Pambazuka News 515: Egypt: A revolution reflected
Pambazuka News 515: Egypt: A revolution reflected
Nigerian soldiers opened fire on students in central Nigeria in late January in a fresh round of violence that also saw churches and mosques set ablaze, officials and witnesses said. A hospital official said 24 people were admitted with bullet wounds and one person had died, but the commander of a military task force in the region said only four students were shot and injured when soldiers fired in self-defence.
Namibia’s opposition parties have taken issue with government once again, this time over what they termed as the ruling Swapo party’s unfair rubberstamping of laws without adequate deliberations in the country’s legislative chambers. Swapo used its two-thirds majority in the legislative chambers last December to rush through a bill that gave optimum power to the President to appoint regional governors, as opposed to the former system where governors were selected from among regional councillors.
Kenya's diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court got a major boost after the African Union agreed to back its bid to defer Hague trials against six of its citizens. AU chief Jean Ping told reporters that the summit had approved Kenya's request for a suspension of the trials for one year as it seeks to overhaul its judicial system and try the suspects at home. Kenya had appealed for a suspension of the ICC process against prominent Kenyans which the court has accused of sponsoring the violence that saw 1,133 killed and close to 600,000 flee from their homes.
The poverty line for maintaining a family of five in economically ravaged Zimbabwe rose last year to $467 per month - but without increased earnings to cover the 8 per cent rise, Zimbabwe's state statistics agency said on Monday. The nation's 240,000 civil servants, teachers and government workers are planning to strike to protest average monthly incomes of about $200. With massive unemployment, most Zimbabweans survive on the equivalent of about $1 a day. Two million people are set to receive food aid in coming months, according to the United Nations.
A group of engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow (which Google acquired last week) have built a speak-to-tweet service for protesters in Egypt. The service, which is already live, enables users to send tweets using a voice connection. Anyone can tweet by leaving a voicemail on one of three international phone numbers: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855. Tweets sent using the service will automatically include the hashtag #egypt.
Nigeria’s opposition parties failed to agree on a joint candidate to face President Goodluck Jonathan, the flag bearer of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, in April’s presidential election, the parties said. The inability to reach an accord comes ahead of the deadline for all parties to submit the nomination papers of their candidates to the Independent National Electoral Commission. 'Each party is at this time pursuing their fortunes separately,' Dapo Olorunyomi, chief of staff to Nuhu Ribadu, the candidate for the Action Congress of Nigeria, said in a telephone interview.
A new issue of Refugee Survey Quarterly (RSQ) (vol. 29, no. 4, 2011) is now available. The focus is on terrorism and refugee protection. Contents include:
- Terrorism, Torture, and Refugee Protection in the United States
- Anti-Terrorism Measures and Refugee Law Challenges in Canada
- The European Convention on Human Rights, Counter-Terrorism, and Refugee Protection
- Refugee Protection, Counter-Terrorism, and Exclusion in the European Union
- Counter-Terrorism Measures and Refugee Protection in North Africa
- Complicity and Culpability and the Exclusion of Terrorists From Convention Refugee Status Post-9/11.
Africa has a wealth of leadership outside of state politics. Sanya Osha gives some examples.
School enrolment has drastically dropped in Turkana County due to famine and insufficient learning materials, reports the Daily Nation. Most children have been forced to drop out of school and migrate with their parents in search of food and water due to the ongoing drought. 'The acute food shortage is impacting negatively on learning in the area. Some children have moved with their parents to areas far away from school in search of food,' said Turkana South district commissioner Joseph Kanyiri.
‘This poem is inspired by the events that unfolded in Tunisia recently but also born out of frustrations with our so-called leaders all across the globe who spare no expense in putting their interests first but don't think twice about the needs of their people. Mr President is an umbrella term for all the presidents – male and female – generals, prime ministers, and all who seem to rule our world with iron fists,’ writes Nebila Abdulmelik.
