Pambazuka News 438: Remembering the Soweto youth uprising
Pambazuka News 438: Remembering the Soweto youth uprising
Sanusha Naidu does a roundup of the week's Sino-African news
During the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese relations with African countries were driven by ideological considerations, with China presenting itself as an alternative to both the West and the Soviet Union. During that time, China’s support consisted mainly of moral and material support for liberation struggles. During the 1980s, the relationship shifted towards economic co-operation based on common aims. After the end of the “Cold war”, China attached importance to both political and economic benefits and portrayed itself as an attractive economic partner and political friend.
China’s economy has continued to feel the brunt of the global crisis. Global economic activity continued to decline in the first part of 2009, even as tentative signs of stabilization have emerged recently in several countries. However, very expansionary fiscal and monetary policies have kept the economy growing respectably. Fiscal stimulus is centered on the infrastructure-oriented “RMB 4 trillion” stimulus plan and the monetary stimulus has led to a surge in new bank lending. Government-influenced investment has soared.
The trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor will continue on 13 July at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone has announced."The lawyers for the former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, will begin their defence against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity on 13 July," the court said in a statement.
Niger's former Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, has urged the country's political class to exhibit more responsibility in a bid to avoid some "useless rifts" about the debate on President Mamadou Tandja's bid to change the constitution through a referendum to have a third five-year term. “It is important that our political class shows a keen sense of responsibility in a bid to avoid in our dear country some useless rifts, by respecting constitutional legality,” he said.
The Comoros autonomous islands will hold legislative and local government elections on 2 August, the permanent representative of the African Union (AU) in Moroni, Mourad Taiati has told journalists. The AU official, who was speaking at the end of a meeting in Moroni with the Comoran Foreign Relations Minister, Ahmed Ben Said Jaffar, stressed that the elections were the expression of a “fervent wish” of the Comoran authorities.
Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had talks with senior European officials on the political and economic situation in his country and secured financial assistance for the administration. Tsvangirai, who is on a working visit to Brussels, told a press conference at the end of discussions that he was satisfied with the financial commitments made by the European officials.
Zimbabwe is still suffering "persistent and serious" human rights violations, Amnesty International says. The organisation's secretary general, Irene Khan, made the comments at the end of a six-day visit to the country. "Although the level of political violence is significantly less compared to last year, the human rights situation is precarious," she said.
The report of the government-constituted Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, submitted to Nigeria’s President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on 1 December 2008, offers an opportunity to reduce violent conflict significantly and begin longer-term regional development in the oil-rich region. The government needs to respond urgently and positively, in particular by accepting a third-party mediator to facilitate discussions of amnesty and demobilisation of militants, in order to dispel growing misgivings in the Delta, save the region from further violence and organised criminality, and ensure Nigeria’s continued reliability as a leading source of energy for the world.
Five more people have died of their injuries after a suicide attack on the Somali security minister, bringing the total number of dead to 35. Omar Hashi Aden was buried hours after the blast at a hotel in Beledweyne, north of the capital, Mogadishu. The funerals for some of the other victims, who included Somali diplomats, are being held on Friday.
Militants in Nigeria's oil-producing region say they have blown up a major pipeline belonging to Italian energy firm Agip. Agip has not yet commented on the claims. A military spokesman denied that a pipeline had been hit but said there had been a "skirmish". He also denied the militants' claims to have disarmed seven soldiers.
A UN base in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been fired on by army soldiers in a dispute over pay. It is the latest in a string of mutinies in North Kivu by soldiers who have not been paid for six months. A senior UN peacekeeper told the BBC that army commanders are not handing over soldiers' wages.
Members of armed paramilitary groups are a serious threat to civilians who fled violence and insecurity and are now returning to their villages, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. People who have returned to their home regions have been killed, forcibly recruited into paramilitary groups, and threatened with death by armed men who in many cases have seized their land.
