Pambazuka News 517: Egypt after Mubarak: Where to next?
Pambazuka News 517: Egypt after Mubarak: Where to next?
Whether Egypt's association with US-backed capitalism has been disrupted is a question that factory workers might yet decide, writes Christopher Carrico.
The global face of corruption is now coming under increasing scrutiny, writes Rasna Warah.
Supporters beat drums in the slums while workers spruced up his private villa as Haitians prepared on Tuesday for the possible return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide with feverish anticipation. 'Some people are cleaning the streets, others are getting the residence ready, and we are making preparations for a beautiful party,' Rene Civil, a die-hard follower of Haiti's first democratically elected leader, told Agence France-Presse.
The African National Congress (ANC) has disputed predictions by political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki that the South African government would face a Tunisia-style revolt, on the same day police fired live ammunition to disperse residents who took to the streets over poor service delivery in Mpumalanga. Mbeki predicted in an opinion piece published in Business Day that SA would face a civil revolt around 2020, when the government would no longer be in a position to sustain the welfare programmes 'it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes'.
The SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu) would be meeting with members to decide whether to accept an industry wage deal. The union had agreed to the revised offer in principle for its freight worker members on Sunday. The offer included a nine percent increase across the board for 2011 and 8.5 per cent for the second year.
Despite claims of a boom in Tanzania’s mining industry, the bulk of taxes paid to the government comprises deductions from the workers’ wages and not levies on extracted minerals, it has been revealed. At least 54.5 per cent of the taxes collected from mining, gas and oil companies in the country is being paid by ordinary workers in form of various taxes, according to a new report released here yesterday by the Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TEITI).
On 3 February 2011, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services (MIBS) Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha said government would not re-open Radio Lymabai in Mongu until investigations into its alleged involvement in the broadcast of seditious materials regarding the Barotseland controversy were completed. On 14 January 2011, Radio Lyambai was forced off air when police confiscated equipment that enables the station to be on air.
Reporters Without Borders says it is relieved that three employees of the opposition weekly 'Al-Midan', who had been arrested on 2 February 2011, were released on 12 February. But it is very concerned about the three who are still being held. The detainees have been beaten and subjected to torture, including electric shocks and sleep deprivation. They were arrested because of the coverage that 'Al-Midan', the Sudanese Communist Party's mouthpiece, gave to street protests on 30 January.
Protesters have clashed with police and government supporters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, reports say. Demonstrators gathered in the early hours of Wednesday morning (16 February) in front of police headquarters and chanted slogans against the 'corrupt rulers of the country', Al Jazeera's sources said. Police fired tear gas and violently dispersed protesters, the sources said without providing further details.
Tunisia and Italy have agreed to work together to counter illegal immigration after thousands of people arrived on the tiny island of Lampedusa. According to Tap, Tunisia's official news agency, an agreement between Italy's foreign minister and Tunisia's interim prime minister was made late on Monday night. Under the deal, Italy will give Tunisia practical aid including a 'network of radars and fast boats that will be operated by Tunisians', the agency quoted Franco Frattini, the Italian minister, as saying.
With the world’s attention focusing on mass mobilization and historic shifts of power in Tunis and Cairo, the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire has faded into the background but remains completely unresolved. There has been no face-to-face meeting between Laurent Gbagbo and his long-time political rival Alassane Ouattara, while both men, backed by their respective camps, continue to lay claim to the presidency.
The price of rice, the staple food in Madagascar, has doubled in the past two years, forcing residents in the capital, Antananarivo, to halve their consumption. 'At almost 2,000 ariary (US$1) a kilogramme, rice has become a luxury item,' Tiana Randrianirina, a rice seller at the main market in the capital, told IRIN.
The African Union Commission is opposed to elections in Zimbabwe this year and is now trying to persuade President Robert Mugabe to postpone them to 2013 to allow for necessary reforms that can ensure violence-free, credible, free and fair polls, top officials in the commission revealed this week. In separate interviews with the Zimbabwe Independent, senior officials in the Political Affairs’ Department of Human Rights, Elections and Peace and Security of the AU Commission, who preferred anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media, said the commission was planning to send an AU assessment team to Zimbabwe to find out if conditions were right for elections.
These are strategic weaknesses that global anti-capitalist civil society has to confront as part of the build up to COP17 in South Africa, says this Red Pepper article. '...the build up to COP17 has to harness global public opinion around the alternatives represented by Bolivia and anti-capitalist civil society. The role of global pubic opinion, of over 6 billion humans on the planet, is crucial to democratise the climate change negotiations.'
