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Biko: Great struggles, great spirits

Ben Okri

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84213

All across the world in the late fifties and sixties could be heard what Byron once called the ‘First Dance of Freedom’. Not long afterwards came the cry of failure as civil wars, tribalism, coups and corruption descended on the recent freedom dances. Then came the long decades of animi, that was such a feast of gloating and salivation for western observers. People emerged from the African world into a European-shaped reality in two or three generations and no one wonders that there would be some confusion. People entered an arena in which others have been shaping themselves as nation states over hundreds of year and no one wonders that they would at first seem inadequate. The fact is we might have lost control of our self-perception. We might have lost control of how we see ourselves in the modern world. We see ourselves and measure ourselves with outwardly determined standards. We don’t play our game.

We don’t choose our values; but more seriously, emerging from African reality into modern reality has had one major effect: time has gotten speeded up for us. We are having to accomplish in 10 years what it took European nations 2000 years to accomplish. Africa is having to compress in a short time her own equivalent of the Roman Conquest, the Viking marauders, the Black Death, feudalism, Civil War, the Industrial Revolution with its dark satanic mills, capitalism, the poverty act, the union of the four warring nations and the unholy spoils of colonialism – all into a few solitary decades.

There is however another way to read history. It could be said that African nations have emerged from the long reality of their selfhood into a different time and are engaged in a complex historical adjustment. We need to define history more accurately, and the history of African people, the Bantu, the Zulu, and the Yoruba’s, to give a tiny example, is long, unique and needs to be written and studied. History is not the story of the impact of the western world on the African world; that is a small part of our history.

History is not objective. The meaning of history keeps on revealing itself through time. Like a text of infinite interpretability, history yields new meanings in relation to the eyes that behold it and the pressures of the times. History may be memory, history may be vengeance, history may be redemption – but whatever history is, it is too soon to extrapolate the meaning of our recent histories. Those who write about history in haste and fall into quick judgements, find that the long unfolding of events change the meaning of the facts upon which they base their judgements. Time is a great ironist. The historian who makes a quick judgement against the United States of America right in the middle of her apocalyptic Civil War, would be made fooling by the unfolding destiny of that nation.

History may be fact, history may be a dream, history may be revelation. It is not how things are that count, it’s what you do with them, what vision you have and with what strength you march towards that vision. We need a new consciousness. History is always responsive to a new consciousness.

Do you want me to keep going? I’m just trying to make sure I’m not talking to myself. They say the greater the mistakes the greater the lessons that can be learned. Africa has surely made enough mistakes for us to learn about. Among other things we are rich in mistakes. Some nations in the world make their mistakes over thousands of years, we made ours over decades. We have made enough mistakes to become nations of genius if we had that inclination. Maybe that is why there is the beginnings of a new consciousness, a new stirring of national success slowly creeping across the continent.

But what are some of these mistakes: the slide towards dictatorship and tyranny, corruption becoming a ‘natural’ part of the national fabric, the depletion of national resources by ruling elite, the erosion of civil liberties, the failure to realise that nations can die just like businesses, companies or individuals. You do not need me to tell you that if Biko were alive today, his cry to Africa would be to put its house in order. He would be appalled at the civil wars, the failure to feed and educate the people, the greed of government officials, and the general failure to live up to the promise of the great struggles for liberation. He would be harder on us than our critics because he would expect from us the highest standards of national life.

I interpret Black Consciousness not only in relation to the history of oppression; I interpret it also as an injunction to the highest fulfilment of a people's possibilities. Black Consciousness means nothing if it does not also mean the best flowering of our reality. To me Black Consciousness means equality, freedom, community, grassroot transformation, but it also means excellence, humanity, foresight, wisdom, and a transcendence of our weakness and our flaws. Stripped of its specific context of Apartheid the core of Black Consciousness does not seem to me a polarising message. Rather it is a call for the awakening of the spirit, a call such as the ancestors might have made. Wherever a people are oppressed, the first thing they must remember is who they are. But once liberation has been achieved, the first thing they must remember is who they want to be.

The heart of Black Consciousness is a message of ‘becoming’; its goal is not limited, it hints as a continuing journey of self-discovery and self-realisation. This can be as wide and as expansive as the mind that interprets it. There can be no end to a self-realisation. Every day we discover more and more who we can be – this is what Black Consciousness says to me: become who you are, and also, become what you truly can be. It is an injunction of greatness. In fact, it is an injunction to leadership. It says in effect that black people because of their history and all that they have learned, should show the world a new way of being – to paraphrase, a better way of being human. I’m coming to the end, slowly.

There are three kinds of leaders. There are the ones who make; there are the ones who bring meaningful change. There are the ones who make change real. And then there are those who squander the possibilities of their times. The challenge of our times has always been the challenge of leadership. It is not the only challenge but it is the most symbolic. Black Consciousness is an injunction to leadership because the people can only be as liberated as its leaders are – in that sense Black Consciousness says that to liberate in your mind and freeing your consciousness, you should be your own leader. Everyone therefore carries the burden of leadership. To that degree, the leaders that you have says something about the kind of people that you are.

Previously leadership was considered on its own as an isolated event of responsibility. We tended to blame our leaders for our failings. The micro responsibility of Black Consciousness implies that we should blame or praise ourselves for our leaders for they are what we have enabled them to become. To me Black Consciousness suggests that the people take the responsibilities for their lives, their societies, and their destiny. This is not a textual but an intuitive reading of Black Consciousness. I am not advocating civil unrest but that the people are complicit in how their societies are run, how their history turns out. The people cannot be passive about the single most important thing that affects them, which is the running of their lives.

In that sense there is a micro and a macro dimension of Black Consciousness, but its core is that of liberating for time and in all historical circumstances the consciousness, the conscience and the spirit of a people. After all, the people cannot come away in their oppression and fall right asleep after their liberation. A continued wakefulness is the burden of Black Consciousness; a continued vigilance is its responsibility. More than that, an ever-higher refinement of the possibilities of the people, an ever-higher reach in its potential and the realisation ought to be its goal.

The renewal of a people of a continent is a miraculous thing. And it happens when a great new idea takes root in a people; when they see the image of themselves not as they were but as they can be. It is a renewed self-vision. Its source is a potent and enchanted vision; it is conveyed through inspiration and sustained by example. Through the undercurrents of our minds, the idea is passed along that we can have good houses, good roads, decent education, fulfilling jobs. The idea is passed along in the undercurrent of our minds that we can stand tall and be fruitful under the sun. The idea is passed along that no one needs to starve and that everyone can have access to health services. The idea is passed along that we can question many of our beliefs; we can apply reason to our inherited notions that we can transfigure our superstitions. The idea is passed along that we can transcend our tribalism without losing our roots; that we can transcend our religion without losing our faith. The idea is passed along that we can transcend our race without losing its uniqueness; that we can transcend our past without losing our identity. It is passed along that we can only look forward and that has been done many times in history all over the world and is being done slowly today in Asia and places like Brazil – that we can remake our societies closer to our heart’s desire. The idea starts along that now is the time to show the true greatness on the part of your liberation. Now is the time to create a society commensurate to the ideals which the people fought for and for which so many died. That the fire of your history is a refining fire, producing from the blood of martyrs the goal of a new civilization.

In alchemy there are two ways to accomplish what is known as a great work. They are called the dry way and the wet way. The dry way is short and dangerous. The wet way is long and safe. In political terms the short way requires a certain kind of dictatorship, thoroughly unified people and highly focussed vision – Japan, the Soviet Union and China in some ways exemplify this; they try to bring about fantastic transformation in society in a very short time. The results are often ambivalent. With Stalin and Mao millions died in the spectre of the gulags haunt success experiments. Only Japan uniquely showed the fruitfulness of this difficult way. But for national of diversity involved in a land of many tribes and many races, the ideal seems to be the wet way. Europe took time to arrive at its current stability. America needed 200 years and a civil war to become itself.

We must measure time differently. Our history began long before the history of others. We must measure time not in the length of oppression but by the persistence of our dreams – and our dreams go back a long way, way beyond the fall of Carthage, which Mandela says we are to rebuild, and way beyond the first imperfect Egyptian pyramids. The cycles of time, like the inundation of the Nile, have deposited on us the immeasurable silt of human experiences. We have great wealth in all that is at the root of humanity. If there is a correlation between experience and wisdom, between suffering and understanding, Africa is the richest delta of possible transformation. The dream of our ancestors nestles in the Rift Valley, when the greatest enemy of man was not man but night itself. Our ancestors battled with all manner of monsters and evils within and without – and this long period of time and long march to civilisation must have forged in them some unconquerable sense of a human spirit. Just as rocks bear the strata of the ages they have witnessed, so deep inside us are the strata of unmeasured overcoming.

Let us be tempered. May the fire of history burn us into a new consciousness. Let the white learn from the black and the black learn from the white. I'm quoting Taoism here. Different histories come together in one great sea. Let us raise one another. You have something special to give the world, and the gift of your genius, our genius will be revealed not long after we claim the right to be ourselves. We can be no one else. We must therefore accept our history with all of its flaws. We should hide nothing from ourselves about who we have been. We can only transform that which we face. What we are now is only the present slice of a picture of ourselves; there can be no final definition of what we are. We grow and change in accordance with necessity and vision, and yet in some mysterious way will become more and more ourselves.

* This is an extract from a transcription of a presentation by Ben Okri at the 13th Steve Biko Annual Memorial Lecture, which took place at the University of Cape Town on 12 September 2012.

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Of myth and man: The legacy of Bob Marley

Dissing the voice of the Third World

David Cupples

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84193

With Jamaica having recently celebrated its Big 5-0 — fifty years of independence from Mother England — it’s natural to think of those things for which the tiny Caribbean island is famous. Fast sprinters and Olympic bobsledders. Patch-eyed pirates raiding the Spanish Main. Winter getaways to tropical beaches. A lyrical way of speaking, often imitated. Ganja and rum. For many it’s impossible to think of Jamaica without Bob Marley coming to mind.

A worldwide cult of followers worships Marley almost as a god-like figure, but in mainstream Western culture the man tends to be dismissed as a freaky pot-smoking dread who had some cool songs, and that’s about it. Certainly not someone to emulate. Not a man to be held up as a hero. No Mandela or Martin Luther King by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, hold on. On both a mythical and human level Bob Marley qualifies as a hero. Not a mere celebrity, but a true hero in the noblest sense of the word.

In the archetypal motif described by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, the hero typically comes from humble beginnings. Like Jesus, Mandela and King, Marley qualifies on that score. Born in a tiny shack in the back hills of Jamaica, Bob Marley grew up first as a barefoot country boy and later as a teenager on the mean streets of Kingston, ratchet knife in pocket and fists ready to fly. He never finished high school.

Next in the hero’s journey comes a call to adventure or action, often involving a Vision Quest or Walkabout. Seeking a way to deal with the hardships of ghetto living — as well as the sting of abandonment by his father and long periods of absence from his mother — Marley hiked not to the mountaintop but into the concrete jungle, to the heart of the inner city, where in the abyss of suffering and deprivation known as Back o’ Wall he encountered the teachings of Jah Rastafari. He’d always had music, but now his music acquired profound spiritual depth. Bob Marley, ghetto rudeboy, would become a messenger for Rasta, spreading the word of eternal life and the black man’s redemption through Haile Selassie I via the medium of his music. Marley had found his mission in life.

The next phase in the hero’s journey is initiation, consisting of one or many tests, like the labors of Hercules or the ordeals of Odysseus. For a penniless Third World ghetto-dweller to get his/Jah’s message out to the world was surely a Herculean chore. Guides (another archetypal motif in the hero’s story) like Joe Higgs, Seeco Patterson and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry tutored Bob and mates Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston (now Wailer) along the way, helping refine their vocal talents and — like Yoda with Luke Skywalker — completing their apprenticeship. But despite scoring a string of hits atop the Jamaican charts, the three ragamuffins could barely put food in their mouths, let alone shout Hosannas to the world. Down to their last few pounds, they marched into the London headquarters of Island Records and pleaded for money to make an album. Chris Blackwell sensed their integrity and slipped them a few thousand pounds; the three youths went home to Jamaica and within six months had crafted one of the great albums of all time, Catch A Fire. The messenger had found his voice.

The most exalted aspect of the hero’s saga is the sacrifice. Historical examples of the dying and resurgent god are many, among them Christ, Mithras and Dionysus. Psychologically, this represents the death of the individual ego as the hero is reborn a collective figure of hope and renewal—given over to a life for the good of all rather than himself (or herself; a woman can fulfill the archetypal role too). Jamaica in the 1970s was a hotbed of political strife, the two main political parties caught up in tribal war; many claimed the CIA was on the island stirring things up. Bob was caught in the middle and nearly paid with his life. In the end it was not a bullet that took him but cancer. Because of his religious beliefs he forswore the operation that might have saved his life and rather than rest he pushed himself to the brink to get his message out before his strength abandoned him. His rebirth was in his music, which continues to give hope and inspiration to millions, if not in the call to Rastafari, then in the ‘positive vibrations’ and message of love and unity his lyrics so brilliantly radiate.

So much for mythology — what about in real-life terms? Much of the world outside the West readily accepts Marley as a heroic figure. Ask Africans old enough to remember life under minority rule how the Jamaican’s songs gave inspiration to freedom fighters risking their lives to overthrow the tyrants. Ask South Africans who could not buy uncensored Marley records because the apartheid government feared the lyrics would incite rebellion. Ask Zimbabweans who were there in 1980 on Independence Day, when the Union Jack was taken down for the last time and the flag of the new nation raised—who was there to sing but Bob Marley and the Wailers?

Marley saw injustice all around and put it to music. He wisely perceived that the cruelest tyranny was hunger:

‘Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob (Them Belly Full)’

He heard and reported the cries of the sufferahs:

‘Woman hold her head and cry
‘cuz her son had been shot down in the street and died
just because of the system (Johnny Was)’

He warned of the repercussions that social and economic inequality would bring:

‘We’re gonna be burning and a-looting tonight (Burnin’ and Lootin’)’

Marley was an astute observer and social critic who let nothing pass. A favourite theme was the shit-stem (system) that made a hell of everyday existence:

‘Today they say that we are free
only to be chained in poverty
good god I think it’s illiteracy
it’s only a machine to make money’ (Slave Driver)

A machine powered by foreign influence and divide-and-rule tactics.

‘So they be bribing with their guns, spare parts and money’ (Ambush in the Night)

Marley wasn’t fooled:

‘Rasta don’t work for no CIA’ (Rat Race)

He spoke out against hard drugs--

‘All those drugs gonna make you slow
That’s not the music of the ghetto’ (Burnin’ and Lootin’)

--and in favour of raising children with love and tenderness:

‘I heard my mother, she was praying in the night…
She said a child is born in this world
He needs protection
Lord guide and protect us
When we’re wrong please correct us’ (High Tide or Low Tide)

Marley sang of a revolution of the mind, echoing the deepest wisdom of humanistic psychologists like Carl Rogers and existential philosophers like Sartre:

‘Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
none but ourselves can free our mind’ (Redemption Song)

He offered solace against the angst of modern times:

‘Have no fear for atomic energy
‘cause none of them can stop the time’ (Redemption Song)

Marley’s guiding spiritual tenet was the doctrine of One Love, a reverence for the unity of all life:

‘In every man’s chest, there beats a heart’ (Zimbabwe)

A true revolutionary, he would turn the other cheek only so far:

‘So arm in arm, with arms,
we’ll fight this little struggle
cuz that’s the only way we can
overcome our little trouble’ (Zimbabwe)

Worldwide, Bob Marley’s lyrics may well have given inspiration and solace to as many as did King’s speeches, and he has come to symbolize resistance to oppression perhaps equally as much as the great civil rights leader. Africans seem to think so. In 1978, an African delegation to the UN presented Marley with the Third World Peace Medal — the former ghetto rudie formally recognized as one of the world’s great champions of freedom and human rights.

Carl Jung wrote of a corollary principle to the hero’s sacrifice — the archetypal impulse of underlings to kill the hero (much like the bloodlust of the sons of the primal horde to slay the clan patriarch, in Freud). Heroes have always been silenced by various methods, the most obvious being their death. One thinks of John Lennon, Malcolm X, Biko, Lumumba, Fred Hampton, Chris Hani, Che Guevara, Chico Mendes, Archbishop Romero and on and on and of course King himself.

When such figures aren’t murdered or imprisoned, they may be reviled, impugned, dismissed. Muhammad Ali was not widely revered in America until age and illness rendered him less threatening to white society. Similarly, King did not become a culture-wide icon until after his death, when the immense power of his presence was removed and only the brilliance of his words remained, rendering him palatable to the mainstream.

Bob Marley was easily dismissed as a dope smoker and profligate who fathered children willy-nilly with this woman and that, when in fact smoking ganja was part of Rastafarian religious belief and Marley as a rule was respectful to all his women; though not literally faithful to his wife Rita he cherished her all his days. Believing the creation of new life was sacred and beautiful he shunned birth control and took pains to ensure all his children were taken care of.

Writing Marley off as a wastrel — whether explicitly in words or implicitly through quiet shunning — is to view him through a Western prism. Of course, the real reason for dissing Marley, like King and Ali, was the threat he posed to the system. Even Mandela was viewed as a serious danger — he was officially designated a terrorist by Ronald Reagan (and Margaret Thatcher) and remained so designated until 2008.

Musically, despite a bright shining moment when Time declared Exodus the greatest album of the 20th Century, the presumed high authority Rolling Stone failed to include any Marley album not only in the top 10 but even the top 100 of its list of the 500 greatest albums. Fleetwood Mac at #26 and Exodus #169? If that’s not dismissal.

In the final analysis, there is little reason to argue over which hero stood the tallest. Just being mentioned in the same breath as Mandela and King is a supreme honor for anyone. Perhaps it is enough to say that Bob Marley was The Voice of the Third World and leave it at that. With much of Africa and the Caribbean having seen little development over the decades, feasting multinationals growing ever richer while the children continue to waste away… with Jamaica suffering the same poverty, lack of opportunity and violence seen thirty-five years ago… Africa plagued still by famine, disease and lack of infrastructure… American blacks faring proportionately far worse in the current economic crisis than their white counterparts, as if constituting a Third World nation within the ‘richest country on earth’ — with all this, we need to hear Marley’s message now more than ever.

