Manuel Paulo argues that Angola has unparalleled opportunities, “but it also faces major constraints and challenges, which if not properly managed could have extremely damaging consequences, indeed, cancelling out the opportunities available.” He points out that for a successful consolidation of long-term sustainable peace to exist in Angola, the economy would need to be diversified first.

The rhetoric in Angola has been that the coming of peace brings with it the opportunity to create a strong economy and society in which the entire population will share the benefits of Angola's huge mineral wealth. Indeed, Norway, Chile and Botswana provide evidence where sustainable development has been built on the basis of mineral wealth. In Angola, however, oil companies tend to voluntarily invest large sums of money into social investment programmes, with little developmental impact on the country, and it appears that the primary purpose of these programmes having more to do with public relations motives than any real commitment to meaningful advances for the local greater populace.

The country has unparalleled opportunities, but it also faces major constraints and challenges, which if not properly managed could have extremely damaging consequences, indeed, cancelling out the opportunities available. Firstly, to ensure implementation of a rigorous application of modern procurement system which would limit opportunities for corruption, there must be a capable workforce as well as an operational legal system. Secondly, there should be efforts to boost development in the country as a whole. Failure to improve the business climate outside the oil sector will continue to result in large-scale urban unemployment. Such a situation would worsen urban poverty and allow frustration to simmer, especially among the youth. The latter nowadays turn to alcohol to contain their frustration at not being able to find a job. Lack of jobs for the youth may well be an ingredient for violence or indeed criminal activities to thrive.

It is safe to say that a promising future for Angola and Angolans will require the development of an independent judicial system, a neutral civil service and strong state institutions, which will require more than the current superficial social investment programmes from the international oil companies. Oil on its own will not lead to increasing Angolan economic and social indicators from its current levels. Sustainable employment creation in Angola can only come from broad-based economic development that goes beyond an oil sector, which provides very few direct jobs. In the medium term, large numbers of jobs will only be generated by large government public works programmes aimed at rebuilding the country’s shattered infrastructure, and in the agriculture sector.

International oil companies currently investing in the Angolan oil industry are required to engage in a process known as Angolanisation, a process common to most developing oil producing countries. This process requires foreign oil companies operating in Angola to staff their local operations mainly with Angolans, ostensibly to benefit to a greater number of Angolans. However, the beneficiaries of Angolanisation are predominantly foreign educated Angolans because ordinary Angolans who attend local state schools are unable to compete on an equal level with Angolans who were trained abroad. In addition, most international oil companies operating in Angola have admitted that there is a fierce competition for skilled Angolans amongst international oil companies, let alone the state. This means that competent workers from already fragile and under-performing state institutions are lost to international oil companies - placing the government in a disadvantaged position when trying to attract qualified personnel for its already weak public administration. International oil companies are also in a stronger position to attract well-educated Angolans due to high remuneration, and better working conditions they offer. The government on the other hand, is unable to pay the sort of salary, training and benefits that international oil companies are offering.

This is a short-sighted strategy since the Angolan authorities should see diversification of the economy as a decisive factor in the successful consolidation of a long-term sustainable peace. Additionally, failure to revive the non-oil economy (that provides jobs and sources of income for ordinary Angolans) will result in popular discontentment and continuing high levels of social inequality a potential source for future popular discontent. This situation is seemingly not of concern to international oil companies, because their goal is the formal one of presenting acceptable statistics to the government on their compliance with the process of Angolanisation.

It is well known that the oil industry is not an engine for job creation. The industry is capital-intensive and after half a century of oil production in Angola, the industry employs only about 19,000 Angolans. Only 50 percent of engineers are Angolans and in certain types of technical jobs such as drilling and well servicing the proportion is even lower, which is low by any industry standards (IPEDEX 2003). The government should establish a more supportive regulatory framework and a fund that permits improvements in education and training, and allows apprenticeship schemes and many other economic activities independent of government to thrive as a way to diversify the economy. Subsequently, the country’s substantial oil earnings could be a major source of investment in a National Training Fund to the necessary human resources to unlock other sectors of the economy that generate more jobs than the oil industry.

Nevertheless, many would argue that, oil funds are not an easy – nor necessarily an appropriate – solution to the problem of diversifying the Angolan economy. However, the proposed National Training Fund would require the government of Angola to set up a legal framework to govern it, in order to avoid the problems the Venezuela Oil Fund experienced. In order to address possible allegations and suspicions of cronyism and patronage, the government should open its books to a leading external auditory firm to monitor the Fund management of the resources.

