:

[1] Disclosure by the reviewer: I have known Mary Ndlovu and her family since the 1970s. During the 1980s I worked and lived in Zimbabwe, as country and regional program director of a Canadian NGO, CUSO. As part of its program of development co-operation with Zimbabweans between 1980 and 1995, CUSO provided financial and technical assistance to ZimPro and to co-operatives formed by ex-combatants.
[2] Also known at the time as “ex-combatants”, “freedom fighters” and “comrades”.
[3] The choice of these reflects the reviewer’s interests—the book offers plenty of material for other conversations.
[4] Early in 1982, the ZANU-ZAPU coalition which had governed Zimbabwe since Independence in April 1980, broke apart in dramatic fashion. Government announced the discovery of arms caches on farms owned by ZAPU, and senior leaders of ZAPU charged with treason.
[5] CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 2012, p. 10.
[6] Drucker, Managing the Non-Profit Organization, New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
[7] The fact that this arrangement pre-dates by twenty-plus years the current practice of General Budget Support, whereby donors play an explicit part in national policymaking in countries depend-ent on aid, makes neither practice defensible. The accountability problems inherent in such a set-up have been clear for years. See, for example, Mark Schacter, “Sector-Wide Approaches, Ac-countability, and CIDA: Issues and Recommendations.” Paper prepared for Policy Branch, Cana-dian International Development Agency (CIDA). Ottawa: Institute on Governance, 2001.
[8] Now OXFAM-NOVIB, a member of the OXFAM International confederation.
[9] Sums which this reviewer was unable to establish. This is an example of the data problem noted earlier.
[10] The cost/revenue squeeze was a product of declining donor grants, reduced loan repayments to ZimPro by stressed or failing co-operatives, and escalating demands for its services. ZimPro had adopted the revenue-generating strategy as part of a far-reaching reflection and re-imagining in October 1989, the “October Revolution”, as it was known. (Chapter 13, pp. 161-72)
[11] The author notes at several points in the book, that organizational records are often incom-plete, and that budget limits prevented her from visiting organizations and people to unearth more detail. The NOVIB/ ZimPro story is one major example.
[12] To borrow Alan Fowler’s phrasing. See Fowler, Striking a Balance (London: Earthscan, 1997), especially Chapter 6, “Mobilising financial Resources,” pp. 129-60.
[13] Detailed by Tina Wallace, with Lisa Bornstein and Jennifer Chapman, in The Aid Chain: Coer-cion and Commitment in Development NGOs (Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing, 2007).
[14] ZimPro’s own initiative to set up a Research and Evaluation Department, taken in 1985 in the wake of its review of its education and training work with ex-combatants, was stillborn when its di-rector was seriously injured by a car bomb in 1987. Had the Department survived, it is reasonable to think it would have preserved a full archive of reviews and evaluations.

Tikur Sew: A music video by Teddy Afro

Elyas Mulu Kiros

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/82931

Teddy Afro is a pop singer in Ethiopia who often writes and sings about timely issues and political subjects that make him stand out from other singers. His romantic songs are also equally well received. Furthermore, Teddy cleverly understands the business side of music unlike his predecessors, popular mainstream singers like him such as Tilahun Gessesse or Asnaketch Worku, who barely benefited from their creative works.

In fact, most of Ethiopia’s old school singers lived their remaining few years in poverty, some rescued by the country’s only billionaire: Sheik Al Amoudi. In contrast, Teddy is quite entrepreneurial in his musical endeavors - he understands the music business well and he knows what people want to listen to, and what he needs to do to reap what he sows and to stay on top of the market. For example, he plans very carefully when, where, and how to release his albums. Often his album release dominates the market, scaring other artists from releasing their new albums because of their fear that they may get overshadowed.

Teddy recently released his latest album, which fans have been anticipating. Upon arrival the album has received mixed reactions from the public, as expected, because of the controversial nature of the song that serves as the title of the album: Tikur Sew (Black Man). Though his fans are as supportive as always, others question Teddy’s motives.

Tikur Sew is an upbeat song and a tribute to Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, the first African leader who defeated the Italian colonial forces at the battle of Adwa in 1896, securing Ethiopia’s independence, though he compromised the region that is now an independent country, Eritrea - which stayed under Italian colonization until 1941 (the British took over in 1941 after Italy lost in WWII), and reunited with Ethiopia in 1952 under Emperor Haile Sellasie. A protracted war that lasted close to 32 years resulted in its final independence in 1993. Emperor Menelik is also criticized for brutally crushing his domestic opposition, those who fiercely resisted his expansionist policies and leadership as King of Kings or Emperor.

The song praises Empress Taytu Betul, too. She is the wife of Emperor Menelik, credited for being a powerful woman behind him. She was a key player in the battle of Adwa and the years that came after it. Other important names are also mentioned in the song such as Alula Aba Nega and Balcha Aba Nefso - both well-respected generals. Overall, the song’s aim seems to be to remind young Ethiopians of the positive aspects of our past and to celebrate the valiant patriots who aggressively fought and defended Ethiopia from becoming a colony, that, of course, excluding Eritrea, for reasons mentioned above.

