Pambazuka News 565: Rwandan genocide truth revealed, Nigeria revolts and ANC at 100
Pambazuka News 565: Rwandan genocide truth revealed, Nigeria revolts and ANC at 100
As the world celebrates with the ANC, they have put up a pretty convincing picture of freedom while everywhere people are broken by the burdens of poverty. Where is the people’s celebration?
Despite its brave history of a hundred years, the ANC is ineluctably becoming yesterday's movement. Fortunately, politics in South Africa has long been about more than the ANC – and so it will be again.
‘The ANC has had its shameful moments but it has also had its glorious moments; and it has often been far closer to the best of the spirit of the age than any of the forces it opposed.’
In its search for a new paradigm and a new strategy in a rapidly changing world, China should embrace the solidarity of all humans. Yet at an important conference last month, Chinese officials had nothing to say about Africa.
Southern Africa’s ‘democracies’ do not produce citizens but subjects controlled by governments due to the hierarchical nature of the region’s politics, which demands obedience. But for how long will this go on?
Most of the country supports not just the strikes but also the Occupy Nigeria movement which seeks to seriously challenge the status quo and once and for all end the rule by kleptocracy.
The Angolan government has warned Namibians living illegally in that country to get their papers in order. Namibians living or grazing their cattle in the Cunene and Quando Cubango provinces bordering Namibia have been urged to apply for residence permits to have legal status in Angola. This was done at a meeting held at Olupale in Quando Cubango Province which was attended by Namibians and Angolans and was addressed by the Cunene Province governor, Antonio Ndidalelwa.
Two years after Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, international aid donors have delivered only half of the billions of dollars promised for reconstruction, according to UN data. Just $2.38-billion (53 per cent) of the $4.5-billion pledged for recovery programmes in 2010-2011 has been delivered, figures from the UN special envoy for Haiti show.
This publication seeks to provide a gender analysis of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement from the perspective of the participation of women in peace building and conflict resolution, and how peace agreements facilitate or hinder gender equality in post-conflict situations. The analysis was developed through a series of meetings convened by the Feminist Institute of Southern Africa (FISA) and the publication is a collaboration between FISA and the States in Transition Observatory of Idasa.
Who shot down President Habyarimana’s plane, triggering the 1994 genocide? A report by two French judges has definitively resolved one of the controversial mysteries of the late 20th century. Gerry Caplan considers the implications in the light also of the extradition of alleged genocidaire Leon Mugesera.
European banks, pension funds and insurance companies are increasing global hunger and poverty by speculating on food prices and financing land grabs in poorer countries, according to a new report by Friends of the Earth Europe. The report analyses the activities of 29 European banks, pension funds and insurance companies, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays, RBS, Allianz, BNP Paribas, AXA, HSBC, Generali, Allianz, Unicredit and Credit Agricole. It reveals the significant involvement of these financial institutions in food speculation, and the direct or indirect financing of land grabbing.
Call Now! Shut Down Solitary Units. Close Restricted Housing Units. End Torture Blocks.
When South Sudan became an independent state in July 2011, northern Sudan lost most of its oil fields to its new neighbouring country. In an effort to revive the country's struggling economy, the Sudanese government has been selling or leasing vast swaths of fertile land to foreign investors. But in areas where agricultural land is the basic source of living for people, there is much anger over what farmers say is a government policy that promotes foreign land grabs, favouritism, and exploitation, reports Al Jazeera.
The current protests in Nigeria are beyond the mere dynamics of reversing the pump price of petrol. They are about combating the corruption, incompetence and deception of the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Amnesty International (AI) has repeated its call for the Nigeria police force to stop shooting at protesters and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to commit to protecting people, after several deaths and injuries were recorded in street protests. The global rights organisation urged the Nigerian authorities to reform the country's police regulations in line with international standards, to prevent additional loss of life and ensure that the police only use firearms when it is strictly necessary to protect life.
Six major global companies have been shortlisted by a comittee of experts from Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland for the 2012 Public Eye on Davos-award
A hundred former Mauritanian refugees, repatriated from Senegal, have staged a protest outside the National Assembly, demanding that their agricultural land, confiscated after their expulsion in 1989, be returned to them, PANA reports. They are also asking that their documentation be completed in accordance with the government regulations, Makasi Diakhite, himself a former refugee, said.
Joint Statement by CSAAWU, Democratic Left Front, Mawubuye Land Rights Forum and the Trust for Community Outreach and Education.
