Pambazuka News 331: Behind the mask of remittances
Pambazuka News 331: Behind the mask of remittances
Déirdre Clancy analyses refugee human rights, statelessness and the African commission.
Despite diverse stories of exile and exclusion, refugees, internally displaced persons and the stateless all have one core experience in common: they have been removed from their communities as a result of a severe breakdown in the relationship with the State authorities charged with protecting their rights. In Africa, the severing of state protection and the exclusion of individuals and groups is widespread.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2.4 million refugees in Africa are compelled to seek protection outside their country of nationality or residence. An even greater number are also displaced from their homes but unable to cross an international border—over 11 million Africans are classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Quantifying those who are stateless in Africa—whether through denationalisation, expulsion, or the imposition of barriers to proving membership of the community—is a more difficult task. It is estimated that worldwide the number of stateless persons is 11 million, but many believe that this is a gross underestimation.
The Open Society Justice Initiative’s multi-year research on citizenship and discrimination in Africa found that statelessness was a complex spectrum of experience, from de jure statelessness at one end, to those who are de facto stateless, or whose citizenship is under threat, at the other. Some victims are high profile politicians or activists who have been declared individually de-nationalised, such as Zambia’s founding President Kenneth Kaunda. In other cases, entire populations have been excluded from full and equal citizenship, such as 1.5 million Zimbabweans whose parents were born elsewhere. Using this approach, at the very least, 10 million persons can be qualified as stateless in Africa.
While international law recognizes that national governments have the primary responsibility for protecting the rights of those within their borders, individuals who are unable to create a strong link with the state are often left in a vacuum. Stripped of the protection of their own governments, these groups—refugees, IDPs and the stateless—constitute a millions strong population of disenfranchised persons who are increasingly looking to regional mechanisms to address their urgent needs. As the premier human rights institution on the continent, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (the Commission) has been at the forefront of the effort to carve out a new layer of protection for these African citizens.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
Since it first started operating in 1987 the Commission has been the principle mechanism charged with promoting and protecting the human rights of all those on the continent of Africa. In its stewardship of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (the African Charter), the Commission has both a human rights monitoring role (which includes the examination of periodic State reports) and direct protection functions.
As a promoter of human rights, the Commission has identified the situation of refugees and displaced on the continent as a priority. In 2003 the Commission signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNHCR dedicated to strengthening collaboration between the institutions [1] and in June 2004 the Commission confirmed the appointment of a new Special Rapporteur on Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (Special Rapporteur) [2].
It is perhaps, however, through the Commission’s direct protection functions that it has contributed most to the strengthening of the rights of the excluded on the continent. The Commission has the power both to launch investigations in special circumstances and, most importantly, to consider specific complaints, or ‘communications’, alleging rights violations, brought to its attention by individuals or organisations. Through a developing jurisprudence, the Commission’s consideration of the situation of the excluded has allowed for the elaboration of standards relating to their rights, a particularly vital function in a context where it is rare that that refugees or the stateless can seek protection at national level, due to practical and legal obstacles.
The role of the Commission as adjudicator: carving out a basic set of protections [3]
The Commission confirmed early on in its decision-making history that the rights protections granted by the African Charter were not limited to nationals should be secured to “all persons” within the jurisdiction of State parties to the treaty. The case of Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO) v. Zambia concerned the detention, ill treatment and eventual mass expulsion of 517 West Africans from Zambia. Since then the non-discrimination and equality protections in Article 2 and 3 of the Charter have been used by the Commission as the foundation stones for its construction of a folder of protection for the excluded. In Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture and Others v Rwanda the Commission later explicitly confirmed that refugees were among the categories of persons protected from discrimination on grounds of their status.
Unlike many international human rights treaties, the African Charter specifically guarantees the right of the individual “when persecuted, to seek and be granted asylum in a foreign territory, in accordance with the legislation of the state and international conventions [..]”. In Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture (OMCT) and Others the Commission ruled that the expulsion of Burundian Hutu refugees from Rwanda constituted a violation of the right to seek and enjoy asylum, but also of the protections in the Charter against the expulsion of legally admitted persons and mass expulsion. In the same case the Commission also demonstrated how the due process provisions of the Charter could provide additional protection to the excluded, declaring that the manner of the expulsion of the refugees had violated Article 7 (1) – the right of every individual “to have his cause heard”. The Commission has yet to give guidance, however, on whether the right to have a “cause heard” could be interpreted to encompass the right of access by an asylum seeker to a fair refugee determination status procedure—in the OMCT case the persons concerned were already recognised as refugees.
The situation of the stateless has been tackled by the Commission in a number of cases, using a variety of provisions, particularly centred around extrapolating a right to protection against arbitrary denationalisation. Although the Charter does not specifically protect the right to nationality, the communitarian aspects of the rights regime established by the Charter affirm the principle of the “right to belong,” through protection of the rights of “peoples” to self-determination, development, a satisfactory environment and “existence” (Article 20).