The Tanzanian and Ugandan governments should ensure that refugees living in camps due to close on June 30 and July 31, 2009 are not forcibly returned to their home countries and are immediately given full information about their options, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch also urged both governments to avoid repeating Rwanda's unlawful forced return of up to 504 refugees to Burundi at gunpoint on June 2, after it closed its last refugee camp for Burundians.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should reject the Sudanese government's request to terminate the mandate of the special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to the council members.
Gaza, South Africa and Thailand are among the world's worst places to be a refugee, according to the latest annual World Refugee Survey released here Wednesday by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). The survey, which was issued in advance of World Refugee Day Jun. 20, found that the number of refugees had dropped modestly worldwide in the past year – from 14 million to 13.6 million, according to USCRI.
As Omar Bongo Ondimba, the Gabonese president who died at age 73 in Barcelona on Jun. 8, is buried in Franceville in the south-west of Gabon on Thursday, his 41-year-reign as absolute ruler of this oil-producing country of 1.5 million has received mixed reviews. In neighbouring Congo, a seven-day period of national mourning has been declared. Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso was closely aligned with Bongo; his daughter, Edith Lucie, was married to the Gabonese president at the time of her own death in March.
An international coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), mostly comprised of women’s groups, is calling for a "gender equitable" response to the global financial crisis, which is to be debated at a UN summit of world leaders next week. "The United Nations, not the international financial institutions (IFIs), must lead this process," Gigi Francisco, general coordinator of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), told IPS.
Thirty-three civil organisations from across the world, including a Zimbabwean organisation, have urged the World bank to increase funding for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS in developing countries where the bank manages investments and development projects. This follows a demonstration by Gender Action, the only organization dedicated to monitoring International Financial Institution (IFI) investments for their gender impacts, that the World Bank’s funding for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS projects during 2000-2007 constituted less than one percent of total World Bank spending during this period.
It has been established that five WOZA members and three journalists were arrested after six peaceful protests were violently broken up by police in Harare on Thursday. Four women, including Clara Manjengwa and Maria Majoni, remain in custody in Harare Central Police Station. One woman who had been arrested with her baby, and the three journalists, have been released.
South Africa's biggest farmers' union on Friday criticised the government's plans to scrap a voluntary system of buying land from white farmers to give to poor blacks. Johannes Moller, president of farmers union AgriSA said the move to scrap the willing-buyer, willing-seller model, under which the government negotiates with owners to buy land, would be unconstitutional unless the system were replaced with a similar one.
Egypt has asked the African Development Bank (AfDB) for a budgetary support loan to offset the impact of the global economic crisis, a senior bank official said on Friday."We are in discussions over a budget support loan with the Government of Egypt to address the impact of the financial crisis and to support the reforms that are under way," Gabriel Negatu, the AfDB's financial reforms director, said.
Pharmaceutical giant Tibotec and the non-profit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) have teamed up to expedite the development of TMC207, which could become the first TB drug with a new mechanism of action in 40 years. Interim data from an ongoing Phase II study of TMC207 was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the placebo-controlled study of 47 patients with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), it was found that 48 percent of patients receiving TMC207 in combination with standard treatment converted to negative sputum culture after eight weeks compared with 9 percent of those who received placebo and standard treatment.
Eighteen people drowned and another 29 are missing and presumed dead after a smuggling boat capsized in the Gulf of Aden due to strong winds and rough seas this week off the coast of Yemen. The boat, which departed June 11 from the Somali village of Marera, east of the northern port of Bossaso, sailed for four days across the Gulf of Aden prior to reaching the shore of Yemen's Hadramout region Monday morning.
"My worry is that my children are going to be slaves because they won't have anything. These foreign people come to South Africa with nothing, but tomorrow he has cash, third day he owns a shop and fourth day he has a car. Where do these foreign people get this money?" Small business owners are venting their frustrations on 'foreign nationals' - among them many Somalis - who own shops in the country's townships, causing experts to warn that xenophobic violence could increase.
