Pambazuka News 477: Zimbabwe: Demystifying sanctions and strengthening solidarity
Pambazuka News 477: Zimbabwe: Demystifying sanctions and strengthening solidarity
The UN has praised Tanzania for granting citizenship to some 162,000 refugees who fled Burundi 38 years ago. "It's the most generous naturalisation of refugees anywhere," said UN refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
Uganda's main opposition leader Kizza Besigye had told the BBC of his anger that proposed electoral reforms have not even been debated in parliament. Dr Besigye was talking after being re-elected leader of his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party
A court in Libya has freed a dissident who faced 15 years in jail for complaining he was tortured in prison.
Jamal al-Haggi was acquitted of charges that he insulted judicial officials, Human Rights Watch said.
Four peacekeepers with the joint UN-African Union mission in the Sudanese region of Darfur have been kidnapped, a spokesman for the force says. The peacekeepers went missing on Sunday and have now been confirmed as abducted, a spokesman for Unamid.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has asked opposition parties to join his government if he wins landmark elections currently under way. With polling due to end on Thursday, Mr Bashir has extended an offer to other parties to join his ruling National Congress Party (NCP).
Africa has been catapulted into the electronic age over the past decade and a half by an almost incomprehensibly swift growth in telecommunications technology driven primarily by a massive rollout of cell phones and wireless technology throughout the continent.
Burundian police and administrative officials must take stronger measures to prevent and punish pre-election violence, Human Rights Watch said today. Members of various political parties, especially their affiliated youth movements, have clashed on a number of occasions since November 2009. In most cases, police have not conducted thorough investigations and no one has been held accountable.
The government of Angola has not done enough to combat pervasive corruption and mismanagement, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Even though the oil-rich country's gross domestic product has increased by more than 400 percent in the last six years, Angolans are not seeing their lives improve accordingly, Human Rights Watch said.
The Egyptian authorities should immediately cease deportation proceedings against two refugees from Darfur, Human Rights Watch has said. Egyptian authorities are preparing to deport Mohammad Adam Abdallah and Ishaq Fadl Ahmad Dafa Allah back to Sudan, where they would face persecution. Both men have been granted formal refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency, which should protect them from deportation.
Fighting between "Enyélé" insurgents and regular armed forces in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo at the beginning of April left 18 people dead, including nine rebels, and triggered mass displacements from the region's principal city, Mbandaka.
UNHCR is shocked by the further loss of civilian lives we've seen from fighting in Mogadishu earlier this week. More than 30 people are reported killed, many of them civilians including children. From local sources we understand that medical facilities are having difficulties coping with the many wounded. Residents have described this week's shelling as among the worst in months.
Kenya's government should halt the proposed eviction of more than 50,000 people living alongside the country's railway lines until guidelines that conform with international human rights standards have been adopted, Amnesty International said on Thursday. On 21 March Kenya Railways published a notice giving residents 30 days to pull down their structures and leave, or risk prosecution. Most of those affected are slum dwellers in parts of Nairobi.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is launching a new livelihood programme designed to address the underlying causes of food shortages in Karamoja, the poorest and most marginalised region in Uganda which has not had a successful harvest in five years and where more than 80 per cent of the population lives in poverty.
The Malawi government will soon draft a law that will outlaw polygamy. Minister of Gender, Women and Children Development Patricia Kaliati said the move intends to help stop growing rates in HIV and AIDS cases.
Malawi and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has signed a formulation phase project document for managing climate change in the country to be implemented to a tune of $4.2 million
Nine people were killed, including a member of President Omar al-Beshir's National Congress Party, as violence broke out on Thursday that was unrelated to nationwide elections, according to the southern Sudan army. The country held its first national election in 24 years.
Rwanda and the World Bank on Friday signed two grants totalling $121.6 million to support the land-locked nation's budget as it recovers from the global downturn and aid reforms. Mimi Ladipo, the World Bank's country manager in Rwanda said $115.6 was earmarked to bolster the 2009/10 budget, a little higher than the previous fiscal year because it included almost $30 million to help mitigate the impact of the global downturn.
Asylum seekers are being thrown out of some countries because of a rise in xenophobia and political campaigns that use foreigners as scapegoats, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) chief said. Asylum and immigration are sensitive issues in many countries, such as Italy and Greece, which say they cannot cope with hundreds of thousands of people arriving as potential illegal migrants, often on rickety boats from Africa.