ZANU PF Member of Parliament for Gokwe Central Dorothy Mhangami with the help of war veterans and party youths on Tuesday 26 January 2011 force marched villagers to attend a rally at Gokwe Centre where she told scores of people in attendance to come in their numbers and sign a petition calling for the removal of sanctions. This is part of a ZANU PF campaign to have more than a million signatures throughout the country against the targeted sanctions imposed by the West on President Robert Mugabe and his allies endorsed on a petition.
As further protests in Djibouti are announced, government is cracking down on civil society and the opposition. There are fears foreign police forces may be used against protesters. Since 29 January, Egypt and Yemen-inspired protests have been noted in Djibouti, calling for Djiboutian President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh to respect the country's constitution and not seek a third term in office in the upcoming April elections.
As a wave of social protests started on 14 February in Malawi, the impoverished country's main donors are withholding aid over repressive media and anti-gay laws. The long announced anti-government protests kicked off in Malawi's capital Lilongwe and in the northern town of Mzuzu. The main demand was for government to address high fuel prices and shortages, causing a large black fuel market in Malawi.
The UNCAC Coalition, a group of over 240 civil society organisations in more than 100 countries, including the Afro-Egyptian Human Rights Organisation (AEHRO) and NADAFA-Egyptians against corruption, is deeply concerned about public wealth illicitly transferred out of Egypt. A report by Global Financial Integrity released in January 2011 finds that Egypt is losing more than US$6 billion per year - US$57.2 billion in total from 2000 to 2008 - to illicit financial activities and official government corruption. Earlier this week, allegations were published about the wealth of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his family. This wealth should be thoroughly investigated, and if illicitly transferred should be immediately frozen and then repatriated.
Gabon's late president Omar Bongo allegedly lined his pockets with money from a 37-million-dollar (28-million-euro) bank embezzlement scheme and funneled some of it to French political parties and President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to a classified US embassy cable published in Spanish daily El Pais.
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, could have as much as $400 million hidden away out of reach of prosecutors, according to leaked US diplomatic cables. A leaked cable sent from US officials in the United Nations in October 2007 reported the concerns of Stephen Rapp, who was the Special Court for Sierra Leone prosecutor at time, about Mr Taylor's alleged missing millions.
Sokari Ekine reviews Shailja Patel’s ‘Migritude’, a collection of ‘beauty’ and a ‘poetic masterpiece’.
Nilani Ljunggren de Silva reviews ‘Defying the Winds of Change: Zimbabwe’s 2008 Election’, edited by E.V. Masunungure, which she describes as ‘a useful book for anyone who is interested in reading about the Zimbabwean election process and about the political environment in depth’.
Fifty years ago the international community agreed upon a set of rights to which everyone is entitled. As the internet has become more important in our everyday lives and as we’ve seen in Egypt and Tunisia in the last few days, a critical means for people to defend their rights and to fight for them, the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should apply everywhere and at all times – including when people are communicating online, says the Association for Progressive Communications.
Bt cotton has increased crop yields for small farmers in southern India, a study has confirmed. But the increase is less than claimed by some studies, is unlikely to be sustainable and has come at a substantial cost to the farmers.
A cabinet minister has accused a renegade militia in Southern Sudan's Jonglei oil state of killing at least 211 people, doubling earlier estimates of the death count. James Kok Ruea, the humanitarian affairs and disaster management minister, called the killings a 'massacre'. Renewed violence has sparked concerns for the security of the underdeveloped south where voters last month overwhelmingly voted to declare independence from the north in a referendum.
Reactions to events in Egypt, the experiences of women protestors and the limitations of Nigeria’s ‘democracy’ feature in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere by Sokari Ekine.
The conference will highlight what happens to a people and its environment when land access falls into the hands of speculators. What landlords and land speculators do is to hoard land by holding onto them for many years without developing them, hoping that someday they can be sold at a very good profit.
ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the announcement by the new Tunisian government of the endorsement of major international commitments relating to human rights and calls on the government to swiftly proceed with these plans. 'We urge the Tunisian government to change their domestic legislation to create an enabling environment for media and civil society, in compliance with international legal standards on freedom of expression,' says Dr Agnes Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director. 'ARTICLE 19 stands ready to provide support in making such reforms a reality.'
The American Political Science Association (APSA) is accepting participant applications for its fourth Africa Workshop, entitled 'Representation Reconsidered: Ethnic Politics and Africa's Governance Institutions in Comparative Perspective.' It will take place 23 July to 6 August, 2011 at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi. The organisers, with a grant secured from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will cover all the costs of participation (travel, lodging, meals, daily stipend, and materials) for up to 23 qualified applicants (20 African, plus 3 based in the US). Professional fluency in English is absolutely required. Because the workshop will have a strong cross-regional component, US-based PhD students with expertise in either Africa or Latin America are encouraged to apply. African scholars of all social science fields with a graduate degree and limited professional experience are welcome to submit applications.