Mozambique has one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates, with more than ten percent of babies not reaching the age of one, according to the United Nations Children Fund’s 2009 State of the World’s Children Report. The main cause of child death in Mozambique is malaria, closely followed by HIV/AIDS, the report states.
The central questions addressed in this bulletin concern the fate of democracy, especially as seen by Africans themselves. Do they say they want democracy, a preference that we call the popular demand for democracy? And do they think they are getting it - do they perceive that their leaders are providing a supply of democracy? Moreover, if there is evidence of democratic development in Africa, to what extent are democratic regimes established, stable, or consolidated?
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a briefing note based on the full Stamp Out Poverty report entitled "Assessing the Alternatives: Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries (http://www.stampoutpoverty.org). This report evaluates the options for new funding mechanisms, and advocates a mix, including a currency transaction tax. Also included in this Bulletin are a selection of links and brief descriptions of other recent reports on the issue of climate change, particularly as it affects Africa.
The gays and lesbians debate threatened to split the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance into two at the just ended Constitutional Indaba held in Bulawayo as the men of cloth exchanged harsh words in defence and against the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution, Zimbabwe Telegraph reports. A larger fraction of the pastors who attended the Indaba felt it was the role of the church to push for the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution as it was left upon the church to fight for the rights of the gays and lesbians so as to win them to Christ.
Kenya, South Africa and Tunisia have emerged as the top innovators of Africa in a report on the continent's competitiveness launched last week. The three countries — which scored highly on ratings of their scientific capacity — are on a par with such innovative countries as Brazil and India, according to The Africa Competitiveness Report 2009, produced by the World Economic Forum, the African Development Bank and the World Bank Africa.
A new global report on Environment has warned that Uganda could be a total dessert in 40 years if the government fails to protect the country’s forests. Uganda has reportedly lost more than 30 percent of its forest between 1990 and 2005. The findings of the State of the Environment Report for 2008, has blamed the great loss of forest cover to human activities, which include among others agriculture, a fast growing population and rapid urbanisation.
With the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro providing a backdrop under simmering tropical sunshine, a group of women in Mijongweni village break into song. The song, in Swahili, praises the benefits of protecting the environment and living in harmony with nature for the survival of generations; values vital to the survival of one of the rarest hardwood trees in the world, the African blackwood. Known to locals as mpingo, the African blackwood (dalbergia melanoxylon) is a tree that has been exploited to extinction in southern Ethiopia and Kenya and is currently only found in Tanzania and northern Mozambique. Tanzania boasts large tracts of natural forest and woodlands
About 5,000 new automatic weather stations are set to be deployed across Africa, under a climate change initiative announced today by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Global Humanitarian Forum, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and mobile telecommunications companies Ericsson and Zain. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region facing the most immediate risk of droughts and floods due to climate change, according to a recent Global Humanitarian Forum report. Agricultural yields in some areas are expected to fall by 50 per cent as early as 2020.
MPs in Uganda have demanded an explanation on the fluctuating rainfall pattern, which they said had become difficult for farmers to understand. Discussing the looming famine in many parts of the country, several MPs said farmers could not tell when to plant the crops due to the erratic rainfall patterns. Samuel Odonga Otto (FDC) said Pader district had experienced drought in the last two months which weather experts had said would be a rainy season.
“In politics and sociology you reach a tipping point and once you’ve reached it, things change,” says Min-whee Kang of the UN Children's Fund. “This is what we’re aiming at to stop female genital mutilation and cutting in The Gambia.” But a strong attachment to the practice in the country means anti-FGM activists must combat the custom indirectly through focusing on improving girls' and women's health and education.
It is prayer time at the Nur madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado Province, on the northern coast of Mozambique. At this school, education does not stop at religious studies; on Saturdays, the malimo (teacher), Mitilage Rashid, talks to the 120 students about HIV and AIDS. In 2008 Rashid attended a course on HIV run by the Islamic Council of Mozambique, in partnership with other organizations, where he and 30 other teachers learned about the epidemic and how to conduct education campaigns at their schools.
