This is an invitation to NGOs to register for a short on-line survey (10 minutes) launched by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). The survey is being conducted by IEG to get the feedback from NGOs on the Bank's work on land reform, policy and administration in client countries. IEG is an independent unit of the World Bank Group (which reports directly to the Board of Directors) established to review systematically and comprehensively, after project completion, all Bank lending operations, and to evaluate their contribution to the development process in member countries.

Secure access to land is a crucial factor in the eradication of hunger and poverty. Providing secure access to land is frequently not easy, and it is particularly complex in situations following violent conflicts. Getting the answer right can go directly to the matter of achieving sustainable peace. Addressing emergency humanitarian needs after a conflict requires finding places for people to live in the short-term under conditions that provide safety for them and which do not threaten the rights to land of others.

From South Africa , the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF) has today, 23.01.08 issued a press statement entitled 'The SADC Initiated Talks: A Let Down for Most Zimbabweans'. ZEF calls upon President Mbeki to give a frank indication of who is responsible for the failure of the talks when reporting back to the SADC Troika. It urges him to do everything in his power to deal with the stumbling block and salvage the negotiations and ensure Zimbabweans in the Diaspora get the
opportunity to vote in the forthcoming elections.

According to media reports, the Kenyan Police has used tear gas and live ammunition to fire on the crowds with at least 12 deaths reported in Nairobi and Kisumu. This has led to security restrictions on aid and staff movements hindering assessments and response for most of the week.

Since the December elections in Kenya an estimated 600 people have died as a result of the unrest, and another 100,000 at least have been displaced. The violence erupted after incumbent Mwai Kibaki was sworn into office in the midst of acusations that the election was rigged, led by opposition candidate Raila Odinga. International observers have called the election "flawed." In this interview Firoze Manji speaks on post election violence in Kenya as a symptom of long term debates within Kenya surrounding the constitution, and a legacy of Kenya's history under colonialism.

Alain Leveque makes a case for the Rodrigues Island's self-determination from Mauritius

Three hundred years ago, men and women in flesh and bone, were kidnapped from their villages in Guinea; trapped and captured like animals in Senegal; ripped from their families in Mozambique; herded aboard slave ships in Madagascar, and shipped across the Indian Ocean to this part of the World. Those who survived ended their days labouring like beasts of burden for foreign masters. They would never see Africa again. To the rest of the world, these unfortunate individuals lend a human face to the dark-end of a fading history; to us Rodriguans, they were much more – they were our great great … grand fathers and mothers.

Historical Perspective

To get to the inmost heart of our liberation struggle from Mauritius, it is sufficiently important to briefly revisit Rodrigues’ timeline. There are differing versions of history. We have the slave-driver’s version according to the slave-driver; we have the slave’s version according to the slave; we have the versions of those who see world conquest as Jus ad bellum (just cause for war) and the versions of those who do not. From this hazy distance, when we search for a truth buried somewhere in a dead past, among so many other diluted, distorted and deformed half-truths – we can only take a leap of faith.

The name Rodrigues was eponymously plucked from Diego Rodriguez, a Portuguese sailor whose brief visit in 1528 heralded the coming of the Europeans. There is some evidence that Chinese Mariners, Arab and Malay traders, and Pirates may have stumbled on the island as far back as the tenth century. No record of any indigenous population exists. By 1638, a council on nearby Reunion Island was already administering Rodrigues as a French possession. It remained a French colony until British troops stormed the island in 1809. It was then governed as a separate British territory until May 30, 1814, when its administration was transferred to Mauritius.

During the Second World War, 300 of our compatriots, my father among them, from our tiny active population, supported the British in Tobruk and El Alamein.
Yet, in March 1968, we were bound to Mauritius against our will, and marooned in the colonially imposed ‘forced marriage’ of unitary rule. Having offloaded Mauritius, the British in Rodrigues simply packed their bags, shot their dogs, and took off.

In effect, we became the whipping boy, left behind at the mercy of new masters, to foot the bill for the transgressions of others.

Our history has been one long painful struggle against non-consensual governments: from French possession, French colony, English possession, dependency of the colony of Mauritius, ‘district’ of Mauritius, to Island region of Mauritius today.

Neo-colonial labels replaced colonial tags; alien masters took over from foreign rulers, but for our people – the dysphoric cycle grinds on: Adieu l’esclavage – Bonjour l’esclavage (farewell slavery – good morning slavery.)

Political Domination

By 1960, the decolonization of Mauritius and Rodrigues islands had already been decided. When subsequent negotiations and constitutional conferences were held in London and Mauritius in 1961, ‘65 and ‘67, Rodriguans were deliberately excluded. The pretext was that we did not have any political parties or organizations.