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* David Cupples is the author of Stir It Up: The CIA Targets Jamaica, Bob Marley and the Progressive Manley Government (a novel). He can be contacted via email at davidcdusty@hotmail.com or through his Facebook Author page at www.facebook.com/StirItUpCIAJamaica .

Cheap labour, cheap lives

Contextualizing farm worker deaths in South Africa and Canada

Chris Webb

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84190

There is a passage from Olive Schreiner’s 1883 novel ‘The Story of An African Farm’ where she describes the isolated existence of the rural Karoo, with its “weird and almost oppressive beauty...the stone walled sheep kraals and kaffer huts.” This cursory and derogatory description of farm workers’ dwellings is perhaps the only time they feature in the book. Rather, labourers and their homes are considered part of the farm’s natural landscape and as such are rendered invisible and silent social actors.

In present day South Africa the lives of farm workers, and the dangerous and oppressive working conditions they face, remain invisible to most. The only time they provoke public debate, or indeed any political action by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) is in moments of extreme tragedy.

The recent collision between a truck carrying farm workers and coal train in Mpumalanga is illustrative of this fact. Twenty-five workers were killed when the truck taking them to harvest oranges on a nearby citrus farm collided with a train and was dragged 200 meters down the track. The workers were transported on the back of an open truck, which, as anyone who has spent time in rural South Africa knows, is the most common means of transport for workers to and from the farms. Known as the bakkie brigade, this mode of transportation is a ubiquitous feature in rural areas during the harvesting season when many farmers employ labour brokers to source cheap labour from nearby localities, often informal settlements comprised of former farm workers. The South African Food and Allied Worker’s Union (FAWU) alleges that the truck was owned by a labour broker, which raises crucial questions of culpability between the broker, farm owner and driver in the transport of these workers. Many of these questions remain unresolved in South Africa’s labour legislation, which remains structured around a normative standard employment relation despite rapid increases in informal and third party employment.

The transportation of farm workers over long distances is but one example of the changing nature of rural labour relations and the restructuring of capital accumulation in agriculture. In South Africa the introduction of legislation protecting farm workers after 1994 alongside tenure rights for farm dwellers has caused many commercial farmers to restructure their operations, relying increasingly on casual and temporary workers in order to avoid compliance with labour laws. The historic reliance of on-farm permanent workers to perform the bulk of agricultural labour is gradually being eroded as casuals, many of who are foreign migrants and women, work for a few months each year in the fields and pack houses. These changes have also been driven by post-apartheid economic reforms, including the deregulation of agricultural markets and adherence to WTO trade policies, which have consolidated ownership in the hands of fewer commercial farmers and exposed them to global markets. This is the context in which the Mpumalanga accident must be understood. Sadly, it is one that threatens to be repeated as agricultural production continues to rely on cheap and flexible labour trucked in under unsafe conditions by unscrupulous labour brokers.

While historically different, neoliberal trade and labour market policies in North America have also caused Canadian farmers to change their labour recruitment strategies. Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, for example, imports farm labour from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to meet the demands of local farmers. Here the intermediary of the triangular employment relation is not the broker, but rather the state which sets the terms and conditions of the contract. Migrant workers are placed on farms for 3-8 months after which they must return home hoping to be rehired the following year.

According to Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), a migrant worker solidarity group based in Canada, “Migrant workers perform rigorous and often dangerous rural labour that few Canadians choose to do. Many workers are reluctant to stand up for their rights since employers find it easier to send workers home (at their own expense) instead of dealing with their serious concerns.” On top of low wages, no benefits, and no legal right to unionize, these workers face the constant threat of deportation if they speak out against their employer. It is within this context that we must understand the crash that six months ago killed 11 farm workers, including nine migrants from Peru, near the Canadian town of Waterloo. Since the accident there has been no government investigation into the transportation and living conditions of migrant farm workers in Canada and fleeting media coverage. Like South Africa, migrant farm workers in Canada live in isolated rural areas, often housed directly on the farms, where they often experience severe discrimination and racism.

Both of these accidents are the inevitable outcome of a system of production that treats farm workers as a cheap and ultimately disposable workforce. In North America the ravages of NAFTA on the Mexican economy and the structural adjustment of the Jamaican economy by the World Bank in the 1980s were acutely felt by the country’s poor and working classes. As a result of these policies, Canadian agrarian capital can rely on a steady stream of cheap migrant labour from the South. In its role as intermediary, the Canadian state will continue to prevent these workers from settling permanently in the country or gaining any organizing rights. This is not to suggest that Canadian workers are somehow immune from enforced labour flexibility. Indeed, there are clear trends toward increasingly precarious forms of work among domestic workers. Migrant workers however, are neoliberalism’s ideal workforce: shipped in to perform specific tasks without draining state resources and sent home when no longer needed.

In the South African case, the surplus labour force of mostly unskilled workers was historically absorbed into mining and agriculture, but steep job losses in both of these sectors has meant escalating unemployment, which now stands at around 40 percent (70% of whom are between the ages of 17-25). South Africa embarked on a high-skill growth path after 1994, which largely neglected the needs of poor and rural workers without access to education or training. Jobs that have been created for low and semi-skilled workers have tended to be low-paid and temporary. Rather than addressing the needs of these workers the ANC has pursued a limited deracialization strategy through Affirmative action measures, the most important being known as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) which, as economists Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass argue has benefitted full-time unionized workers while neglecting the needs of the unemployed—their conclusions however, that the selfish preferences of unions are to blame for low job growth, is highly questionable. This historically disadvantaged ‘underclass,’ as they call them, is without access to land capital or educational opportunities and forms of the bulk of temporary and casual farm labour.

One of the most salient features if the new global division of labour is this increasing divide between a core of permanent employees, still protected by corporatist arrangements, and a fragmented and unorganized majority of informal and precarious workers. The Canadian state is furthering these divisions with changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program that will allow employers to pay migrant workers 15 percent less than the local minimum wage. The move has rightly been branded as a brazen attempt at dividing workers along national and racial lines and at creating a sub-category of more vulnerable and unprotected workers.

Back in South Africa these same tensions are at play over a proposed government youth wage subsidy, which would see the state provide subsidies to employers who hire young people. With youth unemployment being staggeringly high the subsidy has been seized upon by the right wing opposition DA to attract the unemployed and youth vote while simultaneously branding trade unions as greedy and self-interested. In reality the subsidy is nothing more than an opportunity for business to replace unionized workers with cheaper and unorganized workers. In their rejection of the subsidy, the Unemployed People’s Movement have argued that, “Big business built its wealth on the back of a history of racist oppression that included land dispossession and the migrant labour system. The government should not be subsidizing them now. The government should be subsidizing the poor directly!”

Yet the discursive, and entirely artificial, construction of an unemployed youth pitted against greedy unionized workers is a potent weapon in times of economic uncertainty. It also fits surprisingly well with mainstream developmental rhetoric, particularly the social capital school of thought trumpeted by the World Bank, that praises the entrepreneurialism and ingenuity of the poor and informal workers as the new productive subjects of post-fordist capitalism. In reality informality and precarious forms of work are, as South African labour scholar Franco Barchiesi notes, “new avenues for accumulation,” as workers incomes as a share of the national income declined from 55 percent in 1970 to 42 percent in 2007 while the share of company profits rose from 28 to 32 percent over the same period. The poor it seems are getting poorer.

The main union federation COSATU has called for an outright ban on labour brokerage, labelling it a new form of slavery. Rhetoric aside, and the occasional stone throwing at DA marches, unions have done little to organize the most vulnerable workers in the economy. Farm workers in particular have the lowest unionization levels in the country and no major unions are actively organizing these workers. The call for a ban on labour brokers merely illustrates the ideological rifts apparent in the tripartite alliance rather than an effective strategy for organizing those who rely on labour brokers for their wages. The prospects for a ban seem increasingly unlikely given the fact that regulating brokers is already under discussion in parliament. As one COSATU official told me, the unions need to organize casual workers, but they just don’t know how to go about it.

One possibility is the integration of social and community struggles over service delivery, healthcare and access to land with the combined demand for decent work. This would involve a reorientation of COSATU toward civil society organizations active in poor and rural areas, the possibilities of which are a constant source of discussion and debate. The struggle over land access is a particularly important one as the precarious livelihoods of rural workers could potentially be stabilized by secure access to land for small crop production. However, the state’s ineffective approach to land reform will only change through sustained political pressure, and at present no such movement exists to pose this challenge.

Any campaign that demands decent employment for farm workers must also confront the concentrated and racialized ownership structure of South African agriculture and in doing so challenge the existing corporate food regime. As Walden Bello has argued, the turbulence that underlines the global food system — that resulted in riots and wide scale protests against the rise in food prices in 2008—is not merely due to speculation on commodity futures and investment in biofuels but is rather a far deeper crisis of capitalist agriculture. The accidents that claimed the lives of farm workers in South Africa and Canada are markers of this crisis, which marginalizes and brutalizes those millions of farm workers who produce our food. The challenge then is not only to ensure safe transportation for farm workers, but also to challenge the global agricultural system that prioritizes profits over nature and the lives of its workers. It is a challenge to make visible the hidden world behind grocery store shelves and for the workers themselves to occupy a long neglected political space.

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* Chris Webb is a postgraduate student at York University, Toronto where he is researching labour restructuring in South African agriculture. His writing has appeared in Canadian Dimension, New Internationalist and Canada's History.

* This article was first published by Amandla.

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

At the margins of Kenya’s democracy

Wossen Ayele and Mohamed Yunus Rafiq

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84188

In an attempt to construct a cohesive Kenyan state, one of the key questions facing the country is how to coalesce the many ethnic groups into one nation state. [1] Ethnicity has been a powerful organising force in Kenyan politics. Kenya, unlike its neighbour Tanzania, has had a long policy of classifying its citizens by ethnicity.

In the complicated realm of Kenyan parliamentary democracy, ethnic cleavages are the building blocks of political constituencies. Region matters, as does ethnicity — and in many cases, those two features are correlated to the point of being practically inextricable. Outside of Nairobi, the most ethnically diverse region of Kenya, this tends to be the case. Consider, for example, that 87 per cent of all Luo live in Nyanza and 95 per cent of all Kalenjin live in Rift Valley. [2]

What may have begun as a colonial exercise in divide-and-rule has transformed into a normalised feature of Kenyan political life. During the regime of Jomo Kenyatta, as many Kenyans would tell you, it was principally the Kikuyu who enjoyed the fruits of the Kenyan state. Under his successor, Daniel arap Moi, for 24 years until his ousting in 2002, state largesse flowed to the people of the Rift Valley region, the home of his own ethnic group, the Kalenjin.

It is against the backdrop of these two dominant regimes that ethnic-based politics continues in parliament of Kenya. However, unlike the big man politics of the previous regimes, the current multiparty parliamentary system is fragmented and requires the creation of voting blocs and coalitions to capture power. Usually, these lines are ethnic in nature.

Large ethnic voting blocs have created coalitions and captured power and subsequently been able to shape the state’s agenda. However, during this process, some small minority groups have been marginalised.

One of these groups is the Segeju, a minority ethnic group on the southern coast. Comprised of less than 25,000 people (mostly in Kenya with a minority in Tanzania), the Segeju are not formally recognised by the government of Kenya. Instead, they have been forced by the government to adopt the identity of the Digo, a neighboring ethnic group. In Kenya, access to power is mediated by one’s ethnic identity. For the Segeju that access does not exist unless they take on another. This policy on forced assimilation has pushed the Segeju to the periphery.

THE MIJIKENDA AND SEGEJU

The Mijikenda are a group of nine ethnic groups along the coast of Kenya. They are the Chonyi, Digo, Duruma, Giriama, Jibana, Kambe, Kauma, Rabai and the Ribe peoples. Recent scholarship has exposed the Mijikenda as a colonial construct; a supra-ethnic identity created in order to help the British effectively exercise colonial rule. [3] The peoples of the Mijikenda did indeed exist as a related ethno-linguistic group, but never in a formalised entity as the Mijikenda. It is a constructive category that was created in order to more easily govern; the nine tribes were merged to streamline British colonial rule.

In his article ‘The Segeju Complex,’ anthropologist Martin Walsh delves into the history of the Mijikenda and its relationship to the Segeju. He writes that the Segeju share similarities with many of the Mijikenda groups, such that they were the culturally dominant ethnic group in pre-colonial Mijikenda history. [4] The historical Segeju were much more than just livestock herders and efficient fighters; they were also traders and left a legacy of political organisation and ritual practice that contributed significantly to the precolonial Mijikenda. [5] Furthermore, linguistic studies of the languages of the Mijikenda people suggest that Segeju words were transmitted from the Segeju to the other languages.

Further, the Segeju influenced the organisation and institutions of the Mijikenda peoples. In this way, the Segeju possess the typical characteristics by which the Mijikenda were initially judged and coalesced. Examples of the so-called defining characteristics of the Mijikenda that Segeju also posses are the veneration/respect of sacred groves, known as Kaya, the myth of originating from Shungwaya, the use and importance of fingo — a protective medicine for settlements like villages and linguistic similarity. [6] According to Derek Nurse who has done extensive work on Digo and Segeju language, while the two languages are similar, it is inaccurate to call Kisegeju as Kidigo. [7]

Yet today in postcolonial Kenya, the Segeju have never been a member of the Mijikenda super-tribe. The colonial experience hardened the institution of the Mijikenda such that the Segeju are on the outside. Instead, in some parts of the coastal region are forced to adopt the identity of Digo in order to petition the state and participate in Kenyan political life.

The Digo are indeed a very closely linked ethnic group of the Mijikenda, but to classify Segeju as Digo is simply inaccurate. And further, the forced assimilation as Digo has created a mistrust of the state among the Segeju.

Consider the history surrounding the two groups in the southern coast area near Msambweni. Athuman Said Kibada is the elected leader of the Segeju Survival Movement, a community-based organisation that works on issues of political representation and economic development. Kibada is a local leader and historian of the Msambweni area. He describes a period of warfare between the two groups over land. [8][9], While Kibada’s dates there are estimations, they nevertheless confirm roughly to dates documented by British colonial ethnographers like E.C. Baker. [10]

Since then, the political history of the Segeju and Digo was that of tense neighbors, who formed a fragile political alliance after a period of conflict. Digo and Segeju intermarried, but the identities were not completely blurred; there still existed two groups, one that identified as Digo and another as Segeju.

LOCAL SITUATION

What is striking is the rigidity of the ethnic identities and its attendant outcomes, both material and social. This is in spite of the Kenyan state’s constitutional mandate to protect ethnic minorities and safeguard Kenya’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

Article 7 of the 2010 Constitution holds that the state must promote and protect the diversity of languages of the people of Kenya. Article 56 promises affirmative action programmes designed to ensure that minorities and marginalised groups are represented and able to participate in governance. [11]

The situation among the Segeju community in Kwale County demonstrates the seriousness of this forced assimilation and how the present state of affairs falls outside the bounds of the Constitution. Segeju are not recognised by the state and lack meaningful political representation in the government; therefore their language has not been protected, let alone promoted.

Additionally, jobs are scarce in this area. The economic impoverishments have created an exodus of Segeju youth to urban centres like Mombasa for jobs. This demographic shift caused by poor economic and political conditions has negatively affected the transfer of cultural and linguistic knowledge from the elders to youth. Concomitantly, the absence of youth has limited the Segeju community’s ability to represent themselves because they represent perhaps the most educated and socially active demographic.

Local leaders from the Msambweni area have given testimony to the nature of their grievances and provide context to their predicament. Kibada describes the post-independence government as one that allowed the Segeju to participate in political life by actively identifying as Segeju. He contends that identification cards issued in the 1960s demonstrate this fact. That period turned out to be short-lived.

The undoing of this freedom was cased by a betrayal by their elected leader. ‘The Mwamzambi [Member of Parliament Kassim Mwamzandi] was from the family of Kubo, the Digo chief.’ He understood the history between the two tribes and ‘he took that opportunity to seek revenge on the Segejus.’ His revenge was to initiate the project of assimilating the Segeju into Digo. He actively blocked the distribution of national identification cards to Segejus unless they changed their names and identified as Digo. This was a devastating blow to the Segeju and their culture. The identity cards were not only vital in proving citizenship, but also allow Kenyans to choose their leaders, and obtain health services, assistance from police and other governmental agencies.

At that point the Kenyan state ceased to formally recognise the Segeju. The impact of this cannot be minimised. According to records kept by Kibada (the Kenyan government does not keep records on the ethnic group) there are roughly 8,000 Segeju and their Segeju culture and language are in danger of extinction. Furthermore, joblessness is high in this coastal region.

It is important to interrogate the logic of rigid classification in light of the Segeju experience. Ostensibly, the classifications are about knowing the population so that you can govern better and retain your power. That logic, first employed by the British, continues to manifests itself with the present government. But, these things take on a life of their own and are mediated through other factors. In this instance those factors are local history and ethnic tension and have resulted in the disenfranchisement of an ethnic group.

Ethnic classification manifests itself politically through the electoral process. For the Mijikenda, what at first was an assortment of groups that did not identify as being members of a larger umbrella community quickly became a relevant organising tool for Kenyan politicians. During Kenya’s short history the Mijikenda has been a voting bloc through which politicians capture power. In 1945, Mijikenda Union, the first formal organization, was founded. [12] The first leaders who held office were not traditional, and in fact used their school education and salaried employment to legitimise their leadership. Mijikenda political organisation would quickly be marked by a significant focus on traditional leadership centered on the kaya elders, whose name references the sacred kaya forests that play a central role in Mijikenda identity.

