Three gay, lesbian and transgender individuals have been arrested in Uganda after peacefully protesting about an announcement from the Ugandan AIDS Commission that no resources would be directed to HIV programmes targeting gay men and other men who have sex with men. The arrests happened at the HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting which is currently taking place in Uganda.

An estimated 3 million HIV-positive patients in low- and middle-income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy at the end of 2007, according to a report released today. Although this is being praised as a “remarkable” public health achievement it means that less than a third of the 9 million-plus patients in need of anti-HIV drugs in the world’s poorer countries are actually being treated with them.

The war in northern Uganda has driven thousands of people from their homes to live in camps. Now, after a lot of trial an error, BOSCO Uganda has brought the internet and low-cost phone calls to the camps, giving the people a chance to tell their own story.

Can the media reduce prejudice and conflict? Understanding the mass media´s role in shaping prejudiced beliefs, norms and behaviours is very limited. A year-long field experiment in Rwanda tested the impact of a radio soap opera about two Rwandan communities in conflict, which featured messages about reducing intergroup prejudice, violence, and trauma.

Six hundred teachers have left classrooms in Kenyan schools for better paying jobs elsewhere in just the past six months, according to the Head Teachers Association and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT). That is about three teachers leaving the service every day.

Every day, the Dandora dumpsite in the eastern part of Nairobi receives 2,000 tonnes of rubbish -- about half of the waste generated daily by the capital's 4.5 million people. The 12-hectare site is a low mountain of smouldering trash. Vultures and marabou storks circle overhead in anticipation of a meal.

This paper argues that African politics needs to be viewed through a lens that recognises the formal constraints on executives and rejects the assumption that African leaders simply get what they want. Citing a series of recent cases in which African rulers are forced to accept something other than their preferred outcomes, the authors say that across sub-Saharan Africa, formal institutional rules are coming to matter much more than they used to and displace violence as the primary source of constraints on executive behaviour.

Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), which is an umbrella body of gay organisations in Uganda and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) are demanding immediate release of three lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activists arrested yesterday 4 June. They were apprehended at the 2008 HIV/AIDS Implementers Meeting taking place in that country currently.

Sudan will not surrender any individuals accused of war crimes in the country's Darfur region to the International Criminal Court, Sudan's UN ambassador has said. Abdalmahmood Mohamad said on Wednesday that Khartoum would not extradite any Sudanese to The Hague, a day after Sudan was accused of complicity in crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Lansana Conte, Guinea's president, has met his troops in a bid to end an escalating crisis over unpaid wages that saw soldiers go on the rampage in the capital, a military source said. The meeting on Friday is the first since the start of the pay protest, which has since grown to include other demands, including the departure of senior generals.

A survey on learning via technology (e-learning) in Africa suggests that expertise and management skills of the practitioners, not just advancing infrastructure and hardware, are key to the success of e-learning on the continent. The survey of people involved in e-learning in 42 African countries was released at the eLearning Africa conference in Accra, Ghana, from 28–30 May.

The Maasai are struggling with frequent water shortages which is threatening their way of life. But one women's group is taking action. Day in and day out from the months of March through to June, grey and white clouds float across the blue skies above Kajiado, southern Kenya. But each passing day, the rain they promise frequently fails to show up.

Mauritanian officials have emphasised they are not shifting sides towards Morocco in the conflict over Western Sahara, contrasting media reports originating in Morocco. Mauritania's relatively new government confirms it is to stay neutral in the conflict and maintain its recognition of the exiled Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

A disarmament pledge by two minor Rwandan Hutu rebel groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a welcome, if small, step to restoring peace in the devastated region, according to the government and analysts. Rwandan insurgents are one of the key elements in a complex web of armed groups in a region where violence, especially sexual violence against women, is still widespread five years after the official end of DRC's last civil war.

After years of dragging their feet over HIV/AIDS in their ranks, African armies are slowly making strides in curbing the spread of the pandemic, senior military officers at the fourth HIV Implementer's meeting in Kampala, Uganda, admitted this week. Since its formation in the mid-1980s, and all through the 1990s, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) lost thousands of soldiers to HIV. President Yoweri Museveni declared HIV a threat to national security as early as 1987.

More than 400,000 HIV-positive South Africans have begun antiretroviral treatment (ART) since the government launched its programme in 2004. But this impressive-sounding figure still only represents one third of the estimated number of people in need of treatment, and that number is expanding by an additional half a million people every year.

The international community must move beyond providing immediate basic services and develop a strategy to deal comprehensively with the dynamics of the current displacement crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Despite a precarious security situation, internally displaced people in North Kivu and the communities that host three-quarters of the total displaced population are trying to move forward with their lives, and they are doing so with or without the support of the international community.