During that epoch, the ultraconservative Mauritian party, PMSD (Parti Mauritian ‘Social Democrat’), had been running a campaign of scaremongering, along ethnic lines in Rodrigues. Besides promises of freedom, its leader, Duval, had managed to convince our people that the Devil and his Dam would descend on Rodrigues after the British pulled out. Not surprisingly, in their first contact with the ballot box in 1967, an overwhelming ninety-eight percent of Rodriguans voted against being attached to Mauritius. Sadly, the express views of our people did not take precedence over the urgent conspiracy to annex our homeland.

Of note, in 1967, Rodriguans were not offered a choice between freedom and colonialism; we had to face the horns of this dilemma: British colonization or Mauritian occupation … a foreign ruler or an alien master. Not too dissimilar to Indochina’s quandary: Japanese occupation or French colonization.

Rodriguans did not wish to continue living under a British heel, anymore than we craved the prospect of living under a Mauritian one. And we certainly did not fancy the idea of uprooting our families, leaving the bones of ten generations of our ancestors buried in Rodrigues, to sail into exile in foreign lands. Nonetheless, in those blood-curdling days in Mauritius, people were dying in the streets; we feared being carved up next. The chilling reality of the times saw many discard their possessions, homes and lands, to escape to Canada, Australia, France, England, South Africa and other parts of the World. For some, this still cuts close to the bone.

In 1968, before the ink was dry on a unilaterally drafted Independence constitution; baton-wielding police hoisted the Mauritian flag atop Port Mathurin under a cloud of tear-gas. Rodriguans became unwilling Mauritian citizens overnight. On occasions when our stout-hearted brothers and sisters resisted, British troops were summoned to put down our protest.

Admittedly, after the British left in 1968, our hands were not cut off. All the same, Rodrigues was reduced to a Mauritian fiefdom, where marginalization soon became institutionalized. We found ourselves with higher unemployment, higher cost of living, higher infant mortality, higher primary education drop-out rate and lower literacy and living standard than Mauritius. Discrimination, domination and exclusion became the norm. Today, force majeure continues to buttress the status quo.

In 1976, a separate ministry was set up to deal with Rodrigues’ specificities. So far, only a handful of ‘moderate’ Rodriguans, with their wings clipped, have ever been co-opted to this portfolio. What’s more, no Rodriguan has filled this post in the past ten years, and the likelihood of it ever being different, seems remote. Mauritian politicians arbitrarily choose the minister for Rodrigues and politically-appointed Mauritian bureaucrats govern Rodrigues by proxy – irrespective of our votes.

In 1991, when Rodriguans, had the temerity to demand more control over their own affairs, a token island Council was put in place to placate them. Fellow travellers and party hacks were handpicked and allowed to make recommendations on local matters. But, when the Council, though toothless, began to fuel nationalist pride among those with ‘ideas above their station’ – it was unceremoniously disbanded in 1996.

In 2001, following a long sustained struggle, the idea of Autonomy for the ethnically diverse people of Rodrigues, was first mooted. Finally, 170 years after the abolition of slavery, far reaching devolution from the centralized rigidities of Mauritian control came into sight … albeit briefly.

In 2002, after much fanfare, after the spin-doctors had recited their precision-tooled sound bites, after the pig-headed and the big-headed had had their photo opportunities – ‘Autonomy’ arrived. The names were changed from Island Council to Regional Assembly and from Councillors to Commissioners. A few buildings were erected here and there, a few factotums got to fly to Mauritius, there to sit, silent and still, on government back-benches and a plague of introduced Chameleons overran Rodrigues. That was roughly the extent of it.

Mauritian ministers continued to micro-manage our affairs and we got to elect the lackeys who run their errands. The central government retained all legislative and executive powers and practically everything else. Eventually, even its rusted-on supporters had to concede that our promised ‘Autonomy’ was a dud.

When we peek one inch beyond the chic sophistry, we see one people still ruling another, not only without that other’s consent – but against its will.
Loie sans partage (absolute rule) is alive and well in Rodrigues; it can be seen any day of the year, flexing its muscle and beating its chest in Port Mathurin.

At the risk of belabouring the obvious, one cannot consider limited administrative discretion to be Autonomy, anymore, than one can seriously consider a piglet to be an elephant.

The colonial legacy of authoritarian bureaucratic dictatorship was never dismantled in Rodrigues – it was reinforced. External bureaucratic-warlords command and our people obey without question. The chief of police, the judge, the minister for Rodrigues, all the principal heads of department, all the lawyers, all the policy makers, all those who actually govern Rodrigues – all come from Mauritius.