Since then, different leaders have pursued the Mijikenda and specifically the endorsement of the kaya elders. This process is paramount for politicians; gaining legitimacy in their community in this fashion is not simply an issue of attaining votes but also a more symbolic part of Kenyan political culture. A politician at the national level is not seen as legitimate — and perhaps lacking in the right authority — to run for a seat if he does not show connection with his home community. The dramatic and performance filled ceremonies such as the crowning of the political candidates as kaya elders are meant to project or portray these leaders as authoritative, connected and accountable to their communities. [13]

For decades, the kaya elders have continued to be active in this capacity. They have endorsed politicians from Ronald Ngala in 1960 to MP Emmanuel Karissa Maitha more recently (both of whom are Giriama). The kaya elders have also played a role in endorsing national candidates who are not from of the Mijikenda. In 2003, recently elected President Mwai Kibaki, was initiated by the Council of Kaya Elders as a show of goodwill between the Mijikenda and Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). [14] Just this August, the Kenyan press reported that ‘several presidential candidates have reached out to the elders for endorsement,’ including Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi. [15]

The Segeju have been shut out of this process. They do not share a history as a member of the Mijikenda and yet the institutions of the Kenyan government are attempting to incorporate them into this group, with its very specific history, institutions and entangled relationships. On one hand they possess many Mijikenda attributes, yet on the other they were never apart of the Mijikenda proper. The Mijikenda could very well have been the Mijitemba from the start; an arbitrary decision that would have created a group of ten tribes. However, the current forced assimilation is endangering Segeju language and culture.

So what to do with the Segeju.

Minority groups like the Segeju should be able to determine and assert their own identity, even when these identities fail to conform to the parameters of Kenya’s ethno-political landscape. Reforming how governance works in light of historical grievances is not easy. However, it must be reiterated that these institutions that make up Kenya’s democracy, at their best, are designed to broadly serve the interests of citizens and should not result in arbitrary social exclusion. On paper, Kenya is committed to this reality. In 2008 by President Kibaki launched the Kenya Vision 2030 development programme to transform Kenya into a middle-income nation that provides a high quality of life to citizens, all by the year 2030. [16] The guiding principles of this plan outline a desire to create a Kenya where all citizens are treated equally and possess opportunities to flourish. [17]

For the Segeju, this vision is unrealised and, worse, there does not seem to be any movement to make it a reality. The Kenyan government must make substantive reforms in the Segeju community to work towards this ideal. In line with the objectives of Vision 2030, the government must find ways to recognise the Segeju, protect their culture and language and create opportunities that allow them to participate fully in Kenyan society as full-fledged citizens. [18]

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* Wossen Ayele and Mohamed Yunus Rafiq are charter members of the Segeju Survival Movement.


END NOTES

[1] This is not a new observation or confined to African regimes only: John Lie’s book, Modern Peoplehood, “explores the formation of modern peoplehood in Europe and its spread to the non-European world.” Lie describes how “geopolitics ultimately shaped national borders, and the modern state was crucial in forging and disseminating peoplehood identity” (Lie 99). See Lie, J. Modern Peoplehood. Harvard University Press.
[2] Nellis, John. The Ethnic Composition of Leading Kenyan Government Positions. Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1974.
[3] Peterson, D.; Macola, G. ed., Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2009. Also see McIntosh, Janet, In the Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood and Ethno-Religious Boundaries in Kenyan Coast.
[4] Walsh, Martin. “The Segeju Complex? Linguistic Evidence for the Precolonial Making of the Mijikenda.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Shungwaya is an ancient settlement in East Africa thought to occupy the area north of the Tana River near present day Somalia. Its location and existence have been subject to debate among scholars. See the works of R.F Morton, E.R. Turton, Thomas Spear and James de Vere Allen.
[7] Nurse, Derek. “Segeju and Daisu: A Case Study of Evidence from Oral Tradition and Comparative Linguistics.” History in Africa. Vol. 9, (1982) Pp 175-208.
[8] Interview with Athumani Kibada. Telephone. July 16, 2012.
[9] The story about the said conflict was narrated not in real time but mythic time. When the local historian was pressed to provide the time scale of this period of conflict between Digos and the Segeju, he estimated to be about two hundred years ago.
[10] Baker reported that local Segeju headman like Lumwe in Chongoleani (of present day Tanzania) continued to battle with Digos over land and political control in the coastal strip of Tanga up through the mid 20th century. See: Baker, E.C. “Notes on the History of the Wasegeju.” Tanganyika Notes and Records. 1949.
[11] The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, http://www.kenyaembassy.com/pdfs/The%20Constitution%20of%20Kenya.pdf
[12] Willis, Justin “The King of the Mijikenda and Other Stories about the Kaya: Heritage, Politics, and Histories in Multiparty Kenya”. Peterson, D.; Macola, G. ed., Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2009.
[13] Such political techniques are not unique to Kenya but documented in other parts of Africa. See Geschiere, Peter. Perils of Belonging. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Kaya Elders to Pick Their Man for Presidency” by Philip Mbaji. The Star. http://www.the-star.co.ke/local/coast/90516-kaya-elders-plan-meeting-to-pick-their-man-for-presidency 21 August 2012.
[16] Kenya Vision 2030 Official Website. http://www.vision2030.go.ke/
[17] Ibid.
[18] Special thanks to Ahmad Kipacha of The Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Arusha.

Journalists pursuing genocide fugitive flee Kenya

Linda Melvern

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84229

One of them, whose escape has been facilitated by Amnesty International, is seeking asylum in Europe. The other recently returned to Kenya but the death threats continued and he is now in a neighbouring African country.

Kabuga was allegedly instrumental in financing the infrastructure of the genocide: he is accused of establishing the hate radio, RTLM, training and equipping the Interahamwe youth militia and in financial documents found in Kigali he is shown to have used his companies to import vast quantities of machetes from China. He is indicted on eleven counts including conspiracy to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and incitement to commit genocide; there is a US State Department Awards for Justice Programme bounty of US$5 million on his head.

Kabuga, who is aged 77, has been on the run since August 18, 1994 when the Swiss security services let him slip from their grasp. In June that year, as the genocide progressed, Kabuga was given a visa to enter Switzerland only to be later expelled. He is said to have escaped arrest in Kenyan four times. A joint task force of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and Kenyan investigators failed to apprehend him last year even as in New York, at the UN Security Council, the President of the ICTR, Khalida Rachid Khan, had confidently predicted that Kabuga would soon be in custody. Interpol is also interested in him.

The freelance journalists from Nairobi claim to have obtained the first documentary evidence showing that Kabuga was provided with a false identity by officials in the Kenyan Department of Defence as a captain in the Third Battalion of Kenyan Rifles. The journalists obtained letters from this department dated 2002 which purported to describe Kabuga -- under an assumed name -- as an asylum seeker from Somalia. A subsequent letter authorised Kabuga to be given military intelligence for his own personal security and he was later provided diplomatic immunity. The journalists were told by informants that Kabuga’s bodyguards were from the Kenya National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS). One of these guards, Michael Surenei, who is said to have told relatives that he was protecting a Rwandan on behalf of the Kenyan government, went missing a year ago. In the course of their research the journalists were told that Kabuga was currently trying to sell one of his companies for cash in order to go abroad for medical treatment. The journalists located a house in Mombasa where Kabuga was living. Their fears of reprisals seem well founded. In 2003, a Kenyan acting as an FBI informer, William Munuhe, and hoping to lure Kabuga into a trap, was tortured and killed a day before the ambush. The FBI contributed to his funeral costs. Two Kenyan policemen who were planning to betray the fugitive fled abroad some years later.

The Kenyan government has consistently denied any role in harbouring Kabuga and the latest revelations have elicited little response. A TV programme, In the Footsteps of Kabuga, recently produced by the Nation Media Group in Nairobi, presented by a well-known journalist, John Allan, exposing some of the research undertaken by the freelancers, has caused barely a ripple. Allan also left Kenya for a short time but has now returned.

The botched attempts to capture Kabuga are particularly embarrassing for US law enforcement but the case is symptomatic of the international failure to bring to justice other Rwandans who are alleged to have played a determining role in the genocide and who remain at large. The ICTR lists nine Rwandan fugitives on its website, including Kabuga: the Rwandan police have their own Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit which has issued 104 warrants for fugitives in twenty-five countries.

The largest group, according to the ICTR, remains in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where they escaped en masse in July 1994 with their army virtually intact and with thousands of Interahamwe militia; they rearmed and planned “Operation Insecticide” to continue to kill Tutsi. Today they call themselves the Force Démocratique pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), and terrorising the local population they have plundered, raped and murdered the local population. Only this week (September 2, 2012) did the International Criminal Court (ICC), tell the government of the DRC to implement a court order to arrest Sylvestre Mudacumura, the field commander of the FDLR who faces nine counts of war crimes committed in the Kivu region by this notorious militia. The warrant for Sylvestre Mudacumura follows a request in May by then-prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.

The exact links between Kabuga and the FDLR are unknown but he is suspected of providing weapons to them and there is speculation that he sells gold in Kenya which the FDLR illegally exploits in the DRC. Kabuga reportedly has transport networks and runs import businesses. The FDLR’s 15 member Executive Committee is comprised entirely of genocidaires from 1994 and while it publically supports justice and reconciliation it continues to advocate the killing of Tutsi and the destabilisation and eventual overthrow -- by violence if necessary - of Rwanda’s current government. The international failure to bring these fugitives to justice is shared with the government of the DRC which has allowed this group to operate on its territory. The FDLR is today a part of the wider war in the lawless eastern region. The FDLR, the subject of a comprehensive study by members of a UN expert group, has ‘regional committees’ in Europe, in the Nordic countries, the US and Canada. These exist to conduct propaganda against the Rwandan government and protecting the fugitives actively promote denial of the 1994 genocide by claiming the massacres of Tutsi were “spontaneous”. The authors of the UN study believe that the FDLR has the means to operate for many years and without external support it would be seriously weakened.

The FBI’s Genocide War Crimes Unit last week (August 27, 2012) launched a new website intended to educate the public and elicit information to ‘ensure that the perpetrators of such crimes find no haven anywhere in the world’. The failure to capture Kabuga, it seems, is part of a wider miscarriage of international justice.

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* Linda Melvern is an investigative journalist in the UK. http://www.lindamelvern.com/

The malling of Africa

Patrick Bond

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84220

This week, Durban’s International Convention Centre (ICC) hosts 1300 delegates to a Shopping Centre Congress sponsored by one of South Africa’s most environmentally-destructive financial institutions. (As the country’s second largest coal lender and a proponent of failed carbon trading, also known as the ‘privatisation of the air’, Nedbank advertises extra aggressively to brainwash us into thinking it’s a ‘green’ bank.)

Delegates to ‘the largest gathering of retail and retail property people in Africa’ will discuss how to spread social alienation, intensify economic distortions and amplify ecological decay. Damages from the US-style mall model are severe, and South Africa has an especially pernicious role, with our retailers also polluting other African countries with malls. It could get far worse with the invasion of Wal Mart.

Consider some questions that likely won’t be asked at the ICC: What are the eco-social costs? Isn’t South Africa massively overbuilt for retail, coming off a 1997-2008 real estate bubble that was highest in the world – twice as high as even my native Ireland’s?

In Gauteng especially, there was massive recent expansion at Sandton City, The Zone, Eastgate and Menlyn Park. ‘Without a doubt we have an oversupply of shop space in this country at the moment,’ remarked leading property guru, Erwin Rode, on SAfm’s Business Update in April.

The regional escape route is dodgy, according to Human Sciences Research Council official Darlene Miller, whose John Hopkins University doctoral thesis analysed the spread of malls in Southern Africa. ‘Wittingly or unwittingly, SA retailers followed the path of European colonial traders,’ she observed, and their ‘promises of ‘renaissance’ can be elusive.’

In spite of job creation, ‘regional exclusion and deprivation may be enhanced’, Miller argues, citing Shoprite’s encounter with labour and farmer resistance in Zambia, not to mention the deindustrialization of local manufacturing when bulk-produced goods are imported more cheaply via SA retailers.

Our pension funds continue to fuel this madness, since major institutional investors favour shopping centre construction over the low-cost housing which our country so desperately needs, as Marikana just demonstrated.

But according to Rode, the malls’ middle-class clients are becoming financially stressed: ‘I think the consumer is going to be under the whip for many years in this country. There are structural reasons for that: it’s not just a cyclical thing. If you agree with me on that score then you must also be sceptical about prospects for shopping centres.’

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan also worries that South Africans are over-borrowed. By the third quarter of last year, the National Credit Regulator reported an annual rise in unsecured credit of 53 per cent to more than R100 billion rand.

Who gets these loans? Three out of five go to households with less than R10 000/month income, and repayment is harder thanks to usurious interest rates, such as the 40 percent rate charged by Capitec on a typical six-month loan of R3000, resulting in a total repayment of R4082. Last month, the National Credit Regulator begged parliament for new regulations to deter such loan-pushing.

Other questions: aren’t shopping centres major contributors to pollution, a problem so extreme that we rank amongst the five worst countries for environmental management in the world, according to recent Yale/Columbia research? Don’t our deficient rail freight and inadequate public transport to shopping malls contribute to preventable climate change?

What about the labour, social and ecological conditions under which consumer goods are produced before we import them, especially from East Asia? What blame does centralised retailing and shopping-globalisation deserve for the demise of our labour-intensive manufacturing industries?

Likewise, aren’t mega-malls like Durban’s Gateway responsible for an irrational shift of urban planning towards new class-segregated edge cities? Can struggling Main Street shops survive new malls?

What kinds of people are scoring most from our shopping addiction? Last weekend’s Sunday Times richest-South Africans list put Shoprite/Pepkor owner Christo Wiese’s wealth at second highest. Forbes estimates he’s worth at least R25 billion, while Fin24 remarks that Wiese ‘had over years declared a relatively negligible taxable income that was in sharp contrast to his obvious wealth.’

Wiese became notorious after being stopped at a London airport in 2009 with R8 million he wanted to physically transport to a Luxembourg bank (normal billionaires do this by wire transfer, but then the tax man might find it). He only got it back three months ago, admitting it was ‘cash taken out of South Africa in the form of travellers’ cheques to avoid exchange controls’ in the bad old days.

Back home, the South African Revenue Service has estimated that by using a ‘network of trusts and offshore companies’, according to a reliable report, Wiese still owes the society R2 billion in unpaid taxes, the most ever in a country notorious for unpatriotic tycoons running money to overseas shelters.

With the likes of Wiese pushing shopping down our throats, aren’t SA’s most laudable social values – ubuntu, democracy, ecology, a better economic balance – threatened by ubiquitous US-style marketing and consumption?

It’s long overdue we begin talking about a post-shopping centre society in which social, environmental, community, family and friendship relations take precedence over the shallow ‘retail therapy’ buzz that some acquire in malls. In Durban, an inspiring precedent at the historic Warwick Junction came from Early Morning Market vegetable traders who repelled former City Manager Mike Sutcliffe’s destructive mall plan, even at the cost of being teargassed and beaten by brutal Durban police one winter night in 2009.

A genuine transformation is needed to maximise life satisfaction and minimise our vast eco-destructive footprints, along with creating ‘a Million Climate Jobs’, as the Cape Town-based campaign – http://climatejobs.org.za/ – insists be done through meeting basic needs and building a low-carbon infrastructure.

And from California where post-mall culture is thriving, the team at ‘The Story of Stuff’ offers a new internet film showing another way forward: ‘The Story of Change – Why citizens, not shoppers, hold the key to a better world’ (http://www.storyofchange.org).

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* Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Civil Society, http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za

Justice for Marikana: Farlam Commission not up to the task

David Bruce

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84197

Commissions of inquiry have been called by government a number of times in the past to investigate large scale atrocities by police, including the massacres in Uitenhague in 1985, and Sebokeng in 1990. It may be argued that many of these were called as a form of ‘damage control’ by the apartheid government to provide the impression of taking the events seriously. Commissions tend to frame the issue as being about the conduct of all parties to the event. But is it appropriate to rely primarily on such a Commission if it is clear that a major and complex crime has been committed by the police?

In at least one case a Commission of Inquiry, appointed under apartheid, did result in charges being brought against police officers. In 1990, Judge Richard Goldstone headed up a Commission of Inquiry into the Sebokeng massacre of 26 March 1990 in which 13 protesters were killed. Goldstone recommended that the police officers involved in the massacre be prosecuted and they were in fact brought to trial. In August 1993 their trial was postponed indefinitely. No doubt related to the political circumstances of the time, no further action was taken against them.

There are points of comparison between the issues that faced the Goldstone inquiry and those faced by Judge Farlam. There were, for instance, allegations that the protestors in Sebokeng had thrown stones at police. However, the issues of criminal responsibility in relation to Marikana are far more complex. They involve the examination of questions such as: were the miners attacking the police when they first descended from the koppie? If they were not, did the police anyway believe that they were being attacked? If so, was the force that they used in defending themselves (against the imagined or actual attack) consistent with principles of legality? If it is true that the force used by the initial line of police officers was not in fact consistent with principles of legality, which police officers in the line should be charged? Did all of the police in the line discharge their firearms with the intention of shooting at the miners? Some police officers, for instance, stopped shooting after a few shots whilst others continued shooting until a ceasefire was called. Might some police in the line be regarded as having conformed to the law whilst others did not?



Evidence about the latter stage of the massacre, in which most of the victims were killed, also requires detailed scrutiny. Unless all of the police specialised unit members were under direct orders to execute miners, and mechanically carried out these orders, it is likely that many of the members of the specialised units were not involved. The investigation that is required needs to be meticulous in the extreme if it is to answer questions about who committed which killings, and whether or not these were justifiable by law. It is unlikely that an investigation will be able to put together a comprehensive case for all cases of murder and attempted murder (including police who shot at fleeing miners but missed) that should theoretically be investigated. But at the very least it is necessary for the investigation to give very detailed attention to the circumstances in which individual victims were killed.

It should be obvious that the issues of criminal responsibility for the massacre do not end here. In his book, ‘Shoot to Kill’, an examination of the use of lethal force by police in the United Kingdom, Maurice Punch describes the trial of the police officer responsible for the killing of James Ashley in Sussex in 1998. The case involved a drug raid during the dead of night. The police officer who entered the darkened apartment where Ashley had been sleeping said that he had thought that Ashley was about to attack him. In fact Ashley was not only naked but also unarmed. Justice Anne Rafferty however instructed the jury to acquit the police officer saying that those who should have been held responsible for the killing were not present in her court. ‘Those having responsibility for implementing, seeing good compliance and monitoring good practise as to the use of firearms, bear a heavy responsibility for the death,’ she said.