Healthcare workers in Yambio, capital of Sudan's Western Equatoria State, have warned that the number of HIV-positive people receiving treatment has risen, and they cannot keep up with the demand for medication. About 700 HIV-positive people are being treated by a local faith-based group, the Christian Brothers. "The issue of HIV in Yambio is getting bigger and bigger every day; we even find difficulty to provide services due the big numbers of people who are infected with HIV and AIDS," said Brother Daniel Pius.
Nearly 20 percent of Mozambique's civil servants are HIV positive, but given that several government ministries lack reliable data, this number could even be higher, a study has warned. According to a Demographic Impact Study by the government, around 19.2 percent of 167,420 public employees were found to be HIV positive, which is higher than the national prevalence rate of 16 percent.
An initiative that uses music and dance to convey HIV prevention messages to young people, dance4life, has won an award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Communication in Africa from the African Network for Strategic Communication in Health and Development (AfriComNet}. "Adults are still guessing but dance4life has already taken a giant step," their press release quotes one young man, Mugalu, from Uganda, as saying.
Caroline Mbewe, 14, would prefer to be in school, but instead is a domestic worker for an affluent family in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe. "My bosses treat me well but I don't want to continue working. I want to be like their daughters; I want to go to school," she told IRIN. As in the rest of the developing world, poor families in Malawi are often forced to send their children out to earn a wage rather than complete their education.
The South African health system is in deep crisis. We need a major transformation of our health system and we need it now. Problems in the public health sector are splashed across the front pages of our newspapers on a weekly basis: patients being turned away from public clinics and hospitals and some dying as a result, some provinces running out of antiretroviral drugs, the doctors’ strike, and so on.
It is with great sadness that I report that Giovanni Arrighi passed peacefully yesterday morning in Baltimore (Thursday June 18, 2009), with his partner Beverly Silver, and his son, Andrea, at his side.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been invited as a special guest to participate at the 13th ordinary session of the assembly of heads of State and government of the African Union (AU) themed ‘Investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security’ that is scheduled to take place in Sirte, Libya, from 1 to 3 July 2009. During this summit, African leaders are expected to adopt a framework and guidelines on land policies in Africa, a document that was produced by the AU in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank. Relevant to the theme of the summit, the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development suggested, ahead of the three-day World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, that investing in small-scale agricultural projects in developing countries would be a ‘safety net’ as the world struggles to limit the impact of the economic crisis.
Elsewhere, the chairperson of the AU Commission, Jean Ping, met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and other government officials in Caracas to prepare for the Africa-South America summit scheduled to take place in Caracas, Venezuela. In addition, the AU Commission chairperson announced African countries’ interest in exploring possibilities and advantages of a closer cooperation between both regional organisations and that African Union intends on closely monitoring the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas to learn from its experiences in social and economic spheres.
The AU, expressing deep concern at the increased presence of armed groups in Somalia, condemned foreign jihadists who undermine the peace and reconciliation process in the country by helping local insurgents to fight President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government and AU peacekeepers. The AU, considering the report of the mission undertaken by its peace and the security council to West Africa to evaluate the political and security situation there, has urged Guinea Bissau armed forces to refrain from any interference in political issues and to take the necessary measures to guarantee the security of the candidates and the electoral process. The Southern African Development Community has called on Madagascar’s political rivals to consider peaceful dialogue to end months of political crisis and has delegated Joaquim Chissano, former Mozambican president, to lead the country’s all-party dialogue. The chairperson of the AU, Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi, addressing prominent Italian women on his first visit to Italy since the Libyan revolution, called for ‘a ‘women’s revolution’ worldwide to correct the false notion of equality between men and women. On the day of the African child commemorating thousands of Black school children who were maimed and killed during the 1976 Soweto uprising, the UN Millennium Campaign called on African states, civil society organisations and the private sector to tackle child and maternal mortality and gender inequality in universal primary education among others.