Who we are is a question that requires constant inward contemplation merged with the outside - negotiating between two worlds - for knowing is paramount in affirming our existence and freedom. Who we are is a self-orientation of where we have been and the direction we are heading in, realizing that we cannot be anything unless (Sartre: 2007) others acknowledging us as such or may be not. The big business in the quest of identity - socially constructed, contingent, and performatively constituted - is in fact shaped by personal experiences, the formation of oneself within hegemonic social conditions undistinguished between the personal and the political or between private and public spaces.
Responses to the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato and Egypt’s inspiring revolution are the key topics covered in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Sokari Ekine.
Agriculture is back on the international agenda on Africa, but at the heart of the matter is the question of land use – and control, writes Chambi Chachage.
Slogans won’t be enough to build a new Egypt. Mazin Qumsiyeh gives some tips on how Egyptians can recover from dictatorship.
Privatised seed corporations are grabbing the market in basic food staples. Khadija Sharife explains how they pay nothing for the market dominance.
Pambazuka News is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the first annual Pambazuka Samir Amin Award. This award, launched to mark Samir Amin’s 80th birthday in 2011, pays tribute to the extraordinary contribution Samir Amin has made to our understanding of the exploitation of the peoples of Africa and the global South.
The memoirs of Jacinto Veloso, Frelimo supporter and former general, are a rich introduction to Mozambican history by a knowledgeable man with ‘plenty of stories to tell’, writes Wilson Gomes de Almeida.
With Egypt in the throes of deep social protest and calls for change, Hosni Mubarak wants out, says Gado.
Negotiations in both Côte d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe remain hands-on, says Gado.
Tough measures to tackle gender-based violence are more important to South African women than government distribution of free sanitary pads, argues Glenda Muzenda.
With the African Union approving Kenya's request for a one-year suspension of the International Criminal Court (ICC) trials, President Mwai Kibaki grins with impunity, says Gado.
Gado wonders about the depths to which Arab leaders are prepared to change.
she said i'm not
altogether there
grasping at bits of myself
like playdoh
that just won't come together…
The people of Côte d’Ivoire must be supported in their efforts to bring the country’s political crisis to a peaceful conclusion, while all talk of military intervention must be resisted, writes Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua.
While the passing of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act in May 2007 ‘sent very positive signals about Nigeria’s desire to sustain its leadership in the global initiative to the world’, NEITI needs to be subject to a number of new amendments, writes Uche Igwe.
Equatorial Guinea president Teodoro Obiang's appointment as the new chairperson of the African Union focuses attention on areas in his country where African Union principles have been ignored, says a rights group.
With Hosni Mubarak on a tentative footing, a US which once propped him up would now turn to a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) it regards as ‘moderate’, writes Samir Amin. But with the fundamental economic conditions which produced the social unrest in the first place unlikely to change much, and with the working-class and peasants’ movement yet to be fully involved, the same problems will remain, Amin concludes.
Francois Bozize has been re-elected president of the Central African Republic, according to provisional results released by the electoral commission last Tuesday. The commission said Bozize received 66.08 per cent of the vote in the January 23 poll, the outcome of which has already been rejected by three of the five candidates.
Richard Rooney’s online Swazi Media Commentary is a rare example of objective, progressive news and journalism in a country burdened with biased reporting and censorship, writes Peter Kenworthy.
In a letter to the Ad Hoc Committee for the Protection of Information Bill, Idasa, the African Democracy Centre has questioned the applicability of the controversial legislation to various organs of state. 'It appears that the ad hoc committee’s view is that it is in fact too time-consuming to do an audit of the organs of state which exist. We are of the view that it is crucial that every consideration be given to the scope/applicability of the proposed legislation. Given the extensive number of organs of state, we submit that Parliament needs to be mindful of legislating without fully considering the impact of the draft legislation.'
Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of land in Africa. Together with applicable national and international law, contracts define the terms of an investment project, and the way risks, costs and benefits are distributed. Who has the authority to sign the contract and through what process greatly influences the extent to which people can have their voices heard. Yet very little is known about the exact terms of the land deals. Drawing on the legal analysis of twelve land deals from different parts of Africa, this report discusses the contractual issues for which public scrutiny is most needed, and aims to promote informed public debate about them.
Several African leaders have bought lands in Ethiopia to develop agricultural projects or tourism resorts. They are let to bypass a 2007 ban on export of cereals, still in place for other investors. It has earlier been known that former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasansjo and current Djiboutian President Ismael Omar Guelleh privately have bought up large properties in Ethiopia. Also the Egyptian Prime Minister managed to buy large agricultural land tracts in Ethiopia on behalf of his government. However, a US Embassy cable from February last year, released by Wikileaks, indicates that several of these underreported deals operate in the grey zone of Ethiopian legislation.
The Government of Liberia, with support from United Nations agencies, will launch a week-long measles vaccination campaign on Wednesday targeting all children in Nimba County, which hosts over 30,000 refugees who fled the political turmoil in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. As of the end of January, five Liberian children between one and five years old had died of measles, two cases had been confirmed by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), and just over 100 suspected cases had been reported.
Sometimes the teachers make it to school but the children do not - when the fighting is too intense for them to venture outdoors. Sometimes teachers make it to school only to find it has been moved - to enable displaced children to continue learning. This is the nature of teaching in war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, considered one of the world's most dangerous cities. In the midst of the chaos and violence, teachers, students and their parents are confronted with a choice of obtaining a semblance of education or giving up altogether.
Obama’s aim is all too clear: to keep Mubarak in office for as long as possible while fashioning a regime to prop up bourgeois rule and uphold US strategic and economic interests in the region, says this article from the World Socialist Web Site.
A deadly spate of sectarian violence in Nigeria's central Plateau State since 24 December 2010, has killed more than 200 people, Human Rights Watch has said. The victims, including children, have been hacked to death, burned alive, 'disappeared', or dragged off buses and murdered in tit-for-tat killings. The Nigerian government should act swiftly to protect civilians of all ethnicities at risk of further attacks or reprisal killings, and allow the United Nations secretary-general's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Francis Deng, to visit the state, Human Rights Watch said.
Police in Uganda should urgently and impartially investigate the killing of the prominent human rights activist David Kato, Human Rights Watch has said. Kato had dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender persons (LGBT) in Uganda, facing threats and risks to his personal safety. The government should ensure that members of Uganda's LGBT community have adequate protection from violence and take prompt action against all threats or hate speech likely to incite violence, discrimination, or hostility toward them, Human Rights Watch said.
To allow least developed countries (LDCs) to protect nascent industries, they are not required to cut tariffs for industrial goods and fisheries in the Doha Development Round. However, tariffs cuts will affect them if they are members of customs unions where some of their neighbours are larger developing countries without LDC status. For example, 'Nigeria is not an LDC but the nine LDCs in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may also be bound by the commitments that their more powerful neighbour agrees to in the Doha Round,' explains Aileen Kwa in response to questions from IPS about what lies ahead for LDCs at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during 2011.
South Africa landed a coveted membership with the Brazil, Russia, India and China bloc (BRIC) by marketing itself as a gateway to Africa but analysts doubt whether this development holds real benefits for poor countries on the rest of the continent. Sanusha Naidu, research director of communication network Fahamu’s 'emerging powers in Africa' programme, says: 'What most people fail to realise is that by joining BRIC, South Africa offers a strategic partnership for investors from these countries. These investors do not necessarily have the savvy to do business on the continent, nor do they want to take all the risks associated with it. Linking up with South African capital can provide the commercial spin they are looking for.'
The World Development Movement has criticised the findings of the Beddington report in the United Kingdom, which promotes the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops as a key solution to global hunger. The focus on GM in the chief scientist's report is a red herring and does not correctly identify the real causes of hunger. The World Development Movement's director, Deborah Doane said: 'The Beddington report does not accurately reflect the real cause of hunger in developing countries. The current record food prices are down to banks and hedge funds betting on food. The hot speculative inflows of money into commodity markets are dramatically pushing up the price of foods like bread, sugar and corn.'