This is not, of course, to suggest that all of the police officers who killed miners at Marikana should be excused from criminal responsibility. But it is unavoidable that an investigation into questions of criminal responsibility for the massacre must look into matters of command and control in the Marikana operation. How did it happen that reliance was placed on police units armed with automatic weapons to carry out a disarmament operation against the miners? What instructions were given to them? What precautions, if any, were taken to try and ensure that the obvious potential for loss of life was minimised? Questions of responsibility are therefore not limited to who pulled the trigger. There is already extensive evidence that police have gone to elaborate lengths to compromise the possibility of an effective investigation into the massacre.

It therefore needs to be asked whether there is any chance of justice for the victims of the Marikana massacre? Even if the Commission of Inquiry is to be the initial vehicle for examining evidence about the massacre it will not be able to make any findings, other than of a very general nature, unless it is supported by a very thorough criminal investigation.
Neither the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, nor its predecessor the Independent Complaints Directorate, has ever had to carry out a complex investigation of this kind on its own. In the one case where this agency has managed to make some progress on an investigation of this order of complexity, the investigation into the Cato Manor organised crime unit, this has involved working in partnership with the Hawks. Meanwhile the Portfolio Committee on Justice is pre-occupied with raising queries about the proposed South African Human Rights Commission investigation into the massacre. But the key issue at this point, if justice is to be done, is to ensure that the inadequacies, of the current provisions for investigation, are rectified.

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* Bruce is an independent researcher. This article is written in collaboration with the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum.
* This article was first published on the website of the The South African Civil Society Information Service.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

The DRC and the West: the cost of contradiction

Tiago Faia

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84196

The DRC remains a fragile post-conflict society divided in intricate ethnic, social, political, economic, and military lines. Kabila’s first presidential mandate rested upon a fairly democratic electoral process that guaranteed him an absolute majority in 2006. From that platform, Kabila astutely balanced the divisive lines that characterise the country’s society. Presently, the balance of some of those lines appears to have weakened following the 2011 electoral process. Thereby, the West is likely to be proven incorrect in its decision to support Kabila as the best long-term option to guarantee peace and stability in the DRC.

In contrast with the political record of his first tenure as president, Kabila will face bigger challenges to control the DRC’s internal political dynamics in the next five years. His party failed to win the majority of seats in the National Assembly. Kabila’s response was to secure the creation of a complex coalition with a variety of parties to maintain political control over the National Assembly. Nevertheless, that solution remains untested in a fragile democracy like the DRC, and it can considerably hamper the efficiency and range of the workings of the National Assembly and the executive.

Additionally, Kabila had to reshuffle his government following the elections. He planned to continue to deposit all his faith in Augustin Katumba Mwanke, and make him the main mediator with the coalition parties, and the key-man to establish a solid governing platform for his presidency. Katumba Mwanke was his master strategist in the previous five years, who had become the de facto number two political figure in the DRC. Unexpectedly, he died in a plane crash in February 2012. The event compelled Kabila to swiftly correct the balance of power of those closest to him. He appointed a largely technocratic group of ministers under the leadership of Augustin Matata Ponyo as Prime Minister. As a result, Kabila’s grip on his government remains ambiguous, which portrays an uncertain future for the country’s political stability.

Kabila emerged from the 2011 presidential electoral process evidently weakened by the loss of political legitimacy. That development inspired his rivals to take action to progressively discredit his authority. The first signs of the emerging serious break in DRC political stability materialised in the North Kivu province following the actions of Jean Bosco Ntaganda. Bosco Ntaganda is a former Rwandan rebel indicted by the International Criminal Court, who joined the DRC army in 2009 as part of a peace deal with rebel groups active in the East of the country. In April 2012, he deserted from the army, and used the support of a like-minded rebel group composed of fellow deserters - the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) - to take control of large areas across the North Kivu province. Together they started to spread chaos across the Eastern DRC province. Their actions caused mass population displacements and threatened to instigate one of the worst political, military, and social crises in the region over the past decade.

Kabila is attempting to advance with an effective response to the exploits of Bosco Ntaganda and M23 in North Kivu. However, he has considerable limitations. The DRC army remains largely untrained and lacks unity. Furthermore, Bosco Ntaganda and M23 enjoy the full support of the Rwandan government, and superior army, as confirmed by the recent United Nations (UN) report on the North Kivu crisis. Paradoxically, the UN report exposes not only Kabila’s limitations to resolve the North Kivu crisis, but also the West’s double-standards regarding his presidential re-election process. The West endorsed Kabila as the best option to maintain peace and stability in the DRC. Yet, the US continues to arm and train the Rwandan army as a close military ally in the region, and the UK and the US remain Rwanda’s largest international aid donors.

THE COST OF SUPPORT

Despite the grave irregularities that characterised the 2011 DRC presidential electoral process, the West endorsed Kabila as winner. The West regarded Kabila as the best vehicle to secure peace and stability in the country. However, the present political situation in the DRC suggests otherwise. In the months that followed the elections, the country became politically unstable. After the loss of political legitimacy in a fraudulent electoral process, Kabila lost the majority control of the National Assembly, saw the departure of his most trusted aide in the previous tenure, and had to form a new mostly technocratic government. As a result, his political authority weakened considerably.

In turn, Kabila’s loss of political authority led to a progressive break in peace in the already volatile East of the country. The actions of Bosco Ntaganda and M23 pose a serious threat to peace in the DRC and the Great Lakes region. It remains unclear how the North Kivu crisis will be resolved. Yet, it appears that concerted action from the West is now crucial, as its double-standards approach to Kabila’s presidential re-election become more evident.

If the West does not review its approach to the DRC presidential election, it risks to impair the democratic process and governance in the country. The cost for the DRC would be extensive as it could:

- Undo the remarkable democratic progress following the 2006 presidential elections; - Disenfranchise further the citizens from the construction of a solid state structure;
- Affect the strengthening of institutions at the local, provincial, and state levels; and, - Transform the 2011 presidential election process into a simple political tool at the hands of Kabila.

The West should strive for coherence in its relations with Kabila and the DRC, and address the country’s presidential election in correlation with the principles that it claims to advocate - democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Accordingly, the pursuit of the policy to endorse Kabila and return to ‘business as usual’ with him and his government seems improvident. Instead, the West should promote the re-examination and recounting of the election results, offer its support to the democratic winner of the presidential election, and devise a consistent foreign policy towards the DRC and the Great Lakes region that prevents conflict and fosters sustainable peace.

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* Tiago Faia is a recent PhD graduate in Africa-EU relations from the University of Bath, UK.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Young Saharawis are fed up with the futile peace process

Peter Kenworthy

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84194

Young Saharawis are fed up with the United Nations-led peace process between the leaders of the Western Saharan liberation movement, Polisario, and the Moroccans who have colonized most of their country since 1975.

The peace process has lasted for over 20 years, but has yet to produce any significant breakthroughs for the Saharawis, who simply demand the referendum that is to determine the status of Western Sahara that they have been promised by the United Nations.

‘But the United Nations has not been able to assume its responsibilities. The current negotiations are worthless, since they have been used by Morocco to prolong the suffering of our people in the refugee camps and the occupied territories,’ says 24 year old Saharawi journalist, Salama Mohamed.

Salama Mohamed is a member of the Saharawi student union, UESARIO’s, office for human rights. He presently uses his degree in English literature as a translator journalist at the Sahara Press Service.

As is the case with many other Saharawi youths, Salama believes that a return to war against Morocco might be the better of two evils. A recent survey carried out by Polisario’s youth wing, Ujsario, found that over 85 per cent of the young Saharawis polled were in favour of ending the current ceasefire with Morocco and returning to war.

‘Young people here are well aware of the devastating consequences of war but they have nothing to lose,’ says Salama. ‘They are frustrated by the damning situation of ‘no peace, no war’, the human tragedy in the camps, the ongoing repression carried out by Moroccan security and military apparatus in the occupied territories.’

Simply waiting for Morocco and her allies to end Moroccan colonialism is no longer an option, Salama says in his capacity as a member of Saharawi union, UESARIO’s, executive office. ‘We call for reinforcing the peaceful Intifada in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, urgent measures should be taken to strengthen the capability of the Saharawi People’s Liberation Army.’

Like most Saharawis living in the inhospitable refugee camps in a dessert area near Tindouf in South Western Algeria, where around 165.000 Saharawi refugees survive on aid from the UN and the EU, Salama’s family fled the advancing Moroccan forces that colonized Western Sahara in 1975.

‘My mother was seven years old when she fled from her homeland with her family. But she still remembers the brutal bombing that targeted the defenseless refugees on their way to the Algerian desert,’ says Salama. ‘And like all Saharawi men at the time my father fought in the Saharawi Peoples’ Liberation Army, ELPS. I lost two uncles during the war.’

Salama was born and raised in the camps until he was 11 years old where he left to finish his education in Algeria. Like most Saharawis, he dare not return home to Moroccan occupied Western Sahara. ‘We feel homesick. I have never met a large part of my family who live in the occupied territories.’

The rate of literacy and educational level of the Saharawis in well above the regional average, but due to a lack of job opportunities in the Tindouf refugee camps and Moroccan discrimination in the occupied territories, most Saharawi students either have to find jobs abroad or work in the ministerial departments or other institutions of the Saharawi government in exile, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which is based in one of the refugee camps.

‘Saharawi students have been subject to assaults, assassinations, harassment and discrimination by Moroccan authorities in the occupied territories,’ says Salama Mohamed. ‘Presently, six Saharawi students have been at Sale prison in Morocco since Novemebr 2011 for participating in a peaceful demonstration. We are extremely concerned about their deteriorating condition of health after they have been on hunger strikes.’

But regardless of these hardships, young Saharawis and students in particular are playing an increasingly important role in the fight against Moroccan colonialism and for a referendum.

‘Students are playing a leading role in the long-standing struggle of our people - also in making the voice of the Saharawi students heard in the [SADR] government and with the Polisario,’ Salama Mohamed says. And Internationally, UESARIO petitions the EU and other countries, participates in international forums such as the World Social Forum, have established ties with other students’ unions around the world, and organizes demonstrations in front of e.g. the French Embassy.

WRITER’s NOTE: The views expressed in this article are in accordance with those of the executive of UESARIO, with whom Salama has discussed the issues raised in this article beforehand, as well as with Saharawi students in general, as Salama has also raised these issues with many of them.

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* Peter Kenworthy writes for Africa Contact.

50 years on, is Uganda truly independent?

Deo K Tumusiime

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/84225

In the olden days, the colonialists used crude methods of literally stealing resources and taking over leadership positions whilst making Africans subordinates and slaves. I could relate this to the system of graduated tax where adults above the age of 18 used to be chased around to ensure they met their tax obligations even when some were unemployed. Of course over time it became obvious that such a state of affairs was too backward and, in fact, many people lost their lives as they drowned in rivers while running away from tax collectors!

On 9 October 2012, Uganda will celebrate 50 years of independence from the crude colonial rule of old. I do not intend to spoil the party mood, but as we prepare the dancing shoes for the occasion, we ought to stop and ask ourselves the all-important-question: is Uganda really Independent? Or have did we simply change from graduated tax to Value Added Tax (VAT), which is paid by every citizen even when there’s no ‘value added’? Why should a newly born baby be taxed? Oh yeah, one has to pay tax on those inch-long baby clothes and diapers for a day-old child!

One thing that many of us normally do not pay attention to is the fact that the colonialists were not stupid in letting the Union Jack to be replaced by the Black, Yellow and Red flag. No one should even think that the colonialists were defeated by the prowess of the Ugandan forces. No. The colonialists are still here with us. In their metamorphosed state, they do not have to come to Uganda to rule us, but they do so by remote control; they do not have to come to Uganda to pick up slaves, but Ugandans queue up for visas to hand themselves to slavery. And if they wanted, the colonialists could come over, buy all the land in Uganda at a giveaway price. But why bother to take the land away when they can invest on it and wire the proceeds back home whilst paying peanuts to the local citizens (owners of the land as provided in the Constitution)?

Think of this: for a Ugandan who travels to the United States of America, he needs not less than Sh2,500 today to purchase an item worth one unit. Conversely, if an American came to Uganda today, using a mere $1, he would purchase 2,500 units in Kampala! Yet due to lack of a common currency in African regions, a lot of imported goods must be purchased in dollars. So do you need to be colonized any more than this? Uganda has been rendered too cheap that anyone with a few dollars can fly in and have a blast in the capital Kampala. Yet merely getting a visa to visit other countries one must first sweat, leave alone the brutality of cost of living abroad.

Yes, you’ve heard it said that the jobs many Ugandans do abroad are things like baby-sitting, cleaning toilets, caring for the elderly, working on farms, and I guess some even serve as sex workers in the red light districts! How can people who are INDEPENDENT be reduced to this level? How can independent people be so desperate? What’s lacking in independent Uganda that Ugandans cannot happily work and earn a decent living at home with their families and only go abroad as tourists?

I came across an interesting definition of independence on the Wikipedia Website: ‘Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory.’ The bit of ‘or some portion thereof”, for me is the perfect definition of the independence that we attained and the very one we are celebrating 50 years on. We only received a portion of the ‘independence cake’, but the biggest portion was retained by our colonial masters and for this we’ve continued to beg from them to give us droppings of our very own cake!

I think through and through, the present day discreet type of colonialism is the worst, because days gone by, resources would be taken away but at least in an attempt to establish a life close to what was back ‘home’. Ugandans benefited from the white man through decent infrastructure and some social amenities. That’s how South Africa has managed to elevate itself to a European status - they even get snow!!!

So if you asked me whether the White man should come back and take over leadership of Uganda, I would vote Yes. On condition that we have a levelled bargaining field, at least now that many of us can read and write.

I think that the 50th nnniversary should only be a moment for us to light a torch and see how far we’ve come and assess whether we got a deal in 1962 or a raw deal and then decide on the Uganda we’d like to see 50 years from now.

So is there a chance to have a fresh bargain? Yes, we must start by appreciating ourselves as Ugandans and feeling proud of our nation, our people, our land, our resources. Once this is done, then we shall not let nasty Chinese products flood our markets anymore; we shall negotiate better Shilling-Dollar rates; shall decide our political destiny; and, hey, many Ugandans could even marry white women instead of offering themselves away cheaply. With no grain of doubt, independence can be the sweetest thing for any country and its people: only when it is in practical.

For God and my country!

Need for a new beginning in DRC

Pacifique Sukisa-Makasi

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/84224

Future politicians of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who have not yet socially and economically contributed to destroying the DRC should conquer fear. They should request Africa’s sub-regions, the African Union and the broader international community to help us to challenge the existing dictatorial political systems and help the DRC give birth to a positively effective political direction towards a peaceful, stable and prosperous DRC based on the “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and “a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity”.

We have to remember that our diversity must continue but we have shared precious things to protect, that is: “the DRC nationality and sovereignty”. Without forgetting that there are those who are taking chances on our lack of a responsible leadership, the ongoing intolerance of our diversity and lack of strong government institutions, corruption, impunity, etc, we should also always remember that our country is surrounded by nine other countries, meaning the DRC definitively has citizens originally from these nine countries and therefore, whoever is covered by the 2005 DRC constitutional referendum should be considered as a citizen of the DRC.

We should also remember that the current high unemployment in DRC and today’s interdependent world equires us to do business with other world citizens. We have to also remember that no individual, small or big company wants to invest without extracting profit, meaning that we have to carefully open our doors to international investors based on the international formal principles.

NEED FOR A NATIONAL DIALOGUE

There is a need for an urgent national and all-inclusive dialogue – that is, of the DRC’s political leadership, the general public, diaspora - reflecting the post-election problems in consideration of all the defining factors of the current deadlock as well as its various dimensions. Among these are: the major problems of governance, social justice and cohesion confronting the DRC and the great lakes region, towards achieving viable and durable solutions. The current AU, regional, sub –regional groups and the broader international community effort to discourage power politics and conflict and encourage political maturity is already obviously part of the solution.

Congolese in exile are deeply divided over the current DRC situation. Currently, I am aware of two main DRC groups active in South Africa against the ongoing political crisis in DRC. There is a group of Congolese citizens in South Africa, mainly Lingala-speaking, calling themselves ‘combatants’ who are allegedly using violent attacks on individuals and property associated with the regime of President Joseph Kabila. This group sees any DRC person who does not support Mr Etienne Tshisekedi as an automatic supporter of Mr Kabila. There are allegations that the combatants have been involved in other violent actions and threats. This group is reported to have assaulted members of the official Congolese delegation attending a mining conference in Cape Town in early February 2012. It is said that they also ransacked the DRC embassy in Pretoria, destroyed office equipment and forced diplomats to go into hiding. It is also said that the embassy has since reported the death of one of its staff as an indirect consequence of the incident. The ‘Combatants’ are alleged to have camped outside the headquarters of the governing ANC in Johannesburg. Briefly, the current position of the ‘Combatants’ is that opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi won the 2011 presidential elections and that he is the legitimate president of the DRC. This group believes also that South Africa, SADC, USA and allies and the United Nations should not in any way be involved in DRC’s economic and political affairs.

The other group is the Revolution Congolaise.RC, a movement of moderate citizens from the DRC. It is composed of men and women from all DRC’s eleven provinces, political and human rights activists, church leaders, students, workers in the DRC public and the private sectors, the unemployed, etc. We are united in the fight against dictatorial governments that deny us dignity, liberty and protection; governments that oppress us instead of protecting us and which are rooted in injustice, discrimination, intolerance and the lack of good will to make the DRC an effective member of the AU and the international community. And most importantly, we are united in the fight against the Kabila's government’s incompetence and lack of will to make the DRC peaceful, stable and prosperous with a vision. The Revolution Congolaise.RC is also continuously lobbying the SADC, the great lakes region, the African Union and the broader international community to assist us by creating conditions for an all-inclusive national dialogue that will find a way out of the current institutional, political and socio-economic deadlock.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT

It is very obvious to us that political parties in the DRC do not represent the will of the people but personal interest. They believe in promoting strong individuals than promoting strong government institutions and they seem to use politics as self employment.