When our Creole language, in which is stored the experiences and struggles of our people, is spurned in our Assembly – when seventy percent of our people are disqualified from political office, because they do not speak a foreign language –
when half-nourished, half-educated and half-free schoolchildren are forced to learn three languages – when there is a dearth of educational material on our African culture in a curriculum designed for us, by others – when our children mimic cultures, beliefs, languages and traditions dissimilar to their own, in order to validate their sense of self-worth – when our civil service which represents ninety percent of our educated, is effectively gagged from political discourse – when our people speak of Independence in tentative muffled whispers, for fear of government spies – when everything is controlled by external forces, there is no freedom … only domination.
Constitutional guarantees of no ruling caste, of no second class citizens, of consent of the governed to govern, seem to apply to all, except in respect to Rodriguans.

The Rodriguan citizen is like a beleaguered character, hopelessly trapped inside an eternal nightmare of suppressed resentment, being forced to watch helplessly, as his culture crumbles into dust.

Mauritius speaks of human rights at the United Nations, pledges solidarity with SADC (Southern African Development Committee) and the African Union – yet retains its own Colonial Dominion. The double-edged morality is staggering.

Self-Determination

Much water and much blood have flowed into the Indian Ocean, since our brothers and sisters in Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Comoros, Africa, Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius were freed (at least in theory) from the wretched web of Colonialism.
But for us Rodriguans, the on-going ignominy of Mauritian Occupation still haunts our daily lives.

In the 21st century, the island of Rodrigues, one of this regions’ last remaining manifestations of Colonialism has become the ‘sick man’ of the Indian Ocean, forever bonded to an artificial welfare drip, and still begging a foreign kleptocrat to let us go.

It is argued that because on May 30th 1814, Britain dubbed Rodrigues a dependency of the colony of Mauritius, and administered it as part of the island of Mauritius, it automatically became an integral and indivisible territory of Mauritius. Therefore, any dismemberment of territory before independence would have been illegal under international law.

If we follow this line of reasoning, then we also recognise that all colonially-imposed arrangements are forever binding on all future generations. And when this thinking is extended retrospectively, then, Mussolini’s 1936 laws could still be cited today, as justification to go on bedevilling the lives of Ethiopians, forever.

During Mad-Dog-Morgan’s governorship of Jamaica, looting and rape were the arrangements of the day. As one would reasonably expect, when Morgan the pirate left, his arrangements left with him. The British themselves snatched Rodrigues from the French at the point of a bayonet hooked-up to a gun; likewise, any arrangements they made during their rule became null and void – the very minute they left.

There was never any 11th Commandment, which accorded Britain divine-right to bequeath our lives, our lands and our country to Mauritius, for time without end.
Our people were not Mauritius’ or anyone else’s private property. We were not cattle to be handed over from one master to another to another.

Unitary rule was part and parcel of British colonial policy. As a result, despite underlying divisions among different geographical ethnic groups, territories were artificially forced into a unitary state. For example, New Zealand was administered as a dependency of the colony of New South Wales; islands of the Caribbean were grouped together willy-nilly; Seychelles was administered as part of Mauritius;
There were plans afoot to group all British East-African colonies under a federation. And it was only the selfless vetoes of India’s leaders that saved Burma from being administered as part of India. Unfortunately, Rodrigues did not have a Ghandi, or a Jinnah or a Nehru; we had Duval, demagoguery and double-cross a go-go.

The simple truth, however unpalatable, is when colonial rule ended in 1968, the island of Rodrigues had a population, and that island belonged to that population, and was not up for grabs.

On March 12th 1968, there should have been two proud islands, side by side, in free association, both celebrating their freedom. Alas, there was pride on one side of the Indian Ocean and humiliation on the other. On the gloomy anniversary of that miserable day, some Rodriguans still hold a minute’s silence … and remember.

The flaw in the dismemberment argument is that it is predicated on the false premise that Rodrigues was a legitimate territory of Mauritius prior to Independence. This was never the case. Mauritius never discovered a terra nullius Rodrigues; it never captured Rodrigues by conquest; the British never wrested Rodrigues from the French in 1814 simply to give it to Mauritius; Rodriguans never surrendered their individual sovereignty and their territorial integrity to a ‘Pax Mauritiana’ – Moreover, the Rodriguan nation never consented to be part of, or governed by Mauritius.

State sponsored propaganda, unremittingly repeated and embedded in school children as fact, is extremely difficult to unlearn. The untainted truth is Rodrigues was part of the British Empire until 1968; today, it is an annexed country under Occupation.
It is no more a territory of Mauritius, than Hercules is a son of Zeus.

Whether Britain gifted Rodrigues to Mauritius in 1968, as it gave Eritrea to Ethiopia or whether Mauritius opportunistically annexed it, is neither here nor there.
Whatever deal, whatever collusion took place between Britain and its Mauritian colonial minister, without our consent was illegal and immoral.
It was akin to a departing pirate rewarding his faithful slave, with a slave of his own.