The Tunisian revolution was, famously, initiated by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in a provincial town who set himself alight in front of the town hall in protest at petty corruption and his inability to make a living. In the six months immediately after Bouazizi's death (he took two weeks to die from his injuries) at least 107 fellow Tunisians tried to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire, according to statistics reported by the BBC.
Gunmen have killed six people and abducted three others in the latest attack in the north-eastern border region with Somalia, police say. A local police chief told the BBC that Somali militants were to blame for the raid in Wajir district, in which two local officials were seized. There have been several attacks since Nairobi sent troops into Somalia to fight the al-Shabab Islamist group. No-one has claimed responsibility for the latest attack.
Gado's take on the celebrated Senegalese musician's announcement that he will run for president in elections this year.
The articles in Issue 38 of Forced Migration Review cover the positive and the negative aspects of the spread of technologies; the increased accountability, and the increased scope for controlling displaced people; the opening up through the internet of possibilities beyond the traditional confines of life as a displaced person, and the risks and dangers that that brings; and the potential in technological advances for assistance and protection programmes.
Kenya's Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza is under investigation by the judiciary and police after a guard at a supermarket in Nairobi claimed that the judge threatened to shoot her when she (the guard) requested to search Baraza before she could be allowed into the store.
Should the production of pasta, mineral water, butane gas cylinders and gas station services qualify as classified military secrets? The leaders of the Egyptian Armed Forces believe the answer is ‘yes.’
The World Bank has identified South Africa and Tanzania as having some of the highest costs for remittance payments in the world, with some charges as high as 25 per cent of the money being transferred. Remittance payment is the transfer of money across borders, often used by immigrant workers to send money home to family members. In 2010, the African diaspora sent home $40-billion in remittance payments to the continent, with these money transfers representing close to 10 per cent of some African countries' gross domestic products
War on Want has a range of material available for download on their website. Reports include: Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming the global food system; A Bitter Cup: Exploitation in the tea industy; Sour Grapes: Wine workers come from the poorest sections of society; Anglo American - The Alternative Report.
The Kenyan security forces are beating and arbitrarily detaining citizens and Somali refugees in Kenya’s North Eastern province, which borders on Somalia, despite repeated pledges to stop such abuses, Human Rights Watch said. On 11 January 2012, in the latest of a series of incidents documented by Human Rights Watch since October 2011, security forces rounded up and beat residents of Garissa, the provincial capital, in an open field within the enclosure of the local military camp. A Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed the incident.
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that are being negotiated by the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries on one hand and the European Union on the other are essentially Free Trade Areas covering trade in goods, services, trade related areas and other non trade issues. This report looks into the effects EPAs will have on the countries in Southern Africa, focussing on the effects on the production and value chain of three products; sugar, grapes and cotton.
Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life. Drawn by the economic boom in Brazil, now the world's sixth largest economy, and the major infrastructure works in preparation for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games to be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 Haitians have flocked to this country since the earthquake, according to the Institute of Migration and Human Rights.
The death of the president of Guinea-Bissau, Malam Bacai Sanhá, could usher in a replay of the military uprisings that have set an unmistakable seal of instability on the political life of this small West African country. Sanhá, who died Monday 9 January in Paris, was one of the few surviving heroes of the liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonial army. That enabled him to play a mediating role in the frequent disputes for power in Guinea-Bissau, which gained independence in 1974.
In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...
A new Institute of Development Studies short film examines how the British media portray poverty in developing countries. 'Famine, War and Corruption: The British Media’s Portrayal of the Global South' features interviews with journalists and filmmakers, including Jon Snow (journalist and news presenter, ITN), Caroline Nursey (director, BBC Media Action) and Richard Kavuma (journalist, The Observer, Uganda).
A group of young scientists meeting on the sidelines of COP17, held in Durban, South Africa last year, has resolved to mobilise African young scientists and youth within and outside Africa to promote the role of African indigenous knowledge systems in climate change adaptation and mitigation through
research and community engagement.
Al-liquindoi is partnering with Contemporary Image Collective and NOOR to produce this long-term training opportunity for Egyptian documentary photographers and photojournalists. This program is supported by a grant from Open Society Foundations. The program provides fully funded training and support to Egyptian 15 photographers who are using the medium to critically explore current social,economic and political issues in Egypt and the region.
It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on 14 September 2011, after he published a column calling for the government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end torture in prisons. Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if convicted could face the death sentence. He's not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over the past decade than any other country in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The first day of trial for the two explosives suspects, Maxwell Thanduk’khanya Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni began 12 January amid much drama. This was after police and political activists were engaged in a showdown after the latter were ordered out of the courtroom for being inappropriately dressed. President of the banned People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) Mario Masuku, and political activist Mphandlana Shongwe then gave over 10 police officers a tongue-lashing at the Magistrates Court.
