Pambazuka News 530: Memory, history and transformation: 'Time future contained in time past'
Pambazuka News 530: Memory, history and transformation: 'Time future contained in time past'
Thousands of farmers in Western Kenya are attracting global attention after being the first group in Africa to win financing from the World Bank (WB) to use agriculture to fight climate change. The farmers, spread in 45,000 hectares of land in Bungoma, Malakisi, Bondo, and Kisumu, will receive Sh28 million (US$350,000) from WB's BioCarbon Fund to adopt environmentally-friendly agricultural practices that cut carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
The head of the US Department of Agriculture recently announced an incentive program that would subsidise up to 75 per cent of the costs for establishing new US agrofuel plantations, in an 'effort to promote production of fuel from renewable sources, create jobs and mitigate the effects of climate change'. This 'incentive' is a hand-out to agribusiness, and despite the industry’s 'green' fuels hyperbole agrofuels could actually have a negative impact on atmospheric carbon when land use changes are factored in. These subsidies are a public handout to Monsanto, Cargill, BP and Chevron, says this article on the website of the Institute for Food and Development Policy.
The Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First shapes how people think by analysing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change. You can subscribe to their newsletter by clicking on the URL provided.
Traditional rulers from the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta region have called on President Goodluck Jonathan to re-examine the activities of the Joint Task Force (JTF) operating in the Niger Delta region. The call was the outcome of a two-day meeting in Port Harcourt and contained in a communiqué jointly signed by Eze Young Ogbonna and Pere Stanley Perediegha Luke, national president and national secretary respectively.
The winter edition of the Rural Women's Movement (RWM) newsletter contains articles on a strategy to resolve hunger and unemployment in Africa, halting rape and abduction of girls, and news of RWM's activities and achievements.
We are seeking a dynamic, highly motivated and creative young feminist to serve as our executive director. Reporting to the board of directors, the executive director will provide overall leadership in the strategic direction of the organisation through its office in Nairobi.
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...
The Bretton Woods Project and partners from around the world are launching imfboss.org, a new website dedicated to tracking the leadership selection processes at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With the IMF's current Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan involved in a media storm, the debate over the IMF's anachronistic and unfair selection process has been reopened.
Hector Rodriguez, vice-president of the 'Social Area Council of Venezuela', confirmed the Venezuelan government’s commitment to maintaining its reconstruction efforts in Haiti and sent a message of solidarity to the Haitian people on behalf of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In an interview with Latin American news channel TeleSUR, following the inauguration ceremony of the newly elected Haitian president, Michel Martelly, Rodriguez said that they would 'continue working for the dignity, the life, of this brother nation', so that Haiti would 'keep moving forward'.
The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and its partners l’Action contre l’impunité des droits humains (ACIDH) and Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) have filed a communication before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights against the Democratic Republic of Congo. The complainants allege that the events that took place in the south-eastern remote town of Kilwa and the subsequent failure of the DRC state to ensure reparations to victims are in violation of several guarantees of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Issue 2, 2011 of The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southern Africa newsletter contains opinions on South Africa's municipal elections and articles on Wal-Mart, decent jobs and Mauritius.
As health experts gathered in Geneva to attend the 64th World Health Assembly (WHA), global civil society organisations called on World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Dr. Margaret Chan to address widespread concerns about corporate conflicts of interest regarding global water governance, health and nutrition policy.
According to Dutch Defense Minister Hans Hillen, in an interview with Dutch business news radio station BNR: 'It is a disgrace and it truly annoys me that a bunch of Somali pirates with their $2000 dollar fishing boats, a few Kalashnikovs and some RPG’s (rocket-propelled grenade) can keep the western world’s high-tech navy ships and commercial fleet busy for months and months. Of course those small boats and those pirates don’t stand a chance with the modern navy ships and our well-equipped navy sailors, but the sea at that location is so huge, that it is impossible to guard it all.' When the interviewer Niels Heithuis of BNR asked the minister if sending ground troops to Somalia might be the answer to this problem, Minister Hillen reacted: 'No, please don’t call our plan sending ground troops. That would be overly exaggerated. We just want to order some marines to go to the Somali beaches and "play a little bit with the pirates’ boats". When they are finished, the pirates won’t bother us anymore'.
