Pambazuka News 568: Ruptures and changes in 2012
Pambazuka News 568: Ruptures and changes in 2012
Over the past few weeks some 900 residents of the Zimbabwean capital Harare have been diagnosed with typhoid, and about 60 have been admitted to hospital, say health authorities. There have been no confirmed fatalities from the disease, although senior health officials, who declined to be identified, told IRIN they were investigating the cause of some deaths at hospitals.
There are about one million Ugandans living in South Sudan, according to the Kampala City Traders’ Association (KCTA). But life is not easy for the Ugandan traders who supply South Sudan with many essential goods. On a side road at the market, a Southern Sudanese policeman wearing orange fatigues strikes a passing Ugandan with his rubber whip a few times, seemingly without any provocation. The Ugandan winces and then continues on his way. Ugandan migrants say such incidents - and much worse - are not uncommon. They say they have been beaten, arrested without cause and faced a plethora of other forms of harassment by Southern Sudanese security forces.
Mozambique granted concessions to investors for more than 2.5 million hectares (ha) of land between 2004 and the end of 2009, says the Oakland Institute's country report on Mozambique, which forms part of a multi-country study on understanding land investment deals in Africa. 'Mozambique’s history of Portuguese colonialism, three wars, and then the imposition by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund of a harsh neo-liberal economic model led the government in the 1990s to accept the idea that the only way to promote development and end poverty was through encouraging foreign investment. Mozambique was identified by the World Bank as one of five sparsely populated African countries with large tracts of land available for rainfed cultivation. After 2000 rising food and fuel prices and new climate change-related attention on forests triggered the interest of investors in Mozambique, particularly for trees (for paper, timber and carbon credits) and agrofuels (notably sugar and jatropha).'
South Sudan has accused the government of neighbouring Sudan of arming gunmen alleged to have killed dozens of people in a cattle raid, as the UN warned that tensions between the two sides risked regional peace. 'A militia group from Unity state penetrated into Warrap state... and attacked people in a cattle camp, killing over 40,' Alison Manani Magaya, South Sudan's interior minister, said on Monday following the latest violence in the world's newest nation, which ceded from Sudan last year.
The African Union has extended the mandate of its top official Jean Ping after an election, in which he was challenged by South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, deadlocked. Intense campaigns had preceded the vote for commission chief which dominated the AU summit in the Ethiopia capital, where leaders gathered to discuss broadening trade within Africa and tackling conflict hot spots.
Health services in northern Uganda are still scarce in the wake of the region's 20-year civil war, leaving many battling diseases that could be cured with proper medical treatment. Elephantiasis is a widespread disease caused by a parasite that causes limbs to swell up, leaving sufferers in pain and often ostracised from their communities. According to the World Health Organisation [WHO], neglected tropical diseases, such as elephantiasis, affect more than one billion people, primarily poor populations living in tropical and subtropical climates.
Google Kenya country manager Olga Arara-Kimani has left the firm days after the Internet giant said it had taken action against employees implicated in a recent data poaching scandal. Arara-Kimani, who had been at the helm of the firm’s Kenyan operations when the scandal broke, said someone had to take responsibility. Two weeks ago, Kenyan online business directory firm Mocality accused Google of fraudulently using its data to sell competing product to clients.
The man accused of masterminding two deadly bombings at Nigeria's 50th independence celebrations will face trial in October after a South African court delayed his case by nine months. Nigerian national Henry Okah is facing trial in South Africa, where he has permanent residence, on charges that he orchestrated the twin car bombings - which killed 12 people in Abuja on 1 October 2010 - from his home in Johannesburg. Okah has denied involvement in the attacks, which were claimed by the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
In the context of the recent takeover of South Africa's Limpopo province by the country's national treasury, apparently because the province was bankrupt, the Mail and Guardian newspaper visited the province and have published this multimedia package showing how the lives of ordinary people are effected by a lack of service delivery.