In the Mauritania cases the Government of Mauritania was accused of harassing, detaining, and eventually forcefully expelling thousands of ‘Black’ Mauritanians, its own citizens. The Commission ruled that the expelled Mauritanians had been stripped of their citizenship in a discriminatory—and therefore illegal—way and that the government should take appropriate steps to facilitate their return. In the case of John K. Modise v. Botswana it was both the act of denationalisation and the treatment of Mr Modise that resulted which attracted the censure of the Commission. Mr Modise had been rendered stateless by the Government of Botswana and deported to South Africa. Further to his ultimate removal back to Botswana Mr Modise was confined by the authorities to a strip of no man’s land between Botswana and South Africa and rendered homeless. The Commission found that the treatment of Mr Modise taken as a whole violated his basic dignity—and Article 5 of the Charter. It will be interesting to see to what extent in the future the Commission will continue to interpret the types of conditions suffered by those forced into statelessness as amounting to a violation of Article 5.
The Charter and the findings of the Commission have also provided a context within which solutions to the breakdown of State protection can be sought. The Commission has tackled, for example, the root causes of exclusion, examining the human rights violations suffered by those who have lost the protection of their State. In the leading case of John D. Ouko v. Kenya the Commission showed itself as a forum where state responsibility for the creation of the refugee phenomenon could be analysed – an issue often neglected by refugee advocates where the focus is on the urgent need for States to provide refuge. The Ouko communication concerned a Kenyan citizen who had been recognised as a refugee in the Democratic Republic of Congo further to fleeing persecution and detention by Kenyan authorities. The Commission found that the persecution and forced flight of Mr Ouko had violated a number of articles in the Charter, including Article 12 which protected Mr Ouko’s right to leave, and return (voluntarily) to, Kenya.
The responsibility of the state which provides asylum has also come under scrutiny at the Commission. In the case of African Institute for Human Rights and Development v Guinea the communication centred on a spate of abuses, including rape, detention, and killing which were suffered by Sierra Leonean refugees, in the wake of a speech by the President of Guinea urging all foreigners “searched and arrested”. The Commission ruled that the President’s speech, as an incitement and de facto authorization for the resultant attacks and expulsions, violated article 12(5) of the Charter. The Commission also found that there had been violations of the right to life, property and dignity of the refugees in addition to noting that the targeting of Sierra Leonean refugees violated Article 4 of the OAU Refugee Convention on the Specific Problems of Refugees in Africa.
In the Mauritania cases the Commission not only focussed on the arbitrary denationalisation of the complainants’ but also on the deplorable conditions in which the deportees had been held, finding a violation of Article 16 – the right of every individual “to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health”. It is hoped that this approach will be followed in future cases relating to the standards of treatment in refugee or IDP camps, especially where freedom of movement is restricted by the authorities and people are confined to the settlements in contravention of international law.
The role of NGOs
All of the key cases considered to date by the Commission which touch on extrapolating the rights of the forcibly displaced and the stateless have been brought to the attention of the Commission by human rights and civil society organizations on the continent. It is not just in the realm of moving forward the Commission’s jurisprudence, however, that NGOs have been active. At the bi-annual meetings of the Commission it is usual for one of the statements to the Commission by NGOs to be dedicated to a review of the situation of refugees and IDPs on the continent, contributing to the overall monitoring function of the Commission.
It is acknowledged also that the work of NGOs dedicated to advocacy on refugee and IDP rights was critical to encouraging the Commission to create the position of Special Rapporteur. Since his appointment, first as focal point, and then as Special Rapporteur, Commissioner Nyanduga has been very active, conducting a series of missions which have done much to highlight the plight of the displaced (see article in this issue). The work of the Special Rapporteur, however, does need to be better supported to increase its effectiveness—resources at the Commission are highly stretched. NGOs can assist through seeking observer status before the Commission to play a more active advocacy role, and helping to mobilise funds for the functioning of the Rapporteur system.
Challenges
As an independent rights arbitrar the Commission suffers from a number of defects, the greatest perhaps being the non-binding nature of its rulings. It is also fair to say that as a deliberative body of State appointed experts, the Commission can find itself subject to political pressure. Despite this, the Commission can point to a history of courageous position-taking which has belied many of the predictions of politicisation. In recent years, however, it has been suggested that, the progressive stance which marked the evolution of the Commission is suffering a backlash. Some point, for example, to the fluctuating approach of the Commission’s jurisprudence to “exhaustion of domestic remedies”—a threshold consideration for admissibility of communications. In the past the Commission demonstrated a rather liberal attitude to interpreting this concept, particularly where asylum seekers, refugees and the stateless were involved, but it is now building a more elaborate set of hurdles.
Others note the difficulties encountered by the Commission in conducting its broader monitoring functions, particularly in reaching consensus on response to the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur. The official report of the Commission of its mission to Darfur, presented at the third extra-ordinary session of the Commission in Pretoria in September 2004, has still not been published. This report was the first comprehensive African Union assessment of the human rights situation in Darfur, including focussing on the plight of IDPs. Although adopted officially by the AU, publication remains hostage to political manoeuvring, as the text awaits the comments of the Government of Sudan. [4]
What next for the Commission and for the excluded?