Members of Uganda's ninth Parliament were sworn-in this week, with female representation in the House reaching an all-time high. Women in the East African country are now sitting in 35 per cent of 375 available MP seats, up from the previous 30 per cent.
There are obvious gaps in access to the Internet, particularly the participation gap between those who have their say, and those whose voices are pushed to the sidelines. Despite the rapid increase in Internet access, there are indications that people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remain largely absent from websites and services that represent the region to the larger world. A research project is assessing the connection between access and representation - click on the URL provided to read more on this topic.
For many in the developing world, the IMF and its draconian policies of structural adjustment have systematically 'raped' the earth and the poor and violated the human rights of women, says this article about the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It appears that the personal disregard and disrespect for women demonstrated by the man at the highest levels of leadership within the IMF is quite consistent with the gender bias inherent in the IMF’s institutional policies and practice.
In late March, 29-year-old Libyan student Eman Al-Obeidy caught the world’s attention when she burst into a Tripoli hotel to inform Western media of her alleged detention, torture, and rape at the hands of Gaddafi’s forces. Eman Al-Obeidy has subsequently fled Libya. In this Q&A on the website of the Association for Women's Rights in Development, 22-year-old Amany Mufta Ismail, a woman activist in rebel-controlled East Libya, describes her reactions to the story of Eman Al-Obeidy.
In Cape Town, African women who think that AIDS is man-made are half as likely as other African women to have used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter, researchers report in the journal AIDS and Behavior. In addition, African men who believe that HIV is harmless while antiretroviral drugs are harmful are half as likely to use condoms as other men. There are important differences in the findings for men and women, which suggests that gender is crucial to understanding AIDS conspiracy and denialism in South Africa.
Women in the developing world need new methods of contraception that meet their needs and lifestyles, according to a Guttmacher Institute report. The study focused on sub-Saharan Africa, south central Asia and southeast Asia, which 'are home to 69 per cent of women in the developing world who have an unmet need for a modern method'. The report said new forms of contraception are needed in the three regions 'where there are 49 million unintended pregnancies every year resulting in 21 million abortions'.
Municipal elections appear to have had a dampening impact on service delivery protests, according to research by Municipal IQ, which carries out a Municipal Hotspots Monitor. Municipal IQ reported that there were 10 protests in 2004. This jumped to 34 in 2005, dropped to just two in the last municipal election year in 2006, rose again to 32 in 2007, dropped slightly to 27 in 2008, but jumped steeply to 105 in 2009 and to 111 in 2010. There have been 23 so far this year.
Foreign traders in many Johannesburg townships have closed their businesses and put their livelihoods on hold in response to a campaign of threats and intimidation launched in recent weeks by a group of local business people calling themselves the Greater Gauteng Business Forum (GGBF). In late April, the GGBF started distributing letters to immigrant shopkeepers in at least nine townships, giving them seven days to pack up and leave. The letter threatened drastic action against those who did not comply.
Eighteen months after fleeing across the riverine border separating the two Congos, some 120,000 refugees seem to have little prospect of returning home soon. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) had scheduled an organised repatriation from the northern Likouala region Republic of Congo to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Equateur Province in late April, but this was indefinitely postponed because of logistical and financial issues. The exodus from DRC took place in late 2009 following conflicts over natural resources, such as fish ponds, between the Enyele and Munyaza communities.
Almost 4,000 Chadians who have returned home from strife-torn Libya via Niger are in a critical situation in the border town of Zouarke, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has warned. 'According to the Chadian government, more than 3,800 migrants including 310 women and children are in a very difficult situation in Zouarke with limited food, no water and transport to make their journey south,' the IOM said in a statement. Most of the migrants are Chadians, of whom 25,000 have already fled the Libyan conflict and made their way to the northern towns of Faya and Kalait, but the latest batch lacks the means.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has set September as the deadline for the over 25,000 Angolan refugees to voluntarily leave Zambia for their homeland, failure to which they lose their refugee status at the end of this year. UNHCR representative in Zambia Joyce Mends-Cole, announced in Lusaka that Angolan refugees wishing to repatriate with the assistance of UNHCR had only until the end of September 2011 to do so, following the recommencement of organised Angolan repatriation.