Several political parties, including the DA and ANC, are expected to make representations to the Press Freedom Commission (PFC), when it resumes hearings. Monday 30 January marked the start of the latest and final round of hearings on how best to regulate the print media. Possible models include independent regulation, co-regulation, self-regulation, and statutory regulation.
Prominent Senegalese opposition activist Alioune Tine has been released after spending two days in detention. Tine is a member of the opposition June 23 Movement (M23), formed after countrywide protests last year against incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade's plans to run for a third term. Tine told the AFP agency he had been freed without charge.
South Africa's leading HIV group has warned that large numbers of 'faulty' condoms are in circulation in the Bloemfontein area, despite a recall. The problem with the condoms was discovered after people complained to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). Health authorities have recalled more than one million condoms handed out ahead of the recent African National Congress centenary celebrations.
Listening to Somaliland – and deploying some of its methods in achieving stability – is crucial to addressing the crisis in Somalia.
The major weakness of a new film is that it removes the agency, courage and brilliance of black women.
Unlike the Biafra experience, indigenous peoples confronting land dispossession are looking beyond the nation-state for justice.
In December, Pambazuka News carried that had exposed labour abuses in Chinese state-owned copper mines in Zambia. Here, Human Rights Watch responds to that critique.
The Kenyan government plans to move hundreds of thousands of refugees to Somalia, a plan condemned by the The Refugee Consortium of Kenya.
A US-based journalist convicted on politicised terrorism charges in Ethiopia was sentenced to death in absentia recently, while two other Ethiopian journalists received heavy prison sentences in connection with their coverage of banned opposition groups, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the sentences.
Donors and development partners have reduced their General Budget Support (GBS) to the government as they announced a commitment of 800bn/- for the 2012/2013 financial year. The support has slightly been scaled down compared to the 1.1tr/- pledged for the 2009/2010 fiscal year, 822bn/- for the 2010/2011 financial year and 840bn/- committed to budget support for the current financial year.
Four men were jailed for 18 years on Wednesday for stabbing and stoning 19-year-old lesbian Zoliswa Nkonyana to death in 2006. Lubabalo Ntlabathi, Sicelo Mase, Luyanda Londzi and Mbulelo Damba were sentenced by the Khayelitsha Regional Court to 18 years, four of which were suspended for five years. A crowd outside the court cheered, sang, raised their fists and danced when news came that the men had been sentenced. The National Prosecuting Authority had asked for the men to be sentenced to 15 years each.
Cosatu has mirrored the ANC's offensive on the print media faithfully, finding that the three major newspaper groups 'reflect the outlook and prejudices of the capitalist class' and backing calls for tougher regulation of the press. In a six-page submission to the Press Freedom Commission (PFC), the federation praises the ANC for having 'opened up an important public debate' on its 2007 Polokwane conference resolution on the media, and particularly for its investigation of a statutory media appeals tribunal.
Zimbabwean artists operate in one of the most politically repressive environments in the world. But despite the monumental challenges, art continues to thrive here as artists say they are determined to shape the future of the country by expressing themselves, says this report from the Global Press Institute.
This Global Press Institute article says that few rape cases result in conviction in Cameroon. 'Doctors, police officers and lawyers say frequent false reports make it difficult to confirm when rapes occur. But this culture of skepticism leads to underreporting as victims say they doubt anyone will believe them.'
Why is the Chinese economy thriving while that of the West is in crisis? The answer is of great relevance to Africans who have for decades embraced development models created in the boardrooms of Western capitals.
This video report for the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) on the mistreatment of asylum seekers in Israel was submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on 30 January 2012. It presents evidence of racial discrimination towards African asylum seekers and refugees who have walked across Israel's open border with Egypt.
As in other parts of the world, there are signs of revolt of ordinary people against many decades of oppression and dispossession. The dictators leave, but the system which bore them remains.