One way to fund the Oil Fund would be to make it compulsory for international oil companies to pay a quota for each expatriate they have in the country. The quota is a way to encourage oil companies to recruit locally, and the quota would vary from exploration to production phase. The benefit of such an initiative is that all spectra of Angolan society would have a stake in the development of Angola, and international oil companies would not be accused of creating another elite in Angola under the Angolanisation programme. The government would also be able to address the lack of human capacity to effectively manage the revenue generated by the country’s resources. This will be a way of facilitating addressing Angola’s severe shortage of professional personnel.

Oil Funds have been into place in Norway, and Kuwait for decades. Colombia, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, and Chad have also embraced such funds. These funds have several purposes such as keeping money out of the economy to avoid ‘Dutch Disease’ and other problems associated with large inflows of money into an economy that cannot absorb it; or saving revenues for future generations. However, in the case of Angola a National Training Fund financed by oil revenue could be used as a mechanism to introduce a comprehensive Angolanisation Programme that goes beyond the oil industry.

This paper has shown that there are constructive ways in which international oil companies could contribute to Angola’s development not by creating another elite within its Angolan workforce or instituting systems of patronage. Instead, all efforts should be direct towards ensuring that the wealth the oil industry brings benefits all Angolans. The National Training Fund proposed above could be decisive to address the weak capacity and lack of professionals for the oil industry, and help Angola to diversify its economy.

• Manuel Paulo is a PhD Candidate at Middlesex University Business School, Fellow on Angola at Chatham House.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Assis Malaquias suggests that it is premature to suggest that positive peace is a reality in Cabinda. The Memorandum of Understanding which was signed by the Angolan government and the separatist group on 1 August 2006, “establishes five key pillars for ending the conflict in Cabinda: amnesty for rebel fighters, cessation of hostilities, the demilitarisation of the Cabindan rebels, reduction in the number of Angolan soldiers in the province, and integration of the Cabinda rebels in the Angolan military and government.”

After four decades of conflict, Angola welcomed a new era of peace in the aftermath of the death in combat of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and the implosion of the once formidable military organization he created. The post-colonial conflict between Savimbi’s UNITA rebels and the governing MPLA gained international attention for several reasons: the global contexts associated with it (the Cold War and the international political economy of oil) the nature of the players involved: global powers (the U.S. and the former Soviet Union), sub-imperial powers (Cuba and China), regional powers (apartheid South Africa and the former Zaire), and national actors (Angola’s nationalist movements: FNLA [1], MPLA [2], and UNITA [3]) and the issues at stake (ethnicity, ideology, race, and resources, to name a few).

But the conflict in Angola was unique because it involved two parallel civil wars: one on the mainland among the nationalist liberation movements and their external backers, and the second between the post-colonial state and a separatist movement in Cabinda – the northernmost province of Angola situated on the Atlantic and separated from the mainland by a strip of D.R. Congo territory. Half of Angola’s 1 million barrels of oil per day originate from Cabinda.

The first conflict ended in 2002 and the second in 2006 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Angolan government and the separatist group. This agreement established five key pillars for ending the conflict in Cabinda: amnesty for rebel fighters, cessation of hostilities, the demilitarisation of the Cabindan rebels, reduction in the number of Angolan soldiers in the province, and integration of the Cabinda rebels in the Angolan military and government. The Memorandum was the first step towards establishing a new relationship based on a “special status” for the province that include some form of political and economic autonomy without compromising the country’s territorial integrity. For the Angolan government, the end of the conflict in Cabinda has opened the door for exploration of the province’s massive onshore oil reserves.

The length and intractability of the conflict is a direct result of the colonial past and, more specifically, the process involved in creating the colony. Present day Angola, as is the case with most modern African states, is a European creation of the forcible merger of various peoples and territories into a Portuguese possession. Unsurprisingly, Angola also experienced some post-colonial instabilities associated with the demands of some pre-colonial formations to reestablish their independence after the collapse of colonial regimes. In Cabinda, these instabilities were fueled by the inability to agree on mutually acceptable formulas to divide post-colonial power and wealth. Cabinda is Angola’s richest province. In addition to major offshore and onshore oil reserves, it also has large diamond, gold, and uranium deposits. Despite its resource endowment, Cabinda’s population of 300 000 endures similar levels of poverty as elsewhere in Angola. This contradiction – poor people in a rich land – is critical in understanding why demands for independence find resonance among the province’s population, at least in the post-colonial era.