It was the shameless advancement of one country’s territorial ambition at the expense of its neighbour. Mauritius added 130,000 miles of our EEZ (exclusive economic zone) to its territory, and our people lost their homeland and their dignity.
The United Kingdom, Mauritius and the International community clearly understand this, as I do, as you do, as we all do … It was wrong then – It is wrong now!

In 1968, our economic or political unpreparedness should never have been used as an excuse to deny us our independence. Mauritius should have been granted its own independence separately, as Northern Rhodesia was. Rodrigues should have been placed under the guardianship of the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, as a non-self-governing territory. A pan-African commission or UN special committee for self-determination could then have put together a long term plan for Independence.

Under a mutually agreed-upon constitution, with suitable opt-out clauses, we could even have remained in free association with Mauritius, rather than being perpetually entrapped in the existing abomination, euphemistically known as ‘Autonomy’.

If historical debts, legal or at least moral responsibilities, abrogated in 1968, are made good to some extent, past injustices can be belatedly rectified. We remain hopeful.

It is not our lot in life, to be perpetually governed by other people. We did not accept non-consensual rule from France; we did not accept it from Britain – we will never accept it from Mauritius.

Ethnic Dilution

The majority of Mauritius’ 1.3 million population are descendants of Indian indentured labourers, mainly from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, brought by the British to meet labour shortages on Sugar cane plantations; whereas, ninety-five percent of Rodrigues’ forty thousand strong population are direct descendants of African slaves.

We are as distinct, as say Mexicans and Kenyans. This ethnic heterogeneity differentiates the one island from the other.

Rodriguans are not an indigenous group or an ethno-national minority seeking piecemeal internal self-rule; we are a separate people with a fervent aspiration to self-determine our future. Our case for full sovereignty is an exceptionally strong one. More to the point, we can never give up our homeland – our forefathers paid too dear a price for it!

Until recently, Rodrigues’ small maximum carrying capacity (approx.50,000) and its geographical isolation, have managed to preserve its cultural identity to some extent. However, the past few years have seen Mauritians, in ever-increasing numbers, being fast-tracked onto crown land in Rodrigues. If this trend (or government policy) continues, it is a mathematical certainty that it will dilute our ranks to a moribund minority. Much like mixing thirty bottles of beer with one bottle of lemonade – the lemonade disappears.

Once our culture, traditions, language, and way of life are gone; once we have lost our identity as a people; once our claim for sovereignty has been forever extinguished – we would have become a nation of semi-Slaves and half-repressed Serfs, stuck at the bottom-end of a Mauritian vertical class structure.

The once proud people of Rodrigues would have been reduced to a motley mob of untouchables, straw hats under the arm, bowing and scraping in the demimonde of Mauritian ghettos or eking out a living on the mountain ridges in Rodrigues.
We could never again aspire to be anything more than just half a people; we would be forever playing catch-up to other cultures. As a people, we would be dead.
For Rodriguans, this is an existential challenge. If we do not meet it, if we wait for the time that must come, we will surely follow the Dodo. This, I do not believe – I know.

Conclusion

The common Portuguese name Rodrigues (son of Rodrigo) was poorly chosen for us, by old masters, in evil times. Faced with being branded with it forever, even the brotherhood of Goblins, Gnomes and Gremlins would be reaching for the AK47. Seriously though, ‘Rodrigues’ is an old relic, fossilized in another era, clearly disconnected from and incompatible with the essence of our people. And not to mention, the blood-spattered images of Portugal’s brutal savagery in this region, which the name evokes – It is time for our generation to give it (Rodrigues) back to history.

We have lost a country – our body politic is being trampled underfoot; the stench of humiliation is everywhere; cultural oblivion looms large, and yet, we are still blighted by a small clique of bloated puppets and ‘well-assimilated’ latter-day Uncle Toms, wanting us to accept foreign domination.

Strangers overseas, who we do not vote for and cannot remove, design our electoral systems and electoral boundaries, decide our laws, taxation, tariffs, decide our health, education, foreign and economic policies. Strangers, decide our children’s future –
Strangers decide – Strangers have been deciding for the best part of 300 years.

It is time – we decided! For, we too, have a brain and a backbone. Yes, it is true! We too, have dreams and hopes of our own. It is time to cut the neo-colonial umbilical cord sharply adrift, to take active steps to decrease dependence on others, to believe that if we reduce our wants and work hard, that self-reliance is possible and indeed desirable.

It is time to stop depending on built-in assumptions, on ideas and systems that have been partly responsible for our ongoing subordination. It is time to try other ideas, other approaches, perhaps invent new ones which better adapt to our circumstances.
It is time to stop imitating others and trust in ourselves – for who we are, has worth.