The foundation of the African Union in 2002 expressed a regional commitment to creating a more effective, integrated political and economic union with human rights situated at the heart of its principles and objectives. There are a number of areas where the Commission can be encouraged to use its position in the new African Union human rights firmament to promote the rights of the excluded. The new AU institutions, from the African Court to the AU Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOC) all present opportunities for the Commission to contribute to the setting of human rights benchmarks. The Commission has already been explicitly assigned functions, for example, with respect to the peer review mechanism under NEPAD and the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA). A
The Commission, however, is the human rights touchstone, not just for the new AU frame but for other continental processes which address human rights concerns—the International Conference on the Great Lakes is just one process comprising a series of new laws relating to the rights of the excluded. The Commission can ensure complementary efforts and exchange of jurisprudence with such mechanisms. It will be essential, also, for the Commission to act as a a guide to regional courts as they are increasingly called upon to adjudicate on the rights of the excluded who may also claim rights from a sub-regional organisation—the East African Community is currently, for example, adopting a Bill of Rigths where freedom of movement and protection of the regions “citizens” will be paramount. Attention also needs to the paid to the promotion of the Charter and its jurisprudence at national level where the potential for the case law of the Commission to be cited in domestic proceedings is ripe but rarely exploited. National human rights commissions might be mobilised by the Commission in this regard.
Finally, the Commission can be a forum for the promotion of the new norms and standards which will certainly be required to respond to the changing nature of displacement and exclusion on the continent. Among the areas requiring particular elaboration include access to citizenship and the reduction of statelessness, the right of freedom of movement for IDPs and refugees, due process guarantees in asylum proceedings, rights of access to domestic courts (often restricted for refugees), the social and economic rights of the displaced and their hosts, and the implications for State responsibility of delegating protection of the excluded to international organisations. NGOs of course must play a role in identifying the strategic opportunities for litigation that will facilitate this work. They may also need to explore, alongside the Commission, where normative developments—new protocols to the Charter (such as perhaps on the right to a nationality)—may be required.
*Déirdre Clancy is Co-Director of the International Refugee Rights Initiative. She was formerly the Director of the International Refugee Program at Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights).
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
* For notes, please click here
“Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labour for it.” Feminist Ernestine Rose, 1860.
Former Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith has just died, but his patriarchal legacy, of dictatorship, violence and sexist oppression lives on.
The use of violence in contemporary Zimbabwean politics, is part of the machismo political culture inherited from settler colonialists, which successive political systems are failing to dismantle.
I therefore, wish here to link, gender based violence within the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to the question of political power and women’s emancipation, based on our experience as a women’s political leadership. My position being that patriarchy as a system of oppression is not going to willingly dismantle itself, it has to be fought.
Historically, Zimbabwe’s violence politics, has been grounded in the quest for political power and positioning, with women often being at the receiving end of it. Thus today, MDC women are still subjected to all forms, of violence, by both the party and the State, as both systems grapple for political power.
Just as during the liberation struggle when women combatants, were told national liberation first, their emancipation later, today, women who have gone into front-line politics are being sold this ‘two stage’ approach model. This approach implies that the struggle is gender neutral, and that we suffer the impact of State repression the same way, and that when freedom is attained we(men and women) will have the same political will, to reverse gender disparities or to dismantle patriarchy.
Events on the ground in the MDC, however, speak differently.
Days before the annual, International 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign celebrations, MDC women, were once again subjected to another public humiliating bout of violence, this time, by their male counterparts.
Women protestors, against the unfair sacking and treatment of the Women’s Assembly chair-person, Lucia Matibenga, were beaten up in front of the party’s head-quarters Harvest House, on Sunday the 18th of November. The known assailants used fists, kicked, threw stones, to subdue and stop the female demonstrators, from proceeding with the protest in which they were demanding audience with their MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, over the unresolved women’s chair matter.
Strangely, though it seems that it was beyond Tsvangira’s political comprehension that the women were practising their democratic right to demonstrate and seek audience with him, as their leader, instead he shunned them. The message they got was violence. This is not accidental, but a political message.
The irony that played itself out in this scene, is that the MDC male leadership is forcing a new chair-person for women on the women, as part of their “empowerment” or “building efficiency” within the Women’s Assembly, yet the beneficiaries of this male largess are denied the right to freely express themselves, as part and parcel of that political commitment to their liberation cause.
Apart from the violence and total exclusion, we have witnessed in this matter, the men will also not allow a democratic mechanism by which a proper process is carried out, of finding out who the most popular women’s leader is, and conferring the women’s chair on that person. Again, not accidental, thus the basis of my thesis, on political and gender relations within the MDC being rooted in patriarchal tendencies and practices.
The violence both physical and psychological meted out, against Matibenga herself and her supporters, is characteristic of the misogynistic nature of Zimbabwean society, inherited from Smith, which Mugabe has used against opponents real or false, replicated by men in the opposition. Sexist oppression has thus been validated as normal political practice in opposition politics.
And so it seems, each time male power in the MDC seems to be under threat, violence erupts in all its forms - physical and psychological, we have seen this in the party, prior to the October 12 split, when senior female leaders were targets of this violence.
The assault on MDC MP Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, twice at party events, in one attack she was with feminist Janah Ncube. The psychological or emotional abuse, of Sekai Holland when the men, callously removed her as secretary for International Affairs. Like Matibenga she was told, it was because she had been “inefficient” as secretary. I will not try to delve into an analysis of efficiency and male leadership, otherwise Zimbabwe would have been a better society.
Or the emotional trauma and stress I suffered when without warning funding was cut to me as MDC Representative to Europe. In fact I was slowly marginalised and excluded from all party activities, until I made my own way home. I was an emotional wreck, as I failed to survive, to date this gross treatment has never been explained to me, by either of the male leadership in the two MDC factions.