There is also a more historical argument for independence based on the 1885 Treaty of Simulambuco. This treaty – establishing the territory as a Portuguese protectorate – represented Cabinda’s rulers’ attempt to protect their territory from the “Scramble for Africa.” In other words, the rulers of Cabinda voluntarily chose to place their people and land under the protection of the devil they knew – Portugal, with whom they had contacts since Portuguese explorers first reached the Congo in 1482 – rather than become a colony of another European power. Cabinda’s fears were based on the fact that Belgium’s King Leopold wanted an outlet to the Atlantic for his extensive land holdings in central Africa. Cabinda remained a protectorate until 1956 when Portugal joined with Angola into a single colonial administrative unit.

As the 1960s began, Portugal’s colonial presence in Angola was jolted by the beginning of armed opposition by several nationalist groups. FNLA, MPLA and, later, UNITA were formed with the objective of liberating the entire Angolan “nation” from Portuguese colonialism. In 1963, FLEC [4]emerged as another liberation movement whose main objective was more narrowly focused on the liberation of Cabinda. But its military presence was mainly symbolic as the bulk of the fighting that took place in Cabinda was carried out by MPLA from its bases in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville.

The Portuguese colonial regime collapsed in 1974 partly due to the armed resistance in its colonies, including Angola where, ironically, Cabinda was one of the main battlegrounds. The new regime in Portugal quickly put in motion a decolonization process that eventually devolved sovereignty to its former overseas possessions. But since Cabinda had been incorporated into the Angola as an administrative unit it could no longer regain the sovereignty it gave up to the Portuguese in 1885. It was not recognized as a separate entity for purposes of decolonization; it was now an integral part of Angola and received independence only in that broad context. As far as Portugal was concerned, in 1974 Cabinda’s interests were represented by the three nationalist movements who considered the territory to be an integral part of Angola. For many in Cabinda, however, decolonization was incomplete unless their pre-Simulambuco status was re-established or the Simulambuco status quo was maintained. For colonial Portugal since the mid-1960s and Angola since independence, Simulambuco as a legal claim was trumped by an even more powerful reality – oil. The discovery of oil and the beginning of explorations in 1954 irreversibly changed Cabinda’s position within Angola and made its demands for independence harder to seriously consider.

Still, Portugal’s completion of the decolonization process in 1975 did not dissuade FLEC from continuing its armed struggle for independence, this time against Angola. In fact, FLEC made a lukewarm attempt – with the assistance of Mobutu’s Zaire – to seize power in Cabinda during the disordered and violent process surrounding independence. The attempt failed because MPLA, with the help of Cuban troops and Soviet weapons, was able to expel Mobutu’s troops from the country and seriously curtail FLEC’s ability to develop as a credible military opponent. Indeed, for the duration of the civil war, FLEC was unable to pose a threat against major economic interests in the province. Militarily subdued, FLEC settled for a minimal-intensity conflict against government troops interrupted by the occasional headline-grabbing abduction of foreign oil workers. Since FLEC never posed a significant threat to the mainland government, MPLA could focus its military attention on its more powerful rival UNITA which, since the 1980s with the help of South Africa, had penetrated Cabinda.

In the aftermath of the 1992 elections fiasco and the reigniting of the civil war after a short pause, and with UNITA seriously threatening to overthrow the government, the governing MPLA escalated its military presence in Cabinda to protect its main source of revenue. The deployment of 15 000 troops further reduced the FLEC’s military options. As a result, and partly because FAA [5] were focused on eliminating UNITA’s military threat on the mainland, FLEC was able to survive for another decade. In the aftermath of UNITA’s collapse as a military force in 2002, however, FLEC’s potion became completely untenable as FAA’s formidable power could now be shifted to Cabinda. It was, therefore, just a matter of time before Cabinda’s separatists were confronted by the same stark choices UNITA faced in 2002: defeat on the battlefield or a negotiated end of hostilities. The Memorandum of Understanding clearly suggests that Cabinda’s political and military forces have opted for the latter.