In order to reduce instances where pharmacists are inflating the cost of subsidised malaria drugs, the Kenyan government has embarked on awareness campaigns through the media to inform Kenyans of the availability of the drugs, and the recommended prices per dose. According to Dr John Logedi, the deputy program manager at the Division of Malaria Control, the awareness campaign will help consumers make an informed choice and enable them to seek outlets that sell the drugs at the right price.
Three international organisations have negotiated reductions on key first and second-line, and paediatric antiretrovirals (ARVs) that will help countries save at least US$600 million over the next three years. The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the international drug purchasing facility UNITAID and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) made the announcement on 18 May. The deal expected to affect most of the 70 countries comprising CHAI’s Procurement Consortium, features notable reductions in the prices of tenofovir (TDF), efavirenz, and the second-line ritonavir-boosted atazanavir (ATV/r) used in HIV patients who have failed initial, or 'first-line', regimens.
Inaction marked the Extraordinary Summit of Southern African Development Community heads of state in Windhoek, despite an agenda covering Zimbabwe elections, political deadlock in Madagascar, the suspension of the regional court and allegations of corruption within SADC itself. In the days leading up to the summit, there was the chance that it might not take place at all, with the South African president, Jacob Zuma, pulling out at the last moment, preferring to concentrate on local elections in his own country. In the end, eleven heads of state and their representatives met in Windhoek, but deliberations lasted only a few hours before the summit was ended.
Police in Morocco have violently dispersed protesters who defied a ban on demonstrations, beating them up with batons and taking several into custody. Sunday’s police action in the capital, Rabat, and Casablanca seemed to suggest a tougher government response to the increasingly defiant protests that first erupted in February.
The President of the Union for the Development of Fouta Djallon, a region in Guinea where the alleged victim of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn originates from, has expressed indignation over the alleged attempted rape of the lady (name withheld). Speaking to Radio France International (RFI), Mr Souleymane Diallo said that the ethnic Fula community in the United States will shortly undertake a 'massive demonstration' in support of the 32-year-old woman.
ZANU PF has demanded that recent strong resolutions on Zimbabwe, adopted by the regional security organ the Troika, be overturned, calling on the Summit of Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders to reverse the position. Dewa Mavhinga from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which is attending the summit, told SW Radio Africa that SADC leaders were set to discuss recent resolutions adopted by the SADC Troika in March. That summit in Livingstone, Zambia, had condemned the lack of progress in the unity government, in the first meaningful criticism of ZANU PF the region has ever issued. The Troika called for an end to violence and intimidation, and called for the drafting of an election roadmap towards a credible and violence free poll in Zimbabwe.
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem was born on 6 January 1961 in Funtua, Katsina State, Nigeria. He died tragically on African Liberation Day, 25 May 2009 in a motor accident in Nairobi Kenya.
Libyan officials lied about photojournalist Anton Hammerl to the South African government, international relations and cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane has said. 'We kept getting reassured at the highest level that he was alive until his colleagues were released and shared the information yesterday [Wednesday],' she told reporters in Pretoria. It was revealed last week that Hammerl has been killed while covering the Libyan conflict.
More than $25 billion is needed to implement roads infrastructure projects in East Africa in the next 10 years. The amount covers the cost of massive upgrading, modernisation and construction of roads to improve intra-regional connectivity and also link up EA with countries outside the bloc. 'The estimated cost of these roads infrastructure development in the next 10 years is in excess of $25 billion,' disclosed Ms Hafsa Mosi, the Chairperson of the East African Community Council of Ministers, when unveiling the Community's 2011/12 budget.
South Africa's local government elections were officially declared over on Saturday night by the Independent Electoral Commission in Pretoria. At a closing ceremony attended by political leaders from across the spectrum, the governing African National Congress remained firmly in charge of the nation's municipalities, taking just under 62 per cent of the vote nationally. The opposition Democratic Alliance took just under a quarter of all votes - 23.94 per cent.
s the Libyan uprising enters its fourth month, people in the liberated eastern part of the country are playing a waiting game, and for many, patience is running thin. The spontaneous jubilation that marked the early days of the revolution is all but gone. In its place, an unmistakable sense of weariness and uncertainty fills the cool springtime air. Concerns of a civil war or an Islamist takeover do not predominate here; most people laugh these off as overblown Western fears that are not grounded in Libyan realities. Now that the fate of the uprising is almost wholly in the hands of those with the best weapons, foremost on people’s minds is how much longer they must wait for the regime to fall.