In just under two decades of liberation, South Africa is now gripped by the deadly politics of character assassination, rapacious self-enrichment and factionalism. The ideals of the anti-apartheid struggle have been lost in public life.
‘While supporters of the protest argued that their meeting posed no threat to public safety, the city had declared the movement a threat.’
How genuine is the anger that has been expressed in some quarters about Africa accepting a gift of the new African Union headquarters from China? There are so many other issues of urgent concern around the continent that the critics should direct their wrath to as well.
Which other friend of Africa would be willing to fund, design, build and maintain a new $200 million AU headquarters in the middle of a global financial crisis?
The winner, who fled Jamaica a year ago following homophobic death threats, vows to continue with the struggle for LGBT rights in honour of the the fallen Ugandan activist.
What should concern Kenya is not the political and personal fate of the suspects whose charges have been confirmed by the International criminal Court, but the lives of the thousands of victims who are still nursing their wounds four years later.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/568/Unknown.gifThe company contracted to market Angola overseas is owned by the president’s children. While two-thirds of the population survives on less than $2 a day, the president and his protégés plunder the country.
The new hypermarket is one of many businesses belonging to a fast-growing empire owned by senior public officials, which over the last three years has become the biggest player in the national economy.
Time has come for politics of accountability and inclusion. The country’s top leaders need to move away from their ethnic enclaves and promote reconciliation and healing as Kenya heads to the next election.
There is a powerful economic argument for Gibe 3 Dam. But there are also powerful arguments for ensuring that large-scale river-basin development projects provide genuine and sustainable development opportunities for the affected people.
Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which controls a near majority of seats in the Egyptian Parliament, won more than half of the committees of the Lower House on 31 January. The Speaker of the Parliament Mohammed Saad el–Katatni, also a member of the FJP, announced the results of the internal elections of the parliament’s sub-committees, where 9 out of 19 committees are to be headed by senior members of the FJP bloc.
A wave of fresh attacks by suspected gunmen of the Boko Haram sect has claimed the lives of a soldier, two policemen and two civilians. Two other policemen and a soldier have also been injured. The sect attacked the Gambouru/Ngala Police Station, Joint Task Force (JTF) checkpoint and the Nigeria Air Force Barracks, Maiduguri on Monday 30 January.
Cape Town has been awarded the right to host the World Design Capital 2014 (WDC2014), but the City of Cape Town’s recent announcement that it will lead the management and coordination of WDC2014 threatens this vision, writes Gavin Silber of the Social Justice Coalition. 'The City is one of the main providers of Cape Town's basic services including sanitation, water, electricity, roads, safety and (increasingly) housing. It also approves most design plans. As a service provider, whose leadership will always have re-election as a foremost concern, it should not be leading this process; it is a plain conflict of interest. The city has too much vested in promoting its own way of doing things to the exclusion of critics.'
Ethiopia joined the APRM in 2003. However, in this AfriMAP publication authors Tigist Fisseha and Medhane Tadesse, whilst acknowledging the government of Ethiopia’s leadership within the APRM at continental level, argue that the mere fact that the APRM process itself, is little known by the Ethiopian citizenry, and that those that are aware of the process, are reluctant to engage with it, points to the total control of the process by executive power. They also argue that the only way the Ethiopia’s APRM process can be meaningful is if its participatory processes are opened to all citizens, especially civil society, who ultimately have a say as how they wish to be governed.
The 18th African Union summit ended 31 January in the Ethiopian capital with adoption of a series of agreements concerning Africa's economic, political and security issues. Africa will speed up its infrastructure development and put related policies and laws in place to boost the integration process, according to the 'Declaration on the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa.' The declaration said the summit recognises 'the vital role of infrastructure and related services in the political and social-economic development, and physical integration of the continent', especially given the population growth and economic demand.