Rodriguans are a resilient people. I say this, because contrary to popular belief, it is our people who have worked the land and fished the seas and kept farm animals and kept this small economy afloat – generation after generation. We have done it before, we are doing it now – we can do it better. Let’s not hesitate to continue drinking from the old well (the land and the sea), until the ghost of globalization arrives with the magic potion.

It is time to dump the usual too-poor, too-small, and not-yet-ready arguments. They are like bad records that have been played over and over again. They are intended to shackle rather than liberate. Fortunately, oppressed people the world over have ignored them, otherwise most islands in the Caribbean, Indian, Atlantic and Pacific, much of Africa and Asia, and possibly half the planet would still be under some form of colonial rule today. In any case, how large and how rich would a country need to be, for its people to qualify for their freedom? Moreover, who would decide? Our leaders must re-connect with the poor and dispossessed in this country, re-establish links with our ethnic kin in Africa, re-organize our people at the grassroots and demand that which was stolen from us in 1968 ... our Country.

Let us not be discouraged by the indifference of a dog-eat-dog McWorld, let us not dither, let us steel our resolve and demand our Independence. Let us speak of it proudly in every home, in every church, in every bazaar, in every fishing-post, on every farm, on every street-corner, on every bus and wherever or whenever our people meet.
Our task will not be without sacrifice, but if we turn our back on Independence now, we condemn our children to another 300 years of foreign domination. The alternative is simple: struggle or eternal subservience.

Our people have been the human Guinea pigs for some of the world’s most cold-blooded social experimentations. We have been at the painful-end of the whole monstrous gamut of Slavery, Colonialism, neo-Colonialism and ‘civilising missions’ of Missionaries. Despite the inhumanity, the degradation, the indignity; despite the loss of our grand African names, our sense of self, our traditional African clothing, our beliefs and our relationships with our kinfolk in Africa – we have already forgiven and moved on.

Perpetual domination is not a destination to where we want to lead our children, or as the late Pope John Paul II used to say to occupied people everywhere “you are not what they say you are; let me remind you who you really are …”

Our people have undergone a long-enough apprenticeship to be free. The time has come for us to climb out of the abyss of serfdom and view the world through our own eyes. As children of this flying planet, it is our incontrovertible right to self-determine our own future; let us exercise that right and reclaim our heritage in the human family.

With this firm wish warming our hearts, with our heads held high – let us brace ourselves to face a hopeful future with fortitude.

Vive Rodrigues … Libre

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

Dear Pambazuka Community,

Just a few quick words! Starting with this issue you will note a new category – African Writers’ Corner. Why should Pambazuka News - a place for Pan-African analysis - also create a space for our creative workers? Because they themselves are the first to remind us that they have been at the forefront of making Africans visible to each other. Africans meet over Things Fall Apart, see each other in the Famished Road as they look for a Grain of Wheat. Ah, and since African literature is really a Question of Power, surely, can we leave behind sister Killjoy? So we want to have a corner that will feature the creative mind as it wrestles with African issues – be it through poetry, fiction, non-fiction and memoir and the occasional song. It’s about beauty… and the politics.

We also wish to invite you over the next few weeks in the run up to the March 2008 Zimbabwe elections to contribute in depth articles/analysis.

Already there is much contestation to do with the pre-election environment. The opposition is struggling with its own internal dynamics in terms of readiness to participate or not to participate. Consensus for a new people driven constitution remains within the broader civil society's agitation.

Another essential dynamic is the emerging consensus around the fact that the SADC mandated mediation by Thabo Mbeki has collapsed, with very little gain for Zimbabweans in terms of changing their lot towards democratic governance.

There are other thematic cross-cutting issues that can also be considered, gender or women's participations an issue that has been pushed to the periphery, political-economy environment - inflation is the highest in the world; pre- and post-election conflict - mechanisms for handling this, etc.

The idea is to generate debate on such issues as we have been doing with the Kenyan crisis, with a view to giving space to progressive citizens of the world, to once again contribute towards the unfolding events in Zimbabwe.

To help us achieve this is feminist and political activist Grace Kwinjeh. She can be reached on [email][email protected]

A survey commissioned by DENIVA (Development Networks of Indigenous Voluntary Associations) and I-Network (Information Network) in May - June 2007, in Uganda, has shown a close link between ICT and poverty reduction. The countrywide survey indicates that developments of ICTs tend to increase income inequality within a country and it requires relatively good education and special skills to make full use of it

According to the World Bank, climate change effects will impact on the world’s poor countries and Africa composes the majority of this category. It is therefore critical that African leaders are at the fore front in addressing these issues. The Western world by far has an upper hand in looking into climate change because they also not only have developed high-tech climate and weather systems but they have the necessary technical expertise to address climate change issues also.