Pambazuka News 528: Special Issue: Justice for the people of Kenya
Pambazuka News 528: Special Issue: Justice for the people of Kenya
Despite official rhetoric about the separation of powers, colonial-era judges were routinely ‘used as an instrument of policy’, with this relationship between administration and judiciary essentially sustained after independence, writes Ramnik Shah, in a discussion of Kenya’s post-colonial legal system.
Kenya’s media regularly reveals itself to be inconsistent in its reporting of issues of justice, writes Tom Maliti.
In celebration of the late Chief Justice CB Madan QC, his children Kamla Madan Dhall and Anil Madan reflect on the life and experiences of their father.
While the Kenyan courts have some way to go before they achieve the sort of impact that the Indian courts have had, the country’s new constitution should work towards making the courts of Kenya the courts for Kenyans, writes Jill Cottrell Ghai.
Kenya has for many years been running two legal systems in parallel, the common law and community justice systems. With the country in need of ‘common guidelines’ around the administration of community justice, Jedidah Wakonyo Waruhiu, Florence Gachichio and Ezra Rotich discuss the challenges facing the system.
While the theme of justice is central to Kenya’s constitution, writes Yash Pal Ghai, it cannot in and of itself guarantee its own effectiveness.
Kenya’s new constitution is ‘the law of the land now’, writes Tom Avant. ‘Equal rights for all Kenyans are no longer just a dream’, as long as citizens learn to 'demand respect for those rights’ from their elected representatives.
The relationship between Kenyan Somalis and the Kenyan state is ‘tumultuous at the best of times, and indifferent at the worst of times’, writes Abdinasir Amin. Although little has changed for the better since Amin’s grandfather’s time, Kenya’s new constitution brings hope for genuine acceptance in the future.
Kenyans evicted from their homes to make way for new developments routinely have their social and economic rights violated. But these rights are enforceable under the country’s new constitution, which gives people easier access to the courts than ever before. Justice Musinga’s judgement on the Muthurwa case sets ‘the right approach to, and standards of, constitutional interpretation’, write Yash Pal Ghai and Jill Cottrell Ghai.
Kenya’s chief justice Evan Gicheru retired at the end of February last year, as mandated by the country’s new constitution. With no replacement appointed yet, George Kegoro asks what lies ahead for the judiciary.
‘Before I became a Human Rights Defender, I had to safe guard my living space in a closet. I knew I was safe – nothing could or would harm me – I felt untouchable. I had a place to call home, and I held on to it never jeopardizing the privileges. But all that changed when my family learnt about my sexual identity,’ writes Gullit Makobe.
This special issue of Pambazuka News, published in association with AwaaZ, chronicles ‘justice’ as its main theme. This is particularly in the context of the enactment of the new constitution and by extension to seek justice for the people of Kenya. The issue covers a range of articles related to the struggle for justice in the overall context today: In the judiciary, in the courts of the people under public litigation cases and the eviction of the poor from their homes; in the environment – in this case Lamu; for sexual minorities – in this case the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) movement in Kenya today; the relationship between the Kenyan Somali and the Kenyan state; the rights of women; and in the press. We have also examined the constitutional community justice systems in Kenya in comparison to the formal legal systems today.
In addition there is an article on the historical perspective on the Politics of Law in Kenya. We have also chronicled the life of the late Chief Justice of Kenya Hon, Mr Justice C B Madan. We hope that this story will have an impact on the current process of appointing a new Chief Justice in Kenya under the new constitution. The late Justice Madan was a ‘Champion for the supremacy of the rule of Law’, which we so badly lack today in Kenya.
Amidst widespread rumour that the Kenyan government is buying up land in Lamu District to resettle people displaced by the 2008 post-election violence, Abdalla Bujra calls on the government to issue an ‘urgent statement’ on the matter, or risk increasing tensions in Lamu, whose people are afraid that they will lose their land and livelihoods.
Ramnik Shah reflects on the life of Justice Madan, a ‘homegrown Kenyan jurist of the highest order’, and his ‘immense contribution to the political and legal history of Kenya’.