Activists have cautioned that the Gates Foundation funded study, released today in The Lancet and showing welcome progress on reducing maternal mortality globally, also reveals one catastrophic exception. They said that current global AIDS programmes were reminiscent of the Victorian era, casting pregnant women as potential vectors of disease, and ignoring their health in the single-minded rush to achieve a 2010 goal of preventing the transmission of HIV to their babies.
In Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to the worst cholera outbreaks in the country for many years. Over the last five weeks the number of cholera cases has risen dramatically to more than 4,500, while more than 120 people have lost their lives. Despite hopes that the outbreak has reached its peak the previous week and that the number of cholera cases will start decreasing, heavy rains that continue to cause severe floods in the city could potentially worsen the situation in the coming weeks.
Each constituency in Kenya will by the end of the year boast of at least five digital centres complete with computers and Internet connectivity in a government plan to bridge the IT gap.
2010 is not shaping up to be a good year for satellite operators and resellers in Africa. There have been rumours that for the first time one operators’ sales in the continent have slipped down several percentage points. This year sees the arrival of four more international fibre cables: Glo One, Main One, EASSy and LION. Balancing Act’s latest report – African Fibre and Satellite Markets – takes the temperature of the current market and seeks to predict where things will be in three years time.
2010 is not shaping up to be a good year for satellite operators and resellers in Africa. There have been rumours that for the first time one operators’ sales in the continent have slipped down several percentage points. This year sees the arrival of four more international fibre cables: Glo One, Main One, EASSy and LION. Balancing Act’s latest report – African Fibre and Satellite Markets – takes the temperature of the current market and seeks to predict where things will be in three years time.
Libyans are criticising an April 4th government report that describes the country's health care as expansive and top-of-the-line. "Reports like this are created at a time of need to tell lies," Libyan rights activist Mohammed Sehim said.
Moroccan journalists, activists and university professors have launched a new organisation to defend free speech for the press and the public. The Freedom of Press and Speech Organisation will also work to influence the development of laws affecting the media, the group’s founders said at its inaugural press conference Saturday (April 10th) in Rabat.
Survival is appealing to sports giant Puma to disinvest from tourism company Wilderness Safaris over a lodge it has built on land belonging to the Bushmen of Botswana. Puma bought a 20% stake in the company via a private placement shortly before its listing on the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges on 8th April.
"Estimates [for the period 1970-2008] show that over the 39-year period Africa lost an astonishing US$854 billion in cumulative capital flight--enough to not only wipe out the region's total external debt outstanding of around US$250 billion (at end-December, 2008) but potentially leave US$600 billion for poverty alleviation and economic growth. Instead, cumulative illicit flows from the continent increased from about US$57 billion in the decade of the 1970s to US$437 billion over the nine years 2000-2008." - report by Global Financial Integrity.
A gay rights activist in Kenya is receiving death threats and has been attacked on several occasions by random people who have seen and read about him in an anti-gay website that publishes and puts up posters of suspected homosexuals in different cities of Kenya, as ‘NOT WANTEDs’. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) revealed this week, as it denounced the website , stating that it is a violation of rights and that it victimises people, in the name of religion.
As the case of Millicent Gaika (30), a Cape Town lesbian who was beaten up and raped by a man known to her, is presently being heard at Wynberg Court, government has condemned the ongoing acts of “corrective rape” in the country and has vowed to put an end to them. After the man was arrested, the case was first heard at the Wynberg Court on Tuesday, 6 April but was postponed to today, Tuesday 13 April. Speaking outside the court where people are marching in support of Gaika, Ndumi Funda of Lulek’isisizwe LBT Women’s Project said, “We are strongly opposing bail for the perpetrator and we want to see justice being done for Gaika."
Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.
A new piece of kit in the form of a backpack could help small farmers in Kenya increase yields, profits and agricultural know-how in a sustainable way. The backpacks, weighing 15-42 kg, contain things which help farmers bring a crop to harvest, including tools, a training manual and, in some versions, a collapsible water tank. They are designed for small plots of land and are currently being used in the Mau Forest region.
A so-called Vulture Funds bill - to stop finance companies using British courts to extort excessive debt repayments from some of the world's poorest countries - was passed in the frantic scramble to finish outstanding parliamentary business before Britain's general election in May.
The effects of climate change - such as drought, livestock deaths and resource conflict - may be all too apparent for the pastoralists of northern Kenya, but there is much to be done to explain the true causes. "We were warned about the current situation by our elders and spiritual leaders when I was very young. This was about 50 years ago when the Ngishili age groups were born,” Lemeteki Lerinagato, 70, told IRIN in the Samburu district.