Fahamu is a pan African organization committed to building a strong human rights and social justice movement. In a unique collaboration between Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, Fahamu is pleased to announce a course on Fundraising and resource mobilization. This distance-learning course will run for 15 weeks from the 24th March, 2008. Cost per person for this course is STG 400. The course is based on the provision of well-designed interactive training materials on CDROM with a tutor who facilitates the course through email discussions. Booking deadline: March 14, 2008. For more information on these and other Fahamu courses, including how to enroll, call us on 020 2 319 635/6 or email us on [email][email protected] More information can be found on our websites www.fahamu.org and www.pambazuka.org

Like all our compatriots, we (the Kenya Editors Guild) are concerned by the crisis facing our country. The genesis of this national tragedy is within public knowledge. As editors watching events unfold in this country, we believe the government is duty bound to expeditiously find a solution to the stand off which is costing lives, untold human suffering and damaging the prospects of a country long viewed as an island of peace and stability.

Police assaulted several supporters of Zimbabwe's political opposition en route to a rally outside Harare city centre on Wednesday. Police used teargas against the demonstrators who were travelling from the city centre to the venue for the rally, organised by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC rally at Glamis Stadium had been authorised by the Magistrates Court. It has been reported that between 1,000 and 3,000 MDC supporters attended the rally.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Prosecutor of Bangui in the Central African Republic to withdraw a criminal suit against journalist Faustin Bambou who is facing charges of "inciting to public disorder and to revolt, defamation and insults" stemming from an article he wrote accusing government officials of accepting money from a French nuclear company.

The Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has stressed the “historic” importance of the war crimes trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor in signalling an end to impunity, even at the highest level. Mr. Taylor is facing 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law – including mass murder, mutilations, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers – for his role in the decade-long civil war that engulfed Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday. Speaking at a regional forum on bioenergy, Regan Suzuki of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization acknowledged that biofuels are better for the environment than fossil fuels and boost energy security for many countries.

Climate change will have potentially devastating consequences for human health, outweighing global economic impacts, researchers said on Friday, calling for urgent action to protect the world's population. "While we embark on more rapid reduction of emissions to avert future climate change, we must also manage the now unavoidable health risks from current and pending climate change," said Australian researcher Tony McMichael, who co-authored a study in the British Medical Journal.

Distrust of the Sudanese government due to a string of broken promises is the biggest obstacle to planned talks to end the five-year-old conflict, the top U.S. diplomat in Sudan said. U.S. Charge D'Affaires Alberto Fernandez said a political crisis over stalled implementation of Sudan's separate north-south peace deal and other unfulfilled commitments would directly affect Darfur peace talks due in the coming months.

As southern Africa enters its second year of crippling energy shortages as accurately predicted by the Southern African Power Pool about four years ago, massive short-term projects of close to US$8 billion will need to be fast tracked over the next couple of years to get the region out of the present situation. Electricity shortages have in recent weeks severely affected some Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states leading to scheduled and, in some cases, unscheduled power cuts.

Cast out by their families and often fired for no valid reason, Algerians with HIV/AIDS are turning to NGOs for help. The El Hayet Association for People Living with HIV has been working since 1998 to dispel taboos about the illness and help HIV-positive men and women find ways of earning a living.

When UNHCR staff arrived in the market town of Mogotio in western Kenya earlier this week they found some 500 people sleeping in the grounds of the police station without shelter, blankets or basic supplies. The UN refugee agency has found similar scenes in other parts of Rift Valley Province since violence between rival communities swept through the area after the December 30 presidential election. In recent days UNHCR has been able to reach out to the most vulnerable in the countryside as the prospect of stability returns.

Representatives from the consultancy firm Marsh Environmental Services have begun a whirlwind twelve-day consultation programme in and around the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), in Botswana. The move is part of plans to develop a $2.2 billion diamond mine within the reserve. In what has since been ruled an unlawful and unconstitutional act, in 2002 the Botswana government removed more than 600 Bushmen from the CKGR without their consent.

Namibia held out longer than the majority of its counterparts in Southern Africa before signing the interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union, managing in the process to squeeze some concessions from Brussels after intense diplomatic efforts. Namibia and South Africa initially refused to sign in early December, which sent shock waves through the agricultural sector.

The Somalia town of Galkayo is known as a refuge from the violence to the south. But girls and women who are separated from their clans know little safety: An 8-year-old was raped and her mother must keep working with the man who did it.

On the occasion of the 10th African Union summit, the Executive Council will analyze the status of current negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) would like to seize this opportunity to draw the attention of African heads of state and government to the potential adverse effects of these agreements on social and economic rights in African countries, in particular on the human right to food, the right to health, the right to work and the right to development.

A Regional Court in Douala (Cameroon) sentenced three men accused of homosexuality to a maximum sentence of six months in prison and fined them 50.000 Francs (R700) each and another 27.000 Francs (R378) for legal expenses. These three men were among the nine arrested in August last year on charges of homosexuality and they only appeared in court for the first time on 2 January this year.