In other news, finance ministers and governors of central banks of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) approved a report of the inter-institutional working group on the ECOWAS single currency that articulates a strategy for realising a single currency for the region by 2020. The East African Community has started a series of public sessions to gage views from the private sector on issues of trade in services ahead of the signing of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. More than half of the 14 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa free trade area members opted out of the regional economic bloc’s ceremonial customs union stating that ‘they are either not ready for it, indifferent, or not convinced by the trade creation potential of the new arrangement’, which many feel was launched prematurely.
As some countries approach the second round of reviews, analysts examine the performance of the African Peer Review Mechanism underlining the slow pace of renewing the membership of the panel of eminent persons and of its secretariat as well as the lack of transparency of both processes. In a report recently launched by the Africa Progress Panel, the panel stresses that most of the problems that Africa faces such the current global crisis and climate change are creations of the North, but that it is Africa, which is worst affected and least able to cope. The report adds, however, that the main responsibility for tackling those challenges lies with Africa’s own leaders. Moreover, the Action Group of Africa gives a critical view of ‘malpractices going on at the Pan African Parliament’ and suggests using the principle of adult suffrage to make the process of electing African legislators more transparent and democratic.
Finally, AfriMAP invites submissions of papers with proposals of implementation of the African Youth Charter, which was adopted by the assembly of heads of State and government of the AU in July 2006.
Pambazuka News 436: Climate colonialism and the new scramble for Africa
Pambazuka News 436: Climate colonialism and the new scramble for Africa
Kilombo was set up in the UK in 1997 by African anti-IMF (International Monetary Fund) activists forced into exile in the 1980s. However, when they arrived in the West they found that little or nothing was known about the fierce struggles waged by the African street in opposition to the IMF's structural adjustment policies. This resistance, ruthlessly repressed in large parts of the continent, received little media coverage outside Africa. Kilombo was set up partly to address the lack of reporting of Africa's home-grown struggles for social justice, and partly to provide an independent alternative to the myths and misinformation that pass as news about Africa.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/436/56711_bombing_tmb.jpgFollowing the launch of the Nigerian military's latest campaign of violence against communities in the Niger Delta, Sokari Ekine looks at coverage of recent events in the African blogosphere, and finds the response to be ‘disappointingly sparse’. ‘I expected to read that there were Nigerians outraged by this attack on their fellow citizens by the Nigerian military, especially since the Nigerian mainstream media has been uncritical. Unfortunately there wasn’t as much as I had hoped and hope is all too important in the struggle against tyranny,’ says Ekine.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/436/56713_Brian_Chikwava_tmb.jp... this year's now announced, Mildred Kiconco Barya interviews Brian Chikwava, the 2004 winner of the prize. The winner of the 2009 prize will be announced at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 6 July.
cc Reflecting on Kenyan society's unquestioning acceptance of the police's right to intimidate and even kill those labelled as 'Mungiki', Wangari Maathai considers the dubious culture of impunity around harassing those supposedly in league with the Mungiki sect. With the pervasive demonisation of the Mungiki militia group providing an effective cover for the killing of members of the Kikuyu community – Mungiki and non-Mungiki alike – ordinary citizens are reluctant to speak out, both for fear of being accused of supporting the sect and of the reactions of Mungiki militia to criticism. Calling on the political and religious leadership of the Kikuyu community to face up to the challenge in its midst, Maathai urges the country to heal the growing rift between the community and other Kenyans.
