The fact that no single woman MP was elected in the crucial House Committees in the 10th Parliament speaks volumes to an institution that is supposed to pass laws which are amenable to every Kenyan. This is not withstanding that the 10th Parliament will go down in history has having the highest number of women in Parliament and the highest number of Cabinet Ministers.

The World Bank has announced that it has set up a financing facility in the order of $1.2 billion to assist with the global food crisis. A week before the United Nations summit on the global food crisis, to be held in Rome, the World Bank has announced that it has set up a "rapid financing facility" to address the immediate needs of the global food crisis.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Japan has announced a new $92 million initiative to help Africa adapt to global warming. “Climate change is one of the most critical issues that governments and citizens around the world need to address,” said Olav Kjorven, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of Bureau for Development Policy.

International aid groups are rushing to provide assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese civilians displaced by fighting in the disputed oil-rich Abyei area before seasonal rains hamper aid flows, aid groups said. Civilians fled the central town of Abyei during over a week of clashes between northern and southern troops earlier in May, prompting fears of further conflict just at the onset of the rainy season.

Deficient food supplies, inadequate fresh water and geopolitical risks are among the major threats to sustainable economic growth in Africa, a report released on Friday showed. Anger over high food prices has sparked protests in several African countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mozambique and Senegal.

Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party should be reformed, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday in a speech that may open the door to a national unity government. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won the March 29 parliamentary election with a slim majority, handing ZANU-PF its worst defeat since President Robert Mugabe led it to power after independence from Britain in 1980.

Two oral HIV tests have been shown to be highly accurate in a study conducted in Namibia and reported in the May 1st edition of theJournal of Acquired Immunde Deficiency Syndromes. The studies were conducted amongst patients infected with HIV subtype C and the OraQuick test was shown to be 100% accurate with the OrSure test being 98.9% accurate. The investigators believe that oral HIV testing could be used to help diagnose HIV in resource-limited settings, and assist in the gathering of surveillance information.

More than 10 million children around the world die before their fifth birthday every year, according to a new report by UNICEF, the United Nations Children Fund. The report, "The State of Africa's Children 2008," was launched on May 28 at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Japan. It looks at the successes and failures of governments regarding the health and survival of the children of Africa and is complementary to a broader UNICEF report on the health of the world's children.

Pregnant women and single mothers are languishing in a secret detention center in Tindouf, a southwestern province in Algeria, charges Brahim El Selem. "It is made out of mud bricks . . . You can't see the jail because it is a hole between two hills. "El Selem says the women's detention center--which he says he visited three or four times--confines almost 30 women, some with toddlers. The structure's zinc roof provides minimal protection from the Saharan desert heat, he adds.

Gay rights activists have condemned Gambian President Yahya Jammeh`s threat to behead homosexuals. Last week he told a political rally that gay people had 24 hours to leave the country. He promised "stricter laws than Iran" on homosexuality and said he would "cut off the head" of any gay person found in The Gambia.

At least three people have been killed after bombs exploded in two hotels in a town in southern Ethiopia. The blasts also injured five other people in Negele Borena, a small town 595km south of the capital, in the Oromo region, police and government officials said on Wednesday.

Applications invited from parliamentary staff (researchers, librarians, clerks) who regularly handle science related issues. Members of African parliaments are increasingly required to address the science, technology and innovation aspects of important policy issues, such as climate change, infectious diseases, ICT infrastructure, agriculture and food security, etc.

Public-private partnership organisations (PPPOs) — which focus on African neglected diseases — have failed to change the imperialist research paradigm or involve African researchers on an equal basis, say T. J. Tucker and M. W. Makgoba in Science.

Several hundred Malians fleeing fighting between the army and Touareg rebels in northern Mali have crossed the border into Burkina Faso since April, according to the Burkina Faso national commission for refugees (CONAREF). Over 300 refugees, most of them women and children, have been registered in Ouagadougou where they are sheltering in locker rooms in the football stadium, while a further 600 are setting up makeshift shelters in Djibo, 53 km from the Mali border and 205 km north of the capital.

The recent suicide of a secondary school student in Kenya's North Eastern Province after he was diagnosed as HIV positive has highlighted the shortage of qualified counsellors in the region, and the urgent need to address the misinformation and stigma attached to the virus.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has stressed need to increase international investment in Africa with the primary aim of ensuring peace and security in the impoverished continent. He also promised to increase Japan's cooperation with Africa. Fukuda said this when officially opening a three-day high level Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama where African and Japanese leaders are conferring on how to reach internationally agreed anti-poverty target goals - the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - by 2015.

Kenya President Mwai Kibaki said on Wednesday that his country has learned its lesson from post-election violence and promised to focus on improving the economy. Kenya, long considered one of Africa's most stable countries, suffered weeks of political violence that claimed at least 1 500 lives after the disputed December general elections.

The ANC Youth League, AZAYO, IFPYB, DA Youth, other Faith-Based Youth Organisations, Personalities and the Business Sector today launched a Youth Front Against Xenophobia through a campaign dubbed "South Africa We are listening, Africa we are sorry".

Amongst other things, Paul T Zeleza argues that in spite of the xenophobic violence being black on black, there is a "bequest of deeply racialized and internalized superiority and inferiority complexes at work."

The Pan-African world has been watching with mounting horror the xenophobic violence that has gripped several South African townships over the past two weeks which has resulted in the wanton destruction of many lives and property. Fifty-six people have been murdered, thousands seek sanctuary in police stations, churches, community halls and 'safe havens' or camps, and many more are fleeing back to their countries of origin as several governments desperately try to repatriate their nationals.

Our horror reflects our immense investment in the success of the rainbow nation born out of our collective abhorrence of apartheid South Africa as the supreme embodiment of the barbaric crimes committed against peoples of African descent over the last half millennium: slavery, colonialism, and racism. It also reflects deep disappointment that migrants from the neighboring countries and the rest of the continent are being treated with such vicious contempt notwithstanding their countries' unwavering support and sacrifices for the liberation of South Africa from the historic nightmares of apartheid.

To date, 35,000 people are internally displaced and more than 26,000 have fled to Mozambique alone, and 25,000 Zimbabweans are fleeing through Zambia. The scale of the violence has shocked South African civil society and humanitarian organizations, pummelled the rand and business confidence, and dented South Africa's image across the continent, shaking the South African state and its embattled lame-duck president out of their stupor of political indifference, policy incoherence, and operational incompetence on migration and the poor.

The current cycle of xenophobic violence--there have been several others--is a depressing testimony to the failures of post-apartheid South Africa to resolve the interconnected challenges inherited from the political and racial economies of apartheid: domestically the deracialization and reduction of social inequalities and externally the reinsertion of South Africa into independent Africa from its apartheid laager of isolation. While South Africa has made remarkable progress since 1994, not least in terms of economic growth, national integration, democratization at home, and reincorporation into African and world affairs abroad, social inequalities persist and are in fact deepening, and the dangerous and occasionally deadly myth of South African exceptionalism endures.