A month after its disputed presidential election, Kenya remains deeply divided and unstable. Politically motivated killings, hackings and gang rapes continue in the towns and in volatile country districts. The economy is faltering. The latest bigwig to attempt to mediate between the government of President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga is a former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who arrived in Nairobi on January 22nd.

This study focuses on the social protection aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in southern and eastern Africa. It discusses the relationship between HIV and AIDS and agriculture, food security, and rural livelihoods (including children’s property and inheritance rights). It also considers factors that render children’s property rights more vulnerable than adults’ property rights. The paper reviews literature on social protection of children, emphasizing historical developments, types of child social protection, and recipients and providers of child social protection.

The Central African Republic's prime minister and his government have resigned amid a general strike by unions demanding the payment to civil servants of months of salary arrears. Elie Dote, who became prime minister in 2005, announced his resignation on Friday as parliament prepared to vote on a censure motion against him.

Fighters loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general, have signed a peace deal with the government of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an armed tribal group. Joseph Kabila, the DRC president, attended the signing in Goma, the capital of eastern North Kivu province, which has suffered heavy fighting in recent months. The accord on Wednesday followed two weeks of negotiations.

"We cannot stop life for the sake of two people who are not in agreement" said a twenty-three year old Kenyan woman in Nairobi. The two men in question - Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga - both claim to have been elected president in the national vote on 27 December 2007. The incumbent Kibaki was sworn into a second term of office, and Odinga publicly challenges the legitimacy of the vote count.

Apart from a few promises from the EASSy consortium not much seems to be happening with the submarine cable project. The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) has long been punted as the solution to East Africa’s international bandwidth woes – promising to bring affordable fiber connectivity to one of most bandwidth starved areas in the world. The project last year gained support from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank.

AZUR Development and the Reseau Sida Afrique based in Congo which includes 230 institutional and individual members in 17 African francophone countries. The project aims to set up a media campaign and system of alert on malaria and the creation of a partnership between the press and member organizations of the Africa AIDS Network in 10 countries, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Mali, Togo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Djibouti, Cameroon, and Benin.

The Supreme Court in Zambia has rejected the government's demands to deport a British satirists, Roy Clarke, for reportedly insulting the Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa in 2004. Clarke, a satirical columnist of the privately owned daily 'The Post', was pursued by the state after he had referred President Mwanawasa as "mawelewele", meaning "a foolish elephant" as well as named two of his ministers "baboons".

In their attempts to reduce the rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the country, Rwanda authorities have voluntarily asked all uncircumcised men to be circumcised. Health experts proved that circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexual infection of the disease. Most people wonder how the government will succeed in its new campaign, especially in a pre-dominantly Christian society where very few people go through the operation.

South African AIDS activists have called on doctors and nurses to act in the best interests of HIV-positive pregnant women and their unborn children by not waiting any longer for an official directive to switch from single antiretroviral (ARV) treatmentto more effective dual treatment for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT).

For 14 years, Mathabo Mabekhla was one of Lesotho's most successful entrepreneurs. Her ladies' clothing boutique sold dresses, blouses and slacks imported from neighbouring South Africa, and boasted a client base that included cabinet ministers and their wives. But dwindling sales forced her to shut down last year, for which she blames the country's growing community of Chinese retailers. "Chinese are selling very cheap and not good quality things, and they are killing Basotho businesses," said Mabekhla, 59.

For over a week now, post election violence in Kenya has dominated the news. A country formerly seen as one of the most stable in Africa has turned overnight into chaos, violence and ethnic clashes that are being compared to the nightmare of Rwanda 13 years ago. What happened ?

The most frequently used headlines for the election-related violence has been “tribal killings” between the dominant Kikuyu and the Luo. The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have used words like “savage” in the front page and described the Mungiki ethnic group as “blood drinking” in last week’s articles.

In framing the conflict this way, the media not only misleads and oversimplifies the problem, worse, it affirms existing stereotypes that all of Africa’s problems can be reduced to savage tribal violence. The implication is that still, fifty years after independence, most African institutions lack the “sophisticated political and economic contentions” of other countries in the West. It becomes obvious in such scenarios to consider “humanitarian” intervention to bring in much needed civilization.

What the Kenyan election controversy has uncovered is that it much more to do with economics than with ethnic rivalry. Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in a recent article on the subject stated “They don’t seem to recognize sufficiently that Kenya like Africa as a whole has only two tribes: the haves and the have-nots.”