Last year, MDC MP Trudy Stevenson, suffered, severe physical attacks in an MDC constituency, which left her bruised with a broken arm and deeply traumatised. These are examples of women who have come out, I respect those who remain silent, there are more cases, of physical and emotional abuse. Including instances of sexual harassment of female staff members that have been suppressed.
All the abuse we have suffered has been condemned internationally, as being retrogressive to the women’s emancipation agenda.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, (CEDAW) or the International Women’s Bill of Rights, defines discrimination as "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."
Matibenga’s abuse has also led me to revisit the notion of sacrifice within the framework of gender power relations, in the party where others are “sacrificers” or “sacrificed” and others hold positions of power and privilege that insulate them from those “sacrifices.” It is an open secret that in her tenure of office Matibenga never had a vehicle allocated to her, in spite of all the dangers she was exposed to, such her brutal torture in September, 2006.
For a long time we have suffered silent persecution, like the horror stories of the rape of female comrades during the liberation struggle, by their fellow male comrades, that have never been really openly talked about or the perpetrators brought to book. The negative reaction to the screening of the “controversial” movie Flame, which sought to highlight these crimes against women during the liberation struggle was met with such a strong backlash by those in the Zanu PF leadership.
We seem to be ingrained with this, culture of silence around the forms of violence or abuse, we suffer as women in politics. We have been socialised into a political culture of only talking about State sponsored violence.
Matibenga’s battle helps us to further interrogate and demystify these primitive notions, of our silent persecution vis-à-vis our role and placing as women in politics and the respect we deserve from our male comrades.
Two weeks ago, Matibenga was locked out of Harvest House by rowdy youths and told to go away and form her own party. She was seeking an audience with the party leadership which was about to hold a National Executive meeting. There was no condemnation of this treatment of the widow Matibenga, in fact in typical Zanu PF fashion, all rights are suspended when one is seen to be at variance with the powers that be. Yet another example of the terrible abuse, she is enduring.
A social liberation party that articulates so well, violence against itself in the quest for political power, but fails to understand the same kind of violence against its own leaders and members, presents us with bigger questions about the Zimbabwe we are fighting for, as women.
This is because, the women’s emancipation project has been subordinated to the political whims of those in power, who are not willing to let go of patriarchal privilege, thus the different political systems in Zimbabwe have failed in the endeavour of women’s liberation.. Each historical juncture, has seen women lose earlier gains, as they are forced to renegotiate with patriarchy for their survival, be it in the home or in politics. Male bigotry, in both the ruling party and the opposition, has resulted in the further narrowing down of spaces women had carved out for themselves as a movement.
When I first wrote on Matibenga’s unjust sacking I was attacked by men in both the ruling party and the opposition, and so my thesis is based on my personal experience and of other women in politics, and the backlash we suffer when we raise our heads. Most women in politics, are subjects of political violence, both emotional and physical, but are socialised not to talk about it. The way violence in the domestic sphere has been treated as a “private affair” and men getting away with increased cases of femicide, rape and other forms of violence.
Looked at within a historical context, what women at the front-line of Zimbabwe’s struggle for social liberation and democracy are going through is no different to what their sisters in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle were up and against. It is always a double struggle internal and external.
Writes feminist Patricia Chogugudza on women liberation fighters, “Zimbabwean women, like their counterparts in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, joined the armed struggle. Their hope was that with the revolution, gender equality would be certain. Women who could not conform to tradition saw the revolution as an opportunity to escape difficult situations. Yet feminist critics argue that at the end of the struggle, women’s status actually fell as nationalist leaders and nationalist-oriented societies, in the quest of preserving tradition, expected women to be guardians of culture and respectability, or mistresses of the emerging ruling elites, or wives and mothers, recruiters for political parties, and labourers for the new market economy, while men were engaged in competition for political power in the state and the accumulation of wealth.”
Thus today women who have delved out of the socially constructed roles of wife, mother or mistress into the public arena of politics have had to deal with much back-lash.
Feminist critique has shown us that power and democracy are historically exclusionary notions, as they remain class based and androcentric. The MDC example is important in this analysis, as the dust settles on the utopian vision and idealism many of us viewed the party with, as a fulfiller, of liberation goals, and ultimately our emancipation, that the nationalists failed to deliver on. It is in this context that I will further locate the analysis on the cycle of violence in Zimbabwean politics, from the State, to the opposition, and how it impacts on women’s participation, in politics.
In this vein it is also important to take the analysis further to the rise and consolidation of power by Tsvangirai’s “kitchen-cabinet”, and the brutal expression of sexist oppression, that has accompanied it.
The rise of this elite core group of male and female financiers is important to the feminist discourse within the MDC because our political engagement has changed totally, from the values upon which the party was founded to a new finance driven, elitist political culture, that lacks popular support and legitimacy.
It is now power politics, in total and not a pro poor, people centred social liberation struggle, that is just, recognises history and honours sacrifice including women’s role in that struggle. Thus the suspension of these values, explains the crude injustice against us as we are further marginalised and excluded from political processes. Violence in the party becomes self perpetuating as this group seeks legitimacy, outside the organisations formal or official structures and boundaries.