Black History Month ‘allows Africans to tell their “his-story” starting only from the period when they set foot on the enslaver’s soil and became subjected to his “civilising” efforts', argues Chika Ezeanya.
Twenty-four hour network coverage, activist videos, Twitter, Facebook and blogs have all mashed together to convey the Egyptian revolution to the world, writes Patrick Burnett.
The Egyptian government's attacks on journalists and unprecedented blackout of the nation's Internet and mobile phone services have crushed the rights of free expression, assembly and association and should be reversed immediately, say the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and a growing chorus of IFEX members.
The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, has claimed that the economic and social conditions now exist in Mozambique for the government to renegotiate contracts signed with some of the mega-projects that have come to dominate the economy. Speaking on Friday at the closing session of a meeting of the Bank's Consultative Council in Mozambique, Gove said, 'In investment everybody has to win, otherwise social tensions are created.'
The Congo government's ban on trade in conflict minerals has met with little success as trade in North Kivu remains dominated by a mafia network that connect the mines to international markets, a report by the Enough Project said on Tuesday. Many armed groups have benefited from Congo's protracted violence and don't like the possibility of a shrinking market for their minerals, Research Director David Sullivan said in a statement. 'So it should come as no surprise that some of the fastest-moving efforts to trace and audit mineral supply chains are actually being driven by many of the same commercial actors and regional governments that have been indiscriminately purchasing Congolese minerals for years, as documented by UN investigators,' he said.
With nearly one in three South Africans expected to receive state assistance in the form of welfare benefits during the 2011/12 financial year, commentators are wondering how the country can afford to keep providing an ever expanding social safety net. According to the latest South Africa Survey, released on 1 February by independent think-tank the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), the number of social grant beneficiaries has increased by more than 300 percent in the past nine years, while the number of registered individual taxpayers has grown at a much slower rate.
Somalia's self-declared independent region of Somaliland has experienced an increase in landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) explosions in the recent past, with officials calling for mine awareness education in schools, as children have been the main victims. 'Child victims of land mines have increased in Somaliland in the past two months,' Ahmed Ali Maah, director of the Somaliland Mine Action Center (SMAC), told IRIN. 'Some 93 children have been killed by landmines in the past three years.'
In Southern Sudan, preliminary referendum results point to 99 per cent of those polled voting to split from the North. Panos has spoken to voters in the Warrap and West Bahr al Ghazal states about their hopes for the future. Ariac Kuot Akuei, 64, waited in line for nine hours to cast her vote for separation after walking four kilometres to her polling station at Kuajoc Secondary School, in Warrap state.
As most Libyans are still are too afraid of secret government agents to express their ample discontent, three of Muammar al-Ghaddafi's sons are preparing for a possible popular uprising. One is a reformist; two are hardliners. Tunisia is Libya's main western neighbour; Egypt its main eastern neighbour.
Beauty Pillow is a rare woman in Malawi - she can afford to run for office. 'I don’t have any donors but I use the little my husband sends from South Africa and from my own business—selling chitenjes (traditional garments), rice and sometimes beans,' Pillow says. Aspiring for local government is no easy task. Beyond campaigning costs and time spent, Pillow says a major challenge will still be to win her party’s favour and make it through the primaries next year.
Like other Liberian communities along the border, the impoverished villagers in Beo-Garnaglaye welcomed Ivorian refugees with whom they share the same ethnicity, language and ties based on inter-marriage. But aid workers say there is simmering tension as food supplies have dwindled stretching the resilience of the hosts.
The 'deafening' silence by the South African government on issues relating to homosexuality on international platforms has been highly condemned by gay rights groups at a rally spearheaded by the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP) outside offices of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in Pretoria on 01 February 2011. Over 150 people attended the march which called for DIRCO and government as a whole to uphold and promote the South African Constitution and urge African Union member states to fight discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.