Application forms and additional information is available at:
A coalition of over 35 African grassroots organisations, known as the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), has launched a new website to raise the voices of those working across the continent in the development sector. The website shares the work of partners across Africa who are working together to find local, African-led solutions to the challenges they face.
On 21 December 2010, a third landmark resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the use of the death penalty received unprecedented votes at the United Nations General Assembly (UN GA), reports Penal Reform International. 109 countries voted in favour of the resolution, 41 voted against, 35 abstained, and 7 were absent. This is a significant vote in that it reaffirms the continuing trend towards international abolition, PRI says.
One thousand eight hundred women and men, members of Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) turned out for the ninth edition of the Valentines Day protests, the biggest protest since WOZA began these protests in 2003. The huge mass of singing protestors completely closed off 9th avenue for over 30 minutes.
This briefing relies on new research into how new technologies are being used by abusers and by women fighting back. The cases were uncovered in research commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in 12 developing countries in 2009, unless an additional website reference is included.
In Ghana’s capital city, Accra, a commotion stirs along the train tracks near the central railway station. Dozens gather to hear the news - that soon, their homes and workplaces will be razed for a new rail system. 'Last year we came to warn you to leave the railway lands. Last week we came again. And today, too, we have come,' Accra’s mayor, Alfred Vanderpuije, tells the crowd in Twi, a local language as he tours the site. 'I can’t tell you if I will come tomorrow or tomorrow next. But we will come and we will demolish all of the structures.'
The Parliamentary Communication Services has issued a statement condemning the Right2Know’s behaviour as 'particularly unseemly' and threatening to apply the 'full might of the law' against our supporters. This is in response to an incident on Tuesday, when five Right2Know supporters silently donned masks depicting Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele during a sitting of the parliamentary committee dealing with the Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill).
Libya has handed out more than $2 billion in loans to dozens of governments across the globe, according to an internal document that shows the oil exporter's diplomatic ambitions and its struggles to recover its debts. The biggest debtor mentioned in the document is Libya's neighbour Sudan with an outstanding balance of $1.287 billion, part of Sudan's debilitating external debt of almost $40 billion.
The Algerian government has said it will end its 19-year-old state of emergency 'within days'. Mourad Medelci, the foreign minister, made the announcement on Monday, echoing a similar promise made by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, earlier this month. A state of emergency has been in place in Algeria since 1992 and the government has come under pressure to remove the laws following popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
The Communication Initiative (The CI) and the BBC World Service Trust (WST) invite entries for their first contest on the role of media in democratic development. This contest solicits persuasive critiques and encouraging discussion on the relationship between media, communications, and international development policy. CI Network members from around the world (as well as those who wish to become CI Network members) are requested to submit their opinion pieces to the collaborative blog at Communication, Media, and Development Policy.
The South African National Editors' Forum and the Press Gallery Association have condemned the DA's decision to take Sowetan reporter Anna Majavu off their mailing list in protest against her reporting. 'The move by the DA against reporter Anna Majavu flies in the face of the DA’s founding liberal values, including commitment to press freedom,' Sanef chairman Mondli Makhanya, who is also editor in chief of Avusa, said in a statement.
Jean Paul Noel Abdi, President of the Ligue Djiboutienne des Droits Humains, has been arrested on 9 February 2011 and is detained at the prison of Gabode. Jean Paul Noel Abdi is unfairly accused of 'participation in an insurrectionary movement' on the basis of Articles 145 and 146.4 of the Djiboutian Penal Code for having carried out his activities as human rights defender by denouncing the repression, on 8 February 2011, of a student demonstration by the security forces.
Human Rights defenders are outraged after Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika passed a Bill outlawing lesbianism. The new Section 137A, titled 'Indecent practices between females', states that any female person who, whether in public or private, commits 'any act of gross indecency with another female', shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a prison term of five years.
Infuriated gays and lesbians of Botswana have fired back at Deputy Speaker of Botswana’s National Assembly Pono Moathlodi, who recently told a delegation on HIV prevention that he would 'never tolerate' gays and lesbians, stating that he (Moatlhodi) must think thoroughly before speaking and evaluate the potential impact his utterances might have in the lives of other people.
A gay rights organisation has been established in Namibia aiming to amplify voices of the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people who often face human rights violations such as social homophobia, lack of access to public health and loss of employment due to their sexual orientation. OutRight Namibia (ORN) was formed in March 2010 by Namibian LGBTI, MSM and WSW activists. It prioritizes leadership development, human rights, emancipation of movement building as well as health and legal reform as its main strategic areas of focus.