Feminist Patricia Macfadden, writes “And even when such systems aspired to be inclusive and socially expansive, they remained essentially exclusionary and patronizing of those who had been constructed as Other in relation to power as the most critical resource in that society. Across our world we struggled for what appeared to be collective visions of freedom and justice, and while it is critical to acknowledge the opportunities that nationalist liberation struggles and anti-colonial resistance provided to those groups in our societies which had been up till then excluded from the public, for example women, we must also critically evaluate the implications of nationalism as an ideology which is fundamentally sexist and exclusionary of women, particularly during the neo-colonial period.”
To further my thesis on how power relations between Zimbabwean women and men have not evolved with time, from nationalist notions and understanding of our roles in society with the use of violence being a common denominator between the systems, I will now look at Zanu PF’s system of violence.
Mugabe responded to the formation of the MDC and the threat to his continued hold on power through violence. On the character of the post-colonial state and the way it has responded to demands for reform, by the broader pro-democracy movement, in Zimbabwe academic Brian Raftopoulos, writes, “Confronted with a strong former liberation movement, led by a leader with enormous prestige on the continent, civic and opposition forces have had to face the combined obstacles of an authoritarian nationalist state constructed through the legitimacy of the liberation struggle, in a rapidly shrinking economy that has comprehensively undermined the structural basis for the reproduction of broad social forces in the country. Moreover, in the short term, this scenario has not engendered a spirit of reform in the ruling party. Instead observers have witnessed the intensification of repressive rule and the continued marginalisation of opposition forces, with the military taking on an increasingly prominent role in all spheres of the state.”
I celebrate sheroes of the struggle, like young Talent Mabika who lost her life to the regime, others have been raped, tortured, arrested and have suffered different forms of victimisation in the hands of the ruling Zanu PF party.
The Women of Zimbabwe Arise, (WOZA), has just released a report on the violence suffered by its members, in the hands of state agents, reads part of the report, “WOZA has conducted over 100 protests on various issues of civil rights and social justice in its five-year existence and up to 3,000 women have spent time in police custody. Many have been detained more than once, most for 48 hours or more and 112 members once spent five days in police cells. These women, front-line human rights defenders, are willing to suffer beatings and unbearable conditions in custody to exercise their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms. They continue to suffer torture and other forms of cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Given the above analysis and the way it now mirrors the unhealthy situation pertaining in the opposition, of increased authoritarianism, lack of accountability and violence, I will further link this situation to yet another process and the danger it poses for Zimbabwe’s future political dispensation, in relation to popular participation, democracy and our emancipation as women.
As part of the deal under South-Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, SADC sponsored mediation, the two MDC formations agreed to endorse Constitutional Amendment number 18, against public opinion on the political recklessness of such a move. I will not go into the details of the amendment and how in many respects it contradicts the very struggle the pro-democracy movement has been waging, over the past years, and how the manner in which it was adopted short changes our quest for participatory democracy.
However, it is important to use this example to further illustrate, and magnify my point on the connection between ‘elite-deal’ making and politics of exclusion to increased violence and marginalisation of women, in the MDC. Civil society organisations, and the women’s movement got a rude awakening last September, at the voting for CA 18, when the Secretary General of the Arthur Mutambara led faction, Professor Welshman Ncube, literary told them that, their work was to lobby and advocate, they must leave power to politicians.
Defending their voting for CA 18, in Parliament Ncube said,“At that time I was the spokesperson of the NCA and President Tsvangirai was the chairperson. The NCA agreed that we needed a new constitution for Zimbabwe which would be crafted or written in an open, transparent and participatory manner. In that regard, we as members of the NCA were there to oppose two things. One: the piecemeal amendments to the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Two: the unilateral manner of setting such piecemeal amendments. Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand those two principles. Let me say that these two principles were conceptualised, conceived and adopted, not to be verses in a bible. They were strategic and tactical principles which were intended to forge the making of a people-driven constitution. I despair today when I read and hear the attempt to transform these principles into some fundamentalist decrees which, we are told, are to be regarded as completely sacrosanct. As far as we understood them, they were supposed to be means to an end.” And the end political.
Consequently, again by going this route the MDC has agreed to play junior partner to Zanu PF and so now they are on a reactive rather than proactive agenda, on many electoral issues, such as constituency boundaries, access to media, political violence and so on.
Zanu PF however feels re-legitimated as it sees a mirror image of itself in an MDC, that does not respect women, public opinion and is violent.
The men will broker a power sharing deal that will not transform our society, by reconstructing the gender, class and power relations, as they exist, today, but rather endorses the status quo.
And so the notion of liberation through this avenue, has to be viewed within a perspective, of it really being a reconfiguration and consolidation of patriarchy, in our politics, just as we witnessed at the Lancaster House Conference, without any popular participation or support.
Meaning that our experience as women, in politics should really be an eye opener to the struggle ahead beyond Zanu PF’s demise. This abandoning of values we have believed to be sacrosanct, by the men, should be an eye opener to the longevity of our struggle for emancipation.
Activist and journalist Charlene Smith writes, “Governments are by their nature hypocrites. The structure of modern political systems encourages this. Globally politicians are more concerned about getting the right sound-byte on television than in going into communities to hear what people have to say. Politics and perhaps even the way you and I live our lives, have become divorced from values. Values drive societies, they are the essence that sustains humanity. Without them societies decay.”
Given this sad scenario, as a political activist who has put in her all in the fight for a just and democratic society, I can only urge other sisters in the struggle to find new spaces, to continue with our struggle for emancipation, and for those who remain in the patriarchal systems, I can only give them my support.