The DRC opposition is divided and what is most disappointing is that President Kabila and the main opposition leader and others are not willing to come under one roof for dialogue that could move the country forward. Many of DRC opponents of President Kabila lack political maturity by basing their political convictions on tribalism, regionalism, linguistic differences, personal wealth, etc.

The struggle for peace, justice and stability in the DRC is a struggle that has taken many innocent lives. Building unity in the interests of the masses of DRC people requires setting aside regionalism, linguistic and ethnic differences, etc, in order to build a new society.

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* Pacifique Sukisa-Makasi a a Congolese human rights and political activist based in Pretoria, South Africa. He the president of Revolution Congolaise.RC.

The economics behind the Marikana killings

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/84183

‘We were only tolerated simply because our cheap labour is needed.’ - Steve Biko

The killings of 34 demonstrating mine workers in South Africa last month has several background factors, but two of them stand out: police brutality and the exploitation of workers. And they are interlinked.

The aggressiveness of the security forces’ represent the conditioning produced by the ‘governmentality’ of national and international elites. Thus, the assault in Marikana, South Africa, is not an isolated event, it’s a global phenomenon. One major difference is the explicitness of this event - workers usually perish in silence due to, for instance, poor health or social violence, away from the cameras.

The economics behind this ‘governmentality’ propose that the labour market has to be ‘flexible’ to the demands of ‘the market’. In other words, workers have to endure low incomes and poor working conditions, especially if they are easily replaced with others from the abundant labour supply. The current standstill at the Marikana mine is due to this confrontation. The striking workers threaten those that are willing to work at prevailing rates. Thus, this economics rationale also push workers to clash with each other.

Any uprising against the prevailing conditions is seen as an act of disobedience, which disturbs the functioning of the markets. Since disturbing the markets is seen almost like an original sin, the troublemakers face harsh reprisals. And so, over 300 hundred rounds of live ammunition were fired upon the desperate, angry, and alienated mine workers of the transnational corporation Lonmin, one of the largest mining companies of the world. It should be said that the level of police brutality seems to be partly attributable to vengeance - two police officers were killed in the clashes preceding the shootings of the 34 workers.

What was the demand of the workers? They demanded wage increments, from about R4,000 (about USD500) to around R12,000 (about USD1,500) per month. This 300 per cent pay rise may seem out of place, but living costs of the country are constantly rising, while the platinum industry is among the world’s most profitable, and its executives are among the world’s best paid. The UK’s High Pay Commission reports that Lonmin’s lead executive earns 113 times the average worker in the UK. This amounts to about 500 times the salary of Lonmin’s South African mine workers.

Now, allow a naive question: how can any human being’s work be valued 500 times more than someone else’s? Only an autistic economics justifies such disparities.

In the early 1970s, the legend Steve Biko did not only foresaw an imminent collapse of the apartheid regime, but he also warned that ‘[i]f we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie. Our society will be run almost as of yesterday.’

This is exactly what has happened. The simplistic and mechanistic neoclassical economics, co-opted by elitist leaders, has prevailed. The consequences are clear. The economic inequality of South Africa is one of the highest in the world. Today, whites earn more than eight times what blacks earn - an unchanged disparity since the end of apartheid.

Steve Biko pointed out that: ‘...for meaningful change to appear there needs to be an attempt at reorganizing the whole economic pattern and economic policies within this particular country.’ So, political liberation should coincide with economic liberation.

Steve Biko died 35 years ago (12 September 1977) after days of torture at the hands of the apartheid police. His philosophy and inspirational spirit lives on.

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* Deniz Kellecioglu is an economist based in Sweden who has worked in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Alarm over Southern African dams

New study shows dam-dependent Zambezi Basin unprepared for climate change

International Rivers

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84221

The result could be uneconomic dams that under-perform in the face of more extreme drought, and more dangerous dams that have not been designed to handle increasingly damaging floods.

Currently, 13,000 megawatts of new large-dam hydro is proposed for the Zambezi and its tributaries. The report finds that existing and proposed hydropower dams are not being properly evaluated for the risks from natural hydrological variability (which is extremely high in the Zambezi), much less the risks posed by climate change.

Dr. Richard Beilfuss – a noted hydrologist with extensive experience on the Zambezi – evaluated the hydrological risks to hydropower dams in the basin. Overall, Africa’s fourth-largest river will experience worse droughts and more extreme floods. Dams being proposed and built now will be negatively affected, yet energy planning in the basin is not taking serious steps to address these huge hydrological uncertainties.

‘Ensuring energy and water security in the Zambezi River basin for the future will require new ways of thinking about river basin development,’ notes Dr. Beilfuss. ‘We must avoid investing billions of dollars into projects that could become white elephants.’

The report’s key findings describe a region moving toward the edge of a hydrological precipice:

·The Zambezi basin exhibits the worst potential effects of climate change among 11 major sub-Saharan African river basins and will experience the most substantial reduction in rainfall and runoff, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. Multiple studies estimate that rainfall across the basin will decrease by 10-15 per cent.

·The basin is likely to experience significant warming and higher evaporation rates in the next century. Because large reservoirs evaporate more water than natural rivers, big dams could worsen local water deficits (and reduce water for hydropower). Already, more than 11 per cent of the Zambezi’s mean annual flow is lost to evaporation from large hydropower dams’ reservoirs. These water losses increase the risk of shortfalls in power generation and significantly impact downstream ecosystem functions.

· The designs for two of the larger dam projects proposed for the Zambezi, Batoka Gorge and Mphanda Nkuwa dams, are based on historical hydrological records and have not been evaluated for the risks associated with reduced mean annual flows and more extreme flood and drought cycles. Under future climate scenarios, these hydropower stations, which are being based on the past century’s record of flows, are unlikely to deliver the expected services over their lifetimes.

· The occurrence of more frequent extreme floods threatens the stability and safe operation of large dams. Extreme flooding events, a natural feature of the Zambezi River system, have become more costly downstream since the construction of large dams. If dams are “under- designed” for larger floods, the result could be serious safety risks to millions of people living in the basin.

· The Zambezi River is already highly modified by large hydropower dams, which have profoundly altered the hydrological conditions that are most important for downstream livelihoods and preserving biodiversity. The ecological goods and services provided by the Zambezi, which are key to enabling societies to adapt to climate change, are under grave threat. A recent economic study estimated that the annual total value of river-dependent ecosystem services for one Zambezi floodplain (the Zambezi Delta) ranges between US$930 million and $1.6 billion. The economic value of water for downstream ecosystem services exceeds the value of water for strict hydropower production. These services are not being properly valued in planning for large dams in the basin.

Rudo Sanyanga, Africa Programme Director for International Rivers, says: “Large-dam hydro poses not just economic risks, but also adaptation risks. Africa has been called the continent ‘most at risk’ of climate change. Successful adaptation will require new ways of thinking about water resources. We need to act now to protect our rivers as sources of livelihoods and food security.”

The report recommends a series of steps to address the coming storm of hydrological changes, including changes to how dams are planned and operated.

‘The region’s energy planners and governments must acknowledge these hydrological risks, and take steps to improve planning and management of large dams in the basin,’ notes Beilfuss. ‘At minimum, existing and future dams should undergo a thorough analysis of climate risks.’

Contacts:

Dr. Richard Beilfuss (in Wisconsin, US): Office: +608-356-9462, ext. 143; Mob: +608-320-5250

Rudo Sanyanga, Africa Program Director, International Rivers (in Pretoria, South Africa):

Office: +27 (0) 12-342-8309, Mob: +277 684-2-3874

Read the report: “A Risky Climate for Southern African Hydro: Assessing hydrological risks and consequences for Zambezi River Basin dams” by Dr. Richard Beilfuss. Full report, executive summary and supporting materials here: http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/a-risky-climate-for-southern-african-hydro-7673

View a short video on the Zambezi report findings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0YvxVdNSU&feature=youtu.be

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Defend the right to strike

Democratic Left Front (DLF) press statement

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84198

Statements by Zuma on Thursday 13 September and since by other ministers and ANC leaders threaten to stop ‘illegal gatherings, incitement and threats of violence’. Mantashe speaks of the existence of ‘anarchy’. We are told that the ‘full might of the law’ will be used to curb further unrest. The further use of live ammunition has not been ruled out by police spokespeople. There is talk of ‘illegal strikes’ when no strikes are illegal in South Africa. They are simply protected or unprotected. The talk further delegitimizes unprotected strikes.

The ANC government is now talking like the hated apartheid regime. It is openly declaring itself anti-working-class. It wants instead to protect the interests of foreign mining bosses like those of Lonmin in the brutal exploitation of cheap labour-brokered labour. It is the same protection for foreign investors that is behind the decision for prospecting for fracking in the Karoo to go ahead, without any adequate scientific justification.

The ANC government, put into power by the votes of working people, is threatening the right to strike, an absolute right won by the workers in our struggle for democracy and a decent life for all. The talk of ‘illegal gatherings’ is a threat to freedom of assembly. The police are wrongly interpreting the powers given them in Section 9 of Act 205 of 1995, which are not meant to prohibit gatherings but to prevent serious harm once a gathering has taken place.

Under this government, officials of the national, provincial and local state are filthy with corruption. But the ANC government has not set the police to root this out. Instead it tolerates corruption, and demands that the police attack the working class.

Zuma attacks people who ‘instigate miners to operate in a particular way’. This hardly veiled attack on Julius Malema is a convenient way of threatening anyone who supports the demands of the mineworkers on strike at Marikana and elsewhere.

The ANC crackdown undermines collective bargaining. It cuts across the beginnings of progress made on the negotiation front, where Lonmin has begun making offers of wage increases (pitiful as yet) to the striking workers. Will workers be allowed to meet to decide whether to accept offers made to them by the mining companies?

It is incumbent on the working class and all democrats to defend the right to strike! The ANC government wants to drive mineworkers back to work without winning their demands. But they will not succeed! The strength of the working class will triumph over the authoritarian ANC government!

As the DLF, we demand:

- Call the military back to barracks! Withdraw police from the platinum belt!

- Arrest all police involved in the murder of Marikana workers!

- Release and drop all charges against arrested mineworkers!

- R12,500 wage for mineworkers!

- An end to state intimidation and harassment of the Marikana workers, their families and communities;

- Delivery of housing and public services to the Marikana communities and all mining communities in South Africa;

- Compensation to the workers for violence endured at the hands of the police.

ENDS

FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:

Ayanda Kota - 078 625 6462

Martin Legassick - 083 417 6837

Noor Nieftagodien - 082 457 4103

Vishwas Satgar - 082 775 3420

Remembering Steve Biko

Commemorate the life of Stephen Bantu Biko; resist internalized oppression and economic exploitation

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84222

Media Release

September 19, 2012

Toronto, ON - The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) has organized a forum to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the martyrdom of Steve Biko. This event will be on Thursday, September 20 at 7pm in Room 5-280 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (252 Bloor Street West, at St. George station).

Steve Biko was a revolutionary, educator, and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in Azania (South Afrika). He recognized that the emancipation of Afrikan people must be led by Afrikan people, and his work as a student organizer in solidarity with the Afrikan working class is especially relevant for those of us interested in or dedicated to radical organization-building strategies and community mobilization. Black Consciousness, as Gussai Sheikheldin says, "channels our emotions and intelligence towards action for social transformation, and also towards building genuine solidarity among our peoples and other oppressed peoples around the world, to fight common ideological enemies that we can only fight better together."

Central to Biko's stance on self-determined, self-sufficient, organized liberatory struggle was the recognition that Afrikan liberation in Azania could not occur unless Afrikan people develop the critical consciousness necessary to understand the social, economic, and political roots of their oppression by the former apartheid state. Biko recognized the importance of public education for liberation struggles, and this is part of the reason for this public education initiative. While Black consciousness provided an oppositional education to the normative and racist education that the majority of Afrikan people received under apartheid, it is crucial that we continue to engage in public education in our Pan-Afrikan struggles that strengthen our capacities to resist white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist oppression in our organizations and communities.

Responses to the recent massacre of mineworkers at the Marikana mine in Azania by state agents reveals state cooptation of ideas that revolutionary forces must reclaim. As Yolisa Dalamba states, "Given the condition of Afrikans in Azania and around the world the relevance of Black Consciousness is striking. At Marikana and around the country the majority of the people remain oppressed both by apartheid's brutal legacy and Afrikans who now preside over the post-apartheid state. The latter have abandoned the liberation struggle for capitalism that regards Afrikans as little more than slaves." We must work to expose political opportunists that parasitically profit from the national wealth of Azania, while claiming the legacy of genuine revolutionary struggle. Steve Biko was brutally tortured and killed by the apartheid regime because his contribution to the work of Afrikan liberation genuinely threatened the oppressive status quo. There is no space in our work for conciliation with the exploitative forces Biko and countless freedom fighters died resisting.

So, we will gather to engage in critical discussion and commemorate the life and work of Steve Biko, while we commit and re-commit ourselves to the ongoing work of Pan-Afrikan solidarity and liberation. We will show a documentary film about Biko’s life and work, and we will have a panel discussion featuring: Dr. Rozena Maart, professor at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in Durban, Azania ("Black Consciousness and the Possibility of a Gender Analysis”); Gussai Sheikheldin, organizer with NPAS and graduate student at the University of Guelph (“Racial but Not Racial: Being Black to Biko and Rodney”); and Yolisa Dalamba, community activist & educator who was active in the anti-apartheid movement in Canada and Azania (“Black Consciousness and its Relevance for Afrikan Activism in Canada”).

For information please contact: network4panafrikansolidarity@gmail.com

Republic of Congo and Guinea ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa

SOAWR

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84184

Press Release
For Immediate Release
19 September 2012 Nairobi, Kenya.

The Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR), a pan-African coalition of 42 organizations in 23 African countries, congratulates the Republic of Congo and the Republic of Guinea on their ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (hereafter the Protocol). The ratification by Congo and Guinea on 6 August and 17 September 2012 respectively, brings the total number of ratifications to 34 (thirty-four) out of the 54 (fifty-four) African member states.

The Protocol was adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the 2nd Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly in Maputo on July 11, 2003 and came into force in November 2005 after ratification by 15 member states. The Protocol provides a legal framework for the recognition of women’s rights and creates obligations for states and governments to take measures to ensure that girls and women in Africa enjoy these rights. This includes ensuring that women enjoy their rights to dignity, freedom from violence, right to education, right to health (including sexual and reproductive health rights), right to employment, right to political participation, right to own property and to have access to development resources.

SOAWR welcomes Congo’s and Guinea’s ratification of the Protocol and acknowledges this as a huge step that will facilitate achievement of economic growth and development as required in the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

SOAWR further calls upon the governments of Congo and Guinea to ensure that the rights provided in the Protocol are promoted through domestication, implementation and awareness raising. This is based on the fact that higher economic growth is dependent on the successful promotion of human rights for all and the implementation of programmes and interventions intended to achieve gender equality and social, economic and political empowerment for women and men.

As preparations are underway to commemorate ten years since the adoption of the Protocol, SOAWR urges all the remaining 20 African states to expedite the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women.

For more information on the Protocol and the work being done to make it a reality, please contact: Alexandriah Muhanji, Program Officer, Equality Now (SOAWR Secretariat) amuhanji@equalitynow.org; Tel. +254-20-2719832/2719913, Fax: +254-20-2719868, www.equalitynow.org, www.soawr.org P.O. Box 2018-00202, Nairobi Kenya

COALITION MEMBERS

Action for Development (ACFODE), African Centre for Democracy And Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMWA), Alliances for Africa, The Association of Egyptian Female Lawyers, Association des Juristes Maliennes (AJM), BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, Cellule de Coordination sur les Pratiques Traditionelle Affectant la Sante des Femmes et des Enfants (CPTAFE), , Centre for Justice Studies and Innovations (CJSI), Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW), Collectif des Associations et ONGS Féminines de Burundi (CAFOB), Eastern Africa Sub-regional Support Initiative (EASSI), Equality Now, FAHAMU, Federation of Women Lawyers Kenya (FIDA-Kenya), Forum Mulher, Girl Child Network (GCN), Human Rights Law Service (HURILAWS), Inter- African Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices (IAC), Inter-African Network For Women, Media, Gender and Development (FAMEDEV), Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), NGO Gender Coordination Network (NGOGCN), Oxfam GB, People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (RHRA), Sister Namibia, Strategic Initiative for the Horn of Africa (SIHA), Tomorrow’s Child Initiative (TCI), Uganda Women's Network (UWONET),Union Nationale des Femmes de Djibouti (UNFD), University of Pretoria Center for Human Rights, Women’s Advocacy and Communication Network (WANET) , Women Direct, Voix de Femmes, Women of Liberia Peace Network (WOLPNET), Women and Law Southern Africa (WLSA), Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA), Women NGO’s Secretariat of Liberia (WONGOSOL),Women Peace Initiatives Association.

Resolution for the formation of the South Sudan Land Alliance

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84199

We,

Participants representing over 200 members of the 10 State Land Alliances in South Sudan assembled at Intra-Africa Hotel in Juba from 11th-13th September 2012,

CONVINCED that Land is by far the most important resource that South Sudanese have at their disposal;

APPRECIATING the efforts of the National Government in designing the Land Act 2009 and other land related legislations in the offing;

REALIZING the need to work together as citizens of one nation for the protection of land rights for all;

COGNIZANT of the cross-cutting concerns raised by the people of South Sudan during the recent Land Act dissemination exercise that covered over 60,000 people across the 10 States;
AWARE of the dire need for more awareness on the Land Act 2009; the need to operationalize land councils at various levels; need for land rights to top the agenda in the constitutional review process; need for improved processes of land dispute resolution in urban and rural areas; the need for increased protection of women’s land and property rights, and fulfillment of the land rights of vulnerable populations, including persons with disabilities;

CONSCIOUS that land and resource rights are human rights as enshrined in local, regional and international human rights instruments;

HAVING discussed and generally agreed on common grounds for mutual cooperation of all members of State Alliances and other stakeholders interested in joining our cause;

UNITED by a common goal of ensuring land justice for all the people of South Sudan;

Hereby resolve to form a national umbrella, the South Sudan Land Alliance that will harmonize the efforts of all members in the various states into one national voice for the realization of land rights for all the people of South Sudan.