Bloomberg reports that Djiboutian authorities released three opposition leaders as opponents of President Ismail Guelleh clashed with police in the second day of protests against his rule, a party head said. Mohamed Daoud Chehem, head of the Djibouti Party for Development; Ismael Guedi Hared, president of the Union for a Democratic Alternative; and Aden Robleh Awaleh, leader of the National Democratic Party, were detained yesterday morning (18 February), Awaleh said in a telephone interview from the capital, Djibouti.
Bertha Hamases is a tall, lanky woman with a weathered face and a friendly sparkle in her eyes. A few years ago she was one of the many people circling the drain in Otjivero, a dead end settlement one hundred kilometres from the capital. Here evicted farm workers gathered in misery. For Hamases, a single mom with four kids aged between 9 and 16, life looked hopeless. Until a coalition of civil society organisations picked Otjivero for a privately-funded pilot project to show that a universal basic income grant can make all the difference.
With US President Barack Obama’s release of his Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 foreign affairs budget and a proposal currently in the US House of Representatives for massive cuts in 2011 international spending, the fight to sustain US aid abroad is intensifying. Development and foreign policy analysts largely praised the administration’s funding appeal for reflecting conscientious adjustments in this constrained economic environment and for maximising returns by focusing spending on strategic areas such as global health, food security and climate change.
In an unusual move, West and Central African civil society organisations have participated in the negotiations between their countries and the European Union on the economic partnership agreements (EPAs). The organisations stress developmental concerns while assisting under-resourced African governments with trade expertise. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have also taken to the streets to persuade governments not to sign interim EPAs, for example in Mali.
On Sunday, 13 February - just 48 hours after the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as president of Egypt in response to 18 days of street demonstrations - physician, novelist and former political prisoner Nawal El Saadawi welcomed 12 other women's rights activists into her Cairo apartment. They joined to celebrate and look forward and backward. 'We need to guarantee that there is no abortion of the revolution,' she told Women's eNews, adding that she had already been in touch with women and men as to how to proceed in this new Egypt. 'I have confidence in the revolution. I am optimistic by nature. I believe in the collective power of women and men.'
With Black History Month underway in North America this month, Ajamu Nangwaya laments the move away from political engagement and militancy to mere celebration.
Last week’s World Social Forum (WSF) in Dakar ended up riotously happy thanks to the eviction of a universally hated Egyptian pharaoh, after near-debilitating logistical disasters at the event’s outset, writes Patrick Bond.
South-South trade is growing fast, but barriers among developing countries are still up to seven times higher than those imposed by the developed world, a representative from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said. Speaking at a Frontier Advisory seminar at the JSE, OECD Development Centre director Mario Pezzini said that South-South trade had experienced tremendous growth in recent years, with exports from developing countries now constituting 37 per cent of global trade, of which about 50 per cent related to South-South trade.
Fed up with dictatorships, self-serving elites and totalitarianism, Africa’s youths are on the march, says Alemayehu G. Mariam, inspired by events in Egypt.
The global media's attention is focused on the revolutions sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East, with Egypt – and to a lesser extent Tunisia – being most prominent. But not all revolutions are blessed with this level of attention. The West African nation of Gabon is currently also in popular revolt. What, you haven't heard about it yet?
Reflecting on time spent in the country, H. Nanjala Nyabola stresses than rather than simply looking east for comparison, the Egyptian people’s recent experience gives ‘an opportunity for lessons to be learnt further south’ in other parts of Africa.
Mubarak resigns – can the feeling be described? I will try. It is as if for 10 seconds, you totally forget about who you are, what you do or where you are – it's just extreme happiness. Then it all comes back to you slowly. I am Hassan Elghayesh, an Egyptian who was part of a revolution that brought down a dictator.
‘The task ahead for the Egyptian people may be enormous. But the same will, determination and sense of collectivism and focus with which they triumphed over Mubarak should be drawn upon for the reconstruction phase of the revolution,’ writes Horace Campbell.
Recounting his experience of involvement in protests, Hassan Elghayesh chronicles the Egyptian revolution from a first-hand perspective.
Will the spirit of the Egyptian revolution travel along the Nile to Ethiopia, asks Meraf Nebiyu. Perhaps not immediately, but the conditions for a popular uprising exist.
In January, a judge ruled in favour of a group of gay individuals stating that all Ugandans, regardless of their sexual orientation, have a right to privacy and dignity. One of the plaintiffs recounted her story to the Kampala Dispatch.??