In conclusion I say Smiths ghost will haunt Zimbabwean politics for some time to come.
*Grace Kwinjeh is a visiting scholar with the Centre for Civil Society and writes in her personal capacity
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
In a few days Heads of State from Africa and Europe will meet in Portugal to discuss issues common to two continents whose histories, for good and bad, have intertwined for centuries. This is a historic opportunity to inaugurate a new era founded on shared values and a genuine friendship where we can support each other and learn from each other.
But that will not be possible while the summit meeting shies away from discussing two of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, those in Zimbabwe and Darfur. Despite Europe’s and Africa’s shared responsibility to address such crises, neither one is on the agenda. No time has been set aside for formal or informal discussion
What can one say of this political cowardice? We expect our leaders to lead, and lead with moral courage. When they fail to do so they leave all of us morally impoverished. Where they funk the difficult issues they make themselves irrelevant. Why should we listen to the mighty when the mighty are deaf to the cries of the afflicted? Millions of Africans and Europeans would expect Zimbabwe and Darfur to be at the very top of the agenda. It is not too late.
Mukoma reflects on the recent extra-judicial killing of close to five hundred suspected Mungiki sect members in Kenya
As the story unfolds alleging that between the months of June and October 2007 close to five hundred young men in Kenya were summarily executed by the police, I find myself wondering whether African governments have put up the façade of democracy only to cover up the old heavy handed way of doing things.
I find myself asking whether democracy has taken the form of rhetorical voting – a gesture that does not deliver the content of justice promised by the fall of the Berlin wall and thawing of the cold war.
This questioning of the true nature of democracy is all the more urgent because the news of the mass killings comes a few weeks before Kenya's presidential elections on December 27th, and five years into Kenya's experimentation with democracy.
According to a preliminary report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) released on November 5th, the young men killed are mostly from the poverty stricken slums famously portrayed in the 2005 movie, The Constant Gardener. They were, the KNHCR report goes on, in all probability rounded up by the Police on the suspicion of belonging to Mungiki, a sect that claims to draw inspiration from the Gikuyu traditional way of life, and then summarily executed.
The Mungiki sect has not won any love from Kenyans because the group has been engaged in criminal enterprises such as violent exhortations to the extent of actually beheading victims. And also because it came into being and flourished with the blessing and support of former authoritarian president Daniel Arap Moi. In a country where the capital city is now referred to as 'Nairobbery', Kenyans are fatigued with violent crime.
So when in late May the police became heavy-handed with massive raids, mass arrests and occasional shooting of suspects in the slums, apart from human rights activists and those affected, everyone else shrugged it off. It was as if most of the country quietly approved off the de-facto shoot to kill orders. With the young men of Mathare criminalized, and looked down upon by the middle and upper classes, the Kenyan police had the unspoken permission to round them up and essentially cull the herd.
This is a classic case of further victimizing the victim. The residents of slums like Mathare are the poorest of the poorest. Even the definition of abject poverty (living on less than a dollar a day) does not capture the extent of deprivation. Neither do terms like under-class, 'labor reserves,' or the marginalized. These are the children of the forgotten.
The KNCHR has rightly called for a United Nations investigation. Kenyans can only hope that the whole truth will be out before the December elections. It is only right that Kenyans begin the next phase of democracy with the truth of what happened to these young men.
When under the watch of a democratic government close to 500 people are summarily executed this can only be called a perversion of democracy. For truly this kind of justice is blind killing the innocent and those whose guilt has not been weighed in a court of law.
There is a lesson for all us here. A democratic country must have principles that, no matter the circumstances, remain inviolable: It cannot condone or engage in torture, it must not imprison indefinitely or detain without trial, or threaten and intimidate its critics into silence, and it must not, it simply cannot, condone extra-judicial killings. Besides, who is to say that the killings will stop with suspected criminals and not lead to the assassination of political opponents?
Democracy must come with the content of social and economic freedom. It must commit itself to doing justice by its poorest, or it will have failed its mission of freedom.
* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is Co-Editor of Pambazuka News. He is also the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Violent conflict between the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) has plagued northern Uganda for the past 20 years. At its peak, the conflict displaced at least two million people, many of whom fled to or were forced into notoriously unsafe and inhumane camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) known as “protected villages”.
From 21st to 26th April 2008, an important event would be held on the African continent - the organization of the 1st International Conference on African Culture and Development (ICACD 2008) in Kumasi, Ghana. This conference is designed to draw attention to the missing link in the futile attempts to develop the African continent - culture. This is clearly illustrated in the 1995 report of the World Commission on Culture and Development: "Development divorced from its human or
cultural context is growth without a soul. Economic development in its full Flowering is a part of a people's culture".
The Constitutional Court has reserved judgment in the case of a woman hoping to be the first female chief of a tribe in Limpopo. ANC MP Tinyiko Shilubana launched the Constitutional Court bid to wrest the chieftaincy of the Valoyi tribe from her cousin Sidwell Nwamitwa after unsuccessful appeals to the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal .
The film submission period for Lola Kenya Screen—eastern Africa’s first and only audiovisual media festival, production workshop and market exclusively designed for children and youth—opened on December 1, 2007. Lola Kenya Screen, therefore, is calling for film entries in all genres, lengths, and formats from all over the world for the 3rd Lola Kenya Screen that runs August 4-9, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya.