The South African poor are still awaiting the fruits of uhuru as the black middle classes expand and the white rich maintain their monopolies of wealth and privilege even if they are now joined by politically well-connected 'native' beneficiaries of black economic empowerment. In the meantime, South Africa historically constructed as a sub-imperial metropole ever since the mineral revolution of the late nineteenth century continues to attract labor migrants from the subregion and further afield. The postapartheid migrants are no longer chanelled predominantly to the declining mining industry, but find themselves increasingly competing for economic survival with South Africa's poor in the townships.

The demise of apartheid ended internal 'influx' controls into the previously designated 'white' cities and opened South Africa to new waves of African immigrants. Circumscribed by its conformities to neo-liberal economic policies on the one hand and its commitments to a Pan-African agenda on the other, the ANC government has thus far failed to stem domestic racial and social inequalities and develop a sound and sustainable immigration policy. This is the combustible brew that has blown up: the struggle for resources among the disaffected South African poor and the disenfranchised immigrants, whose very social and spatial intimacies engender the violent narcissisms of minor difference.

Whatever their debilitations and marginalizations from the postapartheid dispensation, the township poor have citizenship on their side, which they periodically wield violently to dispossess the immigrants, for petty primitive accumulation (342 foreign-owned businesses have been looted or destroyed), for national attention, to make claims for redress from the neo-liberal state. As is typical in such struggles, the former blame the latter of taking their jobs, opportunities, and women (the gendered inflexion of xenophobic bigotry), and the escalation of crime--never mind that levels of crime in South Africa are much higher than in the countries where most of the immigrants come from, itself another tragic legacy of apartheid.

But there is more to this depressing carnage of xenophobic violence than material conditions. Nor is South Africa unique in its eruptions of xenophobia in the Pan-African world, let alone the world at large. Remember the state-sponsored expulsions of 155,000-213,000 West Africans including 50,000 Nigerians from Ghana in 1969, 1.3 million Ghanaians from Nigeria between 1983-1985, the killings and mass expulsions in Libya in the 1980s and 1990s, the tit-for-tat expulsions of nearly 150,000 people between Eritrea and Ethiopia in the late 1990s as the two countries slid into a senseless war, and of tens of thousands from Cote d'Ivoire during its boom years. The list of xenophobic violence across Africa is a long and depressing one indeed.

One could of course blame the incongruity of Africa's porous national boundaries and the legacies of colonialism, the universal propensity of governments and the media to blame foreigners for domestic economic and social crises, and the rise of chauvinistic and explosive nationalisms in response to the stresses of neo-liberal globalization. In the case of Africa's former settler societies from Algeria to South Africa, via Kenya and Zimbabwe, there is an added dimension: the cruel bequest of deeply racialized and internalized superiority and inferiority complexes. The current xenophobic violence in South Africa is being meted out to what some in the country call "those Africans," or more popularly, the makwerekwere. None of the fifty people who have been killed is white. The anger is intra-racial, directed at other black Africans.

Pius Adesanmi discussed the social pathologization and discursive ridicule of the in an earlier blog on The Zeleza Post. African commentators and visitors to South Africa are often confounded by the pervasive sense of South African difference, of exceptionalism, the lingering racist apartheid myth that South Africa is an outpost of civilization, of modernity, on the 'dark continent'. Ignorance about other African countries is of course not peculiar to South Africa, nor is the sense of misguided national superiority. I have encountered it in many other countries in which I have lived in the Pan-African world from Zimbabwe to Jamaica to Kenya, not to mention Britain, Canada, and the United States. It is the deadly mantra of xenophobic nationalism: 'We are better than you, You are less than us'.

In all these cases, across the Pan-African world, the measures of the 'better than, less than' national discourses mutate and are articulated in peculiar local idioms, but they revolve around two axes: the relative levels of material development and the magnitude of the white presence. Thus, westerness and whiteness remain imprimaturs in the scale of human worthiness in the Pan-African world, the reason why diasporan Africans feel superior to continental Africans, why within the diaspora the light-skinned have historically enjoyed better opportunities than their darker skinned compatriots, why shades of blackness have become a shameful basis for distinguishing African immigrants among black South Africans, why the latter's xenophobic rage is not directed at white immigrants but at 'those Africans', the despised makwerekwere.

This is the racialized devaluation of black lives that we are witnessing in South Africa today in the xenophobic violence against African immigrants perpetrated by fellow Africans whose own lives were devalued during the long horrific days of racial segregation and apartheid. Racialized superiority and inferiority complexes have stalked the Pan-African world for decades, stoking the mistrust that sometimes degenerates into interpersonal and intracial animosity and even violence. This violence is the flipside of the collective Pan-Africanist struggles and ideals for the unity of African peoples and their collective liberation and empowerment. South Africans and all of us could benefit from a more systematic and sustained education about our shared pasts, present, and futures in a world that has devalued and continues to devalue our lives and humanity.

*Paul T Zeleza is editor of The Zeleza Post. This article was first published at http://zeleza.com

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

Jegede Ademola Oluborode looks at the Protocol on the Rights of Women in relation to medical or scientific experiments and argues that ethical and scientific standards are lowered when it comes to African women and informed consent may not be enough to protect vulnerable African women.

This article is a reflection on the provision of article 4(2)(h) of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa( Protocol on the Rights of Women) which seeks to prohibit all medical and scientific experiments on women without their informed consent. The article argues that the prohibition of all medical or scientific experiments on women without their informed consent, without more, falls short of other ethical requirements for safety in scientific and medical experimentation. This in itself is an expression of the regrettable gap which over the years has existed in major international human rights instruments, to which most African States are signatory. To this end therefore, the article suggests that along with the requirement of consent, there is a need to legally prescribe appropriate human rights standard on the performance of medical and scientific experiments. The article concludes that a re-draft of article 4 (2)(h) of the Protocol on the Rights of Women is imperative to ensure maximum legal protection for women, who by virtue of their role in the society are most vulnerable to medical and scientific exploitation.

INJUSTICES IN MEDICAL OR SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS AND WOMEN [1]

Examples of where women have been victims to medical and scientific exploitation under the pretext of research are not new. Grave atrocities were committed in the process of medical experiments carried out during the Second World War on non-consenting women and children prisoners of Nazi concentration camps [2]. During the same period in history, African women from the German South West Africa, now Namibia, were part of sterilization programmes instituted by Germany without their consent [3]. In more recent times, evidence from Nigeria implicated Pfizer International Incorporated (PII) of fraud and criminal breach of trust of its controversial drug test, popularly known as Trovan Clinical Trials, which it carried out on Nigerian citizens in Kano in 1996, which had fatal results [4].

The burden of disease, generally, including malaria, sickle cell anaemia, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, weighs heavily on Africa, where these illnesses are most prevalent. In more ways than one, the impact of these diseases has been disproportionately borne by women. While medical and scientific trials and research involving women, holds great prospects for the solution of these problems, researches and pharmaceutical companies who engage in trials can not always be trusted to function with due consideration for ethical requirements, when such requirements are not well specified and projected in the African human rights system.

It is noteworthy that due to low level of literacy in Africa, very few women who are research participants are sufficiently educated to really understand the details of studies and trials in which they are engaged [5]. The poverty and powerlessness of women often lead to their participation in clinical and scientific researches merely for inexpensive inducements, and largely due to less understanding of study risks, or for the pregnant women, under the mistaken belief that such studies will result in care for their unborn children. There are for instance, controversies which have surrounded microbicide trials carried out on women in South Africa which revealed that women in the study developed higher risk of HIV infection [6]. In 2007, the US-based reproductive health research organisation, CONRAD, also announced the premature end of trials of a cellulose sulphate-based microbicide in Nigeria, Benin and Uganda after the data safety and monitoring committee found a higher number of infections in the active group compared to the placebo group [7].