Edited by Yash Pal Ghai and Jill Cottrell, ‘Marginalized Communities and Access to Justice’ is ‘a useful tool for human rights actors’, writes Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua.
Pambazuka News 529: If Sexuality were a human being...
Pambazuka News 529: If Sexuality were a human being...
In Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, this June, African heads of state and government will gather at a summit with the theme, ‘Youth empowerment for sustainable development’. Youth action is critical to the continent’s development, and more specifically, in ensuring that girls and women can make equally valued contributions to this development.
As such, the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition would like to invite youth to reflect on the importance of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Contestants are asked to respond to the question (in French or in English), ‘Why is the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa important to you?’ in an essay of a maximum of 2000 words. The competition is open to citizens of all African countries aged between 18 and 25.
What: Picket by Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers and Blikkiesdorp residents.
Where: Parliament (Cnr Roeland St & Plein St)
When: 12h00 - 13h00 on the 16th of May
Why: We will be protesting against the horrible conditions in Tin Town and the government's failure to honour their agreement to engage with us on our struggle for housing.
From there, Authors will walk over to the Book Lounge to present to the public our new anthology .
Venue: Book Lounge, 71 Roeland St, Cape Town
Date: 16 May 2011
Time: 5:30 for 6
The ANC 'didn't know' about 1,600 toilets in a Free State municipality which have been left without enclosures for the past eight years, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Monday (09 May). 'We didn't know about open toilets,' he told journalists at as press briefing at Luthuli House in Johannesburg. Earlier, the Human Rights Commission spokesperson, Vincent Moaga, said the body's legal committee would discuss the issue after a complaint had been laid with the commission on the issue.
Cosatu has called on the Competition Tribunal to reject Walmart's planned acquisition of Massmart, spokesman Patrick Craven said. The Anti-Walmart Coalition - consisting of various trade unions, including the SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union (Saccawu), SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (Sactwu), labour federation Cosatu and civil society organisations - opposes the deal because of the negative consequences it sees for Massmart workers, the wholesale and retail sector and its supply chains.
Twenty-six children died from measles out of 445 cases recorded in Angola's northern enclave province of Cabinda since the start of the outbreak in 2010, the official news agency Angop reported. Particularly in malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications, including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea, ear infection and pneumonia or even deaths.
Tension between the ruling MPLA party and the main opposition UNITA party and questions over policy-making are worrying investors in the major African oil-producing nation of Angola, states this risk assessment article from Reuters. Campaigning for 2012 elections got off to a shaky start, with UNITA saying food price riots in Mozambique in September could lead poverty-stricken Angolans to do the same.
President Rupiah Banda had no role in the alleged illegal $100 million arms procurement deal and does not owe people an explanation on the transaction, says Zambia's Defence minister. An ex-minister of defence in the Banda Cabinet, Mr George Mpombo, a fortnight ago claimed he quit his position in 2009 after he resisted pressure from the head of state to approve an arms deal with a South African firm, in which President Banda's son was the middleman. Mpombo, now aligned to main opposition leader Michael Sata and a fierce critic of President Banda, insisted the head of state constantly phoned him at the time to influence the signing of the deal and when he refused, he was scorned in Cabinet meetings, hence his resignation.
The Tanzanian government has denied that it is broke even, as analysts view the current situation as giving hints that the country is going through a financial crisis. Finance and economic affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo was refuting claims by Kigoma North MP Mr Zitto Kabwe who is also Finance shadow minister, who was quoted in the media at the weekend as saying the government was in 'dire financial straits' that has forced it to resort to borrowing to pay salaries. Kabwe had said the government delayed the April salaries to most of its workers. The Citizen established that a number of state employees had their April salaries delayed.
South African artists are bowing to the pressure from the ANC Youth League to cut all ties with the Kingdom of Swaziland. After the youth league urged all South Africans invited to Swaziland for the celebrations of King Mswati III’s birthday and his sons’ concert, moves to boycott the tyrannic state have escalated. The boycott is aimed at the Swazi king, his family and friends.
Cash strapped government will find itself failing to pay salaries in June if its coffers fail to get immediate injection. It also states it will be difficult for May. What had been feared and allayed for months seemingly looms. Since openly acknowledging that it is faced with a fiscal crisis, government has, for months, said civil servants’ salaries are a priority and would be guaranteed. Now it has conceded that beyond this month there will be no money to pay them.