The Memorandum has silenced the guns in Cabinda. Does this mean that peace has finally been achieved? Yes, but only in a negative sense, i.e. there is no longer active, organized military violence taking place in Cabinda. But peace cannot simply be described in terms of absence of war. It must also be conceived more positively in terms of social justice. In other words, the elimination of physical violence is an insufficient condition for peace. Peace also involves the elimination of structural violence defined as social injustice. For Cabinda, the issue of social justice revolves around oil revenues and how they are (mis)used. As the main producer of oil in the country, the inhabitants of Cabinda justifiably expect a level of economic development commensurate with their contributions to the national treasury.

This expectation is yet to be met. Worse still, Cabindans are able to see how oil revenues have been used by national ruling elites to accumulate fabulous personal wealth that is then flaunted through conspicuous consumption. To a lesser extent, oil revenues are also used to provide comfortable lifestyles for foreign oil workers.

In sum, it is premature to suggest that positive peace is a reality in Cabinda. The end of the long conflict must be seen simply as an opportunity to create the conditions necessary to achieve that ultimate goal. Oil revenues can facilitate the attainment of peace if they are used to improve the living condition of the people. Failure to do so will continue to fuel deep-seated grievances and risk reigniting conflict.

• Prof. Assis Malaquias is the Associate Dean of International and Intercultural Studies & Associate Professor of Government St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY USA
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References:

[1] Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (National Front for the Liberation of Angola).
[2] Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola)
[3] União Nacional para Independência Total de Angola (National Union for Total Independence of Angola)
[4] Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (Front for the Liberation of Cabinda Enclave)
[5] Forças Armadas de Angola (Angolan Armed Forces)

In a recent speech at the 50th Anniversary of the 1st International Conference of Black Writers & Artists in Paris, Wole Soyinka warned against the neglect of those who remain silent against the crimes against humanity in Darfur: "As the armies of the Sudanese state mass for the final onslaught on its long determined design of race extermination, that future will stigmatise you one and all, will brand you collaborators and acccomplices if you abandon the people of Darfur to this awful fate, one that so blindingly scrawls its name across the supplicating sands and hills of Darfur – Genocide!"

Was it not here, on this same French soil, in this culture proud nation that sometimes appears to conflate the very notion of civilization with whatever is uniquely French, that a culture warrior once took the bulldozer to a hamburger joint some years ago? His mission was - to stem the tide of a neo-barbarism that, for the French, is synonymous with whatever is American. Lost on that-protector of French cultural purity was a thought that must have tickled the collective memory of former French colonials: the Macdonalisationor Disneyisation of French urban landscape was a kind of poetic justice in a reverse play of history. MacDonalds had arrived from the former colony of another European power to challenge the cultural hermeticism of a former colonizer.

The circumstances, and action directe of the bulldozer response differed somewhat from the strategy embarked upon by the poet and statesman Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas, Diop, Rene Depestre and other cultural militants - to adopt Senghor’s own expression – in their own time.

They were also protesting – right on the terrain of their colonizers, and as protagonists of a distant civilisation - the ascendancy of others over their own cultures and civilization. Theirs was of course a far-reaching protest, initiated within the enemy camp, against the lop-sided dialogue between France and her possessions, one that had turned the African mind into a mere cultural receptacle of France, indentured it to European identity and values. Thus, Negritude – to give it its name - was compelled to commence by a seemingly separatist strategy, one that restated an African cultural matrix in contradistinction to the European.

The implication of this, on the surface, was that the paracletes of Negritude commenced with a proposition of two distinct, parallel cultures, two monologues – one, the European, the other, black African. It was, in plain language, a strategy of fighting fire with fire. Those who recall the phase of
black nationalism in the United States and in apartheid South Africa – Back to Africa, Black is Beautiful, Black Consciousness etc. - will easily recognize in Negritude both heir to, and precursor of a tradition that is born of displacement, domination and dispossession. Its strategy provoked accusations of counter racism from white liberal thought – phrased benignly perhaps by Jean-Paul Sartre as - anti-racist racism. Would all extant racial discourse – all contemporary propositions and projects of cultural separatism were equally benign, and even, as in this case, propitious for the harmonization of the human race. For even this separatist assertiveness was eventually guided into the predication of convergence with others. This optimistic outlook, the mutual insemination of cultures, under Leopold Sedar Senghor’s restless historicism, expanded to embrace the Arab world and its cultural actualities, to which he gave the name – Arabite. It was the culminating annunciation of what history itself had long proclaimed, one that would result, inexorably – in Senghor’s formulation - as the Equilibrium of twentieth-century Humanism, the Civilisation of the Universal.