This week Teddy has released the music video for Tikur Sew. The music video is by far one of the best coming out of Ethiopia. The cinematographic quality is not only well done, but it captures the mood of Ethiopia in 1896. The quote at the end of the video reads: ‘There is no future without the past.’ I wonder why they skipped the present. The past is in fact more important to the present than to the future. We look at the past to build on what has been done and to avoid repeating similar mistakes in the present - so we can have a better future. You can’t have a future without the present; both the past and the future are meaningless without it. One of the reasons why Ethiopia remains a poor and politically divided country, despite its fascinating history and natural resources, is the fact that we have yet to reconcile with the present.

The song can be viewed here.

Please be warned that the video has some graphic parts as it depicts war. Though you will see swordsmanship, which Ethiopian warriors were very good at, the video is not too graphic. Having seen The Passion of Christ or any of Hollywood’s war movies, this one is tolerable.

* Elyas Mulu Kiros blogs at www.kweschn.wordpress.com

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* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!

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Ethiopia today

Elyas Mulu Kiros

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/82939

Ghana: Two podcasts of interviews on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82972

http://bit.ly/LSiEm6

Global: UN live webcasts and Rio+20

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82985

http://bit.ly/KduvIj

Malawi: Justice Denied: Benson’s Story

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/podcasts/82945

http://bit.ly/L7vTR0

Al Bashir cornered

Gado

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/82941

Zimbabwe: Judge ‘too busy’ to rule on bail for 29 MDC-T activists

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/82976

http://www.swradioafrica.com/2012/06/15/judge-too-busy-to-rule-on-bail-for-29-mdc-t-activists/

Zimbabwe: Thousands illegally recruited into army

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/82977

http://bit.ly/Mju5ji

Egypt: Detention, virginity test forced upon woman

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82892

http://bikyamasr.com/69729/detention-virginity-test-forced-upon-woman-in-egypt-salafist-mp-indecency-case/

Egypt: Probe attacks on women, Egypt told

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82876

http://n24.cm/LVrD2h

Egypt: Tweet and blog day held against sexual harassment

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82893

http://bit.ly/KEaB8S

Global: Fight to erase women from sustainable development agenda

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/82988

http://bit.ly/Lypfjo

Africa: How close is an African criminal court?

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82917

http://bit.ly/LDni7t

Burkina Faso: Amnesty for President Compaore and predecessors

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82900

http://bit.ly/NxWJ6m

Burundi: Committee set up to probe 'extrajudicial executions'

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82920

http://bit.ly/OAGyTK

DRC: ICC seeks 30-year sentence for Congo warlord Lubanga

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82918

http://bbc.in/K1ZmYr

Gabon: Concern over detentions

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82961

http://bit.ly/MhTGLP

South Africa: Obamas' freedom of Cape Town honour divides country

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82880

http://bit.ly/N81TXF

Uganda: LRA victims rap compensation delay

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/82916

http://bit.ly/KniogE

Africa: Internal displacement in Africa: a development challenge

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82950

http://bit.ly/L8iBnh

Africa: Israel launches African migrant deportation drive

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82980

http://bit.ly/L6alpQ

Eritrea: Torture and Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82909

http://bit.ly/K1TqOY

Global: Mobility unaffected by financial crisis

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82984

http://bit.ly/LYOuyE

Global: Number of Congolese in Rwanda transit camp passes 10,000

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82973

http://bit.ly/LuNL6E

Kenya: 'People living in Dadaab are broken"

2012-06-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/83039

http://bit.ly/L86ngr

Kenya: Internally Displaced Persons Bill 2012 tabled in Kenyan Parliament

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82981

http://bit.ly/M4OOZZ

Kenya: No consensus on way ahead for world's biggest refugee camp

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82959

http://bit.ly/KEpvTa

South Africa: Home Affairs idles over refugee centre

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82908

http://bit.ly/KF40v9

Sudan: Refugees dying of thirst

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/82949

http://bit.ly/LXxS7M

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood candidate claims victory

2012-06-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/83042

http://bit.ly/MZ0YTH

Egypt: New military declaration causes anger

2012-06-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/83041

http://bit.ly/KvqQuk

Ivory Coast: Thousands of Ivorians flee to Liberia after aborted coup claim

2012-06-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/83040

http://bit.ly/MgMIbQ

Liberia: Reconciliation and reform

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82956

http://bit.ly/P417Zd

Mali: Touareg rebels begin Mali talks

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82974

http://bit.ly/NHVtO3

Mauritania: Differences rock salafist current

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82971

http://bit.ly/KuddLS

South Africa: Cabinet reshuffle

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82901

http://bit.ly/OzjaWR

South Africa: Zuma should beware the No.10 jersey

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82924

http://bit.ly/KFWgsI

Swaziland: Opposition to elections grows

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82882

http://bit.ly/MpmHXt

Togo: Security forces break up big Togo opposition demonstration

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82921

http://bit.ly/KFeudX

Tunisia: Military court hands Ben Ali 20 years in jail

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/82898

http://bit.ly/Kt1P48

Uganda: Lawmakers protest stringent guidelines to access oil deals

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/82915

http://bit.ly/KFc4ff

Chad: ExxonMobil and Chad’s authoritarian regime

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82884

http://bit.ly/L4mxp1

Ethiopia: Loan deal signed with World Bank

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82910

http://bit.ly/Lkov33

Global: Is the end nigh for the eurozone?