Zimbabwe has adopted a two-pronged approach to tackling the country’s foreign debt that will see the African country use its rich natural resources while also embracing the HIPC debt relief initiative to pay back the more than US$7 billion owed to foreigners. The move to adopt a hybrid solution to the debt crisis comes after more than a year of strong disagreements within the Harare unity government over how to handle a burgeoning debt that Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said is the biggest obstacle to efforts to resuscitate the country’s economy ravaged by a decade-long recession.
UN investigators in Côte d'Ivoire have determined there were at least 68 bodies spread out across 10 burial mounds in a mass grave recently discovered on a soccer field in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital. Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy director of the human rights division of the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire, said on Monday (09 May) the victims were probably killed by pro-Laurent Gbagbo militias on 12 April, the day after the strongman was arrested.
Malawi continues to have the highest number of child labourers in Southern Africa, with more than 78,000 children working on tobacco farms, according to child rights NGO Plan. The health risks are high. The handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing and the children absorb up to 54mg of dissolved nicotine through their skin - which is equal to smoking 50 cigarettes. As a result, many suffer from green tobacco sickness (GTS). The symptoms including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.
Least Developed Countries do not need charity; they want more and smarter investments. This was the point of departure for the Fourth UN Conference for the world's poor countries (LDC-IV) begins in Istanbul, Turkey. Up to 8,000 delegates, including the leaders of the world's 48 least developed countries (LDCs), international aid agencies and development partners discussed solutions to abject poverty. Up to 900 million people are citizens of LDCs, half of them living on less than two dollars a day. Over the last decade, 60 per cent of the world’s refugees originated from the LDCs, according to the United Nations.
'The enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression in Southern Africa remains under serious threat, particularly due to repressive legal regimes which are being used as a tool to justify the persecution of journalists and citizens under the guise of due process. Lack of political will to put in place effective measures that enhance the protection and enjoyment of this right, is a common problem particularly in Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.'
Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS) TV journalist Williams Ntege was arrested by anti-riot police on 2 May after he was caught filming the arrest of Kampala female Member of Parliament (MP) Nabirah Ssempala. Ntege says that during his arrest, one armed, plainclothes officer threatened to shoot him on accusations that he was inciting violence.
Beatings, assaults, torture, manipulation of the party structures, tribalism, nepotism, cooked up voters’ rolls, intolerance, vote buying, elections taking place under the cover of darkness, the use of long incumbency to remain in power and the imposition of candidates by the party’s top leadership. The above describes how the leadership of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) is managing its provincial congresses ahead of the party’s national congress in Bulawayo at the end of April, says the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.
The Zimbabwe Coalition of Debt and Development (ZIMCODD), Poverty Reduction Forum (PRF) and Women's Action Group (WAG) with the support of Reality of Aid (RoA) convened a CSO Consultative Meeting on the Implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PD) and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) in Zimbabwe on 23 February 2011. The objective of the meeting was to identify Zimbabwean CSOs which are interested in Aid Effectiveness (hereafter AE) and the AAA and provide a platform for information sharing among them. Visit the Kubatana website for a report of the meeting.
André Mba Obame, Gabon's main opposition leader, has been stripped of parliamentary immunity as government prepares a treason case against him. The Gabonese opposition leader in January created international headlines as he declared himself winner of the elections held 17 months earlier. The failed attempt to gain power and upcoming treason trial against Obame represent a major setback for Gabon's opposition, which has been denied access to power ever since independence.
Supporters of genetically modified (GM) crop technology fear that their four-year effort to get a biosafety bill enacted in Nigeria may have been in vain if the country's upper house fails to pass it before its tenure ends at the end of May. The 2007 bill, passed by the country's lower chamber last July, is with the Senate. It is one of more than 400 bills introduced to the National Assembly between 2007 and 2010 that were highlighted by the Nigerian Bar Association last December as needing passage before 29 May. But Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy group, said the urgency to pass the bill may stem from other motives. 'Nigerians are yet to understand and adequately contribute to the bill,' an ERA spokesperson said. 'We suggest it is stopped in its tracks.'