It would be more than sufficient, in my view, if our gathering today achieved nothing more than an evocation of that optimism, a reunion of minds, a celebration of identity and origin, and an opening up of the collective memory for interrogation, to determine what may be jettisoned, and what to re invigorate as a racial contribution to the quest for the universal. It would still remain deeply satisfying if we have merely responded to the human impulse towards celebration, carving out a brief pause for ourselves from the crushing demands of an increasingly unstable world, its negativities, its season of fear and menace, simply to bask, for two or three days in the boldness of a 50- year old initiative that sought to wean a closed, imperial and aggressive world of its racist limitations. It would be sufficient to celebrate that moment, fifty years ago, when the citizens of the continent of disdain, and their brothers and sisters in the Diaspora joined minds to demolish the doctrines on which the mission of colonialism was raised, and challenge the scriptures – both religious and philosophical - on whose authority the inhuman commerce in black flesh - Arab and European - had been justified. Celebration may choose to limit itself to the euphoria of that event, but one that may also be followed by the sobriety of ‘the morning after’ when reflection takes over, and the expressed or implicit summons of the occasion begin to resurface, enjoining a re-designing of the future, of a re-positioning of attitudes, replacing complacency with re-dedication, disturbing one’s peace of mind with the summons of a familiar imperative: a task that remains unfinished, even after fifty years.

The very prospect of such a reunion, even before the event, may however have provoked an alertness to current, thematically contingent actualities, realities that exhibit the very provocations which, in no small measure, aroused a need for that original gathering, over and beyond the mere wish for a meeting of minds. Realities that make the bulldozer almost a benevolent act, since that agent of cultural eradication has since given way to the armoured truck, the flame thrower, the strafing aircraft and the fragmentation bomb.

Realities where – to bring it all to the present - a presumably modern state, with its massive weaponry of coercion, has replaced the local maverick, acts in full confidence of the control of its own borders, and in a project for the alteration of the demography of a humanised space, its history, its cultural uniqueness – in short, a project for the eradication of its thriving humanity.

Even as we speak, even as the world is distracted by other heated zones all over the globe, one such project is taking place on the black continent, with the passive complicity of that continent’s rulers.

Those who have had the dubious privilege of reading the manifestoes of the arrowhead of a state policy of ethnic cleansing, the Sudanese Janjaweed, an agenda pronounced, without ambiguity, as the Arabisation of the Sudanese nation - will surely have squirmed at the naked language of racial incitement, its claims of race superiority, complemented by the language of contempt and disdain for the indigenous African. It is not quite what Senghor had in mind when he embarked on his fraternal annunciation of arabite and his proposition for a north-south, negro-arab collaboration of cultures: Je ne parle meme d’arabisme…. je parle d’arabite, de cette arabite qui est le foyer irradiant des vertus de l’eternal Bedouin.

How Senghor, humanist idealist, would shudder today at the perversion of that vision on reading contemporary tracts in which a state commits itself –through its surrogates - to the eradication of partners in that optimistic venture, actively condones the elimination of those cultural partners who, to add to the grim irony, were autochthones of that land long before the arrival of the current apostles of race supremacy, a pernicious fantasy that one hoped had been rebuked by monumental race criminalities of the past - the Arabo-European enslavement of and trade in the commodity of African peoples, by the Jim Crow culture of governance by lynch mobs and segregation laws in the ‘brave new world’ of the American mainland, by the lessons of the Holocaust, the atrocities of Apartheid South Africa and even, so lately, the horrors of Rwanda. It is clearly the ambition of the Sudanese government to surpass these records of dishonour, and the world appears to accept that it deserves to succeed, that it is right and just that an African nation join its name to the long catalogue of racist infamy. Enjoy the starkness and concision of directives from authenticated documents taken from the headquarters of one Sheik Musa Hilal, acknowledged leader of the Janjaweed: Change the demography of Darfur. Empty it of all African tribes.