The New England Journal of Medicine carried a comment on 15 on-going clinical trials testing cheaper drug regimens to prevent maternal-foetal transmission of HIV in Africa. Some 16,000 pregnant, HIV-positive women were enrolled in the placebo-controlled trials. The problem with these trials was that it began after Zidovudine (AZT) had been found to prevent such transmission by 50% or more, and is recommended to all HIV-positive pregnant women in western countries. In other words, it was reported that, thousands of women in the trials were getting sugar pills to test the efficacy of the new regimens whereas if they had been enrolled in trials in Europe, they would have received a standard course of AZT [8]. This further underscores the point that the truth in Africa, is that very few women do enjoy the benefits of the research in which they participate.

The survival of women therefore raises the question as to whether international human rights have done enough to protect women in terms of medical and scientific experimentation and if not, whether there is the need for the African human right system to review existing legal framework with the view of addressing such gap.

INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS ON MEDICAL/ SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

When international human rights instruments have discussed access to health services, it has been silent on medical and scientific experimentation. This was the case with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which only guarantees in its Article 25(1) the right of everyone to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care. Similarly, subsequent notable instrument such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in Article 12(2)(d) only urges the States to take steps to achieve full realization of the right to health by creating conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness [9]. Article 5 (d)(iv) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is no different when it provides for the right to public health, medical care, social security and social services [10].

Although, the need to take urgent steps to address the inequality as it affects women on a number of issues led to the adoption of the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), [11] the Convention fails to sufficiently address the issues of human rights around medical and scientific experiments in its copious provisions in Article 11(f), 12(1) and 14(2) (b) regarding improvement of access of women to health care services. This is also lacking in the 1999 General Comment of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which interpreted the right to health under Article 12 of CEDAW as the right of women to be fully informed, by properly trained personnel, of their options in agreeing to treatment or research, including likely benefits and potential adverse effects of proposed procedures and available alternatives [12].

Article 4(2)(h) of the Protocol on the Rights of Women provides that States parties shall take appropriate and effective measures to prohibit all medical or scientific experiments on women without their informed consent. This appears progressive for Africa, considering that, with the exception to South African Constitution which has similar provision; hardly does any other African constitution have a similar provision with such safeguard [13].The Protocol is however merely re-stating article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which provides that ‘no one shall be subject without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation [14]. The inherent weakness in the foregoing efforts is that the requirement of consent, without more excludes certain elements of ethics which are fundamental in medical and scientific experiments and in so doing, deprives them of being legally determinable.

ELEMENTS AS IMPORTANT AS ‘INFORMED CONSENT’ IN MEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

The medical misdeeds at the Second World War led to the Nuremberg code in 1947, a set of principles devised to protect human subjects from unethical experimentation [15]. The Nuremberg code was a part of the judgment delivered in the so-called Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg following World War II. The principles of the code were based upon the criteria for ethical research that were elucidated by the two expert medical witnesses at the trial if human experimentation was to be justified. These are: informed consent; Results must be for the good of society; and the experiment must be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons [16].

While further reinforcing the principles at Nuremberg, the Declarations of Helsinki (1964 and 1975, with further revisions in 1983, 1989, 1996 and 2000) emphasised that in research involving human beings, the potential benefits must outweigh hazards. The Belmont Report of 1979 projected three ethical principles as relating to research on human subjects namely; respect for persons; beneficence and Justice. The principle of respect to persons connotes that individuals should be treated as autonomous agents. The principle of benevolence indicates that harm must not be occasioned; maximum benefits must be ensured while Justice signifies that there should be fair distribution of burdens and benefits of research [17].

RECENT EFFORTS AT CODIFYING RESEARCH ETHICS

The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (the Declaration) which regulates cell research appears to have provided for other requirements apart from informed consent. Article 5 of the Declaration recommends that attention be given to best interest the persons involved in the research, compliance with national and international research standards or guidelines, health benefit, minimal risk and minimal burden, compatibility with the protection of the individual's human rights [18]. Apart from failing to define what the national and international research standards and guidelines are, the Declaration, suffers the same setback with other declarations, which is that generally, they are not binding in international law.

In 1997, Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine was adopted by the Council of Europe (The Convention). The Convention provided extensively for ethics regarding medicine and scientific experiments. Article 16 of the Convention extensively provides for protection of a person undergoing experimentation and accommodates the ethics on Justice, Benevolence and freedom of harm which the Nuremberg Code, Helsinki Declaration Belmont Report have projected. Article 23 of the Convention allows parties to pursue judicial protection to prevent or to put a stop to an unlawful infringement of the rights and principles in the Convention at short notice [19].

Africa may not however benefit from the Convention considering that the only parties to the Convention were members of the Council of Europe. Without regional legal human rights coverage of the subject, it is unlikely that the Convention as it is presently will be of any use on African concerns on the matter of experimentation and exploitation. The need for such coverage is imperative in a globalised world where Africa remains a fertile ground for research and stands the greatest risk to be impacted by medical exploitation. That is more so considering that it is unlikely that free choice and benefits can be enjoyed by women in relation to medical and scientific experiments where standards are absent.

THE WAY FORWARD

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights through CEDAW to the Protocol on Women Rights, international human rights instruments to which most African nations are signatory are inadequate as a standard of regulating scientific and medical experiments. Most importantly, article 4(2)(h) of the Protocol on Women Rights lacks the essential components on ethics required for scientific and medical experimentation. The Protocol on Women Rights, just as the Convention on Human Rights & Biomedicine should accommodate requirements which the Nuremberg Codes, Helsinki Declaration and Belmont Report have projected in terms of respect for persons; beneficence and fairness. Achieving this will be a leap forwards as it will take the principles beyond the realms of mere ethics to the realms of active rights. It is therefore suggested that article 4(2)(h) of the Protocol on Women Rights in addition with the principle of informed consent should include the principles of beneficence and fairness. This is imperative in this age of globalisation where Africa remains a fertile ground for research and its women the most vulnerable.

*Jegede Ademola Oluborode is a legal practitioner and a human rights activist in Nigeria.

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

For further notes, please follow this link:

First of all your premise in that the poverty and economic stagnation in African countries is cause by corrupt and incompetent government is a narrow interpretation of the difficulties which beset the African continent. You virtually exclude the impact of neo-colonialism.

And your claims that the land distribution could have been accomplished by legislation in naive. They tried that in South Africa before Mandela left office and big landowner threatened to resist and ignore any such mandate, forcing the government to back down.

Mugabe has declared war on the people of the world, writes Grace Kwinjeh. To me it sounds a little bit exaggerated as do other statements in .

However, she is right when she writes that the Mugabe government until 1998 was considered amongst the highest-performing of World Bank and International Monetary Fund clients. And the Zimbabwean government did pay back $205 million in hard currency in 2006 to the IMF and more recently $700,000 or so to the African Development Bank. If Mugabe also flirted with the US military for many years, I don’t know. But in that case, this courtship now has been harshly turned down by the attended.