This report from the Hunger Safety Net Programme Secretariat (HNSP) defines the behavior of HNSP beneficiaries receiving cash transfers in coping with and overcoming the challenges of extreme poverty magnified by shocks of environmental extremities of drought, famine, floods and socio-economic marginalisation. Further, it documents how some beneficiaries have been able to build some form of stable livelihoods (a desired knock on effect) using the cash transfers and in the context of the three year prolonged drought.
The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Center for New Community, and Indiana University Press have announced the publication of 'Food Justice', a new issue of the journal Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts that explores the intersection of race and food in the national and global food systems. With a wide range of academic- and activist-authored papers, the issue takes readers through the entire food chain from - 'field to fork' - in an examination of the challenging intersections between race, sustainability, food safety, access to healthy food, land ethics, food worker justice, and food sovereignty.
WACSI on behalf of African Security and Governance Project Members, supported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Open Society Institute (OSI), is conducting a survey to collate views on the need and practicality of a Pan-African Capacity Building Network of CSOs, Networks and Research Institutions working in security sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. The information from the survey will be used to decide whether there is a need and relevance for the creation of a Pan-African Capacity Building Network of CSOs working in the security sector. Kindly see the link to the survey in English and French. Complete all columns of the questionnaire to support the initiative.
English:
On 8 January 1912, South African intellectuals - including pioneering black newspaper publishers Pixley ka Isaka Seme, editor of Abantu-Batho, and John Langalibalele Dube, editor of Ilanga lase Natal - formed Africa's oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), in the Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein. During centennial commemorations of this event, twitter users made the #ANC100 hash tag a global trend. The lively social media debate illustrated both the discomfort many Africans feel toward criticism of their leaders, and the role as scapegoat that the media is currently playing as the ANC struggles to hold onto a decisively positive legacy, says this Committee to Protect Journalists post.
In January 2011, Abyei’s residents were supposed to vote in a referendum to determine whether they wanted Abyei to remain in Sudan, or join what is now the independent nation of South Sudan. The Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) failed to organise the referendum due to a dispute over who was eligible to vote. The past year has seen the worst violence in Abyei since the second civil war, with a series of attacks by militias, backed by the Government of Sudan, culminating in a full-scale invasion of the territory by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in May 2011. Around 110, 000 Ngok Dinka residents fled the area, and have yet to return. It is now just over a year since Abyei’s aborted referendum, and there is little prospect of a resolution in the near future, says a report from the Small Arms Survey.
A revised media law promised by the Rwandan government prior to and during its Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 fails to safeguard the right to freedom of expression and a free media, says Article 19. The State retains its control over the media in the draft Law by determining rules for its operation and defining journalists’ professional standards. Media freedoms and the right to freedom of expression are not safeguarded and can be restricted in violation of international law due to overbroad definitions and the creation of vaguely defined prohibitions.
There is now substantial evidence of the role of financial liberalisation in triggering financial crises, and on how these crises particularly affect the poor. Latin America is a clear example of a region that in the 1980s and 1990s, under the conditionality and advice of the World Bank and the IMF, embraced financial liberalisation, suffered several financial crises and is now increasingly relying on different forms of regulation of inflows and outflows. Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica are among the countries that have recently implemented capital account regulations. This report reviews the evidence available on the impact of the measures implemented in these countries.
Nigeria's president has announced that the government will subsidise fuel prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.75 a gallon, amid a crippling nationwide strike over fuel prices in Africa's most populous country. Protests have seen tens of thousands march in cities across the nation. Soldiers barricaded the country's commercial capital of Lagos and the entrances to protest venues in the second-largest city of Kano. Jonathan's speech comes after his attempt to negotiate with labour unions failed late on Sunday night to avert the strike entering a sixth day.
Kenya's High Court has ruled that the country's next presidential and parliamentary elections should be held in March 2013 and not in August, unless the ruling coalition collapses. The east African country's next election will come under intense scrutiny because it will be the first under a new constitution, and the first since the 2007 poll that gave rise to fighting in which more than 1,220 people were killed. The government had proposed amending the constitution to delay the vote to December because of logistical problems, prompting petitioners to ask the High Court for a ruling.