It’s in the drop
Of water, rain water that turns into a pool
Breeding ground for jealous ambition
The domicile of lost and downtrodden faith
It’s in the drop
Of silence, pin-drop silence that becomes an echo
Laden with guilt from feigned friendships and half-truths
The emptiness out of years of self-patronisation
It’s in the drop
Of a beat, that swells gently into passionate frenzy
Exploring the vulnerability of my frustrations in living
The dance in honor of you and me, oh yes, we the living dead
It’s in the drop
Of one dollar that the world brands as my daily poverty
Yet in my world, my richness is like mood swings
Undulating between 60 and 80 shillings
60’s my mum’s generation; 80’s my generation
It’s in the drop
The beginning of the pool, the echo, the frenzy,
The unlimited potential to redefine universal perspective
Poverty is only the lack of ideas
Surveying a history of exploitation of Africa's people and resources, Lord Aikins Adusei denounces the multinational corporations continuing to plunder the continent's natural wealth. Situating today's ongoing exploitation of African resources within an established tradition of external interference, Adusei decries the ability of corporations to avoid paying taxes and keep dictators indifferent to their citizens' plight in their pocket. But with the emergence of China as a viable funding alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the author concludes that the 'second colonialism' driving Euro-American globalisation may be at an end.
cc In anticipation of Denmark's hosting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference – the COP15 – in December this year, Collins Cheruiyot says that now is the time for Africa to be proactive in asserting its right to be heard. Calling upon its leaders to seize the opportunity to represent their continent in Copenhagen, Cheruiyot stresses that Africa must not allow itself to be short-changed on so crucial a challenge.
cc Haiti may have been the first black republic, but Anne Khaminwa is unconvinced by 
cc Reflecting on the standoff between Uganda and Kenya in the Migingo Island dispute, Korir Sing’Oei considers the nature of each state's claim on the island. With both Uganda and Kenya claiming their right to the island on the strength of colonial-era maps, Sing’Oei states that a resolution on the matter will identify the losing state as having transgressed international law. Pointing out that the Migingo case raises interesting questions around citizenship and Africa's incomplete decolonisation, Sing’Oei argues that greater involvement for the East African Community at large would facilitate dialogue between the two disputing states.
cc In an IT for Change, discusses the history behind the US government's supervision of the Internet, the debate around sovereignty over its basic structures, and the global push for a more democratic approach to overseeing the World Wide Web.
The Guadeloupe Communist Party (GCP) is calling for international support for independence for the people of Guadeloupe, which is currently designated as an overseas territory of France. ‘France tries to make-believe that Guadeloupe is not a colony but a French department. Our people has never been consulted about its political status and therefore has not been able to exert its right to self-determination,’ said Felix Alain Flémin, the GCP’s secretary general.
Thousands of Ethiopian women have turned to begging with their children in order to survive, advocacy group has said. The group claims that thousands of Ethiopian children are dying of malnutrition every day, as a result of a famine affecting close to six million people – but which remains hidden from the public and from the international community. The group has called for donor agencies to reassess their development efforts in Ethiopia, saying that the government’s policies on land, agriculture, and trade and bilateral agreements it has signed have had ‘serious impacts on food production and consumption’.
The Nigerian government’s authorisation of the massacre of people in the Niger Delta’s Gbaranmatu kingdom suggests that it has no intention of reaching a peaceful settlement in the region, the Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition has said. Human rights abuses perpetrated by government and military task forces have reached a level that the international community can no longer ignore, NDCSC suggests. At present, ‘human needs are continually being frustrated on a large scale by illegitimate federal and state regimes in the Niger Delta’, the group says. NDCSC blames the current cycle of violence on the structural violence of the state in response to a peaceful agitation by the Ogoni social movement. Peace lies in putting the people of the region at the heart of a process of sustainable development.