Much of the violence is concentrated in well known slum areas like Kibera and Mathare in the capital Nairobi. At around this time last year, we were in Nairobi for the World Social Forum. What we observed in the city were the obvious contradictions that can be seen in many African cities – well paved roads, fancy hotels and banks not unlike those in London or New York. But, spread throughout the city were the poor. In pockets within the city were the slums where the poorest of the poor reside in conditions unimaginable for human survival. It is in such areas that the violence is concentrated; people who have nothing to fear and nothing to lose.

When violence erupts so suddenly, the immediate response of the most vulnerable is to leave their homes and flee. Already there are reports of Kenyans leaving for neighboring Uganda in the thousands. What is alarming in this case is that there are already in Kenya millions of refugees from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. Kenya has provided safe sanctuary and passage to millions of refugees escaping conflicts in the Horn of Africa.

The Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia & Sudan) is the most volatile region in the continent. Assistant Sec. for African Affairs Dr. Jendayi Frazier stated in a talk in San Francisco that she spends 70% of her focus on issues related to the five countries in Horn. The violence in Kenya, if not abated soon, has the potential to engulf an existing volatile situation into further chaos.

Nothing short of an independent investigation into charges of election rigging will begin to restore confidence of Kenyans. It is the first step toward long term cessation of violence and hostility that can then lead to political stability. It is important that both candidates exhibit the necessary leadership in resolving a crisis.

The worst proposal to “solve” yet another problem in Africa is the consideration of a military alternative, as in AfriCOM (an Africa Command center) which the State Department announced a year ago.

Expected to go into full operation in September of this year, AfriCom is being promoted as “security” measure to end conflicts and provide humanitarian assistance to Africa’s hotspots. The current violence in Kenya will, no doubt, be used as yet another reason why the US should speed up the operational phase of AfriCom.

As we have seen in the case of Iraq, military responses to deeper economic and political problems are no solution at all. They in fact exasperate and further divide communities along religious, ethnic and economic lines.

Let Kenyan leaders step in to propose solutions to the elections.

UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM ACADEMIC STAFF ASSEMBLY (UDASA)

STATEMENT ON THE GRAVE ELECTION AND POST-ELECTION SITUATION IN KENYA

As an association of academics with the social responsibility of pursuing truth and being obliged to take up issues of great concern to citizens of countries in which we work, UDASA wishes to register our grave concern about loss of live and the wanton destruction of people’s property arising from the sad events that have been unfolding since the hurried inauguration of Mr. Mwai Kibaki as the President, for a second term, of the Republic of Kenya. As intellectuals we have made our modest contribution to the building and consolidation of democratic institutions and traditions in Tanzania and, more generally, in East Africa. General Elections are the principal means by which citizens may exercise their hard-worn sovereignty.

On the 27th of December 2007, General Elections were conducted in Kenya. On the 30th of December, 2007, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, Mr. Samuel Kivuitu announced that Mr. Mwai Kibaki, the leader of the Party for National Unity (PNU) that had gained 33 seats in the 210 seat Kenyan Parliament against 95 seats gained by the party of his main rival, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), was the winner of the Presidential race in that General Election.

Immediately, thereafter, Kenya has been plunged into violence triggered by outbursts of anger and resentment against supporters of PNU and those ethnically associated with Mr. Kibaki who ODM and its supporters accuse of rigging the tallying of the final count of the General Election results and thus stealing victory in the Presidential race from Mr. Raila Oginga of ODM. More than 300 people are said to have died so far and thousands have been internally displaced. Some Kenyans are said to be already fleeing to neighbouring countries as refugees. All the General Election observers, both local and international are in agreement that there were undue delays in having the constituency election tallies submitted to the Electoral Commission headquarters. There is also consensus now that the results that the Chairman of ECK announced on the 30th December 2007 on the basis of which Mr. Kibaki took the oath as the winner of the Presidential race were not credible tallies of the General Election results where the Presidential race is concerned. The ECK Chairman himself has subsequently made the surprising admission that he himself did not know who won the Presidential race in spite being the one, who announced that Mr. Kibaki won the election on the 30th December, 2007.

Popular displeasure has been unleashed. This displeasure has in some cases taken a very violent turn that has expressed itself in ugly scenes of the destruction of people and property. Political passions have been aroused and in heat of the raised political passions ethnic bigotry has been aroused and made to thrive. Some citizens now have taken to thinking that an injustice had been committed against a political leader or groups of political leaders they considered to be of their kind. Other citizen also now being encouraged to believe that an advantage, however unfair, had been gained by a political leader or group of leaders considered to be of their kind. Seeds of ethnic cleansing are being sowed among residences with mixed ethnic backgrounds coinciding with rival political camps.

UDASA believes that it is time to call on all concerned to sit down and discuss the underlying issues that are the source of the unfolding conflict. The tallying of the election results needs to be revisited. Furthermore, a wider debate needs to be initiated on issues such as the composition and role of election commissions.

Dr. D.L. Nyaoro Chairperson