Last week, 40 year-old Lindiwe Mazibuko, passed away at her home in Phiri after a lengthy illness related to cancer. Lindiwe was the first applicant in the landmark Phiri water rights case. Judgement was recently handed down in this case, in the High Court, in which the pre-paid water meters that Lindiwe had fought so valiantly against, were declared illegal and unconstitutional

This week’s blog review will focus on those blogs that deal exclusively or primarily with African literature.

Book SA – News

Book SA – News is the official blog of Book Southern Africa which host dozens of blogs by Southern African writers:

“BOOK Southern Africa is a literary news and social network for publishers, authors and the general book-buying and -reading public. BOOK SA reports on local fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, book happenings, reviews and more.

BOOK SA is also a free author and publisher website service for those involved in the world of Southern African literature. Our sites' special features help drive information about books throughout the web, attracting new audiences and creating more space for literary endeavours. Our goal is to help build the Southern African literary marketplace to new heights.”

Literary Tourism Blog
http://blog.literarytourism.co.za/

Literary Tourism Blog is another South African blog which is part of the KZN Literary Tourism website maintained by Lindy Stiebel, Professor in English Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Literary tourism is defined here as a literary genre which “deals with places and events from fictional texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include following the route a fictional character charts in a novel, visiting particular settings from a story or tracking down the haunts of a novelist. Literary tourists are specifically interested in how places have influenced writing and at the same time how writing has created place.”

Anglocamlit
http://anglocamlit.blogspot.com/

Anglocamlit, is a blog on Cameroon Literature in English which showcases works of fiction from Anglophone Cameroon and seeks to eradicate the widely-held view that there is a paucity of literary talent in the English speaking part of Cameroon:

“Is Cameroon Anglophone Literature non-existent? Or is there a thriving literary community in the former British Southern Cameroons which is simply not known on the national and international scene?

This blog will try to answer this question by profiling novelists, poets and playwrights from that former British trust territory, most of whose works are not available out of Cameroon, and have only limited distribution within Cameroon.

The blog will also focus on the emerging third generation Anglophone writers in the Diaspora who are part of what is increasingly being referred to as the Anglophone Cameroon Literary Renaissance.”

Discovery of Gambian Literature & Writing
http://www.gambianliterature.blogspot.com/

Discovery of Gambian Literature & Writing also seeks to introduce the world to the little-known Gambian literature:

“The following information on Gambian Writers (of literary texts) is meant to be shared with those interested in Gambian authors and their works. It is a humble contribution and far from exhaustive. Many thanks to Dr Jean-Dominique Penel, the coordinator and director of the research and to whom this is dedicated, Dr Momodou Tangara and Dr Pierre Gomez (lecturers University of The Gambia), Mr Saihou Bah (Principal Sheick Mass Kah), Ms Isatou Niang and Ms Aissa Dabo (Journalist)”.

Kenyan Poet
http://www.kenyanpoet.blogspot.com/

Kenyan Poet is ”A Kenyan Artistic Space that showcases the best in Kenyan Arts, Music, Creative writing, Spoken Word Poetry, art and book reviews as well as emerging art trends.”

Wordsbody
http://wordsbody.blogspot.com/

Wordsbody is a literary blog maintained by Molara Wood, a Nigerian writer and arts journalist based in London. The blog focuses on the Nigerian, African and international literature.

Poefrika
http://poefrika.blogspot.com/

Described as a “weblog of creative, Africa-inspired writing”, it carries both original poems by its creators (Rethabile Masilo and Phomolo both from Lesotho) and poems published elsewhere.

African Poetry Review (USA)
http://african-poetry.blogspot.com/

African Poetry Review (USA) is a blog run by Mark Lilleleht in Madison, Wisconsin:

“Thoughts on reading, reviewing, critiquing, considering African poetry; playing with poetry from across the Continent; engaging poets working in Africa and abroad; and generally just getting thoughts and knee-jerk reactions into a format that might encourage dialogue. Hopefully fruitful dialogue...”

Scribbles from the Den
[email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

A Nurse Education Specialist / CPD Coordinator is sought to deliver an 18 month programme of CPD for nurse teachers as well as develop, coordinate and implement CPD programmes for nurses and midwives in Somaliland. The postholder will play a key role in strengthening nursing and midwifery in Somaliland. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the development of human and institutional capacity, crucial for the rebuilding of the health system in Somaliland. Closing date for applications: 13th June 2008. Telephone interviews in the week beginning 16th June 2008.

Savo Heleta looks at the ways death tolls are manipulated for political ends and argues the same could be happening in Darfur.

The conflict in Darfur, now in its sixth year, is for a long time one of the prime news around the world. Other conflicts come and go, but Darfur is receiving extensive coverage ever since the American government officials called the conflict genocide in the late 2004.

The fighting in Darfur broke out in 2003, when two rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese government forces. The rebels, who came from predominantly "African" sedentary tribes, blamed political, economic, and social marginalization and neglect of the region by the "Arab" dominated government of Sudan as the main causes of rebellion in Darfur, the vast western Sudanese province the size of France.