Delays in drug registration by the country's Medicines Control Council (MCC), contribute to depriving South African HIV patients of important fixed dose combination antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. But there are indications that the effects of the delays are being felt even farther afield. In December 2010, South Africa announced a new, two-year tender for ARVs which halved drug costs for the national HIV treatment programme; The tender however failed to include many fixed dose ARV combinations, which although approved by bodies like the World Health Organisation are not yet registered by the MCC for use in South Africa.
A number of female Moroccan seasonal workers in Spain find themselves in a precarious legal and economic situation, a study revealed on 28 January. 'They do not speak Spanish, so they have no way of defending their rights,' said Rachid El Badouli, director of strategic studies at the Orient-Occident Foundation. According to the findings, around 90 per cent of the women are illiterate and come from large poor families. Over 23 per cent of them earn less than 35 euros per day.
The Right to Education Project and ActionAid has launched the Promoting Rights in Schools: providing quality public education (PRS) resource pack. Aimed at actively engaging parents, children, teachers, unions, communities and local civil society organisations in collectively monitoring and improving the quality of public education, PRS offers a set of practical tools that can be used as a basis for mobilisation, advocacy and campaigning.
Experts warn an influx [of returnees] is expected to cause dire shortages of food, water, health care and sanitation in Southern Sudan. The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Mr. Georg Charpentier says even when the referendum results are announced, the number of returnees could keep increasing.
The government has announced that laws requiring foreign mining companies to sell a majority of their shares to locals will be gazetted by the end of February. In a statement published in the state-run Herald newspaper on Wednesday, the Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, said consultations were at an ‘advanced stage’ and new regulations would be gazetted no later than the end of February. A controversial Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, requiring all businesses to give 51 per cent of their shares to locals was signed into law in 2008, but the government has not yet acted on it.
As in many African countries, women in Mozambique often give birth outside of a health facility. Factors leading to this decision include having difficult access to health services, being scared of how they will be treated at a health facility, and feeling more comfortable delivering at home. But, when complications occur at home, women and babies are much less likely to receive the appropriate, life-saving care they need. Women Deliver reports that the Mozambique’s government and partners are working to change this trend by improving health care delivery through the Model Maternities Initiative (MMI). The goal of MMI is to improve maternal and newborn health care services while providing a supportive environment in which women give birth.
Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, Youth of 30 January for Change Alliance in Sudan has mobilised thousands in protest.
With the world’s population slated to top the milestone seven billion mark by late 2011, the new head of the United Nations agency that helps countries use population data for policies to reduce poverty pledged today to focus on the largest global youth generation ever. 'Investing in youth, their reproductive health and gender equality can help put countries on a path to accelerated economic growth and equitable development,' UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said in his first address to the UN Development Programme (UNDP)/UNFPA Executive Board.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's failure to understand the workings of communal democracy in Africa put him in a weak position to negotiate for peace in Côte d’Ivoire, argues Okello Oculi.
In the wake of the welcome and peaceful move towards democracy in Tunisia, PEN International notes with great concern the violent response to anti-government protests elsewhere in the region, notably Egypt, but also in Yemen and Syria.
Do you want to change the world? Are you a woman working in tech, or working for a cause in which Google Maps could help tell your story? Or perhaps you’re just interested in Google Map Maker and mapping your world, as well as interacting with other like minded women? Then join us at iHub on 12 February 2011 for a Mapping Party using Google Map Maker.
The Angola Monitor covers the politics, economics, development, democracy and human rights of Angola. It is published quarterly by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) and is available in both English and Portuguese. This issue covers President dos Santos’ state visit to South Africa, the meeting of the general secretaries of liberation movements in Luanda and the 2011 budget and increased investment in industry and health. It also covers calls for more transparency in the oil industry, cases of rape during the continued mass expulsions into DRC and growing concerns about violence against reporters.