A shadow has fallen over Zambia's long history of generously hosting refugees from troubled countries since 36 foreigners were deported to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the government says it is only trying to ensure security and order in camps that still shelter some 57,000 people. "We are hoping that [deportations] will stop," said James Lynch, country representative for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Zambia. The organization communicated its alarm at the expulsions to the Zambian authorities on 13 April.
Pambazuka News 478: Obama and AFRICOM: Militarisation intensifies
Pambazuka News 478: Obama and AFRICOM: Militarisation intensifies
Within the framework of the 50th anniversary of African independence, the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO (SHS) is launching a “Call for Ideas” for prospective proposals in favour of Africa’s development within the next decade.
On the eve of UN Mother Earth Day, over sixty national and international organizations threw their weight behind a common statement launching a global campaign to prevent real world deployment of geoengineering experiments. Geoengineering refers to large-scale intentional tinkering with the climate and earth systems to counteract global warming. The ‘Hands Off Mother Earth’ campaign (or H.O.M.E. campaign) regards such geoengineering schemes as dangerous and unjust. It is urging individuals and organizations to speak out in opposing them.
On April 14, 2010 during the ongoing Parliament meeting in Dodoma, Hon. Damas P. Nakei, MP for Babati Rural asked a question in the House wanting to know the limitations on an MP to access public information held by Government and what type of information an MP might be denied. A Coalition comprising eleven Civil Society organisations (two from outside Tanzania) organized and held meetings and public hearings countrywide to collect people’s views. All along, it emerged that the public was not only interested in the freedom to access information but wanted this to be pronounced as a basic right – hence the notion of Right to Information in the discourse of the Coalition’s work.
This is a communiqué issued by members of civil society Participating in ‘Civil Society Experts Consultation on Maternal, Child and Infant Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Africa’ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 17-18, 2010, organised by Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR), IPPF-Africa Region, Ipas Africa Alliance, Save the Children International, Abantu for Development, and the UN Millennium Campaign in collaboration with the AU Commission to assess progress in reducing maternal, child and infant mortality and implementation of the Continental Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health (Maputo Plan of Action 2007-10):
The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP) wrote to the President on 19 January 2010 regarding the appointment of John Qwelane to the post of High Commissioner to Uganda. Despite assurances that the matter would be addressed, there has been no reply, prompting this follow-up letter
Upon replacing George W. Bush as US president, hopes were high that Barack Obama would oversee sweeping change in relation to US military policy. But, writes Daniel Volman, far from seeing a reversal, such policy has in fact intensified, entirely at the expense of more progressive diplomatic and economically-based approaches.
In the wake of serious doubts around Sudan's ability to oversee free and fair elections, Sudanese civil society networks 'believe that the voters of Sudan were unable to freely express their will and select their representatives'. Spelling out the range of problems impeding the current election, the group outlines a set of recommendations rooted in ensuring genuine representation for the Sudanese electorate.
Accompanied by Nomie, a Chinese female translator, Owen Grafham describes interacting with Chinese migrant workers in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
As religious fundamentalists in Kenya stress homosexuality to be 'ungodly', Audrey Mbugua asks 'so what?' Religious-based delusions paralyse 'otherwise rational people', Mbugua argues, and religious fundamentalism 'fosters criminal activities by coating them with spirituality and messages of madness'.
Once a respected and professional example of high legal standards around the world, the Nigerian judiciary has now entirely lost its way, writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde. The judiciary is plagued by lost case files, tampered evidence and inmates seemingly locked up indefinitely, Abidde stresses, a picture of decline that mirrors that of Nigerian society as a whole.
'Fire in the Soul – 100 Poems for Human Rights', writes Amira Kheir, is a great set of poetic works, but one whose 'human rights' framing 'does a disservice to the beautiful poems encapsulated in this collection'.
While Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi may insist on his country's booming economic performance, the evidence speaks differently, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) strangely indulgent of the Ethiopian financial institutions' statistics, the picture is one of glaring exaggeration and inaccuracy that does a huge disservice to the Ethiopian people, Mariam concludes.
While the greatest foreign influences on Sudanese youth culture have been predominantly American in recent years, there are signs that the Chinese government is beginning to get in on the act, writes Owen Grafham.
There is much uncertainty around the 2 March arrest of Agathe Habyarimana, widow of former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana. Following a visit to Rwanda by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Agathe was arrested and subsequently released on bail, writes Horace Campbell, a turn of events that appears but a part of the murky collusion between Rwanda and France around the militarisation of the eastern DR Congo.