Kwinjeh paints a somber picture of the developments in Zimbabwe but forget to tell us what really happened when this development sat in.

In 1998 Zimbabwe broke with the IMF and Western-sponsored developmental paths, paths apparently spurned by Kwinjeh, and tried to enter a more homemade one. No doubt, it is has been an arduous pathway with a lot of potholes and blemishes but to blame all the present malice in Zimbabwe on the government may be an elopement. T

The introduction of Kwinjeh’s article promises an analysis of Zimbabwe through regional, African and global capitalism. But she fails grossly to tell us about how the forces of global capitalism are working against Zimbabwe today. The West has been heavily investing in regime change in Zimbabwe lately, through sanctions and its docile media, sometimes referred to as the “free press” or “independent media”. In what way FOX, CNN and BBC are independent is beyond me, but those media paint the same one-sided and ominous picture of Zimbabwe as do Kwinjeh.

In my opinion it is Kwinjeh who is “talking ultraleft” while at the same time “walking right” more than the government of Zimbabwe.

I think the article, , might have been somewhat mis-translated - "awash with extremists" is not what I understood from the French original, but rather something along the lines of how the West had suddenly become suspicious after the attacks; nor "suspicious of the West" but rather "which worries the West". I'd suggest readers turn to the original French if possible

The 25 May is commemorated annually as Africa Day, recalling the founding of the Organization of African Unity, now the African Union, in 1963. Flowing from the communiqué issued by the African Civil Society Meeting held in Dar es Salaam in April 2008, we ask concerned organizations regionally and internationally to commemorate Africa Day, Sunday 25 May 2008, as one on which to show solidarity for the people of Zimbabwe – a “Stand Up (For) Zimbabwe” Day.

Although the concept originates with a group of southern Africa-based NGO’s, concerned for issues of democracy and human rights, in Zimbabwe, it is intended that people all over the world build on this concept and that the “Stand Up For Zimbabwe” campaign have varied and multiple dimensions.

On this day there would be protests and assemblies outside offices of the Zimbabwean government, like embassies; outside offices of SADC, the AU and the UN calling for stronger action; outside offices of those individual governments which have roles to play in resolving the crisis (specifically southern African governments). All such protests and assemblies are to stand in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe.

The campaign will also be carried out through other activities: through asking congregations assembled at places of worship to rise and stand in solidarity with those beaten, tortured and killed in the post-election violence in Zimbabwe;

HOW TO ORGANISE YOUR “STAND UP (FOR) ZIMBABWE” ACTIVITIES FOR 25 MAY 2008

The day in a nutshell:
We are asking organizations and people from around the world to “Stand up (for) Zimbabwe”, by planning and participating in a series of activities around the African continent and the world that seek to show solidarity with those Zimbabweans impacted by the unashamed attempt to subvert the people’s will who voted for a party of their choice and the escalating post-election violence. We ask that you plan these events to lead up to or coincide with the 25 May 2008, a day traditionally commemorated as Africa Day, being the day on which the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) was founded.

THE THEME

The theme of the International Day of Action is “Stand up (for) Zimbabwe” to highlight that the people of the region and the world are standing up and with the people of Zimbabwe in their desire for a democratic, peaceful transition of government and an end to the violence that is so much part of their lives.

On 25 May

1. We call on people to join TAC and other organisations from South Africa and from around the world to literally stand up at 12:00pm local time.

2. In South Africa TAC will be marching upon the Presidency on Sunday 25th May.

3. Mobilise, organise and popularize this mass event to STAND UP FOR ZIMBABWE

*For more information, please visit:

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

In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.

INTRODUCTION

On May 25, 2008, peace loving peoples all over the world will celebrate African Liberation Day. This will be the fiftieth anniversary of the setting aside of a day to commemorate those who sacrificed for the liberation of the African peoples at home and abroad. In 1963, the Organization of African Unity was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Then, the main emphasis was on the liberation of territories from colonial rule. At the end of apartheid in 1994 new ideas of liberation were placed on the agenda for Africa. Questions of health, food security, environmental justice, decent education, the rights of women, the politics of inclusion and cultural freedoms were placed as the core of the liberation of Africa. African women at the grassroots are campaigning for a new form of popular power where African peoples will have the voice to intervene in the political process where they live and where they work. These men and women at the grassroots seek to give meaning to political participation and realize the dream of C.L.R. James who envisioned that ‘every cook can govern.’ This form of politics elevates the political participation of the people beyond periodic voting. African youths at home and abroad are looking forward to new institutions and new sites where the ideas of peace, love and human dignity will prevail.

THE ORIGINS OF AFRICA DAY AND AFRICAN LIBERATION YESTERDAY

At the All African Peoples Conference, held in Ghana, in 1958 it was agreed that one-day would be set aside as a national day of remembrance for African freedom fighters. Ghana had achieved its independence in 1957 and one year later Kwame Nkrumah called a conference of African workers, freedom fighters and champions for justice. Nkrumah who had been inspired by Garveyism and the self mobilization and self organization of the people took up the idea of African Liberation day and successfully promoted the idea to the leaders who formed the Organization of African Unity. The first celebration of Africa Day had begun in Harlem, USA by the followers of Marcus Garvey who had called for African Unity from as far back as 1919.

When Ghana achieved its independence in 1957 Nkrumah maintained that the independence of Ghana would be “incomplete without the independence of all of Africa.” Together with the principal freedom fighters within Ghana, Nkrumah established a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government and appointed George Padmore to run the secretariat. The task of the secretariat was to act as the coordinating point for the establishment of links with freedom fighters on the African continent and for the secretariat to be a center for information to support those fighting for freedom.

At that historical moment freedom was conceived of as freedom of the peoples and freedom of the states from colonial rule. To carry forward this task the Ghanaian government deployed the resources to support freedom fighters, trade unionists and political activists for independence. This was the spirit that inspired the calling of the All-African Peoples’ Conferences in 1958. It was at this meeting where Patrice Lumumba was introduced to the wider Pan African struggles. In tandem with this people-centered activity, Nkrumah also convened the conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa.

Because most of the present governments in Africa are opposed to the liberation of the peoples and the Union of the peoples of Africa the detractors of African Union present the struggle for the United States of Africa as a Gadaffi Initiative. Instead of Africa Day becoming a day to honor and celebrate those who struggled for independence, the day has been taken away from the people and the officials use this as another opportunity to organize embassy parties and dinners to seek assistance from the imperialists who are today called ’donors.’ Nowhere is the idea of Pan Africanism more devalued than where Pan Africanists seek to use the name of Pan Africanism to establish NGO’s to seek assistance from the very same forces that undermine African independence. Yoweri Museveni has used the current Secretariat of the Pan African Movement in Kampala as political football.

AFRICA DAY AND THE OAU IN PRACTICE

Fifty years after the start of the celebration of Africa Day in 1958 there are still colonial territories in Africa. The most well known is the case of the Western Sahara. The military invasion and occupation of Iraq by the USA demonstrated clearly the reality that the days of colonial occupation are not yet over. In North Africa and in Palestine the legacies and problems of military occupation reinforce and support the dictatorial rule of the Egyptian ruling elite.