We entrust our Taskforce elected today, with the duty of harmonizing our discussions and finalizing the structure of the South Sudan Land Alliance until the new leadership shall be elected by the General Assembly of members.

The South Sudan Land Alliance is therefore officially inaugurated by the RESOLUTION of the participants meeting here at Intra-Africa Hotel, 11 - 13 September 2012; and launched by:

Hon. Lado Lwoki Robert, Chairman, South Sudan Land Commission

Sign a petition to restore presidential term limits in Uganda

“All power belongs to the people who shall exercise their sovereignty in accordance with this Constitution.” Article 1 of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84185

Fellow Ugandans,

On 30 September 2005, seven years ago, the 7th Parliament voted to amend the Constitution of Uganda to remove presidential term limits. This was done without the citizens’ mandate nor was due regard given to the aspirations of Ugandans who had demanded presidential term limits to be entrenched in the 1995 Constitution because of our history of dictatorial leadership and violent transfer of power.

Today’s despicable state of the economy, poor quality health and education services, corruption with impunity, massive levels of unemployment and increasing response to citizen’s demands with repressive legislations can be traced to the regrettable action of lifting presidential term limits.

As right thinking Ugandans, we are tired of war and fear of war; we are tired of being treated like second-class citizens or even foreigners in our land; and we are tired of being betrayed by our leaders.

That is why as Uganda commemorates 50 years of independence and also marks seven years since the lifting of Presidential term limits, it is our duty as citizens to demand of the 9th Parliament to take action and secure a better future by restoring presidential term limits. The restoration of term limits would return citizens authority in the constitution as in article 1 of the 1995 constitution: “All power belongs to the people who shall exercise their sovereignty in accordance with this Constitution.”

This single action would in effect restore parliamentary authority as representatives of the people, remove impunity and make the government of Uganda more accountable of all its actions especially for the provisions social services. It would also restore predictability and stability to our politics to ensure we have systems for peaceful transfer of power in Uganda.

Therefore;

We the undersigned citizens of Uganda strongly demand that the 9th Parliament reinstates presidential term limits and call Upon all Ugandans to do the same for the sake of Our Country,Our Children and Our Future.

A CALL TO ACTION!

This petition will be shared with members of the 9th Parliament as a demand from Citizens of Uganda on 28th September 2012 as the Nation commemorates 7years since term limits were lifted. Your signature will make a big difference for the Nation.

Please include your name and district of origin when you sign.

Your data will be kept confidential save for your name and district details.

Please pass this on to at least 10 Ugandans and implore them to sign the petition. We are targeting at least 5000 signatures by Friday 28th Sept.2012.

For GOD and Our Country.

Sign here.

Victory for forgotten shack dwellers

Abahlali baseMjondolo and Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (SERI)

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84219

Media statement

19 September 2012

Today the Durban High Court handed down a ground-breaking judgment in Mchunu and Others v Executive Mayor of eThekwini and others, following a hearing held on 17 September 2012. The decision, given by Acting Judge Nigel Hollis, requires the Mayor of eThekwini, the City Manager and the Director of Housing to take all the necessary steps, within three months, to provide permanent housing to 37 poor families living in a transit camp near KwaMashu, Durban. If they do not, they may be fined or imprisoned.

Today’s judgment comes after the Durban High Court ordered the eThekwini Municipality to provide houses to 37 families of Richmond Farm Transit Camp in KwaMashu. The families had been evicted from the Siyanda informal settlement in March 2009 in order to allow for the construction of a road. One of the conditions of the eviction order was that eThekwini Municipality would provide the families with permanent housing within a year. The deadline for this redress expired in 2010, and nothing has been done to comply with the order. The occupiers were simply abandoned at the transit camp, to live in appalling conditions indefinitely. With the assistance of Abahlali baseMjondolo and SERI, they took the municipality to court, demanding the implementation of the 2009 court order.

Today the Durban High Court declared that the Executive Mayor, City Manager and Director of Housing at eThekwini Municipality are ‘constitutionally and statutorily obliged to take all necessary steps’ to comply with the 2009 order. These three municipal office-bearers must ensure that the municipality provides the housing due to the families for the last two-and-a-half-years, or face being held in contempt of court.

Teboho Mosikili, attorney at SERI, said: ‘This is a victory for the rule of law. This case has important implications for local government accountability, as it means that municipal office-bearers can no longer hide behind nebulous administrations for the performance of constitutional obligations. Municipal office-bearers are responsible for giving effect to court orders and constitutional obligations placed on municipalities. If they do not take this responsibility seriously, they can be held in contempt and fined or sent to prison. The Mayor of eThekwini, the City Manager and the Director of Housing have simply ignored my clients’ repeated petitions that they comply with the court order. If they now continue to do so, the consequences for them could be very severe indeed.’

According to Bandile Mdlalose, General Secretary of Abahlali: ‘This judgment is a victory for all the shack dwellers that are dumped to rot in transit camps. We want to express our deepest gratitude to our legal team from SERI. While we celebrate this victory, Abahlali are worried that we may be attacked and receive death threats, as happened after the Constitutional Court victory against the KZN Slums Act when Kennedy Road was attacked leaving two people dead in September 2009.’

Advocates Geoff Budlender SC, Stuart Wilson and Nicole Lewis represented the families in court.

Contact details: Teboho Mosikili, attorney at SERI: teboho@seri-sa.org / 072 248 2199 Bandile Mdlalose, general secretary of Abahlali: bandy.mdlalose@gmail.com / 071 424 2

The passion of Hastings Maloya: A tribute

Steve Sharra

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/84192

I learned with great shock, on Friday night, 14 September, that Hastings Maloya is no more. Malawi has lost a young, unique, dynamic citizen who combined a passion for the environment, a zeal for communication and a love for conservation. In addition to being an environmentalist and a conservationist, Hastings was also journalist, blogger, public relations practitioner and cultural conservationist, among many other hats he wore.

I first met Hastings Maloya in 2004. I had travelled to Mulanje to visit Our Hope Private School, which he was running with a group of friends. I had brought him a blue T-shirt with the words ‘Post Oak Elementary School,’ given to me by Mrs Mary Krouse. Mrs Krouse, now retired, was then a 5th grade teacher at Post Oak, in Lansing, Michigan, USA. She was an experienced mentor teacher in whose class I supervised post-bachelors degree students interning for their certification to teach at Michigan State University. She wanted to twin her 5th grade class with a Malawian 5th grade class. I posted the request on Nyasanet, and Hastings Maloya replied immediately.

I spoke to the children at Our Hope on August 16th, 2004, and took some pictures with them. I also took some artefacts they had asked me to take back to their friends at Post Oak. Our Hope didn’t last long; it closed a year or so later, but Hastings held on to hopes that it would reopen one day. I remained very good friends with Hastings, and got to admire a number of things that made him stand out as a uniquely talented Malawian.

He dedicated his professional life to the environment in general, and to Mulanje Mountain in particular. The third highest peak in Africa, Mulanje Mountain is a rare monument that holds amazing wonders. Yearly tourists visit the mountain from all corners of the world, and some attempt to go to its no-go areas. The highest peak on Mulanje Mountain, Sapitwa, means just that: no-go. In the last ten years at least two tourists have attempted to reach Sapitwa, with fatal consequences.

On the morning of 12th or 13th September 2003, Linda Pronk, a lab technician from the Netherlands working for VSO, set off on her own to scale Sapitwa. When she did not return by night, search and rescue teams were despatched, but did not find her. She has never been found, to this day. According to Peter Mitunda, Malawian filmmaker Villant Ndasowa produced a 30-minute documentary on Linda Pronk’s missing, a review of which is available online. There is also a 3-minute video clip on Youtube. Mitunda’s review of the documentary mentions two other known disappearances on Sapitwa. Patrick Phewa disappeared in 1943, whereas Kubwalo Mwabvi disappeared in 1992. They were both Malawian locals who came from the Mulanje area.

On 5th August 2009, grass cutters found the body of Gabriel Buchmann, who had been reported missing three weeks earlier on July 17th. Buchmann was a Brazilian Fulbright scholar studying at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), in the United States. He too had hoped to climb Sapitwa Peak, without the help of trained guides.

In both the 2003 and 2009 episodes, which grabbed international headlines, Hastings Maloya was the public face of Mulanje Mountain. He was Programme Officer for Education and Communications for the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust, MMCT, where he started working on 1st September, 2002, according to what he wrote on his blog. In 2010 Hastings became chairperson of the SADC Environmental Forum, ascending to a remarkable position in recognition of his work on environmental activism and conservation. Previously he had worked as a reporter at the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. Hastings wrote on his blog and in the local print media about the disappearance of Linda Pronk, and spoke to local and international media on the death of Gabriel Buchmann.

As an environmentalist, Hastings was a walking library of knowledge about Mulanje Mountain and about the environment in Malawi. I nursed the hope that he was one day going to sit down and write a book about the mountain, something I suggested to him on more than one occasion. He promised he would. He liked to post pictures on facebook and on his blog, in which he was seen lovingly and nonchalantly caressing deadly snakes. I once asked him what it took to learn how to do that, and he said it was a matter of training. He was an avid sports lover, and actively promoted the annual Mt Mulanje Porters Race.

Hastings had a strong presence in Malawi's social media sphere. He founded and moderated an environmental discussion forum, before co-founding and moderating the google forum for the Malawi chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). As a blogger, he promoted environmentalism and conservation. He was a prominent feature on Nyasanet, where many of us first met him, before meeting him face to face. Countless times Malawians in the diaspora would make contact with Hastings as they planned trips to Malawi, and would make it a point to visit Mulanje just to see him. He did the same on his travels around the world, using social media to connect with other Malawians in the diaspora.

In November 2011 I joined a team of colleagues who were visiting schools in Mulanje district. The next afternoon I walked over to Hastings’ office and found him out on a long lunch. I phoned him, and he asked me to wait, he was just turning the corner. He asked, half-jokingly and half-seriously, if I had any interest in seeing his snakes. I told him absolutely no way. I had planned to go up the mountain to see how far an hour's hike would take. I asked Hastings if it was safe to do so, and if I needed a guide. He reassured me it was safe, and that for an hour's hike up from Kara O' Mula Lodge, I would not need a guide. I was surprised to find robust cellphone network deep into the recesses of the mountain, which enabled me to tweet my way up and down the trail.

That afternoon Hastings told me about an exciting project that was about to be launched in Mulanje district. A remote village was going to have electricity for the first time ever, solely powered by a hydro-electric plant on a falls along Likhubula River. He and his colleagues were very excited about it. He also gave me calendars, magazines and annual reports prepared by the MMCT. I told him I was particularly interested in MMCT’s project to have UNESCO designate Mulanje Mountain as a World Heritage Site. It would be Malawi’s third such site, after Lake Malawi, and Chongoni Rock Art in Dedza.

Should this happen, it will be a dream come true for Hastings. It would also be a fitting tribute to his life and work to protect Mulanje Mountain and to promote ecological consciousness in Malawi and beyond.

May your soul rest in eternal peace, Mbwiyanga, Mapwiya Mung’onong’ono.

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* Steve Sharra, PhD, is a Malawian writer and academic. He blogs at [url=http://mlauzi.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-passion-of-hastings-

From the outside looking in

An unconventional review for an eccentric book

Nicholas Kariuki Githuku

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/84189

‘Peeling Back the Mask’, written by Miguna Miguna, a former adviser to Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga, is an explosive book that contains, depending on one’s political sympathies, either revelations, allegations or both, in equal measure on the goings-on in contemporary politics of the East African nation. From the time it was conceived, that is, after the widely public personal and political fallout between the two, after barely four years of working together, and since being launched, this book has become the subject of serious political controversy in Kenya, especially ahead of the elections looming in the horizon that will decide who becomes the country’s fourth president.

The book has whipped up political passions in both print and electronic media, the blogosphere and alternative media. Indeed, shortly after the book was launched on 14 July, the writer’s effigy was burnt and a mock coffin made for him in Nyando constituency in the heart of Luo Nyanza where both Odinga and Miguna hail from. Miguna left the country ostensibly to promote his book in North America. Since his return from Canada, his adopted country of exile for twenty years, on the 16 August, Miguna has embarked on a countrywide tour to sell the book in major towns. In one such event, in the second biggest city of Mombasa, the hotel hosting it was stormed by rowdy youth who roughed-up the author leading to the termination of that particular regional launch.

This controversial and unconventional book defies categorization: it cannot exactly be said to be an academic analysis of contemporary Kenyan politics, nor does it fit within the memoir genre although it reads like a well-crafted political diary that recounts an insider’s view of the intrigues, secrets and inner-workings of the corridors of power in Kenya since the disputed and divisive presidential elections in December 2007, which led to the formation of the grand coalition government. Although the writer styles himself as a whistle-blower spilling the beans of the unseen world of the inner working of this uneasy coalition, ‘Peeling Back the Mask’ doesn’t fit within this form of delivery. It does, however, approximate this genre as well as the memoir, but, at best, it is a personal and political book that raises serious issues and others less so. Indeed, it has created an interesting debate that is going to last a while.

The book’s launch and events surrounding it, for one, have raised the question of how far one can take freedom of expression and thought under Kenya’s new constitutional dispensation that was inaugurated in August 2010. This unusually long book review is a contribution to the rousing debate that Kenyans are having amongst themselves: it seeks to be objective and views both the book and the consequent debate as necessitating individual and collective introspection even as the country inches closer to the first elections after the promulgation of Kenya’s new constitution.

I am curious about how other readers acquired their copy of this book. Hopefully, they are not reading the widely circulated free PDF version that is still available on the internet. That's obviously cheating the author out of his hard-earned royalty. With that said, the circumstances around which I got mine are interesting to relate. I got it after arriving at a bookshop in Nairobi where all the 800 copies it had received from the distributor, a day after the book was launched, had been sold in minutes. So, I waited for the next tranche for two hours. Upon my return to the bookshop, I walked up to the cashier who had earlier assured me of a reserved copy. To pick up my promised copy, he surreptitiously advised me to walk to the back of the shop where there was an attendant who was quietly but quickly handing out copies to buyers once payment was made strictly in cash. As I approached the back room of the bookshop, I heard the bookshop attendant tell a customer who'd just bought the book, ‘…Oh, man...this is Kenya.’ I guess the question to which he must have been responding must have been, ‘Why are you not putting up the book on the shelves as you do normally with all other publications?’ Anyway, that's how I got my copy: quietly under the counter and proceeded to devour it all in a matter of forty-eight painful but eager hours. The experience was okay because the book reads easily, lyrically in some parts. The anecdote, however, speaks volumes about the state of the exercise of personal freedoms as enshrined in the law of the land.

What do I think about the book and the author? I have read many books and articles and written many book reviews but I could never write a conventional review of ‘Peeling Back the Mask’ even if I tried. For that, I would have to perhaps read it again and think more deeply about some of the things Miguna Miguna says in it. So this review ought to be read as an unconventional review of an equally eccentric book that defies classification. I decided to attempt a book review after reading many half-baked commentaries and ‘reviews’ and watching many television interviews of people who acknowledged not having skimmed but a few pages of the book, in both the print and electronic media. It was clear, in light of the rising public debate, that there was need for an objective review written only after one read the book not just from cover to cover but also between the lines.

‘Peeling Back the Mask’ is an avowedly personal and political book that Miguna promised from the moment he was fired by the prime minister. Following the deluge of criticism it drew only days after the launch, I felt that the author was getting a lot of unwarranted flak as bitter as he might have been while he was pouring out words onto the page. Indeed, anticipating such accusations of having conceived the book under other-than-ideal circumstances that he hadn't chosen, hence the bitterness and settling of scores theme that runs through his book, Miguna admits (502) that he is human. That he was angry and bitter: "I am human and have a right to feel angry and bitter," he writes.

However, there are parts of the book that are redeeming in a way, if they're not calculated to earn him public sympathy. A good instance of this is when he writes (327) that most of the time he defended and stood up for Odinga not because he loved him but because he cared for the country. But then, in the same vein, he adds a short line, which is important as it speaks volumes about his wavering temperament and mood as he wrote the book: "Without a doubt I did...love him...." This is something only but a few men, especially African men, dare to say especially in the recorded word. Indeed, the book is not all-daggers-drawn and spears thrown at Raila Odinga. There are quite a few times the reader will find Odinga being, inadvertently, painted as the good guy while Miguna seems like he was the arch agitator-antagonist especially in the heady days following the much-disputed presidential elections of 2007 of which he was part. In the first few chapters in which he recounts the times when he was Odinga’s leading general, Miguna says that, at times, he felt that he had to run to the rescue of his boss who would at times break down and literally cry (241).

The incident related here occurred after the National Accord deal of February 2008 was sealed. Things got sour and, according to the author, Odinga was allegedly emotionally spent and Miguna had to rise to his defense. By this intimation of his running negotiations on behalf of Odinga behind the scenes, Miguna, by his own admission, emerges as the King of "Antagonia" who thrived in an environment of national and parties’ discord while peddling mistrust in the name of managing the coalition and constitutional affairs for ODM. On the singular basis of what I have read in the book, I can scarcely blame Caroli Omondi, Odinga’s private secretary, for going, as Miguna states, “on national television to cast aspersions against” him. According to the author, Omondi claimed that Miguna was “responsible for the conflict within the coalition government” (308). For whatever reason, Miguna manages to depict himself in the book as the stamina behind Odinga during this time and he is not at all modest about his combative nature especially where he perceived issues of social justice were at stake. As such, the author succeeds in revealing the truth about his shark-like confrontational character in the fight for justice throughout his life, the zenith being at the presidential votes tallying centre at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in 2007.