Soon after the rebellion began, the Sudanese government mobilized and armed local militias from Darfur's Arab ethnic groups, called Janjaweed, particularly those without traditional land rights, to fight against the "African" rebels. The Janjaweed are believed to be behind the worst atrocities against civilians in Darfur.

Referring to a 2006 estimate by the World Health Organization, the Western media, politicians, and international humanitarian organizations claim that more than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003. Out of these 200,000 victims, the World Health Organization estimates that about 20% people died from fighting and violence, while 80% died from starvation and diseases. It is estimated that over 2 million people are living in refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring countries after fleeing their homes.

Some organizations, such as the American advocacy group Save Darfur Coalition and the Washington-based and the United States State Department-funded Center for International Justice claimed, without any evidence, that over 400,000 people have died in Darfur.

Recently, John Holmes, a senior United Nations official in charge of humanitarian relief, announced that as many as 300,000 people could have died in the Darfur conflict. Holmes said that the 300,000 total "is not a very scientifically based figure," but a "reasonable hypothesis and extrapolation" from the earlier estimate of 200,000.

Why are these Darfur death toll estimates taken for granted by so many people, media, and organizations in the West? How reliable are these numbers, considering that humanitarian workers, the main source of data used to come up with the estimates, have had only limited access to many areas in Darfur since the conflict began in 2003? Could the death toll be inflated? Would someone purposely exaggerate the numbers?

The Western media, aid agencies, and advocacy groups have exaggerated numbers of war victims around the world on many occasions before.

During the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, the international aid agencies, the United Nations officials, and the Western diplomats and media had claimed that between 200,000 and 300,000 people had lost their lives in fighting that ravaged the country for four years. The widely accepted figure that almost no one questioned was at least 200,000 dead. The international community and Bosnian politicians had used these numbers for their own purposes all the way until early 2007, when an independent Research and Documentation Center from Bosnia and Herzegovina, after three years of extensive and nonpartisan work, revealed that 100,000 people, civilians and soldiers on all sides, had died in the war. They collected over twenty different facts about each victim, such as people's names, nationality, time and place of birth and death, and circumstances of death.

The Bosnian death toll of 100,000 people is an enormous tragedy, but still it is not the same as 200,000 or 300,000 dead. The aid agencies that came up with the inflated death toll in Bosnia never publicly commented on their exaggeration. The Western media kept quiet or only briefly reported about the new findings. No one has ever apologized for the overstated numbers used for about 15 years. People in Darfur need help. Their suffering and misery should not be used for political campaigning around the world.

Darfur urgently needs peace through a negotiated settlement that can effectively tackle political, social, and economic marginalization of the region, first by the British colonial government and later by the successive post-independence governments of Sudan.

Numbers currently used to portray the death toll in Darfur may be correct. Yet, knowing the record of the international aid agencies, the Western governments and media, and various advocacy groups, it should not come as a surprise if the current estimate of 300,000 dead was exaggerated to serve some hidden purposes outside Darfur.

* Savo Heleta is the author of Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia (AMACOM, March 2008) and a postgraduate student in Conflict Transformation and Management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

**Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/376/48446boy.jpgA man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind, writes Yash Tandon. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world. Our collective efforts, he continues, will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

The National Project began before countries in the South achieved their independence from colonial rule, continued for several years after political independence and then, in the era of globalisation, died a sudden death. It needs to be revived.

However, let me first address the issue of what I call the ‘South intellectual’. Is it artificial to describe certain scholars and intellectuals by their geographical domain? We talk about ‘an Indian scholar’, ‘an African intellectual’, or a ‘Caribbean scholar’. Does it make sense to go beyond the nation and the region? Is there something distinctive about a ‘South scholar’ or a ‘South intellectual?’[1]

My answer is yes. There was something in the writing and engagement of Caribbean scholars and writers – such as Norman Girvan, Arthur Lewis, M.G. Smith, C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, Walter Rodney and Clive Thomas – with which those of us at universities in East Africa in the 1970s easily identified. Something in common pulsated in our hearts. How else could we in East Africa have resonated so ardently with intellectuals thousands of miles away in the Caribbean? Of course, the writing of many others from Asia, Africa and Latin America contributed to our lively debates. All these scholars were trying to define the specificity of peoples who had gone through the colonial experience.

Intellectuals were only a small part of the National Project. Political leaders such as Nehru, Nkrumah, Nasser, Sukarno, Manley, and Nyerere were the real inspiration. Politicians and intellectuals alike sought answers to some critical questions of self-identity and collective destiny: Who are we as a ‘nation? What do we do with our hard-won independence? How do we build our nation in ways that answer to the needs of our own peoples rather than those of colonising powers? In challenging the claims of neo-classical economics and neo-liberal policies to universal validity, Professor Girvan writes, significantly, that the objective of ‘policy autonomy’ in the South is self-determination [2]. This, in my view, is the crux of the National Project: self-determination.