Sokari Ekine pays her last respects to Fr Gerard Jean-Juste, a gentle man and a liberation theologist who dedicated his life to fight for justice for Haitians in Haiti and the US.
cc As South African President Jacob Zuma starts legal proceedings against renowned cartoonist Zapiro, for sketches based on Zuma’s appearances in court on rape and corruption charges in 2008, Annar Cassam writes that she isn’t a fan of some of Zapiro’s work either. Cassam comments on two of Zapiro’s cartoons, one which depicts his own personal angst after having ‘lost faith’ in the ANC, and the other which shows what he thinks lies ahead for the majority of voters who voted for the ANC because of what the leadership promised them. Quoting Nelson Mandela, Cassam speaks of the need for South Africans to combine their ‘collective wisdom’ and the ‘talents and energies’ to address the glaring inequalities together. Cassam argues that Zapiro’s cartoons make a mockery of the aspirations of impoversished voters, and encourages citizens to switch parties rather than work with the ANC, which she argues, ‘remains the most important and the most inclusive organisation for the average South African’.
cc Returning to DRC for the first time since 1996, Lansana Gberie finds that a little cash comes in handy for dealing with bureaucracy and that it is impossible to get anything done without a ‘fixer’. Considering the conflicts in the country’s history, Gberie notes that in Congo ‘money is always at the centre of the bigger drama of suffering’ and that justice – or the interests of victims of mass atrocities – has had to be subordinated to wider geopolitical interests. Leaving Kinshasa after just over a week, Gberie finds himself feeling that he is ‘in a place whose future has come and gone’.
cc As climate change forces economies around the world to cap carbon emissions, investors are pouring cash into the development of biofuels, as a replacement for fossil fuels. Seif Madoffe writes that this has led to ‘climate colonialism’ – ‘a massive land-grabbing scramble in Africa’, as European companies – some with foreign aid money support – rapidly establish enormous carbon monoculture fields in tropical countries. With reference to the Saadani National Park in Tanzania, Madoffe asks whether it is ethical for rich countries in the North to make ‘renewable’ carbon in places where it has serious negative impacts on poor people and tropical forests that will be cut down to create space for ‘carbon fields’ in monoculture plantations.
As Kenya commemorates Madaraka Day, the Partnership for Change calls for the full implementation of the National Accord, and pledges to play its role in making the Accord a reality.
The sets out its concerns and recommendations for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), regarding ESA-EC economic partnership agreements (EPA) negotiations.
, the and ending
Tributes to Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, pan-Africanist, fighter, comrade and friend to so many, continue to pour in at Pambazuka News. Since last week, we have received nearly 60 tributes bringing the total to more than 250. Tributes include those from Dismas Nkunda, Norah Matovu-Winyi Executive Director FEMNET, Breyten Breytenbach, Juma V. Mwapachu, East African Community, Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo, Owei Lakemfa, Ibrahim Abdullah, Ama Biney, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, L Muthoni Wanyeki, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi and many more. If you wish to contribute, please go to
As Ken Saro-Wiwa stood before the hangman’s noose in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil capital, he spoke not just of his imminent death but also of the campaign against Royal Dutch Shell that had won him international attention. Sentenced to death after a deeply flawed trial, he had come to be seen as a martyr by those opposing alleged abuses involving the oil industry in his country. According to fellow activists, his last words before his execution were: “Lord, take my soul but the struggle continues.”
The Spring 2009 issue of the Peace and Conflict Review reflects the growing dialogue between theorists and practitioners, addressing philosophical issues of methodology and socio-political analysis as well as practical ways for protecting human rights and facilitating sustainable and equitable development.
From 15 to 18 June 2009, Niger will host the 3rd edition of the Grand Diplomatic North-South Conferences (GDNSC) initiated by ACECI (www.aceci.org). This 3rd GDNSC having as theme "Translate the MDGs into a poverty reduction law ", is co-organised by the National Assembly of Niger, the Consortium composed of civil society organisations and networks, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in cooperation with Niger’s technical and financial partners.
By 2011, the International Labour Organisation will adopt an international standard listing the rights of domestic workers. Domestic/household workers want the right to be treated properly as workers. An ILO Convention would be an important step forward.
An effort to fight global poverty and hunger may become a Trojan horse to force genetically engineered crops on countries and farmers that do not want them. In the Senate, Senators Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) introduced the Global Food Security Act, which increases funding for agricultural research in the developing world, and a companion bill in the House of Representatives is expected to be introduced soon.