Somalia's Islamist al-Shabab group have killed at least six Kenyans in a cross-border raid, claiming revenge for Nairobi's troop deployment against the al-Qaeda-linked group, police and fighters said. Four police officers, a local government official and a civilian were killed in the attack by assailants, using firearms and an explosive device, said regional police chief Leo Nyongesa.
Senegal's Appeals Court has on a technicality rejected a request by Belgium to extradite former Chadian ex-President Hissene Habré. Handing down its ruling following days of interrogation of the request, the court Wednesday said that there were 'technicalities in the format', further arguing that there was no annex of the original application for arrest and detention by Belgium. Belgium has sought to extradite Mr Habré after it charged him with crimes against humanity and torture during his term in power.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take drastic action against governments of the most dangerous countries for media after it published its annual list of 106 journalists and media personnel killed in 2011. The Federation says 2011 was another bloody year for media and blames governments' failure to uphold their international obligations for the ongoing violence targeting media. In a letter to the UN Secretary General, the IFJ calls for effective implementation of international legal instruments to combat the prevailing culture of impunity for crimes against journalists.
The African Union (AU) has unveiled an ambitious wish-list of priorities for Africa that would give the continent a stronger global voice, boost democracy and encourage peace and security. AU Ambassador to the United States, Amina Ali of Tanzania, presented the list of top priorities at a conference on 11 January held at Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution. Among them were the regulars - peace and security, enhanced democracy and good governance – as well as improved regional trade and greater involvement of the continent’s large diaspora in African affairs.
As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria last week, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place. 'We know that because of the corruption and irrelevant people placed in certain key positions in the sector, a lot of crude oil is being lost,' Garba Ibrahim Sheka, a senior lecturer in economics at Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, told IPS.
Two of the seven men arrested last Thursday, following skirmishes between police and vendors in central Harare the day before, were allegedly tortured to confess their roles in attacking a police officer. Barnabas Mwanaka and Kudakwashe Usavi were among the first group of three to be picked up by the police in a morning raid at Harvest House on Thursday. The MDC-T said Mwanaka is their Youth Assembly secretary for Mbare district.
Several events in the last two months have shown that Zimbabwe’s coalition government exists in name only and that Mugabe and his ZANU PF party are now blatantly running a parallel government. Towards the end of December Mugabe unilaterally promoted Three Infantry Brigade Commander Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba, to Major-General. Not only did Mugabe snub Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in making the promotions, but in June last year Nyikayaramba had told the ZANU PF controlled Herald newspaper that Tsvangirai was a 'national security threat rather than a political one', and suggested the military should step in to deal with him.
A number of South African social movements issued statements following the arrest of Ayanda Kota from the Unemployed People's Movement (UPM) and reports that he had been assaulted while in police custody. Kota has now been released, but statements about his arrest made by the UPM, the Democratic Left Front and the Mandela Park Backyarder's can be read from the Abahlali baseMjondolo website.
A Ugandan advocate for sex workers and homosexual rights, Busingye Kabumba has said prostitution and anti-abortion laws should be repealed to encourage the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young women. Kabumba, a lecturer at Makerere University’s Faculty of Law in Kampala also said there was a 'need to streamline the Ugandan legal framework in light of the international legal structure on the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) for young women in the country.'
The Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU), the Mawubuye Land Rights Forum, the Trust for Community Outreach and Education, and the Democratic Left Front (DLF) launched the Speak-Out Campaign on the 27th of November 2011 at a mass meeting in Robertson (some 2 hours from Cape Town). Farm workers and farm dwellers spoke of the inhumane living and working conditions that they face each and every day. They do backbreaking work to produce food for everybody yet they are forced to work under unsafe and unhealthy conditions, to drink dirty water, live without electricity, live with threats of evictions, to live on poverty wages and to suffer abuse at the hands of the bosses. The Speak-Out Campaign aims to bring an end to the oppression and exploitation of farm workers and farm dwellers by coming together to build solidarity, strength and hope amongst the rural working class.
Pambazuka News 564: Fanon, Biko and Sankara: The courage to invent the future
Pambazuka News 564: Fanon, Biko and Sankara: The courage to invent the future
Much of the infighting in South Africa’s ANC, which is paralysing both government and the party, is the result of outdated codes, traditions and rituals governing the elections of leaders of the party, especially that of the president, writes William Gumede.
Nearly 25 years after the death of Thomas Sankara, signatories to the following petition continue the call for an independent investigation into his assassination.
Father of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement Steve Biko would have been 65 on 18 December. Peter Kenworthy looks at the influence of his ideas on Swazi civil society today.