What does the National Project mean for the engagement of Southern intellectuals today? In my view, three passions should steer or motivate their intellectual creativity: to critique the dominant imperialist ideology, to critique the dominant structures of power (speaking truth to power), and to provide ideas for a future vision of global society. I will first address the larger question of the relationship between ideas and political practice, and then outline an alternative vision or strategy to the dominant neo-liberal paradigm. Finally, I will take one aspect of this strategy, which is close to my heart, and that is integration in the regions of the South as a counterweight to globalisation. CRITIQUE OF THE DOMINANT IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY

The language of discourse of the dominant imperialist ideology is economics. Economics has an aura of the scientific, although we know that its scientific pretensions are based on make-believe (much of it self-motivated) rather than rigour. Furthermore, when economics is bolstered with mathematics and graphics, it acquires an added aura of ‘authority’, which is often quite spurious. Does it then follow that the language of counter-ideology must also be economics? Our own economists have answered the orthodox economic theory of mainstream economists and trade theorists with what is called ‘heterodox’ economic theory. Like its adversary, this is largely an abstraction from the reality of power and politics; substantial political analysis is lacking. None of the heterodox economists that I know deal with the issue of imperialism; it is not in their vocabulary. Furthermore, I am not sure what real impact heterodox economics has made on the ground. Even in the realm of ideas it has not made as much impact as it might have.

I do not want to be misunderstood. I think that heterodox economics has provided a valuable and necessary critique of orthodox economics. In my own writings I find that, among some audiences, quoting Joseph Stiglitz or Dani Rodrick gives me a better punch than all my efforts to rally data and evidence on behalf of my arguments. My point is that heterodox economics is good up to a point but that it is not good enough. It must move beyond the realm of economics to the realm of political economy. In other words, I endorse the theme of this conference – ‘Reinventing the Political Economy Tradition of the Caribbean’.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER AND A REALITY CHECK FOR THEORY

I shall start this discussion with a quote from none other than the late Michael Manley:

‘Those who have to face the challenge of action may make mistakes. Meantime, those who reside permanently in the world of ideas, alone and untested, do not help anyone when they refuse that reality is more complex than theory’ [3].

I must say that I sympathise, even empathise, with Manley. Academics can speak truth to politicians, but when do politicians get an opportunity to challenge the academics with a reality check? We who research, write and critique have an obligation to speak truth to power – to say how things are and how they should be, from the vantage point of some distance from political power and authority. That vantage point is extremely important: it gives a larger perspective to the drama of daily politics. At the same time, however, we cannot escape the question of what we would have done were we in power at the time that difficult decisions had to be made. Theoreticians speak truth to power. Politicians, in return, provide theory with a reality check. The coin has two sides.

The challenge is how political leaders and theoreticians meet and work together when it matters rather than after the event. When there is a separation between, as it were, the philosopher and the king, how do we create a synthetic ‘philosopher-king’? The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, gave a partial answer to this question in his concept of the ‘organic intellectual’. For Gramsci, an organic intellectual arises as part of society and in the midst of struggle for liberation from oppression and exploitation. An organic intellectual is always in the midst of struggle, always on the move, drawing strength from history and from the society in which they are embedded and that nurtures them.

Let me go a step beyond Gramsci. There is also an ‘organic institution’, held together by a shared vision of society and long-term strategy among a group of organic intellectuals. Both organic intellectuals and organic institutions are involved in daily struggles, not from the privilege of distance, as academics do, but in the heat of battle. There are many research and academic institutions in the South, but they mostly remain on dry ground. Organic institutions, on the other hand, have to swim in the middle of the ocean.

SPEAKING ‘EXISTENTIAL TRUTH’ TO ‘DIPLOMATIC TRUTH’ AND THE ROLE OF THE SOUTH CENTRE

Truth, of course, has many dimensions. The kind of truth that we at the South Centre deal with on a daily basis is what I call ‘diplomatic truth’, or truth as negotiated between asymmetrical power relationships, in our case between the North and the South.

Let me give an example of diplomatic truth. Globalisation is defined in the course of negotiations between contending political forces in a particular context. Africans might argue, for example, that they have seen few benefits from globalisation; that they have only seen its negative consequences. They would present it as a “challenge”. On the other hand the North might argue that many of the benefits of globalisation have not permeated Africa because of problems with internal governance and corruption, and the failure to create the conditions for investments to flow; that globalisation is an “opportunity” that Africans have missed. The “negotiated” or “diplomatic” truth about globalisation is thus a compromise between these views and presented as both an opportunity and a challenge. This compromise camouflages huge differences in ideology and policy that obscure the reality on the ground.