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82967

http://bit.ly/NHMSea

South Africa: The South Africa-SADC remittance channel

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82944

http://bit.ly/LmYYWV

Uganda: Oil will not bring jobs bonanza, experts emphasise

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/82888

http://bit.ly/M1pXEA

Malawi: Kangaroo care helps Malawi leap forward

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82879

http://bit.ly/Lhqsx9

South Africa: Science fight back against Aids conspiracists

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82979

http://bit.ly/MHaN8j

Uganda: Activists to pursue maternal health case against government

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82960

http://bit.ly/MVCta4

Zimbabwe: Financial burden of HIV treatment not to be put on patients’ backs

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/82878

http://bit.ly/MzzseF

Global: UN: 'List of Shame' cites school attacks

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/82926

http://bit.ly/LK33qN

Kenya: Gay man stoned to death

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/82887

http://bit.ly/MKNRJ8

Nigeria: Stop gay Biafran activist Joshua Odeke from being forcibly deported

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/82890

http://bit.ly/MD7csr

Global: Not wasting the waste

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82983

http://bit.ly/KLXDbb

Global: People’s summit alive with the sound of voices

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82970

http://bit.ly/KSZaKA

Global: Rio+20 Summit: the key issues

2012-06-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82948

http://bit.ly/Kx8D0H

Global: State of renewables report launced

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82975

http://bit.ly/LSkFi5

Global: Supply chains cause extinction of many species

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82986

http://bit.ly/Lv99bU

Global: Why we can't save the planet by putting a price on nature

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82923

http://bit.ly/KVmNbH

South Africa: Wild Coast community renews mining fight

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/82889

http://bit.ly/KE6Gch

Cameroon: Stop oil palm plantations from destroying Africa's ancient rainforests

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/82913

http://bit.ly/KUwAio

Ethiopia: Ethiopia 'forcibly displacing' for sugar plantations

2012-06-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/83044

http://bbc.in/N95geJ

Sierra Leone: Whitestone sub-leasing 1.34 million acres

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/82914

http://bit.ly/KBKh11

Global: Syngenta charged for covering up livestock deaths from GM corn

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/82987

http://bit.ly/LYSiQx

Ethiopia: Ethiopia introduces advanced internet monitoring

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82885

http://bit.ly/LIrV29

Ethiopia: Skype criminalised

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82902

http://bit.ly/LlKRiT

Ivory Coast: CPJ says Ivorian police assault journalist

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82922

http://bit.ly/KtBClX

Mali: 'Slow death of freedom of information'

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82966

http://bit.ly/KLrHDO

Sudan: Poet reportedly sentenced to death, detention location unknown

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/82958

http://bit.ly/NAI2Ro

Global: 'Over 100m children subjected to worst forms of child labour'

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/82919

http://bit.ly/Lm3bIK

Global: ILO seeks new global economic order

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/82891

http://bit.ly/LltXRw

Tunisia: Confronting social and economic challenges

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/82957

http://bit.ly/KLndgm

Africa: Africa 'US expanding spying network' in Africa

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82964

http://aje.me/LuF4JG

Angola: Govt concludes withdrawal of Missang forces in Bissau

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82883

http://bit.ly/OqH4Ut

Global: Resolution on arms trade ‘bold but not bulletproof’

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82969

http://bit.ly/N5p3M9

Kenya: Kenya seeks US, EU aid in Kismayo attack

2012-06-12

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82877

http://n24.cm/LYf1Kb

Liberia: Ivorian government foes wage, plot attacks

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82925

http://bit.ly/KugqML

Libya: Troops sent to quell clashes in western Libya

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82963

http://aje.me/KErFCj

Nigeria: Church blasts in northern Nigeria

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82962

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/06/20126179452530898.html

Somalia: Suicide blast hits base near Somali capital

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82965

http://aje.me/NANX8O

Tunisia: Overnight attacks leave country on the edge

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/82911

http://bit.ly/KF61HB

2012 Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing

CODESRIA

2012-06-17

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/589/Call for CODESRIA Small Grants Applications 2012.pdf

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.

Global: e-Atlas series makes it easy to visualize data on key issues

2012-06-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/82968

http://bit.ly/NHOaWO

Nigeria: The environment as seen by the Nigerian media

2012-06-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/publications/82927

http://bit.ly/LE5edj

Fahamu