While the Egyptian authorities have sought to disrupt the country's communications through turning off internet traffic, people in Egypt are able to post a 'voice tweet', writes Khadija Sharife.
Sanogo Aboubakar and Kangbe Yayoro Charles Lopez, of the pro-Ouattara Television Notre Patrie (TVN) in Bouake, the second largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, have been detained by security forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo since their arrest on 28 January 2011. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the two journalists were picked up at the airbase of the Liaison Transport Air Group in Abidjan where they were to board a flight belonging to the United Nations Operations in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI) to cover a story at the Golf hotel.
It’s crucial for the Ethiopian people to draw lessons from the Tunisian revolution in their struggle for freedom and democracy, writes Melakou Tegegn, as similar events could ‘take place in our country too sooner or later.’
This Friday, COSATU, with people from organisations and groups around Gauteng will protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Tshwane to raise their voices in support of the demands of the Egyptian people: Bread, Jobs, Education, Dignity, Democracy, Freedom of Expression. Join workers and people of Egypt and South Africa. Show your support.?
We appeal to all human rights organizations and to all the defenders of freedoms and human rights and all the free honourable media inside and outside Egypt to interfere immediately and support our peaceful demonstrations from the savage attack of the security against the demonstrators using all kinds of weapons...
Following developments in Tunisia and as Egypt’s extraordinary scenes continue, Melakou Tegegn stresses that the ruling classes across the region are shuddering at the power of the revolts.
The heroic masses of Egypt have risen up against the decades-old corrupt dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Over the next weeks, a number of activities will be held in solidarity with these struggles throughout South Africa. These activities will kick off with a demonstration outside the Egyptian embassy in Pretoria, with South Africans repeating the calls of our Egyptian comrades: “Bread! Jobs! Education! Dignity! Democracy! Freedom of Expression!
We, civil society organizations from across the world, strongly urge all governments, as well as regional and international organizations, to clearly and unequivocally denounce the ongoing violent crackdown against the public protests and demands for democratic reform and government accountability that have been occurring across Egypt since the 25th of January.
The dubious coverage of events in Egypt reveal the extent to which Western media outlets remain mere neoliberal cheerleaders, incapable of conceiving that the Egyptian people have both the right and capacity to determine their own direction, writes Adrian Crewe.
Survival International has reported that: 'In a momentous decision, Botswana’s Court of Appeal today quashed a ruling that denied the Kalahari Bushmen access to water on their ancestral lands...Celebrating after the decision, a Bushman spokesman said, "We are very happy that our rights have finally been recognised. Like any human beings, we need water to live."' Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow says, 'This is a major win, it’s the first test case of our right to water resolution at the United Nations.'
The MILEAD Fellows Program is a one-year leadership development program designed to identify, develop and promote emerging young African women leaders to attain and succeed in leadership positions. It builds their knowledge skills and support network to be agents of change in their community and Africa as a whole.
Raising Voices is searching for a website resource person, with experience in the field of violence against women, and knowledge of organisations and individuals in this field within Africa and specifically the Horn, East and Southern Africa.
During the course the participants are familiarised with contemporary theories of conflict and conflict resolution, acquainted with a range of relevant information on conflict on the Internet and introduced to practical issues and debates within the field. They are brought together in a 'learning community' with people with a professional interest in conflict. The subjects for each of the course weeks are: Introduction to Conflict Resolution, Conflict Analysis and Conflict Prevention. The students participate through online debates, assignments and exercises and are coached intensively online. Information about the content, fees, planning and approach to the conflicts can be found in the demos course: If you are interested in participating in the courses or if you have additional questions regarding course content and fees, please contact us at [email][email protected] Information about the Network University or its partner Modus Operandi can be found on our respective websites www.modop.org
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) has issued a statement showing how solidarity groups can help following the murder of David Kato on 26 January 2011. Kato was an advocacy officer and a longtime leading activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights.??
If Egypt’s military is ever to be a legitimate national force, it must side with the protesters against Mubarak’s thugs and the police, writes Mozn Hassan.