As organic intellectuals and organic institutions we have a moral obligation to speak truth as we know and experience it to the diplomatic truth that is negotiated by our governments in the forced circumstances in which they find themselves. In the South Centre we have often taken positions against those that some of our governments have been compelled to take because of the pressures put on them by powerful forces in the North.

The trade negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are a case in point. Ever since the WTO was formed, the countries of the South, especially the smaller and vulnerable ones, have been subjected to enormous pressures to conform to agreements entered into by the bigger trading powers such as the USA and the European Union. These powerful trading blocs divide and rule the South. To the poorer countries of the South they offer ‘technical assistance’ and incentives such as ‘quota-free’ and ‘duty-free’ access to their markets. Once these smaller countries are taken out of the loop of negotiations with promises of technical and financial assistance and privileged access to their markets, the Northern power blocs then face the bigger countries of the South in hard bargaining over the technical details. Once the big powers, including the larger trading nations of the South, have agreed to a compromise deal in which they have taken care of one another’s interests, this jointly agreed formula is then imposed on the smaller countries. They are forced to surrender the illusory and temporary ‘concessions’ that they were earlier given and accept full reciprocity as, so to speak, ‘equal’ partners in the negotiations. This is the existential truth of the global trade negotiations.

In the case of the negotiations between the EU and ACP countries over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) the diplomatic truth put out by the European Commission and some governments in Africa and the Caribbean confounds all logic and evidence. The European Commission (EC) argues that EPAs are good for ACP countries. Our analysis in the South Centre shows that the agreements in their present form will further de-industrialise African countries. They may even threaten their food security and policy options for endogenous development. The EC has systematically practiced a policy of divide and rule in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, where older, indigenous efforts at regional integration within the context of SADC, COMESA and the East African Community are now in shreds.

Fortunately, there is growing resistance from some African governments to this old-style, colonial policy. Civil society social movements in Africa are also very active in this area. On 23 March 2008 50 of them called for a stop to the EPAs, saying that they will destroy the economies of African countries, lead to a substantial loss in government revenue accrued through tariffs, and a loss of jobs and policy space. They demanded that the interim agreements must be nullified. In the Caribbean context, Norman Girvan has argued that the Cariforum-EC EPA negotiations have been subject to lesser disclosure, debate and parliamentary oversight than legal and constitutional changes of lesser importance, and that the agreements must be subject to full public disclosure and debate, and possible review.

This, in my view, is the most challenging issue of our time that those engaged in the National Project must address, one in which all social and political forces from Jamaica to Cape Town and Vanuatu must join. They must invite bigger countries in the South, such as China, India and Brazil, to fight in solidarity against this European aggressive effort to recolonise a significant and vulnerable part of the South.

Other examples of the struggles of Southern countries in today’s globalising world, in which the South Centre is involved, include: - The struggle for access to knowledge and innovation, protection of indigenous knowledge, and flexibilities in intellectual property and copyright laws that would permit the diffusion of knowledge as a public good.

- The importance of resurrecting the original mandate and vitality of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

- The ‘aid effectiveness’ project of the OECD, called the “Paris Declaration” which will be the subject of negotiations in September 2008 in Accra, and which we must oppose. Many of our countries have become so dependent on aid that it is impossible to talk about self-reliance or the National Project unless effective exit strategies from aid are offered to them.

- The debate on finance for development and the so-called Monterrey Consensus, which will be the subject of further negotiations in Doha towards the end of this year, and which has acquired an entirely new dimension in the wake of the financial crisis in the North.

AN ALTERNATIVE VISION

Let me now come to the third task of the South intellectual, that of offering alternative visions of a future society. It is not enough to critique the present system without offering an alternative vision of where one would want to go.

I give below the elements of an alternative vision taken from an initiative of activist trades union leaders in Southern Africa called the ANSA project - Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Southern Africa [4]. 1. A people-led political and social strategy, as opposed to one led by the IMF/World Bank/WTO/donors.

2. Grassroots-led regional integration, as opposed to the current fragmentation of the region by the Empire.

3. An alternative economic production system, based on domestic demand, human need and the use of local resources and domestic savings, as opposed to the present export-oriented strategy based on foreign investments.

4. A phased withdrawal from globalisation, rather than further deepening of integration within the existing iniquitous global system.

5. A science and technology policy that harnesses people’s collective knowledge and wisdom, instead of blind emulation of techno-science rooted in the commodification for profit of nature, human labour and social structures.

6. Alliance-building and networking with progressive forces at national, regional and global levels, rather than their co-option by capital-led globalisation.

7. Politically governed redistribution of wealth and opportunities from the so-called formal sector to the informal sectors, instead of the misallocation of resources and the integration of informal sectors through their provision of cheap inputs and semi-employed labour.

8. Women’s rights as the basis for a healthy and productive society, replacing the present system based on the exploitation of women`s labour.