The nation that is Sudan belongs to two families of the world community – Arab and African. These are structured, with global recognition, as the Arab League, and the Africa Union. It is depressing to observe the studied indifference of one – the Arab family - to the criminality of one of its members, a nation historically placed as a cultural bridge between two races, just as, in Senghor’s cultural architecture, the North Africa Arab world represents the bridge between Africa and Europe. The African family, for its part, manifests a shaming impotence that permits a re-enactment of a history that forged the chains of colonial bondage. But there is also a third, overarching family that is common to both – the United Nations. When a deviant branch of that family of nations flouts, indeed revels in the abandonment of the most basic norms of human decency, is there really justification in evoking the excuse that protocol requires the permission of that same arrogant and defiant entity, one that is unambiguously indicted in the court of universal censure, before it goes to the rescue of its abused, violated, and dehumanized victims?

One finds it odd that this alibi for inaction was not invoked before the rigorous intervention in former Yugoslavia, an intervention that not only brought a rogue regime to heel, but oversaw the return and rehabilitation of the dispersed populations of ethnic Albanians and Moslem Croats. If the lightning speed at which the UN responded to the recent Middle East war and its aftermath is explained away by the willingness of the belligerents to accommodate, indeed to demand the presence of peace enforcers from the United Nations, we are still left with the example of intervention in central Europe over the strenuous resistance of the murdering regimes. That leaves the African situation in what category, exactly? Equals before the family structures of rights and responsibilities, or yet again, fifty years after the first organised challenge to a racist order, as the marginalised orphans of history?

As we speak, the Africa Union is preparing to abandon the peoples of Darfur, leaving them at the mercy of murdering, raping, and burning gospellers of race doctrine, withdrawing even its pathetically inadequate protection forces which, at the very least, provided a moral presence and a modicum of restraint. We are speaking here of a nation where mass rape is proffered as compliment to Senghor’s vision of cultural metissage. This is the established profile of a regime that has given its peers their marching orders, read them the riot act and delivered its ultimatum, and the African family has chosen to obey, to beat a retreat on schedule, with its tail between its legs. The Arab Family, one to which belongs a primary moral authority irrespective of the location of its member on the black continent, has steadfastly refused to call Sudan to order, indeed placed obstacles in the way of sanctions. But by what right does this speaker impose this moral responsibility on the Arab world?

None whatsoever, except on the authority of the protagonists of Arab culture themselves, on their own historic claims, such as the self-pronounced Arabist, the Sudanese prime minister, Ismail Al- Azhari, who, in 1965, made the following declaration:

‘We are proud of our Arab origin, of our Arabism and of being Muslims. The Arabs came to this continent, as pioneers, to disseminate a genuine culture and promote sound principles which have shed enlightenment and civilization throughout Africa at a time when Europe was plunged into the abyss of darkness, ignorance, and doctrinal and scholarly backwardness. It is our ancestors who held the torch high and led the caravan of liberation and advancement; and it is they who provided a superior melting-pot for Greek, Persian and Indian culture, giving them the chance to react with all that was noble in Arab culture, and handing them back to the rest of the world as a guide to those who wished to extend the frontiers of learning”

That lofty declaration – never mind its hyperbolic accents - but certainly one which Leopold Sedar Senghor would have endorsed as the ringing spirit of Arabite was made just less than a decade after the first gathering of the black writers and artistes of the world, impelled also by the need to situate their race and heritage accurately in a racist world. The claims of black civilization were no less resonant at that conference, no less proud, the mission of race retrieval no less impassioned. And the question we must ask the government of Sudan today is simply this: how does the current manifesto of the Janjaweed, the champions of Arabism, its project of cultural extermination, correspond to Al-Azhari’s manifesto of enlightenment – among numerous others.

Examine the tomes of attestation with the United Nations’ fact-finding missions, examine even the dossiers that have resulted in sealed indictments against named individuals both in government and in the autonomous order of the Janjaweed, soulmates of the Milesovics, the Radovan Karavics, the Radkos of eastern Europe, and tell us if Al-Azhari’s banner of enlightenment has not been besmirched by his Hitlerian apostles.

And the African family? I refer to the family of humanist idealism of whom the poets and philosophers sang or preached – Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas, Marcelino dos Santos John Mbiti, Ogotimeli, Tierno Bokar and all. Did they not instruct that African humanism does implicate a concern, and a responsibility towards ‘my neighour’? And does that responsibility end with the rhetoric of power and the commodity of compromise? This African family, which vies for cultural honour with any race on earth, will be the subject of our gathering here, so for now, we shall merely let this question hang in the air: Has that family made any move to openly denounce or expel this renegade member?