An indefinite strike by public-sector workers in diamond-rich Botswana is threatening the ruling party’s 45-year grip on power and denting its image as the steward of one of Africa’s success stories. The main public employees’ union said more than 90,000 workers have joined the strike, which has ground public services to a near halt and forced schools, clinics and government offices to operate on skeleton staff. The country’s three largest opposition parties have moved to capitalise on the unrest.
Duma Boko, head of the opposition Botswana National Front, called on Botswana to replicate the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.
'Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in the South as well in recent years. Now that Southern Sudanese have opted for independence in the 2011 referendum on self-determination, investment activity will likely increase further. This paper presents preliminary data concerning large-scale land acquisitions in two of the Green Belt states of Southern Sudan: Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. It explores the concept land belongs to the community, a statement that has been taken up by communities in their demand for greater involvement in decision-making regarding community lands.'
Inspired by the January revolution, Egyptian workers are occupying a closed factory and demanding that they be compensated. The workers say the factory was profitable, but was privatised, sold at below market rates and stripped of its assets. This video from The Real News Network reports on the plight of the workers.
Tax authorities in five African countries are to investigate giant brewer SAB Miller following an ActionAid report which found that the multinational avoided millions of pounds of taxes in Africa every year. The African Tax Administration Forum will coordinate the groundbreaking investigation of the company's transfer pricing strategies in South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius. Martin Hearson, one of the report's authors, said: 'This unprecedented initiative marks a new era in which rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in developing countries will come under much closer scrutiny, both from tax authorities and from campaigners. Tax avoidance by multinationals costs billions in lost revenues, which could transform healthcare and education services for millions of people.'
Reporters Without Borders says it is appalled by the Rwandan government’s determination to keep hounding one of its media bugbears, Jean Bosco Gasasira, editor of the bimonthly newspaper Umuvugizi and one of the country’s most outspoken journalists. Prosecutors have asked Rwanda’s supreme court to sentence him to ten years in prison on charges on which the Kigali high court acquitted him last September. Gasasira is charged with spreading rumours that incited civil disobedience, insulting the president and deliberately violating Rwanda’s media law. The supreme court, whose decisions cannot be appealed, is due to announce its verdict on 27 May.
Nigeria should tear up World Trade Organisation free trade agreements and protect its domestic industries from foreign competition, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria has said. 'We have to tear up WTO agreements and ask ourselves whether we were right to sign up to everything that's there,' Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi told an audience at Chatham House in London.
'The so-called International community pushes the agenda for intervention in certain countries if they are sure of receiving comfortable dividends in return, usually in the forms of natural resources or the protection of western interests,' states this article. 'But if they stand little to gain in political or economic terms, powerful countries will find themselves lacking in “political will”, never mind how grave the catastrophe maybe. To save face, they will pass powerless resolutions while abuses continue and human dignity is disgraced.' The UN will have to live up to its core values calling for the maintenance of peace and security and call an end to selective intervention if this is to change.
More than 80 rebels and civilians were killed when insurgents attacked a camp in south Sudan, the army said on Tuesday (10 May), in the latest violence to mar preparations for the region's independence. In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot and wounded four Zambian UN peacekeepers in the contested Abyei region on Tuesday, another north/south flashpoint, the United Nations said. People from Sudan's oil-producing south overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January, promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.
A vast majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people seeking asylum in the European Union on the basis of their sexual orientation, have been met by a severe blow as most of their applications have been rejected due to failure of giving accurate account or valid proof of persecutions they claim to have experienced or might incur if they were sent back to their country of origin. This has prompted the call from ARDHIS (Association pour la Reconnaissance des Droits des Personnes Homosexuelles et Transsexuelles à l’Immigration et au Séjour), a French based organisation that advocates for the rights for LGBTI people to be granted asylum in France, urging African based LGBTI organisations to document homophobic persecutions occurring in their respective countries.
Escalating fuel prices, climate change and the impact of the global financial crisis are the challenges currently compromising development in Malawi. The Southern African country wants to see a bold plan of action addressing these problems agreed upon at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. In recent months, Malawi has been experiencing a fuel crisis so severe fuel has been rationed at the pump. People have taken to parking their vehicles at service stations overnight to get a place near the head of the queue. The country is facing severe shortages of foreign exchange, leading to strict controls on the export of hard currency and causing problems for businesses that need forex to pay for imports.