At the time of Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser and the peoples of Egypt represented one base of support for freedom fighters. Today, the leaders of Egypt seek to establish a dynasty and hinder the full support for those fighting against occupation whether in Palestine or in Iraq. Peace activists in North Africa like peace activists in the other parts of Africa oppose occupation and genocidal violence. It is this reversal for the peoples that ensure that the politics of retrogression thrives. With the absence of committed leadership, militarists seize the discourse of liberation to establish movements for emancipation and liberation to foment genocidal politics. Genocidal politics thrives when the politics of exploitation, exclusivism, racism, militarism, religious dogmatism, extremism, and patriarchy intersect in a nested loop to oppress the people. Sudan is one society where the recursive processes of genocidal thinking, genocidal institution, genocidal politics and genoicidal economic relations are reproduced to perpetuate war and the wanton destruction of human lives.

There is a new peace movement across the globe and the celebration of Africa Day is one component of the struggles against genocide and genocidal thinking. This peace movement in Africa must link up with the global movement for peace so that liberation in Africa will be associated with emancipation, peace, social justice and the well being of the people.

THE OAU LIBERATION COMMITTEE

It was very significant that it was in those states that supported African liberation with moral, material and political support that this day was observed at the national level as a public holiday. After imperialism killed Patrice Lumumba and orchestrated a military coup d ‘etat against Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and the Tanzanian people stood out in the ways in which the idea of African Liberation was respected and the society made tremendous sacrifices for the liberation of Africa. Julius Nyerere established a tradition of self-sacrifice that was followed by those committed to ending all forms of exploitation. The Tanzanian society could not have supported liberation and hosted the OAU Liberation Committee to spearhead liberation without the mobilization and politicization of the ordinary people.

One can compare the sacrifices of the Tanzanian peoples with the present Xenophobia in states such as South Africa and Angola where former freedom fighters have used the history of the liberation struggles to hold on to political power, to enrich themselves and diminish the meaning of independence and liberation The attacks on African migrants in South Africa and the violence unleashed against poor workers in 2008 represented one example of how the former leaders of the African liberation process have become obstacles to the further emancipation of Africa. Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF leadership in Zimbabwe represents the extreme example of freedom fighters who started out on the side of the people but used state power to enrich a small clique while shouting about imperialism. Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea represent leaders who once used the language of liberation while setting up militaristic states to oppress the people of Africa.

WILL THE PEOPLE PREVAIL?

The momentum and energy of the poor ensured that the OAU through the liberation committee supported the process of decolonization in Africa despite the fact that the generals constituted the majority at the summit. The formation of the OAU in 1963 had been a compromise among member states that could not agree on how to respond to the clear external manipulation of the Congo after those representing the interests of Western mining capital murdered Patrice Lumumba in 1961.It was in this Congo where the traditions of militarism, corruption and genocide had taken deep roots.

Those who yesterday opposed African liberation and supported dictators such as Siad Barre (Somalia), Arap Moi (Kenya) Félix Houphouët-Boigny y (Ivory Coast) and Hastings Banda (Malawi) now write books on failed states in Africa. This language of corruption and notions of Africa representing a breeding ground for ‘terrorism’ is one component of psychological war against Africa. The objective of the propaganda is for the young to forget the imperial crimes in Africa. In this way the dream of the young is to escape Africa to Europe.

The imperialists who orchestrated and planned the assassination of Patrice Lumumba have reframed their role in the destabilization of Africa and now write books celebrating their role in the destruction of African sovereignty. Larry Devlin who was the Chief of Station of the Central Intelligence Agency in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) has written a book (Chief of Station) to cover up the crimes of US imperialism in Africa. Mobutu represented the biggest obstacle to African liberation and unity and for thirty five years Mobutism supported genocidal politics and genocidal leaders in Central Africa from Rwanda to Burundi and Uganda under Idi Amin. The clause of non-interference in the internal affairs of states was the expedient to protect the confraternity of dictators. Despite these setbacks, the people prevailed and are now placing the question of the union of the peoples of Africa as the urgent task of contemporary liberation.

The formation of the African Union in 2001 was a conscious effort to transcend the traditions of violence and militarism. Defeat through victory Just as how at the end of slavery in the British territories 1834 the slave masters were compensated, so in the period at the end of apartheid the West intensified the neo-liberal agenda of privatisation, liberalization and de regulation so that the architects of apartheid and their black allies could enrich themselves.

Firstly, through IMF and the World Bank the basic rights to education, housing, health care and decent wages have been eroded. This has meant that the African poor have borne the brunt of the world capitalist depression. When Alan Greenspan, (former head of the Federal Reserve in the USA) noted that this capitalist depression has been the worst since 1920, he neglected to note that the poor and the exploited in Africa bore the brunt of this capitalist depression. Food riots in Senegal, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Egypt, Somalia and the Cameroons are the outward signs of the stirrings of a new liberation movement where the peoples of Africa are demanding food, clothing, shelter and access to proper health care.

Secondly, African liberation now requires that the people control their governments and that issues of financial planning and budgeting are discussed in the villages, townships and cities of Africa. In Africa, the politics of retrogression has become the norm, and the leadership has taken – to cultural proportions - the tendency to turn their backs on the people as soon as they take office. Hence, though the African Union has stipulated that no leader can come to power through military coup leaders now resort to electoral theft as evidenced recently in Kenya and Zimbabwe. There is now an urgent need to create new democratic institutions to strengthen popular participation and representation. Parliamentary democracy on its own is not enough; it must be supplemented with and strengthened by other popular institutions and associations like the local governments, cooperative movements, independent workers, women, student and youth organizations, assemblies or organizations for the environmental concerns and for minority rights, and so forth A new leadership must ensure that this is the dominant political culture, with enough flexibility to allow for changes when changes are needed to strengthen and further consolidate that culture.

This new political culture will eventually shift power from the current corrupt and unrepresentative political groupings, to local communities whose chosen representatives will be accountable to the interests of these local communities first not those of a small center that monopolizes power in the national political groupings.

Thirdly, in the midst of the millions dying from the AIDS pandemic the African governments are being coerced to cut delivery of health care. The provision of health for the masses of the people represents one of the fundamental goals of liberation in this era. All across the continent the requirements for a healthy life are pressing when the poor are seeking environments with clean air, clean water, and neighbourhoods cleared of mosquito holding areas and homes that are not dilapidated.

LIBERATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL REPAIR

Environmental repair and environmental justice form the fourth link in the chain of liberation in this new century. All across the continent the present leaders glorify the extraction of petroleum resources without regard for the health and safety of the peoples. From the North of Africa down to the Namibian coast petroleum companies are looting African oil while destroying the environment. Nigeria represents an extreme example of where environmental racism abounds and where a small clique is enriched while the majority of the peoples are exploited.