This handbook from the African Centre for Biosafety will enable readers to:
1. Know the field and articulate your position;
2. Familiarise yourself with the regulatory issues;
3. Identify your allies;
4. Interact with the process;
5. Keep the pressure on.
Senegalese riot police fired tear gas to break up a tense, thousands-strong rally 31 January in Dakar demanding that President Abdoulaye Wade drop plans to seek a third term in office. Opposition groups united under the June 23 Movement (M23), had called for mass resistance after a decision last Friday by the country's top judges allowing 85-year-old Wade to seek a third mandate in the February 26 polls. Thousands had gathered by late afternoon in a square in the working class suburb of Colobane, where tension rose and angry youths hurled rocks at scores of riot police keeping watch from afar.
Meet the Davos Man in this article and hear about the same old song being played at the recent World Economic Forum. With global retrenchments and a Eurozone in crisis, was system change a subject for debate. '...the system, as we know by now, is one designed so very carefully for the benefit of the 1 per cent. So things like, for example, prosecuting financial fraud, redesigning incentives for corporate predation, and, well, reining in a capitalist system that is sucking the world's real economy dry, are just not on the table.'
Power tariffs will remain high despite the anticipated commissioning of Bujagali Hydro Electricity Dam in July, State Minister for Energy Simon D’Ujanga said. The Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) last month increased consumer tariffs by 36 per cent and commercial dues by 69.7 per cent.
New studies released in London 1 February suggest that the frenzied sell-off of forests and other prime lands to buyers hungry for the developing world's natural resources risk sparking widespread civil unrest - unless national leaders and investors recognize the customary rights of millions of poor people who have lived on and worked these lands for centuries. 'Controversial land acquisitions were a key factor triggering the civil wars in Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is every reason to be concerned that conditions are ripe for new conflicts to occur in many other places,' said Jeffrey Hatcher, director of global programs for the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), which sponsored an expert panel today at the Royal Society on the trends shaping rural lands and rights worldwide.
Bargain prices on Ethiopia's prime farmland! Who's down for some land grabbing?! Anybody? This spoof commercial follows a Human Rights Watch report stating that the Ethiopian government under its 'villagization' program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities.
Although it remains one of the best known pro-poor social movements in Kenya, Bunge la Mwananchi faces serious internal challenges that hamper its effectiveness in mounting collective action. The problems need urgent attention.
‘I have been accused by some of being a mouthpiece for the [former] Libyan government but now the truth is coming out. We know that the essence of the former Libyan government's analysis has been proved correct.’
'The 39 members of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition based in 18 African countries vehemently condemn the stripping of women wearing trousers and short skirts by male vendors in three major cities in Malawi, namely Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantyre.'
‘While as a young movement we try to build radically new forms of direct democracy within by challenging the old guard, we will also be able to strengthen accountability and the authority of the decisions we make as a collective.’
The incumbent chairman of the opposition umbrella in Mauritania, Mamadou Alassane Ba, has called for an end to military rule in the country. Ba, who leads the Mauritanian Coordination of Democratic Opposition (COD), an umbrella of 12 political parties, called “for the withdrawal of the military system in power in Mauritania for 30 years to end the misery and suffering of the people.
The deadly violence that has broken out in Senegal seems surreal even to the most seasoned analysts of the West African nation’s political evolution. Angry Senegalese believe President Wade has executed a coup to stay in power.
‘As the Unemployed People's Movement we reject all provisions in this bill which will hinder the free flow of information.’
Progressives must brace for intensified struggles in 2012 because people in all continents are seeking alternatives beyond neo-liberal domination. The current European struggles will sharpen the struggles in Latin America and Africa.
Aiming to enhance the quality of the environment and ensure sustainable utilisation of shared natural resources in the five-nation East African Community (EAC), the East African Legislative Assembly has moved a step closer to enacting a regional law on the management of trans-boundary ecosystems. Currently holding its session in Kampala, Uganda, the Assembly has passed the East African Community Trans-boundary Ecosystems Bill 2010 after its third reading.