European and African leaders should go beyond promises and act to end atrocities, hold abusers to account and combat corruption, Human Rights Watch has said. The first European Union-Africa summit for seven years will be held in Lisbon on December 8-9, 2007.
When Bob Dylan was singing about the times changing, I doubt he had in mind a Maasai Moran or a Turkana pastoralist in full traditional regalia negotiating the price of cattle on the international market with a mobile phone in some distant arid landscape.
While mobile phones are undoubtedly the greatest technological revolution in Africa, the next wave of communication technology is grounding itself well beyond urban centers. Like mobile phones which have empowered marginalized communities across Africa, the internet is quickly beginning to bridge that huge gap between those that have access to information and those that don’t. Ironically, the further we get away from traditional social necessities, the more we strive to recreate them in a virtual world. Simple human needs like shopping, dating, chatting and now “blogging”. . Blogs, or interactive online diaries, may certainly be new but the practice is as old as keeping a journal. They are actually one and the same thing – the only difference is that it’s public!
Today, there are over 72 million blog sites, making the practice of sharing your daily life and thoughts with the rest of the world one of the fasted growing areas on the internet. Interestingly, the impact of blogs on our world stretches beyond our immediate needs to be heard and is being used more and more to effect change. For example, the first blog-driven political controversy led to the eventual downfall of a U.S. Senate Leader exposed for his white supremacist sympathies.
And it’s not just humans that stand to benefit from access to virtual communication. Dr. Richard Leakey, a household name to anyone with an interest in conservation, has focused his efforts on the power of the medium to address one of the biggest problems in wildlife conservation: “After spending many years struggling to improve wildlife conservation in Kenya, I decided to start WildlifeDirect to solve a very real problem in Africa, the lack of adequate funds to protect our wildlife heritage. Persuading individual donors to give support was not easy because most people are unaware of what is going on in conservation until there is a crisis. I needed to find another way to raise awareness and funds on a continuous basis.” Hence, WildlifeDirect was born. The first of its kind, the organization was conceived as a way of facilitating exchanges between the front lines of conservation and the rest of the world. It brought two worlds together: a global community of sympathisers with good African conservationists.
Take the case of Atama-to Madrandele, a park warden who, in 2005, started working at the Ishango, sub-station of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He carried out his work in almost complete physical and financial isolation. In February 2007, Atamato began to blog on WildlifeDirect about his work. Through this blog he was able to raise some funds to help pay for patrol rations and equipment, as well as salary supplements for his five underpaid rangers (the official pay for a Congolese ranger is about three US dollars per month). From August this year, Ishango has become a fully functional park station, thanks to the donations received through his blog. His men are now fed and have enough fuel to be able to carry out regular patrols.
The previous issue of Swara featured the gorilla crisis in Congo. This was one of several stories written about this critically endangered species in the international television, print and radio media. The daily blogging on WildlifeDirect from rangers working on the ground stimulated a global drive to cover the story. Global awareness about the gorillas in the Virungas has never been so strong. The blog also provided an immediate avenue for desperately needed funding for the rangers who have virtually no support from the national authorities. After the slaughter of the Rugendo gorilla family, the donations reached reached $66,000/ in in the month of August -. The gorilla blog currently earns $18,000/- monthly in direct donations. WildlifeDirect has also managed to bridge the pitfalls of bureaucracy and crippling bank procedures to allow people to donate no matter how small the sum is and to allow the recipient to receive almost instantly. Moreover, for those who work in conservation and development, we all know how hard it is to raise funds for day to day items, salaries and other overheads. The bottom line is people need to eat and we tend to forget this. WildlifeDirect provides a platform for conservationists to raise funds for whatever they need, be it a pair of boots or medical supplies for rangers.
The early success of whose operations began in the fall last year, has led to a 10 fold increase in blogs over the last few months with over 40 conservationists from all over Africa and beyond using the blogs to communicate their work and needs. Everyone around the world can play an interactive role in conserving the planet’s endangered wildlife. As Dr. Leakey states, “Not only have we enabled a number of interesting and courageous conservationists to write blogs from the frontline, but I am encouraged that the world is reading, listening, and taking action.”
The Kamusi Project, the web’s leading Swahili language resource, needs coding help in a hurry. We have a lot of old code that works pretty well for what we’ve been doing (running a collaborative online Swahili dictionary), but we need to modify and modernize our back end in order to get where we’re going: a free and open source interlinked dictionary and learning center for dozens of African languages. If you can volunteer, please contact [email][email protected]
This year ActionAid launches a new campaign focusing on women's rights and HIV & AIDS, starting with a new report that shows that persistent and systematic violations of women’s rights are leaving women and girls disproportionately vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. The report calls on donors and national governments to fund programmes that reduce women and girl’s vulnerability to Aids as a matter of urgency.Globally the percentage of women and girls living with HIV and AIDS has risen from 41% in 1997, to almost 50% today, while in sub-Saharan Africa, 75% of 15 to 24-year-olds living with HIV and AIDS are female.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_01_mirrorofjustice.gif writes about the improvement of the food situation in Malawi after the government ignored advice from the World Bank and USAID and subsidized fertilizer and seed to farmers:
“Clearly leaving things to market forces didn't work. Equally clearly, the subsidized fertilizer is having a dramatic positive effect - not only can do people now have enough food to feed themselves, but they have food to sell to other countries. Are government subsidies perfect? Probably not, and doubtless there is some displacement of commercial fertilizer sales. But government programs aimed at helping people become self-sufficient are a different matter than those that simply hand someone a bowl of food.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_02_ndagha.gifMalawian blogger Victor Kaonga commemorates World Aids day by discussing the challenges of Aids sensitization, primary among these, the stigma and silence that still surrounds the disease:
“Admittedly, it is not easy to disclose one's status because there are so many fears and consequences. Though this years' theme is on leadership, I have some worry over the performance of most of our leaders in Malawi…
AIDS is an area where silence still reigns. I just pray and hope that as leaders, they (and some people claim I am also a leader in my own right!) need to be more aggressive. May be this year's theme will remind them (us) about our roles when it comes to AIDS.