As much as 76 per cent of all the natural gas from Petroleum production in Nigeria is flared compared to 0.6 per cent in USA, 4.3 per cent in the UK, 21.0 per cent in Libya. The flaring is one of the most severe of the numerous hazards to which the peoples of the Delta and the Rivers States are exposed. At temperatures of 1,300 to 1,400 degrees centigrade, the multitude of flares in the Delta heat up everything, causing noise pollution, and producing CO2, VOC, CO, NOx and particulates around the clock. The emission of CO2 from gas flaring in Nigeria releases 35 million tons of CO2 a year and 12 million tons of methane, which means that Nigerian oil fields contribute more in global warming than the rest of the world together. (Claude Ake, 1996)

It is in Africa where the petroleum companies are engaged in crimes against Africans and crimes against nature. Many of the gas flares are situated very close to villages, sometimes within a hundred metres of homes of ordinary citizens. Petroleum companies have been flaring at some sites for 24 hours a day for more than 30 years. Despite this record, the standard view of environmental management, is that the basic rights of private property and of profit maximization, come before the health and welfare of the peoples of Nigeria in general, and in particular, the peoples who live in the Niger Delta.

Concerns for environmental justice are kept subservient to concerns for economic efficiency and capital accumulation. Successive governments in Nigeria have been willing accomplices to this degradation, the oil companies are protected while the health and welfare of Nigerian society suffers irreparable. The cuts in the social wage of the population make it impossible for local communities to support health clinics and there is an absence of drugs in most rural hospitals. The oil revenue is recycled to prop up the political class. Since 1958, Royal Dutch Shell has extracted billions from the lands of the Niger Delta. It is in this situation where a movement has developed called Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Should African freedom fighters be supporting the armed struggles in the Niger Delta when we are presented with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta? Acts of militarism even in the face of the keenest oppression can only be supported in the present era when all other forms of popular political mobilization have been exhausted. This is the concrete lesson from the wars in Sierra Leone and “the revolutionary forces of Foday Sanko.” We have also learnt the limits of armed revolutionary struggles from the wars of liberation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the military campaign of Kabila, the intervention by Wamba dia Wamba, the senseless wars between Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Namibia along with prolonged fighting in Eastern Congo there are clear lessons for liberation.

These acts of militarism and war force revolutionaries to grasp the meanings of liberation and liberation movements today.

The legacies of the defeat in the Congo The Congo stands at the heart of Africa and peace in the Congo will have a tremendous impact on social reconstruction and transformation in Africa. Regional cooperation between truly democratic states will change the African Union and there will be a quantum change in the politics of Africa when the ideas and principles of African wildfire spread to all parts of the continent. In order to forestall the full operation of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, the United States has established the US Africa command to remilitarize Africa at the moment when the driving force behind African liberation is the peace and social justice movements. It is this peace and justice movement that inspired the continent wide opposition to the Africa command so much so that the US government has to resort to covert agreements to shore up the allies who are secretly colluding with western militarism.

Potentially were countries such as Angola, the DR Congo and the Sudan democratic states, they could collectively put together a major program of self-development, funded entirely by them for the whole Eastern and Southern Africa region. The West understands this and it is for this reason that the European Union and the USA are not supporters of peace and demilitarisation in Africa. In the face of the crisis of US capitalism the Chinese have emerged as a major force in the political economy of Africa. This new engagement has been significantly different from the period when the political leaders of China had supported the decolonization of Africa and provided support for Tanzania to build the Tazara railroad.

From liberation to emancipation As we come to the end of the first decade of a new century this moment provides one other opportunity to reflect on the tasks of liberation in the last fifty years and to assess how far the tasks and goals of liberation were realized. The crisis of the nature of human existence is manifest in all spheres of social relations; in the relations between humans (men and women), in the relationship between humans and the environment and in the forms of economic organization. It is now clearer that African liberation is not possible within the capitalist mode of production. When Walter Rodney wrote the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, he had stated unequivocally that capitalism stands in the path of further human transformation. Now this is even clearer with the nested loop of environmental crimes, food crisis, economic terrorism, pandemics and the absence of representative democratic forms.

African women are leading the call for a new definition of liberation beyond one where African males occupy the positions of power of European and send their children to schools to be educated in European languages and in the ideas of patriarchy, domination over nature and private property. Since the period of the anti-apartheid struggles there has been a deepening of the understanding of liberation to encompass issues that are common on both sides of the Atlantic such as regional economic integration, democratisation, the end to genocide, reparations, the emancipation of women, the end to sexism and heterosexism, the humanization of the male and the humanization of the planet. The African Liberation Struggle of Tomorrow How can Africans be validated as human beings and lay the foundations for a new sense of personhood? This question has been sharpened by the major turning point in human transformations with the revolutionary technological changes that carried potential for healing as well as the potential for destruction. Books on Apartheid medicine have pointed to the ways in which Africans are being used as guinea pigs. The questions of the worth of the value of African life, of human life will be contested in the 21st century.

Millions are dying from preventable diseases and the health infrastructure has deteriorated while health workers leave Africa in droves. Where Information technology and robotics are changing the nature of work, education and leisure and the traditional understanding economics, the advances in gene splitting technologies are changing the very ways in which plants and animals are produced. The information revolution is bringing telecommunications technology to most communities across the continent and the peoples are now able to keep in constant contact with their village communities. African youths are using this technology to bring knowledge and information to others in order to break the control over information. Imperialism seeks to tap into the cognitive skills of the peoples while the governments look to Europe for models of education.

Africa is the home of the richest biodiversity on the planet. While some leaders are struggling for land, the biotech and pharmaceutical companies are patenting African medicinal plants. The threat of the major biotech companies to patent life forms along with the new rules of the World Trade Organization relating to intellectual property rights contain the seeds of undermining all of the gains that were made in the context of the struggle for self determination. By presenting life as an “invention” the biotechnical companies and the food corporations seek to eliminate the African farmer altogether. It is against this background that Africa is providing the lead in the World Trade Organization against the patenting of life forms. In the book, the Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, Samir Amin has warned of the dangers to the pauperization of the majority of farmers in Africa if African government follow the model of agriculture of Europe and the United States.

AFRICAN LIBERATION AND THE CENTRALITY OF GRASSROOTS WOMEN

Whether it is in the area of food production, health care, care for the sick or the education of the youth there is a disproportionate burden that is carried by women of the grassroots. One of the most important new development in the debates on revolution and transformation in the 21st century lies in the centrality of the place of the black women of the producing classes in the struggle for social transformation. This discussion which is going on in Africa and in the Americas emanates from a long tradition of struggle by black women and the determination that the black woman would never be again be marginalized in the African revolution.

The ensuing debates on women’s rights, racism, class alliances, environmental racism, gender and social reproduction hold the seeds of the most profound understanding of the limits of the concentration on productive forces that was the hallmark of radical politics for the generation after 1917. The question of how the understanding of the oppression of women is linked to the household as a site of politics brings home the point that one cannot be politically progressive and support any form of domination or intolerance. The women's movement successfully challenged the labor theory of value and influenced our understanding of the centrality of household production in the capitalist labor process. These revolutionary women have deepened our understanding of the importance of care and that the discipline of economics will remain one branch of capitalist ideas unless it takes into consideration care and reproductive capabilities of women.

Female labor power was never calculated in the economic models of nineteenth century revolutionaries. Black women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman yesterday and women such as Angela Davis and Nawal El Saadawi today placed the question of the liberation of women on the political agenda. Throughout the twentieth century the women’s movement internationally made great strides in placing the gender, care and housework as fundamental questions of revolution. However, in the main, this mainstream movement was dominated by conceptions of progress and reason that emanated from Western Europe.