9. Education linked with production and improvements in the technical, managerial, research and development skills of workers and those directly in control of matters of production and governance, as opposed to education for a bureaucratic and technocratic elite.

10. Peoples’ demonstrations in support of the evolving ethical and developmental state regarded as embodying the democratic strength of society and creating a dynamic, participatory and radical democracy, rather than the present system in which mobilisation is seen as a threat and in which the representative democracy can sign away people’s future rights.

The ANSA project aims to evolve into a mass movement, a renewed liberation struggle, through sustained education, consultation, debate and action. It is fully compatible with and an extension of the National Project.

THE CASE FOR INTEGRATIVE REGIONALISM IN THE SOUTH

One of the major challenges that the National Project and the ANSA project face is the question of how we in the South integrate our own countries in the face of continuous fragmentation and balkanisation by the forces of globalisation. I identify four main types of regional integration. The first type is what I call distributive regionalism between countries that are roughly equal in economic and political strength. The gains and losses are closely tabulated and calculated. No state surrenders anything unless it gets something of equal value in return. When this kind of distributive regionalism takes place between roughly equal partners that share borders, and when these relations stabilise over a long period of time, it can lead to the second type: integrative regionalism. States are perceived to have compatible interests. Conflicts are sublimated by consideration of the common good that comes from integrating into a single economic or political unit. The best example of this type is the European Union.

A third type is what I call enforced regionalism, where one country is subject to the diktat of another largely because of an asymmetrical power relationship. In theory the weaker partner could walk out of the arrangement, but in practice walking out may be even more costly than a bad bargain. The African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) is an example of this. The fourth and final type is structured regionalism where the outcome is determined not by negotiation but by historically created conditions or institutions in which asymmetry is embedded. One example of structured regionalism is the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, signed in Cotonou in June 2000.

It is hardly necessary to make the case for integrative regionalism. The economic case based on market size and the benefits of large-scale production is obvious enough. However, the argument that must be reiterated here is the political one, i.e. that only through integrative regionalism can the populations of the region acquire a negotiating clout in the global fora of trade and investment negotiations.

The biggest hurdle to integrative regionalism in the South is forced or structured regionalism imposed on them from above by the dominant economic and power blocs, namely the United States and the European Union. Their interventions result in the disruption and disintegration of efforts that Southern countries have been making to move towards genuine integrative regionalism.

CONCLUSION

A man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world to which many of our governments have surrendered their people’s mandate and trust. Let us hope that our collective efforts will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

*Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, an Intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries.

* This essay was edited and summarised by Izzy Birch of Fahamu from the keynote speech given by Professor Yash Tandon in honour of Professor Norman Girvan at the 9th annual conference of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), Kingston, Jamaica, March 2008. The fuller version may be requested from Professor Yash Tandon at [email][email protected]

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

For further notes, please follow this link:

In addition to a conflicted identity, Mildred Barya argues that the xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Africa in general can be traced to the Berlin Conference and partitioning of Africa.

Until the colonial borders are removed we will not have lasting peace anywhere in Africa. Nobody is going to deconstruct the existing borders except a group of committed African thinkers and doers. The recent South Africa shame of brother against brother, sister against sister has clearly shown that we need to make the journey to Berlin quickly, to break the curse of borders that was inflicted upon Africa by the white colonialists in 1885.

The time is ripe to reverse the trend before other clean ‘fingers’ catch the infection and oozing pus from the festering, sore fingers. The disease is the same across Africa, it only manifests differently. It happened in Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa, it has happened in Kenya in East Africa, it happened in Rwanda and continues to spill in the Great Lakes Region. It is the same happening in the Horn of Africa, now it is happening in South Africa, soon the entire Africa might begin to smell from these rotting fingers if the African Union leadership and other concerned bodies, concerned people, do not step in to curb the disease and rename the land. It is time for us Africans to change this bloody, brother-sister-hunting course and write our history as Patrice Lumumba dreamt when he said:

“Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity…it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets.”

South Africa reached pitch fever in its bursting hatred, clearly demonstrating a greater need for us to say; ‘Let there be no more South Africa but a country that accepts all Blacks, no matter where they may be coming from.’ Words alone do not bring a prophecy to pass; we are not in the days of miracles so actions must do. Short of action, South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, must eat the papers on which he wrote Black Consciousness. What is Black Consciousness without the African personality and identity? What is Black Consciousness if it is not all Africa-Black-Inclusive?

It is a big shame that when we were beginning to recognize and celebrate the African presence globally, South Africa announced its own drum beat and danced to a different tune. When we were beginning to warm up to the World Cup come 2010, South Africa proved that it is not worthy to host the cup, that it is not ready, not yet ready. For if many South Africans cannot tolerate their brothers and sisters from the closest, neighbouring countries, how will they consider the people from far off lands? The saying that charity begins at home does not lie. Who will be safe to watch the World Cup in the folds of xenophobia? One would rather go to a less ‘privileged’ but safer country than being caught up in the throngs of xenophobia.