The late Fatima Meer was 'was to me like that elusive relative is to you', writes Azad Essa, a person who lived an incredible life whom you never got to know and who lacks the genuine recognition they deserve.
Economist David Ricardo's theory of 'comparative advantage', despite being highly dubious, continues to exert a high degree of influence on Tanzanian policymakers, writes Chambi Chachage.
Last month, as Jews around the world prepared for Passover, Egyptian border guards were killing migrants trying to cross into Israel. How many of us, as we sat at our Seder tables, were even aware of the dramatic parallel to the Passover story taking place on the present-day Egyptian-Israeli border?
In his Independence Day address, President Robert Mugabe spoke of the need for Zimbabweans to “foster an environment of tolerance and treating each other with dignity and respect irrespective of age, gender, race, ethnicity, tribe, political or religious affiliation." At the same time, four WOZA activists, Jenni Williams, Magodonga Mahlangu, Clara Manjengwa and Celina Madukani were spending their fourth day in the cold, dark, filthy cells of Harare Central Police Station.
Almost four weeks have already passed since the six of the seven Saharawi human right activists, held at the Moroccan prison of Sale, began their open hunger strike. Their were arrested and detained, on 8 October 2010, on their return from a family visit to the Saharawi refugees camps in south West of Algeria. The Moroccan government intends to bring them before a military court on account of that trip.
The IBSA Fund, which finances anti-poverty projects in the most vulnerable countries, is an example of the spirit in which India, Brazil and South Africa wish to build their partnership, their leaders say. The fund was set up in 2004, one year after the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum was created, with annual contributions of one million dollars from each member. It currently supports reconstruction in Haiti after the January earthquake, agriculture in Guinea-Bissau, and projects in other African and Asian countries like Burundi and Cambodia.
The following is an with Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, conducted by Zahra Moloo. Commenting on the influences on his writing, Okri discusses a writer's 'natural journey' and the importance of drawing upon as wide a set of literature as possible.
Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the majority of black South Africans remain excluded from the country’s land and formal economy. Udo W. Froese asks whether the talk of national reconciliation and nation-building is simply propaganda.
‘Humanitarian intervention’ in Haiti, South African attitudes to HIV/AIDS and condom use, police killings in Lagos and everyday life in the aftermath of an earthquake are among the stories covered by Sokari Ekine in this week’s overview of the African blogosphere.
In May, disarmament organisations will assemble alongside government delegations meeting for the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. But the ‘discussion, analysis and political course of action that bring real disarmament will not come from refining the discourses dominated by those who currently hold power and control debate, but by rendering them irrelevant,’ argues Andrew Lichterman – it’s time for conversations that chart a new way forward.
Cuba’s offer to rebuild Haiti’s entire national health service is arguably the most ambitious and impressive pledge made at the UN’s recent donor conference, write Emily J. Kirk, John M. Kirk and Norman Girvan, so why then have its efforts been largely ignored by the media, while those of other governments have been praised?
As South Africa prepares to celebrate Freedom Day on 27 April, Motsoko Pheko warns that the negotiated settlement that ended apartheid 16 years ago failed to take into consideration ‘the primary objectives for which the liberation struggle was fought’. The country’s constitution may be the best in the world, but isn’t it time it was amended on the fundamental issues that affect the majority poor, Pheko asks.
An exhibition of art from the Nigerian Kingdom of Ife at the British Museum isn’t only exquisitely beautiful, it is ‘something of absolute historical importance’, writes Joy Onyejiako. But given the low-key public response to the show, how much will it actually transform the ‘deeply embedded notion of African art as essentially primitive’ and encourage ‘the notion of a truly contemporary African artist’?
People born after 1980 have benefited little from 30 years of Zimbabwe’s independence, writes the Youth Alliance Democracy, thanks to the government’s continued failure to empower young people, rather than seeing them as equal partners in politics. Half of political representatives – from local government to the cabinet – should be ‘youths below the ages of 35, who can forward and address the youth concerns and youth mainstreaming in all national policies and processes’, the alliance argues.
Al-Qaida claiming responsibility for Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, Omar al-Bashir's notion of 'free and fair elections' for Sudan, and inspecting Umara Yar'Adua as a guard of honour all feature in this week's cartoons from Gado.
In a piece written for Pambazuka News in 2007, Annwen E. Bates looked at how Africa’s lack presented as spectacle is used ‘to legitimise Euro-American programmes of salvation – from colonialism to aid involvement’. With South Africa in the spotlight ahead of the football World Cup in June, Bates revisits some of the ideas raised by her original article.