It was the radical black feminists who have reflected on how the growth of emancipatory ideas has contributed towards the project of our collective emancipation. By framing and ending the separation of the woman question from the other sites of struggles and making gender transformation the central question of the struggle, the progressive women inside the left movement and in the radical formations have taken the political lead in the fight for justice. Hence in Africa today, the combined energies of the women from all parts of the Sudan are seeking to place the issues of rape, sexual terrorism, violation and gender oppression at the center of the debate on the future of the Sudan. Fundamentalism of all forms represents one component of the counter revolutionary period in which we live.

UBUNTU

There is need for a new orientation on liberation to conceptualize the values of ubuntu as the basis for liberation. The concept incorporates values of sharing, cooperation and spiritual health. Ubuntu, emancipatory politics and reparations are the key concepts for liberation tomorrow. The attainment of ubuntu is bound up with the political union of Africa. The concrete understanding of the cultural unity of Africa and the contributions of the African peoples towards human transformation are being refined every day through day to day struggles. Cheik Anta Diop who has studied the linguistic basis of African Unity emphasized the importance of African languages in the push for continental unity. African Liberation will be meaningless if it is not rooted in African languages and in the genius of the African woman. The aspirations of Diop, which were outlined in his book on the Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, form the core of the African Union of tomorrow. Diop was clear that his idea on industrialization and regeneration of Africa was not based simply on the development of the productive forces without reference to the working people of Africa. Diop wrote clearly of the requirement of effective representation of women at all levels of governance.

The future of African liberation will be informed by a new mode of politics where ordinary African men, women and children will be able to revel in the idea of Africa for the Africans at home and abroad and tear down the borders of oppression and control which were created in 1885. The future of Pan Africanism and the AU must reinforce the traditional respect for the elders and should raise up a new tradition, respect for young people. This new tradition calls for Africa to lead the world in the use of all means to support the emancipation of African women and girls and to end all forms of oppression.

This is the essence of reparations, peace and justice!

*Horace Campbell is the author of the well known book, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. His latest book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation is published by David Philip of Cape Town, South Africa.

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

Emma Njoki Wamai reflects on the 2007 I6 Days of Activism Campaign and notes the positive impact on Sauti Ya Wanawake (The Voice of Women) such as strengthening the organization's relationship with the provincial administration. This has led to police and the chiefs’ working together with SYW on cases of sexual and gender based violence.

The Sauti Ya Wanawake[1] grassroots women’s movement members recount their experiences with sexual and gender based violence with an uncomfortable familiarity. In the dusty and desolate sisal plantations, national parks and the savanna grasslands in Taveta, Taita and Kinango districts in the Kenyan Coast, everyday women and children are sexually abused at an alarming rate.

In Taita, Taveta, Kwale and Kinango Districts in Kenya, sexual and gender based violence has been rampant for a long time due to retrogressive cultural practices and poverty which deprives the most vulnerable people, mostly women and children their human rights. In 2007 alone, 62 girls and women and 2 boys were defiled and raped (Children’s Department, Taita Taveta District). According to the Children’s Officer and the Sauti ya Wanawake movement[2] in the region, reported rape and defilement of children is excercabeted in the district by the complacent culture of wazee wa vigogoni[3] laxity of provincial administration, entry of illicit drugs and brews from neighbouring Tanzania. Of these 62, only 20 cases were taken to court. It is notable that these were reported cases and many other cases especially where women were violated, were not reported to the police since the perpetrators are normally relatives and fear of castigation by the community.

Coincidentally, the theme of the 2007 16 days of activism campaign, ‘Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence against Women’ could not have been more appropriate to the sisters and mothers of Taita Taveta who have watched helplessly as their children’s childhood is hurriedly ended by lurking man made beasts.

Inspired by the need to end violence against women in their communities, they sought partnership with like minded organizations such as the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) ,a non governmental organization whose vision is promoting and protecting human rights and the Canadian International Development Agency Gender Equity Support Project (CIDA-GESP) to mainstream strategic and practical gender issues in the existing pre election promises by aspiring candidates and to raise awareness on legal forms of redress such as the New Sexual Offences Act through dialogue forums and community radio stations. They also trained local village elders, local provincial administration, religious leaders, youth and women on the effects of violence against women and erected 4 information billboards in remote villages offering community members safe spaces to deposit information on violence against women and children.

Mama Dorcas Jibran, the coordinator of the Sauti Ya Wanawake says that the impact of the 16days of Activism 2007 is profound on the safety of women and children in the three districts barely 3 months later. Mama Dorcas shared these achievements of the 2007, 16 days of Activism campaign which include;

- Sustainable Partnerships. This project has strengthened Sauti ya Wanawake’s relationship with the provincial administration and as a result, Sauti ya Wanawake, police and the chiefs’ work together on cases of sexual and gender based violence. The Divisional Officer’s office (DO) has been facilitating Sauti ya Wanawake to visit remote places incase of an alarm and they have also been making follow-ups together. Mama Dorcas is currently working with the chiefs and the Councilors to establish modalities of setting up information boxes in every location.

- The grassroot women’s movement now has the capacity to articulate issues and the village representatives are called upon to advice on gender issues in churches and local development committees. For example, Mama Dorcas and Mama Emma Mailus are normally called upon by their local police posts to advice and train the police when a sex offender is arrested.

- Lastly, Sauti Ya Wanawake and the residents of Taita, Taveta and Kinango have benefited from the information billboards which are positioned in every constituency. Mama Docras Jibran has already received five cases on violence against women and children and succession issues from women and she has referred the individuals for further support to Police and the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Mombassa Office.

There is need for the Africa Union Members states to fully domesticate the numerous instruments and regional charters that recognize the hardships women like Mama Dorcas face.

The Convention on Elimination against All forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) is one such instrument. The African Women’s Protocol of the African peoples Human Rights Charter is another that criminalizes any violence committed against women.

The time is now!

*Emma Njoki Wamai is a Programme Associate in the Kenya Human Rights Commission

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

For further notes, please follow this link:

Managing and Transforming Global Conflicts in the 21st Century is a two-day experts level seminar arranged for government and political leadership, diplomats, representatives of national and international organizations, and experienced practitioners, mediators and field workers for the UN and other international agencies.

In March 2007, the Sonke Gender Justice Network partnered with Silence Speaks to co-ordinate two digital stortelling workshops focused on issues of gender, violence and HIV and AIDS in South Africa. Working with a team of trainers, men and women participants shared their own stories with one another; wrote and recorded first-person voiceover narrations; collected and generated still images and video cilps with which to illustrate their work; and gained the computer skills they needed to edit these materials into short digital videos.

My writing this letter emerges from realisation of the seriousness of the scenes of "xenophobic attacks" we have been experiencing in South Africa over the past couple of days and as such would like to refer to this situation as "Democracy Betrayed-The Struggle Betrayed".

When the African National Congress (ANC) ascended to power in 1994, the politico-socio economic landscape of South Africa changed drastically. The people of the country, through their elected representatives, draw up a Constitution that stands to be one of the best in the world. The RDP was seen as the path to be taken in ensuring that the imbalances and inequalities that characterised the new South Africa would be addressed. Employment, education, health, housing and social security among others were promised. Due to perceived economic difficulties in the period of 1996-1997, RDP had to be removed and replaced by a neo-liberal economic policy, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), which, it was suggested, would "generate the necessary wealth which would ensure that the South African society realises the objectives as contained in the Freedom Charter adopted 55 years ago.