'As the soul-deprived, brain-dead, heartless climate-policy Zombie stumbled off the Durban platform in the direction of Qatar for the COP18 next year, it immediately tripped on the crumpled carbon markets,' writes Patrick Bond.
The damnation of the world’s majority that Frantz Fanon spoke about did not end with the withdrawal of formal colonial rule. It continues in the razor wire transit camps, detention zones, rural pauperisation and in shanty towns, writes Nigel C Gibson.
‘Africa is bleeding money, as capital flows into the private accounts of African elites and their accomplices in Western financial centres,’ write Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, in an excerpt from their new book.
A new Canadian funding approach raises some serious ethical and political questions about the role of NGOs and constitutes a veritable PR coup for a mining industry discredited for environmental and human rights abuses.
Human rights organisations in Egypt are increasingly concerned about the safety of protesters and activists after a series of brutal attacks.
With international diplomacy at the UN deadlocked on issues like climate change, new regional formations offer a way forward.
American military influence has fanned out across Africa during 2011, thanks in large part to assistance from African governments.
‘Steve Biko’s words had a profound effect on me. They helped shape my personal outlook and political beliefs,’ writes Roy Trivedy. ‘They also played a key role in helping me decide what I wanted to contribute in life.’
Dedicated to the remaining few, in Busoga, Uganda.
listen
can you hear it pull
the wires and plugs
out of our ear sockets...
In July 2002, African leaders dissolved the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and created the African Union (AU). By emphasising on democracy, good governance and respect for human rights as necessary pre-requisites for development, the AU makes a significant departure, at least in theory, from the modes operandi of its predecessor which was known for its long-held principle of ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.’ In July 2012, the AU will celebrate its tenth anniversary. The event is an opportune moment in stocktaking the state of democracy in Africa since the establishment of the AU.
The goal of The Young Feminist Fund (FRIDA) is to provide accessible, strategic and responsive funding for young feminist-led initiatives. FRIDA invites applications from groups led by young women and transgender youth under 30 years for grants of up to US$5,000.
Early this month, the US repaid Trinidad and Tobago’s hospitality by acutely embarrassing the Caribbean nation in the presence of regional leaders. But, as Norman Girvan reports, it was America’s image that suffered the most.
Two Swedish photojournalists have been convicted by an Ethiopian court for supporting terrorism, but the Committee to Protect Journalists contends they are the victims of a politicised trial.
Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, in her capacity as president of the COP 17, was a key player, writes Yoke Ling Chee. It is hard to not conclude that the EU agenda was at the forefront of the presidency’s preoccupations.
A group of South African musicians has recorded a response to Bob Geldof’s 1984 song. Proceeds from the new single will go towards teaching discipline, literacy and contraception at British schools.
Burkina Faso’s first president was assassinated nearly 25 years ago but the identity of his killers remains unresolved. Marking the anniversary of his birth, campaigners draw attention to the continuing struggle for justice for Sankara.
Harare’s iconic music and performing arts centre will close its doors to the public in Fife Avenue Shopping Mall. It will be moved to new premises.
Pambazuka News 563: Busan to Durban: Failure of aid, failure of climate talks
Pambazuka News 563: Busan to Durban: Failure of aid, failure of climate talks
The promise of job creation has been put forward by investors, governments, and international institutions to convince local communities of the benefits of foreign investment in agriculture. For instance, the Sierra Leonean president, claimed in March 2011, 'Huge investments in the [agricultural] sector will definitely translate into hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities for our youths.' Several countries studied by the Oakland Institute reveal that many locals thus welcome land investment with the hope that such projects will bring jobs and wages.
Despite a range of progressive amendments made to the Protection of State Information Bill (widely known as the Secrecy Bill) over the past 18 months, the Right2Know campaign continues to be 'extremely concerned' about the broadness and harshness of criminal penalties contained in the Bill, and the lack of adequate protection for whistleblowers, journalists, and ordinary citizens. Their concerns are outlined in a letter sent to the Open Government Partnership at the beginning of December.
Food prices, which increased by just 1 per cent last year, have increased by a whopping 10.6 per cent so far this year. Lower-income South Africans, who spend much more of their total earnings on food, are the biggest victims of this sharp increase in food-price inflation. According to the South African quarterly 'Food Price Monitor' report, produced by the National Agricultural Marketing Council, the cost of the standard Statistics South Africa food basket, expressed as a share of the average monthly income of the wealthiest 30 per cent of the population, is only 2.9 per cent. By contrast, this cost for the poorest 30 per cent of the population was a heavy 36.4 per cent in October.