Somali government forces backed by Kenyan troops have reportedly captured a strategic town in southern Somalia after al-Shabab fighters vacated the town without any resistance, Press TV reported. 'Several pro-government forces, including Kenyan soldiers and Ahlu-Sunna fighters are now based in Howsingow town,' said Mohamed Khalif, a Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) military official.
Egyptians have continued a sit-in outside the country's state TV building to protest the media's pro-junta programs, calling for the purging of the state media from anti-revolutionary officials, Press TV reports. The protesters believe that even after the popular revolution which led to the ouster of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak back in February last year, the state media outlet is still the voice of the country's ruling junta and part and parcel of its propaganda machine.
The Democratic Alliance Students Organisation (DASO) recently released a controversial poster as part of their anti-racism campaign. The 'In OUR future, you wouldn't look twice' poster shows a naked mixed-race couple embracing. The poster has caused a huge stir on Facebook, Twitter and blogs and even generated viral spoof posters. Global Voices Online has summed up the online reactions and posted some of the spoofs.
Cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), as well as domestic violence, are increasing in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland, with social workers attributing the trend to hard economic times made worse by recent drought in the region.
Egypt has declared three days of mourning for at least 74 people who died at a football stadium amid violent clashes between rival supporters in the northern city of Port Said. Earlier, Essam el-Erian, a politician from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, said the military and police were complicit in the violence, accusing them of trying to show that emergency regulations giving security forces wide-ranging powers must be maintained.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has attributed the typhoid outbreak that has affected 1,500 people in the capital Harare to biological warfare and Western sanctions. The claim was made by a Zanu-PF spokesperson in Harare Mr Claudious Mutero as Health and Child Welfare Minister Dr Henry Madzorera warned the outbreak would spread to other towns because of collapsing water and sewer infrastructure.
The Democratic Republic of Congo's ruling party and its allies won a reduced parliamentary majority in November elections, according to results released two months after the disputed polls. The electoral commission announced the figures saying President Joseph Kabila's People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) and its allies captured an absolute majority of about 260 seats in the 500-seat National Assembly. The opposition won about 110 seats, the results from the 28 November vote showed.
Human-rights groups in Senegal, including the local branch of the UK-based Amnesty International, have condemned police violence during an opposition rally in which one person was killed. Officers used tear gas and water cannons to break up the protest in the capital, Dakar, on Tuesday night, attended by an estimated 10,000 people in what until now had been one of Africa's most stable countries.
A gun battle between rival groups has raged near office buildings and five-star hotels in central Tripoli, in the latest sign of unrest in Libya following the overthrow and killing of Muammar Gaddafi. Witnesses said gunfire could be heard on Wednesday 1 February coming from near the beach house of Gaddafi's son, Saadi, on the Mediterranean Sea at Tripoli. Thick smoke spewed out from near the house, and ambulance sirens could be has heard as rival groups, using heavy machine guns, clashed in the mostly business district of Tripoli.
The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF recently launched a year-long advocacy campaign to raise awareness of the DRC's HIV crisis. 'The problem is quite old in the DRC; the country has always been minimized by donors who have not seen it as a priority, mainly because HIV prevalence is relatively low at between 3 and 4 percent,' Thierry Dethier, advocacy manager for MSF Belgium in the DRC, told IRIN/PlusNews.
The self-declared Republic of Somaliland is grappling with high child and maternal mortality rates, malnutrition and inadequate medical personnel, health officials told IRIN. 'Somaliland has one of the worst maternal mortality ratios in the world, estimated to be between 10,443 and 14,004 per 100,000 live births,' said Ettie Higgins, head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) field office in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland. 'The infant mortality rate is 73/1,000 while the under-five mortality [rate] is about 117/1,000. Fully immunized children represent a mere five per cent. Environmental sanitation is highly challenged,' she said.