The way South Africa has given vent to reckless violence shows there’s something rotten at the core. We are not witnessing the surfacing of new fear, but a deep decay in the hearts and minds of the killing groups. It is not about hating the other foreigner. If anything, South Africans started with hating themselves. For a long time they have been killing what is considered their ‘own.’ They did not spare Lucky Dube; they do not spare thousands of women and young girls who are raped and murdered everyday, making South Africa one of the most dangerous countries to live in. The killings have been going on, it is only now that they have reached marginal proportions and gained a new definitive target: Black foreigners. Immigrants.

The murderers have forgotten a crucial piece of history: They have forgotten that many Africans wept with the South Africans during apartheid rule. Many African countries mobilized logistical, moral and physical support for the South African struggle. And many Africans left their safe homes to go to dangerous South Africa to fight for the freedom of South Africans. The people from Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Tanzania and several other places actively joined the South Africa struggle with good will and intentions of brother fighting for brother, sister standing by sister. They must rent their clothes now realizing not only the loss of unity that they embraced, but the shame and disgust that come with regression. The pain in a journey back to the broken road.

I did a small exercise with a large, African social group. I asked each one of the members to suggest which country in Africa they would not want to live in. 99 per cent circled South Africa. The most amazing thing is that places like Congo, Sudan’s Darfur, Chad, Somalia, Kenya and Zimbabwe where conflict is ripe and the residents are not just seated on volcanoes but are being boiled and cooked in the lava, many Africans still indicated a willingness to want to live there, to go there and help. To go and suffer with those who are suffering. This gave me hope that there is a revolution and there are Africans keeping true to the revolution, defying fear and other obstacles to fight for justice, progress and African-ness.

South Africa therefore has plunged in a senseless blood-spilling orgy. We cannot understand why this has happened if we do not recognize that a deep Identity crisis is at the bottom of the problem. Many South Africans have never quite accepted themselves as Africans. The logic therefore is simple. They cannot accept others who are Africans. Many South Africans haven’t felt safe in their own skin, in their country, in their own-ness, how then can they accept others? South Africa is warped in denial at many levels, confusion, reckless power and now, a terrible forgetfulness. This is the analysis: It will take a longer time cleaning up the South African psyche and reality than stopping all the violence in Congo and Darfur. The reason is because South Africa seems to be the only country so far that has an in-built denial system. In other countries when things are not going well, the masses and leadership to a large degree generally accept the dysfunctional phases and the need to change. There is a wide acceptability of things having gone wrong. In South Africa what you easily recognize is denial: It is not HIV/AIDS, it is not crime, it is not this and that... This is going to cost South Africa such a huge fortune in terms of time and name clearance.

How do we help South Africa to at least resolve the huge identity crisis and denial syndrome? The answer is in deconstructing and then reconstructing Africa as a whole and within that framework redefining who is a South African. Many of us know that our cultural ties and heritage go beyond colonial borders, yet we continue to wear the colonial blinds. Culture and politics have failed to make the interconnectedness shared among all Africans a check against violence. Perhaps it is time to go scientific. Here is how. If many of us are to do a DNA ethnic make-up test, we would discover various percentages of several ethnic groups that contribute to our genetic profile. This would give us good snapshots of who we are, our ancestry and our identity. We would realize we are yesterday’s people, we are much of today’s people and we will be tomorrow’s people too. In short, to borrow Alice Walker’s new book title, “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.” There isn’t going to be a so-called pure South African, the other Mozambican, Malawian, because in truth such identities do not exist, have never existed. They were coined up to suit the colonizers. Centuries down the road we still let them make us, shape us, define us. What more could be wrong with us?

For a start, I think all the so-called South Africans should do a DNA test, government sponsored. It will make us humble and teach us a thing or two about union and diversity which culture and governments have failed to teach us. Because we inherit a unique assortment of DNA from our mothers and fathers, it is possible for one’s DNA results to be different from a family members—even a sibling’s. Does this mean members of a family who discover unique differences and some noticeable similarities as well should pick up guns and fire at one another, in the name of a different DNA composition, one being more Shangaani than Zulu for instance?

Before any peace movement can stop us all from shouting ‘kill the other, kill them all…’ perhaps a DNA is what will save us and show that we have enough of ‘the other’ in us; in our cells, in our genetic make up and ‘bloody’ composition, thus stopping us from wrecking havoc on our selves, the other.

* Mildred K Barya is Writer-in-Residence at TrustAfrica (www.trustafrica.org)

**Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

At approximately 18.00 hrs on the 28th May 2008, the South African Police Services came into the camp with white tents and commanded the refugees to move to the Disaster management camp set up by the South African Government. The Refugees have made it clear on a number of occasions that they do not want to move to the South African Government camp but have requested that they be attended to by the UNHCR and moved to a safer country.