Felix Alain Flémin, secretary general of the Guadeloupe Communist Party (GCP) has called for international solidarity in support of the struggle for independence and self-determination of the people of those Caribbean islands under French colonial dominion. “We are a nation whose right to self-determination is not recognized by France. We are looking for international support for the islands to return to the UN list of colonial territories”, stated Flémin during a visit to OSPAAAL headquarters.
The objective of the PanAfrican Research Agenda on the Pedagogical Integration of information and communication technologies is to better understand how the pedagogical integration of ICTs can enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Africa. The national reports from participating countries are now available.
African synergy is focused on facilitating cultural collaboration across Africa - in every way possible. Our goal is to see a decisive break with the legacy of ‘cultural isolation’ between African countries. To this end, we build arts linkages cross Africa - between French, Portuguese and English speaking Africa – the major fault-lines of isolation – as well between the regions of East, West and Southern Africa. African Synergy works through a network of festivals, venues and arts NGOs, comprising 75 cultural operators in 15 countries. We work in partnership.
In a particularly infuriating Article, the NewYorkTimes sites developing countries as the toughest places to monetize web traffic for web services like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. The article makes the argument that countries in South America, parts of Asia and Africa, are particularly hard to monetize due to the increased costs of serving rich media (like video and flash advertisements) to low bandwidth regions of the world.
The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, home to 270,000 Somali refugees, is the world's largest. Created 18 years ago as a stopgap, new fighting is driving thousands of additional refugees into the already overcrowded, overstretched camp.
Biofuels produced from the crop jatropha may be competing with food production for land and water, according to a new report released by two Friends of the Earth groups as the Jatropha World Summit begins in Ghana. The report – “Jatropha – wonder crop?” – investigates claims made by UK biofuels company D1 Oils about jatropha.
The first Kenyan photojournalist to win the CNN Multichoice Journalist Award has been banned by social networking site Facebook. Boniface Mwangi who won the CNN Africa Photojournalist of the Year 2008 is starting up a new Facebook profile after his was deleted last week due to his radical status updates. Commenting on the issue he said, “I was removed from Facebook due to controversial updates calling for political change and the youth to stop hero worshiping tribal leaders who have messed up our country.” One of his last comments before his profile was deleted was “Kenyans elect criminals to parliament all you need is money to get elected.” He had over 1,500 friends.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has now documented 40 cases of castration, severe sexual abuses and unlawful detention, which were carried out by officers of the British Government. The actual number of Kenyans who suffered this barbaric treatment at the hands of British officers in fact runs into their thousands. In recent years, following exhaustive research by historians, it has become clear that far from being the acts of a few rogue soldiers, the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of Kenyans during the Emergency Period (1950s to early 1960s) resulted from policies which were sanctioned at the highest levels of Government in London.
The Republic of Congo will delay finalising a multi-million hectare land deal with South African farmers until after a planned July presidential election, Congo Republic's minister of agriculture said. AgriSA, South Africa's main farmers union, has said it had been given tax breaks and rent-free access to arable, poultry and dairy farming on 10 million hectares of Congolese land for 99 years in what would be one of the largest such deals in Africa.
Investigating the impact of the 2003 Extractive Industries Review on a number of African countries, the contributors in this book find that a key dimension of the problem lies in the regulatory frameworks imposed on the African countries by the IMF and World Bank. They aim to convince academics, governments and industry that regulation needs to be reformed to create a mining industry favourable to social and economic development and environmental protection.
It has been just over a year since the few weeks of seeming madness in May 2008, when xenophobic violence broke out across South Africa, shocking the nation and attracting international condemnation. However, migrant women in South Africa consider that period as an example, albeit extreme, of what they experience in their daily lives as foreigners in South Africa. Research recently conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) on migrant women in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban – before, during and after the xenophobic attacks in May 2008 – found migrant women’s daily experiences of xenophobia far-reaching.