What happens in private caucuses within the closed chambers of the so-called ‘peer review mechanism’ of NEPAD and other much vaunted structures of restraint, is cold comfort to those who are violated daily, who fight the hot and grainy wind for the rags on their backs, the pitiless sun for moisture, the camels for the dry clumps of grass that have escaped the fury of the Janjaweed arsonists. And as they leave their camps, in sheer desperation, to forage for more nourishing fodder, are they not set upon by the marauding Janjaweed, slaughtered, raped, mutilated and robbed of the last shreds of their innate dignity?

For the family of all, the United Nations, which again and again has been compelled to avow, ‘Never Again’, it continues to meet in impotence and debate in sterility. Sealed indictments against the identified violators of humanity are admirable, but they cannot replace the rigour and honour of prevention.

Not one member of the UN family has expressed its displeasure by expelling Sudanese diplomats from its borders. Not one has demanded that sanctions be universally applied to the Sudanese cesspit of criminal impunity. For decades, Libya was declared the pariah of the international community on suspicion and/or evidence of complicity in terrorist acts, and of harbouring terrorists within its borders – she was ostracized. What further dimension of state terrorism does the world need in order to act when a government unleashes its surrogates, armed to the teeth, supported, supplied, and logistically enabled by its own forces and intelligence services, authorised by well documented mandate of ethnic cleansing, its acts witnessed, recorded and reported by the United Nations’ own agencies, its results seared on the Sudanese landscape as mass burial grounds, ruins of burnt villages, poisoned wells, slaughtered livestock, in the swelling army of mutilated survivors, victims of gang rape, of diseased and overflowing refugee camps.

Words are our stock-in- trade, and writers are not slow to notice when a word screams out through absence and avoidance. Now what is that word that the United Nations, once again, has scrupulously skirted, a strategic avoidance, a moral liability that led, in this very recent memory to - Rwanda? The protocols are clear. Recognition of a certain dimension of criminality against a people, its culture, against the very existence of the people of Darfur compels the United Nations to act. But no, Darfur is not the heart of Europe.

It is not the heart of Lebanon or the borders of Israel. It is located in a land of disdain, recognized only as the home of want and occasionally – of much sought material resources So, just what is this word that accuses, damns, and will not be silenced? What is this word for which so many substitutes are massed, though derobed of the inexorable imperative, in the corridors and chambers of the United Nations?

As writers, we cannot cease to recognize and embrace our mission of testifying and laying ambush for escapist minds. Those who are alive today to witness this renewed perfidy, and their successors living or yet unborn in the mission of warning and bearing witness, will not forget. Let words, at the very least, be mobilized towards the fulfillment of responsibilities by those who are charged with the protection of the weak and helpless, the temporarily disadvantaged, let them persist in saying to you, all who hold the primary controls of the direction of a continent’s future, that that future will not forget, nor will it forgive. As the armies of the Sudanese state mass for the final onslaught on its long determined design of race extermination, that future will stigmatise you one and all, will brand you collaborators and acccomplices if you abandon the people of Darfur to this awful fate, one that so blindingly scrawls its name across the supplicating sands and hills of Darfur – Genocide!

• This Paper by Prof Wole Soyinka was presented at the 50th Anniversary of the 1st International Conference of Black Writers & Artists -Paris, 19-22nd September 2006. It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Have you ever wondered if there is anything you can do to contribute to solving global poverty? Did you sometimes ever get that sinking feeling that you are just one person who is too insignificant in the face of the forces of global domination and systematic oppression to make any difference? How many times has helplessness at the things happening around you or in the wider world forced you to conclude that you cannot beat the system, and that, at best, your only choice is to either join them or drop out?

If you have answered yes to one or more of these questions do not be embarrassed at all. You are one among billions of us (actually 6.5 billion) who inhabit this earth. Most of us feel helpless, often disapproving of many things happening around us and in the world but feeling we lack any power to change them. There is frustration that no matter what we think or do, the world will always remain skewed against the poor and powerless, the little men and women, who constitute the majority. Whether it is the environment, the economy, education or health, many have to come to accept that the rich classes amongst us, and the richer nations of the world will always squeeze the poor and get their way all the time.