This international working conference will probe and address global acquiescence to impunity, gender violence and exclusion that continues to obstruct peacebuilding and deny human security. Dates: September 24 - 26, 2008.

At their next Group of Eight summit in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, in July, leaders of the world's major countries should commit themselves to helping Africa provide low-cost high-speed Internet access. African universities could be the continent's gateways into the global knowledge economy for local diffusion of new technologies. But this potential remains unrealized because universities and research institutes in Africa remain digitally isolated from the rest of the world. This is partly because of government neglect and lack of strategic policies on Internet access.

"From the late 1990's onwards, the research of children and childhoods has gradually become a topic of study in the social sciences. Children have increasingly come into the limelight as culture makers and not just as extensions to the study of adults. At the same time, African children have remained in the margins of such studies despite the fact that over forty percent of Africans are under the age of fifteen.

The Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) has observed the escalating attacks and harassments of press freedom, media and journalists in Uganda. The latest development occurred on April 26, 2008 with the raids by Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) on the offices of privately-owned newspaper "The Independent" and the home of its publisher, Andrew Mwenda.

More than 18,000 people have fled xenophobic violence around Cape Town since mobs began attacking foreigners and burning and looting their homes and businesses one week ago. Thousands more were chased out of their homes in the central Gauteng Province in the previous week. At least 42 have been killed in and around Gauteng's capital, Johannesburg. Terna Gyuse reports from a shelter in Cape Town.

All groups representing the displaced refugees will be marching to parliament on Monday 2 June from 10am (keizergracht str - next to CPUT (old Cape Technikon). Memorandum will be handed over at 1115am and march will end by 1230pm. They have asked the Action Forum against high prices to assist with the march. We appeal to all to spread the message and to mobilise as many as possible to come and show solidarity with them.

Chief Justice Pius Langa, Chief Justice of South Africa will deliver this lecture, which will address the relationship between the entrenchment and enforceability of socio-economic rights in South Africa and the fact that the Constitution is best understood as a manifesto for positive transformation towards a truly equal society.

Community members dispersing to their vehicles after a peaceful picket OUTSIDE Anglo Platinum's PPL Mine Property on 27 May were DRAGGED from their vehicles onto the PPL Property by the SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE SERVICES. 11 out of the 15 picketers have been arrested and are currently being charged at Mahwelereng Police Station in Mokopane(formerly Potgietersrus), Limpopo.

Corporations are getting away with murder – and like many serial killers they have learned to put on a charming, friendly face. But those who have to live in their backyards know that no matter how much greenwash these corporations might apply, they are still perpetrators of ongoing environmental injustices.

The Muslim Human Rights Forum (MHRF) is demanding action by the government of Kenya on behalf of a Kenyan national detained without trial in Saudi Arabia since September 2007. The Kenyan Abdullahi Adan Sheikh Ali, 23, a fourth year student at Madina University was detained at Jeddah Airport by immigration officials who told him they wanted to question him about his visa. Efforts by his family in Kenya to establish his whereabouts only bore fruits in December last year when he called to say that he was being held in a jail in Riyadh.

The Council for the development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) regrets to announce, yet again, the death of one of its illustrious members. Harris Memel-Fotê passed away inAbidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, on 11 May 2008, having lost his battle against a prolonged illness that put him in a wheelchair for some time. He was 78 years old.

The Free State students who made the racist video are perhaps breathing a sigh of relief that they’re no longer the centre of the world’s attention. It was too much for them too soon. The world was shocked then too. At least they too know, no matter how revolting their little show, malicious prejudice conflicts with the idea of democracy and they are not alone in harbouring ghastly prejudices. They have something in common with all of us. Even a quiet prejudice seeds it’s acting out in others – its unwitting.

Burundian police and judicial officials should immediately release the scores of persons still detained solely as suspected members of a movement long opposed to the government, Human Rights Watch has said. They should also instruct security forces to cease such arrests. More than 300 alleged members of the Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People-National Liberation Forces (Parti pour la Libération du Peuple Hutu-Forces Nationales pour la Libération, Palipehutu-FNL), many of them civilians, have been arrested throughout Burundi since mid-April.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has appealed to Members of Parliament to give due consideration to the matter of a wage subsidy for young people, who comprise the bulk of the country's unemployed. Delivering his Budget Vote on Thursday, the minister suggested that, in the light of recent sharp increases of food prices, the oil price hitting record highs, and high unemployment levels domestically, the time had perhaps come to give serious consideration to a proposal he described as "critical".

Why is budget participation important? How can meaningful citizen participation in budgeting be fostered? This chapter of a World Bank book examines participation theory and case studies from Brazil, India, South Africa, Uganda and the United States. Citizen participation can make local service delivery more effective. Government attitudes and the role of civil society are both key in improving budget participation.