After all, Raila Odinga, as presented to the reader, was a flip-flop and a coward who trembled and crumbled in the presence of President Mwai Kibaki. Miguna writes that Kibaki, times out of count, short-changed him and edged Odinga out of the power-sharing deal that was reached with the help of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on 28 February 2008. This gullibility did not please ODM’s First General, Miguna (298) who was Odinga’s ‘strongest …defender, thinker, writer and fire-fighter.’ He wanted ‘more real power’ for Odinga and the ODM party. But Miguna’s boss ‘seemed to have accepted his small role in government and to resent’ the author's suggestion ‘that he use sharp elbows to better his position’ (279). In a way, Odinga failed to live up to Miguna's egoistic but mostly protective expectations. Reading the middle chapters of the book one is bound to be dumbfounded at the pettiness that Miguna shamelessly sank into in the name of what he calls "more real power" (279) and “real power sharing” (278) over and beyond what his erstwhile boss and ODM had been able to secure under the National Accord.

This rather simplistic and warped perception of power curiously entailed how the principals’ seats were to be arranged around the table; who sat where at “the very first meeting of the Permanent Committee on the Management of the Grand Coalition Affairs” at the end of March 2009 (272); and who was supposed to have which rooms at Kilaguni in April 2009. The writer shares this in his book ever so candidly because, as he says, he is well-acquainted with symbols of power and the almost imperceptible dynamics therein. But, probably seeing the folly of it all, especially the power dynamics of who occupied what room at Kilanguni, Miguna qualifies his intimation by adding that although some of these things ‘might look small or petty for those unfamiliar with how power is played, especially in coalition arrangements,’ they really were not (282).

What! Pardon me Mr. Miguna Miguna, do you suppose that Kenyans, all the nine million of them, voted for public officials so that they would expend most of their time babysitting the negotiated coalition arrangement?

This is a question a perceptive reader is bound to ask: after all, Miguna confesses that ‘since the formation of the coalition government,’ such ‘protocol issues’ such as speaking behind curtains (283), determining where around the table the principals were to sit and who got what room in a holiday resort, ‘occupied a lot of our time’ (279). This was at the expense of running the country Miguna! Or is it an inadvertent admission of how Kenya’s political class ‘serves’ the country? This is downright petty. Readers will find many other instances of petty stuff that the author recounts. For me, there’s absolutely no correlation between “the brouhaha over ‘the pecking order in government’” (326) and the active, efficient and productive running and management of public affairs for the benefit of the ordinary Kenyan mwananchi/citizen.

From this reading, it would seem that political leaders in Kenya are more preoccupied with the perks, trappings and symbols of power like the presidential lectern ‘…bearing the national emblem;’ being in the presidential programme; mobile toilets; state entrances to parliament; the ceremonial Sika ‘dwa, the Golden Stool otherwise referred to as ‘state ceremonial chairs;’ ‘a large national flag, presidential flags …and a neatly dressed brass band….’ (250-251). While it all makes for a gripping and never-ending political soap opera that is pounced upon by various political satirists in Kenyan media such as the XYZ Show and Bull’s Eye, it is not a very entertaining episode in the larger picture of the country’s political development.

For this reason, while reading the book, I was constantly reminded of the Swahili saying: Nyani haoni kundule huliona la mwenziwe/ the ape does not see his own backside, he sees his companion's. Certainly, Miguna takes a holier-than-thou attitude. Someone in Kenyan media circles once said that Miguna Miguna cuts a larger-than-life public figure and to match it, he had to have a double name. But reading this book made me think that in addition to his imposing physique and matching persona, he has an equally big ego that deserves having the same name twice!

As such, Miguna's pervasive sense of self-importance and exalted self-righteousness that’s written all over the book merits attention. Before I even reached page 471 where Miguna quotes what the law Professor Makau Mutua, who is a professional and intellectual rival, thought of him –viz. that Miguna seems to have ‘confused himself with Mr. Odinga,’ – I found myself thinking the same on reaching pages 328-329! Yet, before getting the book, I had never heard of Miguna until one of the national newspapers serialized excerpts of the book a few weeks before its launch. I arrived at the same observation as Prof. Mutua on the strength of what I read in Miguna’s book. Odinga, Miguna intimates in these two pages, liked Miguna’s work a lot: ‘...he not only loved my style; he also agreed wholeheartedly with virtually all my thoughts and opinions. ...He assigned me the role of responding to media questions and written interviews for him and would authorize me to forward the same for publication without correcting my answers.’ I have to say that penciled in the margins of my copy against this text is this question I pose to the author, ‘So you (Miguna) thought you had become the Prime Minister?’

After reading the book in its entirety, I am convinced that this is more than likely to have happened to the writer, at least subconsciously. That is, Miguna in his own mind had become Odinga, and therefore, the prime minister. So much so that he might have even thought himself better than his boss, hence Miguna's fear that some ‘...might have believed’ that he was ‘too close to the succession equation within Luo Nyanza’ (338). Is that the miscellaneous reason, besides settling personal and political scores, for writing the book: to launch a national political image to play an important role in the future?

However, personal scores aside, Miguna embarks upon the job he sets out to accomplish with relish and considerable effect. That is, that of peeling back Odinga's mask, which he does quite successfully. For one, he removes the whole mystery around his former boss that stuck especially after the publication of the biography by Nigerian political scientist Dr. Babafemi A. Badejo, ‘Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics’ (2006). Miguna convincingly, on the strength of adduced evidence and closeness to the prime minister, and there is the possibility, as admitted, that he withheld even more damning proof, proves that his former boss is pro-status quo. He thus effectively demolishes Odinga as the paragon of change and reform in Kenya's politics. In his estimation, ‘Raila is evil –pure, undiluted evil’ (544) and a flip-flop who doesn’t even deserve the title ‘leader.’ According to Miguna, Odinga ‘couldn't manage even a group of squirrels’ (407). Of course, as earlier noted, Miguna is less than honest because as he unmasks Odinga hitherto, perhaps, Kenya’s most ‘enigmatic’ leader of the second liberation, he hides his own face and role and, therefore, culpability, behind the ‘mask’ of his many words. This book is humongous and the task of reading it arduous, and could be tiring were it not so well and interestingly crafted by a master story teller.

Granted, Miguna ably carries his argument that his erstwhile boss may not be the face of change in Kenya on strong facts. He manages, to some extent, to build an incontrovertible case that is crystal clear and upheld by copious evidence, no doubt, that ‘Raila has demonstrated, time and again, that he is an ardent defender of the status quo’ (322, also 338, 349 and 353). Miguna does this splendidly discounting the said bitterness or in spite of it, for once, allowing his critical and brilliant legal mind to shine-through some of the more analytical parts of the book. These, for all the petty stuff referred to, are copious and quite revealing.

Moreover, Miguna fully applies his ‘God-given gift’ of writing to peel back many masks of Kenya’s political actors and inner working of government. He succeeds to ‘use words carefully’ citing others who have done the same in history and with equal lethal effect. These are an amalgam of thinkers and politicians like Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and South Africa’s anti-apartheid slain hero, Steve Biko. It will be quite clear to the reader that Miguna has taken Czech writer-activist and political leader Vaclav Havel’s lesson to heart. It is to Havel that he attributes the quote, '...words are a mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent and perfidious phenomenon. They can be rays of light in a realm of darkness ...They can equally be lethal arrows,' (338). This is a principle that Miguna strives hard to live up to with mixed success. Somewhat, either intentionally or inadvertently, Miguna uses too many words that tend to mask his complicity in the muck of Kenya’s second experiment with coalition government and politics, and therein lies his duplicity.

While he readily acknowledges his frail humanity that entitles him to bitterness and anger, Miguna doesn’t extend the same to Odinga who, according to Miguna, has the worldly streak of the for money, power (349) and attendant pleasures. A good example of this is when Miguna tries to exculpate himself for not blowing the whistle after the alleged rigging of ODM national elections . He writes, ‘I apologise profusely to ODM members, specifically, and to Kenyans in general. I’m a human being with human frailties like any other person. I mistakenly believed that Raila acquiring power so that he could transform Kenya was more important than the electoral infractions he had committed to get the ODM nominations.’ This is a double-faced admission of guilt that demonstrates that the author is not honest to himself. It would really have served him, and the book, well to simply state that despite all his shortcomings, Odinga, like the rest of us humans, is not (a political) ‘superman.’

But when all is said and done, Miguna’s words are, indeed, rays of light in the realm of darkness that the Kenyan political system can be and has been in the course of its post-independence history. Indeed, Miguna makes an invaluable contribution to the ever approaching dawn in Kenyan politics that cannot be taken lightly or be dismissed out of hand. This review doesn’t discuss the many examples he gives of the rapacious greed in government that is second only to that of the army worms of Lambwe Valley that he mentions on page 5. Miguna will be happy to note, that in my view, the insatiable army worms of Lambwe Valley are probably nothing when compared to the eating with impunity as if there is no tomorrow out of public coffers that he describes as taking place in the corridors of power. These examples of corruption and moral decadence of Kenya’s political elite, I will leave for you, my fellow readers, to discover for yourselves. For now, let it suffice to say that the one thing that Miguna does indefatigably well and with remarkable passion and well-targeted righteous rage, is to unmask Kenya's political system, how it has functioned over the years and its status when he served in public office.

Put differently, when he is not casting Odinga in bad light, besmirching and blistering his public image as part of his revenge mission for his rather indecent dismissal, Miguna aptly captures (and this in so many instances) what Kenya has become and where it is headed as a nation. If his Kenyan readers allow themselves to be open-minded, their dulled collective conscience can be stirred to see that, indeed, they as a people have fallen short of their ideals, aspirations and core values that they have always cherished. Indeed, as a Kenyan, reading this welcome and refreshing book, I found myself thinking that if a critical number of people come to this realization, we can then rise from the ashes of our sordid past together. Refreshing? You ask: yes, Miguna's book is refreshing at several levels. I agree with Miguna’s observation that Kenya cannot have enough of such personal, firsthand accounts of public servants relating their experiences of the intricacies and the inner workings of the Leviathan, which is the behemoth and juggernaut of Government of Kenya.

I have never been in anybody's government and I may never be, especially and as long as the more ‘change’ occurs in Kenya, the more things tend to remain the same as Miguna ably demonstrates. Like the Michela Wrong book, ‘Its Our Turn to Eat’ (2009) based on the experiences of Kenya’s number one whistle-blower, John Githongo, who briefly served the National Rainbow Coalition government as its anti-corruption czar, Peeling Back the Mask is a most welcome breathe of fresh air, I dare say. It is an act of truth-telling, as relative as that may be in this case, or at least, an estimation of truth that will water the struggling little bud of democracy in Kenya. Speaking as an outsider (one who has never served in government and who lives outside the country), I gleaned numerous little nuggets of information about what happened where, who did what and when that I didn't previously know: so, the book is refreshing, but not in a particularly empowering way. Indeed, pondering upon these refreshingly new pieces of facts, I was mostly outraged and disgusted.
The margins of my copy of Peeling Back the Mask are replete with check marks that attest the brilliance of the legal mind behind it: the manner in which Miguna dissects the issue of placing judges under ‘performance contracts’ (320-321); former President Moi’s controversial Kiptagich farm and the issue of the Mau Forest Complex (319-331); the fact Odinga isn’t always told the truth by those close to him (499); the need for Kenyan politics to break away with the past characterized by sycophancy, lies, bribes and falsity at the expense of ‘honest and unadulterated views from…below’ and openness, ‘a kind of politics without rancor, hate and negative propaganda…a politics solely based on issues’ (454-455); that Kenyans will soon break out of the politicized ethnic cocoons and ‘begin focusing more on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues and less on ethnicity’ (487 & 415); his extensive thoughts on the International Criminal Court with regard to the post-election violence in Kenya (between 2007 and 2008) in pages 381 to 407); the fact that, in Kenya, ‘the process of wealth accumulation and retention is shrouded in muck’ (350); and various references to major corruption scandals in recent years among many other pertinent issues raised in the book, the veracity and importance of which I will leave for individual readers to judge for themselves on a case to case basis.

Lastly, and unfortunately, I must add that this book says nothing that is really new especially to Kenyan readers. The public characters and times, as well as locales of rapacity may be different but the reeking grand corruption is the same. ‘Peeling Back the Mask’ is thus a book about Kenya’s past and present: the country’s beautiful mess. Its fine and lovely, little mess. There really are no new truths in it per se. I dare say that it is not truth that Kenya lacks, comrade Miguna. It is not liberation-courage, the courage to liberate ourselves as Kenyans, either. What Kenyans lack is the courage to harness the power of the truth/s about them as a people to transform themselves and their lives and that of future generations and chart their great destiny as a nation. What Kenyans lack is the humility to recognize themselves when they take an honest look at the image in the Githongo and Miguna mirror, and from thereon actively and collectively start to extricate themselves out of their miry mess, guided by the spirit of forgiveness and mutual understanding and re/conciliation. This book, in as much as it may be about personal pay back, and as much as it details very personal squabbles, as opposed to people-focused and issue-based analysis of Kenyan politics, should serve to remind the country that its problems are not "personal" or because of certain people but, are, rather, largely institutional, systemic and, therefore, societal. Now that Kenya has one of the best constitutions in the world, and is being guided by the National Vision 2030, anything is possible, and it is possible to start afresh and mend its rend body politic.

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* Nicholas Githuku is a PhD student at West Virginia University, Department of History (ngithuku@mix.wvu.edu). Be sure to look up on Facebook the “Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya Book Discussion Group" for additional exciting discussion of readers' impressions and reflections of the book besides here on Pambazuka –Books & Arts or by writing an email to the reviewer.

Taking civilization to the whiteman’s land

A review of ‘Love under the Kola-Nut Tree’ by Esther Lamnyam, Author House, 2009, 279 pp. Paperback $19. 95. ISBN 978-1-4392-1823-5

Peter Wuteh Vakunta

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/84212

Lamnyam’s fictional work titled ‘Love under the Kola-Nut Tree: What City Moms Didn’t Tell You about Creating Fulfilling Relationships’ is a treasure trove of indigenous knowledge and ontological aphorisms. In reading this book I caught myself umpteen times drawing parallels with ‘Les maximes’ (1664) [1] by French man of letters, François de La Rochefoucauld. In ‘Les maximes’ La Rochefoucauld reflects on the conduct and motives of himself and of his compatriots. Lamnyam assumes the same posture in ‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’. The novel is woven around the theme of a civilizing mission [2] undertaken to America by an African woman, Sophia Maya, queen of the village of Malah. Maya takes leave of absence from her ceremonial duties at home and decides to visit her next-of-kin in the white man’s land for reasons that remain obscure to the reader from the beginning to the end of the novel.

Sophia Maya is portrayed as a woman with much clout in the village: ‘The education of young women and their initiation into womanhood and the laws of nature were under her jurisdiction’ (18). The African queen is presented as someone who is keen on maintaining a symbiotic relationship with nature; she does not seek to domesticate the natural environment; she lives in communion with nature. Thus, Lamnyam’s protagonist is presented to the reader as an anti-thesis of the land he is visiting: a clime where materialism and humanism are locked in a collision course. Maya’s insuperable rhetorical questions leave her admirers hard pressed for correct answers: ‘Can you explain to me how you can love and hate so viciously at the same time?’ Maya asks (116). This seemingly easy question proves tough for Maya’s listeners who are accustomed to the Manichean division characteristic of the Western world. The narrator does not mince words in her acknowledgement of ignorance: ‘We all drew a blank on this one’ (116). ‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’ is replete with existential questions of this nature as seen in this other example: ‘If lions and other vicious carnivorous animals can be tamed, what more of a woman, flesh of my flesh?’ (83) The parallel the narrator creates between meat-eating animals and women is intriguing.

Maya Sophia is not just a symbol of nobility but also a custodian of traditional values of love, communalism, fidelity, truth, forgiveness, spirituality and more. ‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’ is a revolutionary novel in several respects but the aspect that captures the reader’s attention from the onset of the narrative is the manner in which Lamnyam turns the tables by portraying Maya Sophia, an African, as a torch-bearer bringing light and civilization to a benighted white man’s land . In fact, in ‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’, the whole concept of the ‘civilizing mission’ is turned on its head. America is depicted as a dark continent sorely in need of enlightenment. One weighty value that Maya insists on inculcating in people in her host country is the importance of fidelity in interpersonal relationships: ‘…We must have and honor verbal contracts of friendships and relationships…These days I sometimes wish grown-ups were as honest and committed as kids’ (197).

It is noteworthy that Lamnyam is not the first to resort to the technique of reversed psychology to convey messages of crucial importance. In a novel titled ‘Aux Etats Unis d'Afrique’ (2006) [3], translated into English as In the United States of Africa, (2009) [4], Abdourahman Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down and invites his readers to re-imagine a world where economic refugees and victims of social oppression escape from the squalor of America and the slums of Europe in desperation to seek freedom and prosperity in the United States of Africa. Several events in ‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’ substantiate the contention that Lamnyam is hell-bent on painting the portrait of a topsy-turvy world. One such incident is Dr. Morgan’s misappropriation of a mystical stone belonging to the people of the village of Malah: ‘There were many myths about Malah and about the missionaries who came there. It is said one in particular stole the village stone the gods had given to Malah’ (51). It should be noted that Dr. Morgan is a Caucasian American physician whose father is alleged to have lived in Malah and had stolen the stole that meant everything to the people of Malah. The symbolism of the stone is the practice of witchcraft. Tongue-in-cheek, Lamnyam derides Dr. Morgan by putting him in the uncomfortable position of having to be identified with African occultism.

‘Love under the Kola Nut Tree’ could be construed as a discourse on the fair sex. Lamnyam takes her readers through the crevices in the minds of feminist thinkers. From benign statements like ‘Woman, like the earth, is the womb of all creation’ (113), to more convoluted semantically loaded ones like ‘Look at the turmoil in the world today due to the sex act’(112), the novelist takes a stand for and against quite a few gender-related issues in contemporary society. She does not veil her bias in favour of the feminine gender as the following statement seems to suggest: ‘Without a woman, a man is incomplete and lost… Man needs woman to survive this journey and not vice versa’ (113).