We all know that Mahatma Gandhi’s famous words: ‘there is enough in the world to satisfy our needs but not enough to satisfy our greed’ uttered so many decades ago are as true today as ever. The vast wealth from improved technology, science and genetic engineering in the last five decades is more than enough for all of us. However, the structures of power within and between nations continue to reward those at the very top, while penalizing the majority poor at the bottom of the pile.

Poor people in poorer countries of the world cry out against their rich who also groan at the richer countries. Within richer countries the poor feel no better. Yet the system that is producing this fabulous wealth in one pole, and desperate poverty in another is created by human beings. Therefore it can only be changed through their individual and collective efforts, sometimes cooperatively, but often in confrontations and through contradictions.

The United Nations ushered in the third millennium (and its 55th anniversary) at the Millennium Summit in 2000 with a declaration that recognized that the world could be made better and that we all deserved to treat each other and our shared environment better. This was encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was an attempt to create a new social contract between the peoples and governments of the world. It committed to eight goals ranging from ending hunger through universal access to basic education, women empowerment, health, and environment to reforming the unequal global trade, increasing quality aid and cancelling debt of poor countries.

Since the MDGs became the ‘new’ language of development discourse, there continues a debate as to whether they are achievable or not.

The UN itself realized that neither the declaration alone nor the official adoption of the MDGs will guarantee their fulfilment both in the north and the south. That is why the UN Millennium Campaign was established to work with citizens to hold their governments accountable for the fulfillment of the MDGs. The campaign works with and through national coalitions in various countries allied to the Global Call Against Poverty (GCAP) but also with faith based groups, local councils, national, sub regional and regional legislatures, youth, students, women and trade unions, to ensure political accountability of all leaders to their peoples at various levels. The MDGs can only be achieved at the local and community level. That is where their impact will be directly felt.

Over the recent years of neo-liberal economic hegemony, economic policies have become even more undemocratic. The policies are dominated by technicians, all kinds of latter day voodoo experts from the Bretton Woods institutions, to the total exclusion of citizens who are the producers of their national and global wealth. The majority of citizens become victims of these policies. The MDGs have tremendous potential for opening up democratic spaces for political accountability of leaders. Through MDGs it is possible to begin to reverse this arrogant trend of making economic issues the sole preserve of economic egg-heads, and judge economic policies not just in terms of macroeconomic growth but development, how they impact on the general welfare of the majority of the peoples of the world who are poor.

As part of efforts to popularize the MDGs and focus global attention on poverty, the UN Millennium Campaign in partnership with GCAP allies and others including OXFAM, Action Aid International, NOVIB, and Micah Challenge, has been participating in a one month campaign of activities. This began on the 16th of September and will culminate in the International Day for Poverty Eradication on Tuesday 17 October.

If you have not been involved it is not too late. You could still join the activities this weekend. On Sunday, October 15 and Monday, October 16 there is a ‘Stand Up Against Poverty Challenge’ in which anybody who cares can be a full participant.

Can you imagine a world in which the MDGs are a political priority for all our governments and other governments in the world? A world without poverty where every child is guaranteed education, where many women do not die in labour and people living with HIV/Aids have universal access to free treatment based on need not cash. A world where malaria, TB and other preventable diseases no longer kill us in the vast numbers they currently do. A world in which the environment is fully protected and the vast creativity of human mind and scientific discovery will be used for sustainable development that guarantees that this earth that we are loaning from the future generation is handed on safely.

There is a small chance to put your imagination into action. The goals sound like dreams but even the creation of this world must have begun with a dream. It needs not remain so. It is a world that we can bring about by first making people aware of the MDGs and working with them to demand their fulfilment from their leaders. Holding leaders to their promises is all that it takes. If the richer countries deliver on goal 8 the poorer countries can also deliver on goals 1-7. It is a complementary process which must run concurrently from goal 1 to 8. You can contribute to making it happen wherever you maybe. Together we can all make the difference between fulfilment and indifference.

This weekend you can add your voice to that of millions of other citizens of the world by joining the campaign against hunger amidst plenty: ‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ and stand up for the MDG’s. It will take not more than five minutes.‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ is an innovative Challenge in which we are attempting to set an official Guinness world record for the highest number of people ever to ‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ and stand up for the MDG’s.

We have just 24 hours to set this record. Be one in a Million!

Check for details of campaigns near you this Sunday 15 October (from 10.00 am GMT)to (10.00 am GMT) Monday 16 October and also how you can organize your own stand up moment and register it to be counted: and [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org