However, this policy has not "delivered" on its promises. As Paul Kingsnorth observes, the poor of South Africa have realised that the task of rebuilding their nation ultimately rest with them. "The foreigners are taking our jobs, women, homes, etc" the poor claim, therefore, "lets get rid of them". One of the things that needs to be realised is that this results from the frustration and dissatisfaction over service delivery in general and in particular, the economic situation that the poor find themselves in. The assumption, particularly with regards to employment, is that the foreign nationals are undermining the struggles that the "people" endured so as to ensure that SA has the labour laws and regulations it has, by overlooking such issues as the minimum wage, healthy working environment, proper working hours and so on.

People live in informal settlements with no access to sanitation, clean drinking water, electricity, housing, employment opportunities and so on. The need has arisen for the people to make known their feelings. However, how will killing fellow Africans correct the situation? The Constitution of South Africa guarantees rights and privileges to all people, including foreign internationals. Where do people get the idea that by ill-treating others, we can capture the attention of leaders and hence demand their immediate action? Indeed, most of us may not be experiencing what these people are experiencing on the ground, but definitely there are other mechanisms that can be used to raise such issues. Many people still have the conviction that by having a political leader and government come to our level and address the situation, then we can consider changing. This has not been the case, senior political figures and government officials are only sending press

Statements to condemn the situation, how the hell wills this work? It just shows the people that officials are not taking the situation with the seriousness that they should. This indeed is sending a negative reflection of SA to the world and the political leaders need to show some degree of leadership now!! People are dying and their only sin is of being foreigners. We all accept that the services promised to the people have not been delivered, Democracy has been betrayed, the struggle has been betrayed, but this is not the way to deal with the situation. South Africans need to realise that violent action is not the only way to solve problems, there are various legislations that have been promulgated to deal with such issues and people need to make use of these avenues.

Political education and sensitization around issues of xenophobia, service delivery and legislation need to be ensured. The culture of violence needs to be removed from Africa if Africa is to ensure that the dream of a better continent for all is realized.

The Africa Commission is holding a conference on youth and education on 16 June. At the first meeting of the Africa Commission in Copenhagen on 16 April it was decided to set up five thematic conferences in various places in Africa during the next half year. Here the participants will discuss and investigate various aspects of the Commission’s focus on youth and employment.

The Southern Africa Trust is seeking a consultancy to undertake an assessment of the impact of financial aid flows on the policy work of regional civil society in Southern Africa as part of its ongoing work to engage with donors on financial aid flows to Southern Africa but also as a way of strengthening its work around supporting increased aid flows to civil society for them to be able to effectively to influence policy to overcome poverty.

The Social Movements Indaba (SMI) – a co-ordinating national body of social movements, civil society and activist organizations – is organizing with its affiliated organizations and immigrant communities to roll back the groundswell of xenophobia.

In the years since its formation in 2002, the SMI has linked organizations of the poor in struggle for basic services, international solidarity and against police repression. At its last national meeting in December in Cape Town, the SMI identified xenophobia as a pervasive problem in communities and undertook to campaign against hatred of foreigners. Now that the crisis of hate crime is no longer foreboding and is terrifyingly HERE, there is no time to stall and wish we were better prepared. We are without hesitation committed to the struggles for social justice, internationalism and solidarity with all repressed people.

While the police have been deployed to try keep a lid on the pressure that has boiled over, this is no solution to the safety and security of all. As a xenophobic force in Johannesburg pre-existing the outbreak of violence, the police cannot be trusted to be more than the brute barrier between perpetrators and their targeted victims. The South African Police Services and Johannesburg Metro Police harass immigrants to solicit bribes as a matter of practice. Calling on the police to 'do their work' as president Thabo Mbeki and his government have done does not, therefore, address the issues of safety and security amongst immigrant communities. The refugee communities do not trust the police as impartial arbiters of the conflict. The police conducted a brutal raid on the Central Methodist Church on the 31st of January 2008 under the pretext of crime prevention. Criminalisation of immigrants is a smokescreen for deportation and bribery that the police has not cleared.

Long-lasting safety and security for all does not include deportation of foreign nationals, whether voluntary or not. Xenophobia's origins lie within the conditions of poverty in which the majority of south Africans live. Immigrants have been targeted for their ethnic difference and for their very similarity with their persecutors. Seen as competitors for scarce jobs and housing, south Africans have misdirected their anger at conditions of poverty that are unchanging. Their fellow brothers and sisters who are enduring the same cannot be responsible for what the economic and political system has created.

While we struggle for a change to the neo-liberal capitalist system that has created this reality, rearguard struggles for safety and security of immigrants in the country must continue. The SMI gives thanks for those humanitarian organizations, emergency services and churches that are trying to stem the tide of bloodletting and forced removals. We will organize against the creation of refugee camps and work towards the reintegration of immigrants in our communities. In working to recover our common humanity and restore calm, delegations from the SMI are meeting with community-based organizations in Alex and the inner city, and as the programme of action to roll-back the hate unfolds, the SMI will be going further afield to speak to affected communities.

The SMI is mobilizing social movements, immigrant communities, NGOs and concerned residents from poor areas around the province for a march this Saturday, the 24th of May. The march will gather at Marks Park (Empire and Hospital Road) from 9a.m., proceed through Hillbrow and stop at the Departments of Home Affairs and Housing before ending at the Library Gardens. The message marchers will be conveying is that our struggle is common and knows no borders.

— No one is illegal —

*The Social Movements Indaba includes amongst other organizations: the Anti Privatisation Forum, Jubilee South Africa, Imbawula Trust, Sounds of Edutainment, Umzabalazo we Jubilee, Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, Inner City Resource Centre, Kliptown Concerned Residents, Khanya College, Earthlife Africa (Johannesburg), Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Golden Triangle Crisis Committee, Samancor Retrenched Workers Crisis Committee, African Renaissance Civic Movement, Group of Refugees Without Voice.

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

In the midst of the drama of the past few days, which has seen South Africans rampaging against foreigners to vent their frustrations at the slow pace of delivery of land, housing and jobs, one story stands out as the antithesis to the story of non-development.

The government of Côte d’Ivoire should take immediate steps to end impunity for members of a pro-government student group responsible for numerous acts of violent, criminal behavior, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Since 2002, when a failed coup attempt plunged the country into a political and military crisis, the Student Federation of Côte d’Ivoire (Fédération Estudiantine et Scolaire de Côte d’Ivoire, FESCI), alternatively described as a “pro-government militia” and a “mafia,” has been responsible for politically and criminally motivated violence.

International action is needed to end the Lord’s Resistance Army’s reported new spree of abductions and sexual violence and to help execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the group’s leaders, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch has learned that since February 2008 the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) group has carried out at least 100 abductions, and perhaps many more, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Southern Sudan.

Supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe tortured more than 70 people, including six men to death, in a “re-education” meeting on May 5, 2008 in Mashonaland Central, Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s campaign of organized terror and violence against the political opposition is continuing despite agreement to hold a presidential runoff election.

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