Painting the country as both a contributor to and potential victim of global climate change, South Africa’s green paper ‘seems to fit within an all too predictable Pretoria formula’, writes Patrick Bond. It's up to civil society to demand genuine solutions.
David Kato, a prominent Ugandan gay rights activist, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in broad daylight at his home in Uganda, dying on his way to hospital. News of Kato’s death reverberated throughout the world as friends, leaders, activists and human rights organisations paid tribute to a man whose lifelong legacy championed human dignity in the face of man’s inhumanity to man.
At the forefront of most people’s dreams when South Africa’s new ANC government came into power was the famous quote: ‘There shall be houses, security and comfort’. But it is now ‘years since we first voted and there is little change to show for that’, writes the Mandela Park Backyarders Movement.
In a world plunged ever deeper into an uncivilised global capitalist condition, the World Social Forum is a crucial beacon of hope. But while news of Egypt and Tunisia’s revolutions electrified activists at this year’s gathering in Dakar, Vishwas Satgar asks whether progressive civil society is powerful enough to organise for a genuine climate change solution at COP17.
Mubarak has stepped down but that is just the end of the first phase of Egypt’s revolution. What is also at stake is ‘whether the self-organisation learnt from Tahrir Square will take on a class character and whether the public political space, the democratic space opened up by the revolution, will remain open,' writes Nigel C. Gibson.
The reconstruction of a viable Somali state depends largely on the rebirth of a united Ethiopia, writes Samir Amin.
'As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Dakar, 2011, we are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of Africa and its peoples in the construction of human civilisation. Together, the peoples of all the continents are struggling mightily to oppose the domination of capital, hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and political stability. Complete decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance.'
A group of prominent African writers has signed a letter condemning 'in the strongest possible terms the murder of Mr David Kato, the Ugandan gay rights campaigner'. The signatories 'state emphatically that homosexuality is neither a sin nor a social or cultural construct. Noting that 'homosexuals are human beings like everybody else,' the letter calls for all 'violence against gays and people deemed to be gay in Africa' to cease forthwith.
Egyptian protestors were furious at Mubarak for upholding his own interests and those of Western powers and foreign companies at the expense of the country’s people. Mika Minio-Paluello takes a closer look at oil company BP’s relationship with the regime.
‘Baffled, appalled, angered, enraged and deeply disappointed’ by the University of Cape Town’s administrative decision to disestablish the Centre for African Studies without their input or consultation, Concerned CAS Students include their response and position here, hoping that their voices ‘will be heard and taken seriously.’
In an interview with Basta! at the World Social Forum (WSF), Firoze Manji, editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News, discusses the problems of the ‘aid industry’, the resurgence of Africa’s popular movements and the need for a new people-centred ideology.
The poems of Kenyan human rights campaigner Philo Ikonya inspire a sense of urgency and provide a melodious and metaphorical wake-up call to courageous men and women in the struggle for justice, writes Khainga O’Okwemba.
Kenya's Kibaki shares his insights with other African leaders...
Gado imagines how politicians across the continent might have taken the news about Mubarak.
could not be more timely coming as it does at the heels of Egypt's popular revolution. She provides much food for thought and important principles to potentially guide countries in the throes of change. Her analysis was indeed refreshing to me and others who still value the emancipatory works of Ake, Davidson and Rodney. Keep it coming Dr Daley and many thanks.
Bad governance and the persistence of the tax avoidance industry allow billions of dollars of profit to be siphoned out of Africa, untaxed, every year. For the past 25 years, tax revenues in most African countries have missed even the low target of 15 per cent of gross domestic product, far less than rich countries’ average of 35 per cent, according to a recent report of the Tax Justice Network’s Africa section.
Egypt could soon be looking for a new economic model – one that will be different from the traditional system that has been promoted for years by international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), under the reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Since the mid 1980’s, the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID have sought to encourage policies that limit the role of government in the economy, cut budget deficits, and give more influence to the private sector and corporations.
Environmental activists are hopeful that negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to curb fisheries subsidies, especially those on fuel, can produce a deal that will help end overfishing. Agreement would not only help reverse the alarming depletion of global fish stocks and contribute to a broader trade deal in the WTO’s long-running Doha round, but would provide a template for tackling global problems such as climate change that have a trade dimension.
Algerian students staged a two-day sit-in last week outside the higher education ministry in Algiers in order to demand that authorities not lessen the value of their degrees under a new system. The sit-in, which ended on Thursday (17 February), sought greater prestige for engineering degrees by granting them the same status as a Level 2 masters degree, enabling students who hold them to progress to PhD studies.