Much of Kenyan civil society wants politicians to leave the current draft of the constitution alone, fearing that they will make only those changes that benefit themselves, and that disadvantage ordinary citizens, writes Yash Ghai. As various groups put pressure on the politicians to change specific provisions, from a gender, religious or other perspective, Ghai argues that if Kenya is to get a new constitution at all, it may be worth accepting compromises on some issues.
The commitment of African finance ministers to continental integration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the declarations of their own heads of state has come into question after national delegations from South Africa, Rwanda and Egypt succeeded in deleting any reference to budgetary targets for education, health, agriculture and water in the report and resolutions of the annual meeting of the African Union and Economic Commission for the Africa Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, which took place in Malawi at the end of March. Geoffrey Njora explores the possible consequences of their actions.
Fifty years after ‘18 African countries allegedly gained their “independence” from colonialism’, it is ‘safe to state that most of Africa suffers from the delusion of being independent’, argues Hama Tuma. ‘Colonialism played many tricks on gullible Africans,’ writes Tuma, ‘and its most damaging joke has been to declare that it has left…while actually rushing back in through the back door.'
The Kenyan people cannot have leaders who don’t have their interests at heart, writes redINK, ‘We must organise ourselves and identify a genuine alternative leadership.’
Oxfam America’s endorsement of biotechnology sets a very dangerous precedent of being used by the industry in their struggle to force the adoption of GM crops in spite of strong global resistance. The shocking endorsement of transgenic crops in the face of diverse and voluminous literature countering their stance, threatens to damage Oxfam’s relationship with longtime allies and its reputation as an independent organisation.
What do you do with numbers so big that
They stop being people
And start being data
And you put them on paper
And make life or death
With tired calculators
What do you do with your heart so big
Do you put it on freeze
Shun the bleeding disease
Do you take it in stride
Would you still feel alive
Do you sustain
A million little bolts of pain
Or deny that bitter refrain
and Stay Calm?
The Katiba Sasa! Campaign is a civil society initiative aimed at ensuring that Kenya gets a new constitution. The National Civil Society Congress (NCSC) declares 2010 the Year of Transformation. The campaign was launched to ensure that Kenyans enact a new constitution to begin the process of transformation.
The Zanzibar International Film Festival is the largest multi disciplinary art and cultural festival in Africa. Dedicated to the exhibition of films, music and Panorama, each year over 150 films made in Africa, Middle East, Europe, Latin America, USA and Asia are exhibited. Currently ZIFF is accepting applications for all African films and films from the Dhow Countries region - South East Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, The Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and the Indian Ocean Islands.
The Harare International Festival of the Arts roars into life on April 27 at venues in and around the capital. Festival organisers held a pre-launch press briefing on Friday April 9th 2010 at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe where they unveiled the festival programme.
Since its first edition in 2008, Bayimba Cultural Foundation has organised a number of workshops prior to the annual Bayimba International Festival of Music and Arts with a view to stimulate artistic creativity and to ensure that all disciplines of arts find their way to the Festival. For 2010, Bayimba Cultural Foundation decided to include a Photography Workshop prior to the 3rd edition of the Festival (scheduled for 17-19 September, 2010). The results of the workshop will be exhibited during the Festival and in other locations after the Festival.
Application is open to all professional visual artists from all over the world who have been professionally active for at least the past 3 years (your resume/CV should reflect professional activities since 2007 or earlier).
This 10 week Creative Writing course will look at various techniques and exercises to open up & improve writing writing skills, work with metaphor and imagery, create texts and narratives to given themes and word counts as well as free writing. The end goal will be to write a 1000 word short story. There is no criteria other than a willingness to open up one's writing; the course is designed that people of varying writing experience can participate and each draw their individual benefits.
Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president Robert Zoellick to South Africa and the global climate? Notwithstanding South Africa's existing US$75 billion foreign debt, on April 8 the bank added a $3.75 billion loan to South Africa's electricty utility Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world's fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi. It will spew 25 million tons of the climate pollutant carbon dioxide into the air each year.
On the International Day of Peasants' Struggle, April 17, FIAN International together with many other civil society actors calls for an immediate stop of land grabbing. A new report published today by FIAN International documents the findings of two research missions on land grabbing to Kenya and Mozambique, and concludes that land grabbing violates human rights.
The first-ever African Grandmothers' Gathering takes place on Mother's Day weekend in Manzini, Swaziland - and forty-three Canadian grandmothers will be there, representing thousands of women who form the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Since 2006, the campaign has raised more than seven million dollars to support African grandmothers who are parenting their orphaned grandchildren in the most challenging of circumstances.