While the quality of education available in refugee camps varies, the difficulties of accessing education in urban settings are generally greater. In addition to legal and policy barriers and the often prohibitive costs of sending a child to a local school, a UNHCR report has noted that: 'Refugee children often have less support than in a camp-based school in adjusting to a new curriculum, learning a new language, accessing psychosocial support, and addressing discrimination, harassment, and bullying from teachers and peers. They may also encounter a lack of familiarity by local school authorities for the processes of admitting refugee children and recognizing prior learning.' A year-long, yet-to-be published study by the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg into the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants to education in South Africa found that schools often demanded documents to enrol a child which are not legally required.
The Constitutional Court has issued an order barring public discussion on the candidature of Deputy Prime Minister and William Ruto in the next presidential elections until a case before it is heard and determined. Justice Isaac Lenaola issued the orders on Thursday 2 February in response to a petition by three voters and two civil societies seeking to block Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto from vying for the Presidency in the next elections.
IMF held up Tunisia under Ben Ali as a model, yet ordinary people fed up with his excesses overthrew the regime. Now IMF appears to be courting the new leadership.
Members of the Ghana Community Radio Network (GCRN) and the Coalition for Transparency of the Airwaves (COTA) have demanded that government answer to the limited frequency allocation being given to community radio stations. Across the country, there are 11 community radio stations on air with 14 more waiting to receive their frequency.
The main focus of this new entity is to support a growing transgender and intersex movement and to engage regionally in advocacy for the human rights of transgender and intersex people.
On 3 February 2012, the Cassation Bench of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia will hear a petition by the Human Rights Council (HRCO), Ethiopia’s oldest human rights organisation, to admit an appeal against the freezing of its bank accounts. Amnesty International, ARTICLE 19, CIVICUS, East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project and Human Rights Watch have expressed deep concern at the obstacles and restrictions to which HRCO and other human rights organizations in Ethiopia are now subjected, as illustrated by this case. The decision of the Supreme Court will be of great significance for the future of HRCO's vital work and for the wider promotion and protection of human rights in Ethiopia.
While speaking to delegates at the African Union’s summit, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged stronger protection of homosexual rights. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon over the weekend urged African leaders to respect gay rights. Ban told the on-going African Union summit in Addis Ababa that discrimination based on sexual orientation had been ignored or even sanctioned by many states for too long.
Professor Welshman Ncube has once again denied claims contained in a book by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai that he and former South African President Thabo Mbeki connived to split the MDC into two factions in 2005. In the book ‘At the Deep End’ Tsvangirai claims that Mbeki was a central player in hatching a plot that would have seen an MDC faction led by Ncube forming an alliance with the ZANU PF faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa.
South Africa’s police force is facing criticism for refusing to help a Zimbabwean man, who was beaten by security guards at a refugee reception office in that country last week. The man, Lucky Dube, was trying to sort out his asylum documents at the Maitland Refugee Reception Office in the Western Cape, after making an application late last year.
The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights has released an independent statement in response to the crisis facing the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. It states: 'The November 2011 announcement of the cancellation of the 11th round of funding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria because of the Fund’s financial difficulties presents the international community with both a health and a human rights crisis. Since its first round of funding in 2002, the Global Fund has played an indispensable role in advancing the health and human rights goals of the global HIV response. The Global Fund’s financial difficulties are part of a broader global HIV funding crisis.'
A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France for Muammar Gaddafi died from torture within a day of being detained by a militia from Zintan, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Friday. On 26 January, humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres said it had stopped its work in detention centers in the city of Misrata because its medical staff were being asked to patch up detainees mid-way through torture sessions so they could go back for more abuse.
African Heads of State have endorsed the launch of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), a multi-billion dollar initiative that will run through 2040. In a statement at their 18th summit held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, the Heads of State approved the implementation of the recommendations in the study on PIDA presented to the summit. The study was a joint initiative of the African Union, the African Development Bank and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordination Agency. Endorsement by the AU summit will now be followed by more detailed planning on the actual implementation of PIDA.