There is no gainsaying the fact that Lamnyam’s seminal work treats the reader to a string of intertextual references. Her treatment of the fair sex is reminiscent of the stance taken by French feminist writer, Simone de Beauvoir, who argues in her seminal book ‘Le deuxième sexe’ (1949) [5] translated as The Second Sex (1953) [6] that gender is a social construct. As she puts it, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine’(5). Like De Beauvoir, Lamnyam underscores the role played by prejudice in the oppression of women in contemporary societies.

Lamnyam’s sledge-hammer does not fall on emasculators of sex alone. She wages an all-out war against merchants of racial prejudice as this statement suggests: ‘Being a black man in America is hard’ (123). The burden of being black in the United States of America seems to be the pet-peeve of this valiant fiction writer. The term ‘black man’ should be construed as a generic word referring to all blacks regardless of gender. In a land befogged by racial hatred, hate language and bigotry, Lamnyam’s protagonist comes out with a totally new message. She enjoins her hosts to be color-blind, love one another and nurse no hatred based on pigmentation. She is not alone in her vendetta against racial prejudice. Standing by her is celebrated American writer Toni Morrison who maintains that ‘Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It is real information, but it tells you next to nothing.’ [7]

The subtitle of this novel, ‘What City Moms didn’t Tell You about Creating Fulfilling Relationships’ is an apt portrayal of the moral degeneracy that Lamnyam identifies with the so-called civilized world.

The didactic value of Love under the Kola-Nut Tree resides in the novelist’s proclivity to impart knowledge. Many chapters in the book have proverbial captions. Chapter 5, for instance, is titled ‘When the eyes have a problem, do not think the nose will not be affected’ (19). This figurative saying is pregnant with meaning. The writer goes to great lengths to inform the reader that the proverb is culled from the folklore of the Wimbum people. [8] The importance of this aphoristic expression resides in its relevance in the context of interpersonal relationships. In plain terms, the narrator is insinuating that a dishonorable act committed by one member of a family is likely to bring opprobrium upon the entire family. This is a note of caution to all and sundry to be mindful of despicable comportment.

The title of Chapter 26 is semantically rich as well: ‘The bugs will fly to a lighted candle even at the risk of being burned to death’ (205). This idiomatic expression underscores the risks inherent in foolhardy behavior. Lamnyam resorts to this figurative language in a bid to show that African tongues are rich languages and must be nurtured and preserved. This kind of writing, it should be noted, in a negation of the message paraded around by colonial masters who sought to destroy African languages through the policy of assimilation. Biblically speaking, the lighted candle could be construed as a metonym for the wide road that leads to hell as opposed to the narrow road that leads to Paradise.

The themes of religiosity and communion with God constitute the leitmotif that runs through the entire novel. The caption of chapter 36 is Biblical: ‘Whatever thou resolvest to do, do it quickly. Delay thou not till the evening what the morning may accomplish’ (271). In secular language, this thought would be expressed as: do not leave for tomorrow what you can accomplish today. This is a very powerful lesson against procrastination which secular minds have christened the thief of time. More often than not, the protagonist resorts to Biblical terminology not only to invoke blessings from her ancestors but also to convey her firm belief in the existence of a Supreme Being that guides all human action: ‘Sophia Amena, Amena Nah, Nah Yentoh, Yentoh Bibi’(134).

The language of choice in ‘Love under the Kola-Nut Tree’ is hybrid. Sophia Maya switches codes when she deems it necessary. Oftentimes, she communicates in impeccable English. However, there are moments when she switches codes and speaks in Pidgin English as seen in the following statement: ‘Ma pikin,’ Maya said to Toni, ‘if it was those days in Malah, I would guide you to become a leader’ (129). The expression ‘my pikin’ could be translated as ‘my son’. It should be noted that this expression does not imply a filial relationship between Maya and Toni. It is simply a term of endearment. The question that begs to be asked, though, is why Maya would opt to speak to the same character in two languages at the same time. This is only one of several puzzles that readers of this novel are called upon to unravel. It is a book to be read by anyone interested in African philosophy and traditional worship. Students and professors of African studies would find Lanmyam’s book a priceless working tool.

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* Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta is professor at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute, POM-CA

END NOTES



[i] François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et réflexions morales, 1664.

[ii] Mission civilisatrice (the French for "civilisatory mission”) is a rationale for intervention or colonization, proposing to contribute to the spread of civilization, mostly amounting to the westernization of indigenous peoples. It was notably the underlying principle of French and Portuguese colonial rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was influential in the French colonies of Algeria, French West Africa, and Indochina, and in the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea, Mozambique and Timor. The European colonial powers felt it was their duty to bring Western civilization to what they perceived as backwards peoples. Rather than merely govern colonial peoples, the Europeans would attempt to westernize them in accordance with a colonial ideology known as "assimilation".

[iii] Abdourahman, Waberi, Aux Etats Unis d’Afrique. Paris: J.C.Lattes, 2006.

[iv] _____________________. In the United States of Africa. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

[v] Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.

[vi] ____________________, The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1953.

[vii]Ella Mazel, And Don’t Call me a Racist! A Treasury of Quotes on the Past, Present and Future of the Color Line in America, 1998.

[viii] The Wimbum people inhabit the Donga Mantung Plateau (formerly Nkambe) of the Northwest Region of Cameroon. They speak a language called Limbum or language of the Mbum people.

Alleged Igbo massacre

Sarah Lasenby

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/84195

New Year, new flower

Elyas Mulu Kiros

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/84187

Africa: Gendered fighter constructions in Eritrea and South Sudan

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84333

http://bit.ly/UsKaIA

Côte d’Ivoire: New cassava varieties bring women autonomy

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84316

http://bit.ly/UOOJzZ

Ethiopia: Ethiopia urged to end human trafficking of women as abuse continues

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84248

http://bit.ly/SN0Clz

South Africa: Women told their comments on Traditional Courts Bill are not welcome

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84231

http://bit.ly/SMXHcu

Sudan: Woman activist faces death sentence

2012-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84306

http://bit.ly/QQeBYE

Swaziland: Child marriages banned

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/84234

http://bit.ly/UH4okS

Egypt: Missing protesters: lost between two regimes

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84210

http://bit.ly/S7X8O5

Ethiopia: Indigenous people demand accountability from World Bank

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84309

http://bit.ly/VBvbhQ

Gambia: Stepping up pressure on human rights

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84235

http://bit.ly/RNdxcu

Global: Violence against women, property rights most pressing indigenous issues

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84228

http://bit.ly/QogKtW

Kenya: Mass graves found in Kenya's delta region

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84204

http://aje.me/S7kSlq

Mauritania: March to commemorate the passing of rights activist

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84321

http://bit.ly/UsGxT4

Morocco: Minister admits police abused protesters

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/84335

http://bit.ly/VClfVv

Ethiopia: Women, children get reprieve after being stranded

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84247

http://bit.ly/PYapVH

Global: Asylum seeking not criminal, says UNHCR

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84313

http://bit.ly/PCOFAy

Global: Reflections on the Arab Spring

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84209

http://bit.ly/VdwUtI

Libya: ‘They don’t treat us like humans’, say migrants

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84322

http://bit.ly/RTDOGg

Somalia: In search of safety for Somali refugee adolescents

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84320

http://bit.ly/QgZytu

Southern Africa: Increasing hostility towards Chinese traders

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/84202

http://bit.ly/RvVe64

Cameroon: Start of cocoa season in Cameroon raises pay concerns

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/84245

http://bit.ly/PzjeH9

South Africa: Employment equity shows little progress

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/84330

http://bit.ly/QvdPT7

South Africa: Miners continue strike despite threats

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/84331

http://bit.ly/QBDmrb

South Africa: Truck drivers on strike

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/labour/84334

http://bit.ly/S1usCL

Angola: Court says vote was fair

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/84338

http://bit.ly/UPCfrV

Burkina Faso: Stability vital to region

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/84200

http://bit.ly/OEuwqT

Togo: Ruling family faces increasingly determined opposition

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/84337

http://bit.ly/QhzTB8

Uganda: Teenage girl becomes Africa's youngest MP

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/84318

http://bit.ly/PUtnOF

Zimbabwe: COPAC excludes civil society from 2nd all stakeholders’ conference

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/84329

http://bit.ly/Qh837U

South Africa: Malema arrest raises possibility of court showdown

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/84328

http://bit.ly/UCsiPY

Ghana: Oil wealth not reaching poor

2012-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/84307

http://bit.ly/NN9smg

Ghana: Re-launched Economic Justice Network to deal with threats to Ghanaian livelihoods, jobs

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/84207

http://bit.ly/RuHkGI

Global: Shutting the spigot on private water

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/84214

http://bit.ly/OHFsnN

Uganda: 'Oil frightens me', says former Finance Minister

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/84217

http://bit.ly/QnP4bw

Global: Community involvement key in hunt for HIV vaccine Living with AIDS

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/84332

http://bit.ly/TuFMxK

Kenya: Striking doctors blame State for impass

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/84243

http://bit.ly/PziwJX

Somalia: Suspected cholera kills a dozen in south

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/84201

http://bit.ly/T3wjNH

Uganda: Patients go private as state sector crumbles

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/84236

http://bit.ly/SmV5XS

Global: Leaders demand immediate attention to children’s education in crisis zones

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/84317

http://bit.ly/QgXDVZ

Cameroon: Thousands demand Cameroon drop criminal charges for gay text message

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/84326

http://huff.to/PCTI3K

Uganda: Minister in court over gay meeting closure

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/lgbti/84308

http://bit.ly/OYCrjb

Africa: West African and Caribbean seas rank among unhealthiest waters

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/84208

http://bit.ly/VdvlvR

Global: Brics discusses negotiating position for Doha

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/84327

http://bit.ly/UsIDCk

Ivory Coast: Amnesty and Greenpeace in Trafigura investigation call

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/84314

http://bbc.in/PiXHS6

The Nile: Egypt, Ethiopia can build new Nile River water relationship

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/84246

http://bit.ly/Pzk1b0

Zambia: Copper project rejected on environmental grounds

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/84216

http://bit.ly/Us0zjg

Africa: Land grabbing and food sovereignty

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/84310

http://bit.ly/QRrLEF

Mali: Farmers want their land back

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/84311

http://bit.ly/PlhG1z

Mozambique: Mozambique looks to fine mining firms on resettlement

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/84339

http://bit.ly/Pjx0g7

Sudan: Drivers and actors in large-scale farmland acquisitions

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/84205

http://bit.ly/QZVehM

Uganda: Refinery site residents remain in limbo, and some go hungry

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/84242

http://bit.ly/OTplnh

Global: French study finds cancer link to GM corn

2012-09-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/food/84305

http://bit.ly/QeoGBg

Egypt: Tahrir graffiti removal stirs anger, artists return to paint more

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84227

http://bit.ly/QogjA6

Ethiopia: Amend laws that repress civil society and media

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84215

http://bit.ly/Vfzgs7

Global: Controversy and censorship over anti-Islam film

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84203

http://bit.ly/Rt1tgk

Somalia: Killing of four journalists condemned

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84323

http://bit.ly/UCnqdB

Sudan: Press under threat as economy deteriorates

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84211

http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2012/09/sudan-press-freedom-economy/

Swaziland: Journalists suspended over critical report

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84218

http://bit.ly/OdWCyX

Tanzania: Unesco chief condemns killing of journalist

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/84223

http://bit.ly/NEbFAG

Niger: Child marriage rises due to hunger

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/welfare/84319

http://bit.ly/SPf2l0

Africa: Concern over mercenaries

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84232

http://bit.ly/TmnuyI

Côte d’Ivoire: Reluctant farewell to arms

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84240

http://bit.ly/UutwMZ

DRC: Congo rebels set up de facto administration - UN

2012-09-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84206

http://bit.ly/PqTv3E

Libya: Anti-militia crackdown sweeps Libya's Tripoli

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84241

http://bit.ly/SMZvSN

Mali: Call for Ecowas intervention

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84233

http://bit.ly/QsSOZw

Nigeria: Nobel Laureate calls for armed intervention

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84315

http://bit.ly/PiXWwg

Nigeria: Police put casualty figures from church blast at 3 dead, 46 injured

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84312

http://bit.ly/UsEzls

Nigeria: Tens of thousands protest anti-Islam film

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84244

http://bit.ly/UHc9ao

Rwanda: EU suspends new aid to Rwanda over DRC crisis

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84336

http://bit.ly/UCTcqW

South Sudan: S.Sudan accuses Sudan of supplying arms to rebel group

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/84230

http://bit.ly/Ra7E6W

Rwanda: New lab gives techpreneurs a jumpstart in Rwanda

2012-09-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/84226

http://bit.ly/P2ugDH

Uganda: Ugandans tap smart source to find cheap fuel

2012-09-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/84238

http://aje.me/PzgbP9

Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/84324

Organization: National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Location: Washington, D.C.
Website: http://www.ned.org/fellowships/reagan-fascell-democracy-fellows-program
Email: fellowships@ned.org
Apply online: http://fellowships.ned.org/

Description:

Dedicated to international exchange, this five-month residential program offers a collegial environment for fellows to reflect on their experiences; consider best practices and lessons learned; conduct independent research and writing; engage with counterparts; and develop professional relationships within a global network of democracy advocates.

While in Washington, D.C. all fellows devote full time to their fellowship projects and receive a monthly fellowship payment, health insurance, travel assistance at the beginning and end of their fellowship, and research support. Awardees my not receive concurrent funding from the Endowment or its family of institutes during the fellowship period. The program does not fund professional training, fieldwork, or students working towards a degree.

The program will host two five-month fellowship sessions in 2013–2014:
Fall 2013 (October 1, 2013–February 28, 2014), and Spring 2014 (March 1–July 31, 2014).

Eligibility:

The program is intended primarily to support practitioners, scholars, and journalists from developing and aspiring democracies; distinguished scholars from established democracies may also apply. Projects may focus on the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural aspects of democratic development and may include a range of methodologies and approaches. A working knowledge of English is required.

For more information, visit http://www.ned.org/fellowships/reagan-fascell-democracy-fellows-program or email fellowships@ned.org

To apply, visit http://fellowships.ned.org

The application deadline is Monday, October 15, 2012.

Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship

2012-09-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/84325

Organization: National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Location: Washington, D.C.
Website: http://www.ned.org/fellowships/reagan-fascell-democracy-fellows-program
Email: fellowships@ned.org
Apply online: http://fellowships.ned.org/

Description:

Dedicated to international exchange, this five-month residential program offers a collegial environment for fellows to reflect on their experiences; consider best practices and lessons learned; conduct independent research and writing; engage with counterparts; and develop professional relationships within a global network of democracy advocates.

While in Washington, D.C. all fellows devote full time to their fellowship projects and receive a monthly fellowship payment, health insurance, travel assistance at the beginning and end of their fellowship, and research support. Awardees my not receive concurrent funding from the Endowment or its family of institutes during the fellowship period. The program does not fund professional training, fieldwork, or students working towards a degree.

The program will host two five-month fellowship sessions in 2013–2014:
Fall 2013 (October 1, 2013–February 28, 2014), and Spring 2014 (March 1–July 31, 2014).

Eligibility:

The program is intended primarily to support practitioners, scholars, and journalists from developing and aspiring democracies; distinguished scholars from established democracies may also apply. Projects may focus on the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural aspects of democratic development and may include a range of methodologies and approaches. A working knowledge of English is required.

For more information, visit http://www.ned.org/fellowships/reagan-fascell-democracy-fellows-program or email fellowships@ned.org

To apply, visit http://fellowships.ned.org

The application deadline is Monday, October 15, 2012.

Senior Program Officer

Nigeria Evidence-based Health System Initiative (NEHSI)

2012-09-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/84067

Position #: 779
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Salary Range: $86,426 - $104,128
Status: Term - until January 2014

Job Overview

The Program Officer, working under the guidance of the Project Leader of NEHSI, develops, monitors, manages, and evaluates a portfolio of small research projects; coordinates formal reporting to CIDA; analyzes or commissions analyses of funded projects to identify and document lessons learnt; leads the development and management of the NEHSI communication strategy including documentation and active dissemination of program outputs; directly supports NEHSI partnerships; and assists senior team members with the range of tasks associated with the project portfolio and successful implementation of the NEHSI (including, liaison with the regional offices, donor relations, publications, seminars colloquia).

Candidate Profile

Education

• PhD, or a Master’s degree with equivalent work experience, and a record of research in a relevant health or social science discipline such as epidemiology, public health, health informatics, political science or public policy

Experience

This position requires five to eight years of relevant health systems, epidemiology, and health information systems experience, which includes:

• conducting and managing research
• some experience with field epidemiological research in Africa
• building and maintaining partner relationships in Nigeria, and Canadian agencies particularly the Global Health Research Initiative partners
• reviewing and assessing research proposals
• working specifically in Nigeria with familiarity of the local, state and federal level of governments and civil society organizations
• working in developing regions, particularly in high security risk countries

Language

• Bilingual position (English/French) at an intermediate level

Knowledge

• Knowledge of global health and health research policy processes and communities in Canada and low and middle income countries (LMICs), specifically Nigeria
• Knowledge of health and social policy issues in developing regions, specifically Africa
• Knowledge of CIDA procedures, documentations and requirements for the implementation of projects in Nigeria
• Knowledge of health information systems, specifically community based systems and population based systems in Africa
• Knowledge of information management to support evidence-based planning

Competencies

• Excellent leadership, interpersonal and communication skills (orally and in writing)
• Superior planning, organizing, coordinating and negotiation skills under pressure
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Innovative, creative and flexible team player
• Ability to manage complex and diverse projects while traveling or in the field
• Ability to establish, manage and monitor relationships with stakeholders
• Ability to provide advice and guidance to stakeholders and senior management
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team including diverse cultures, expertise and experiences
• Awareness of and sensitivity to individual, gender and cultural differences.

Additional Information

• This position requires a willingness to travel internationally, an average of 60-90 days per year.

Application Deadline: July 3, 2012

For more information about this opportunity and how to apply, visit our website at www.idrc.ca/careers

Fahamu