I think the theme is ideal as most leaders are men in our region and yet very few of them ever disclose their sero-status. My observation is that it is mostly women who easily disclose their sero-status. No wonder that often when it comes to programming, most of the interview voices on air have been those of women who are free to say they are living with the virus.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_03_whichwaynigeria.gifWhich Way Nigeria comments on the recent declaration by the Nigerian Senate that the handing over of the disputed Bakassi peninsular to Cameroon by the Obasanjo administration was unconstitutional:
“One wonders, if this ceding off of Bakassi is the only unconstitutional act of Obasanjo? The Senate should spend their time on legislating and carrying out their oversight functions to see that all the depilated infrastructures are functional. The mobile telephone service providers are ripping off Nigerians with diverted calls, dropped calls and poor reception. A handful of schools in Nigeria are paying either in pounds or dollars, yet Nigeria is a Sovereign state. While sympathizing with the displaced Nigerians of Bakassi extraction, one is tempted to say that these displaced people are better off being Cameroonians than Nigerians.
The degradation in the Niger Delta – the goose that lays the golden egg – is a pointer that most oil producing areas are better off in their own Republic. This unwarranted declaration of war by the Nigerian Senate, is most unfortunate as Nigeria parades herself as giant of Africa and parrots that Africa is the at the heart of Nigerian Foreign Policy.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_04_sierraeye.gifSierra Leonan blogger Sierraeye reproduces an article from Worldpress which reviews the downward spiral of the Sierra Leonan civil service in the past decade:
“At the dawn of independence, Sierra Leone's civil service was one of the best in Africa. The work of the civil service was widely accepted and respected, as it worked to serve the people of Sierra Leone. That reputation of the civil service has quickly been eroded since the late 60's. The civil service became entirely corrupt and grossly inefficient. And it did not get better even when after the war ended in 2002, and the international community rallied behind Sierra Leone as never before, supporting efforts to build capacity and helping to address the problems of the civil service.
[…]
Sierra Leoneans have paid a heavy price for being too susceptible to the deviant and corrupt practices of civil servants nullifying the competence of the civil service once enjoyed in colonial times and the years immediately after independence—a civil service that was rooted in a preference for being honorable over exhibiting selfishness, for being progressive over showing lack of will to make a difference. At a moment in history when the country's most pressing problems require unprecedented civil service performance, [former President] Kabbah's lenient administration only contributed to the ruin of the nation.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_05_pitsotsibs.gifThe ANC Women’s League endorsement of Jacob Zuma for the ANC party presidency has been hotly debated in the African blogosphere. South African blogger Pitso Tsibolane is among those bewildered by the choice of the Women’s League:
“But why? Why did the women choose the “Kanga-Man”, one who exposed his attitudes about women and sex when he slept with an HIV+ woman (Kwezi the faceless one, now exiled lesbian and a family friend) without protection? The same man who is polygamous and yet divorced? Do they condone his actions?
Allow me to think aloud;
- Could it be that most women of the ANC believe that JZ’s troubles are all a conspiracy by Mbeki?
- Could it be that most women of the ANC actually believe that Zuma is a good man, and actually do not share the “more bourgeoisie sentiment” that he is a ticking time bomb, bad for the country’s image?
- Could it be that most women in the ANC really believe that there is nothing wrong for their future president to be sleeping with friends of the family and begging for money in brown envelopes from convicted fraudsters?
- Could it be, that most women in the actually choose to see the good in Zuma, the humble man, the people’s person, a real MK man, a soldier, a survivor, rags-to-riches genius, the victim of the aloof jealous leader president!
Allow me to surmise, Zuma sure knows how to rise to the occasion when he has to, he outsmarted the “intelligent native” with his charm. However, he has not swayed me to his side; I actually do not believe he is what South Africa needs now. I do hope he chooses his deputy and cabinet well for South Africa’s sake (but first he must win at Limpopo!)”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_06_chippla.gifThe case of the English teacher who was jailed in Sudan for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed” is still generating lots of discussion on the blogosphere. Chippla’s Weblog looks at the broader implications of the actions of the Sudanese government:
“What the Sudanese authorities ought to have done was to educate Ms. Gibbons on the religious and cultural values of the Islamic parts of Sudan (Khartoum, where Ms. Gibbons taught, is in the Islamic part of Sudan). Instead, they ended up doing something reminiscent of the backward Middle Ages—sentencing her to jail. An event like this sometimes makes rational people laugh at the chocking effect of blind adherence to religious faith. And few things could be more potent than when the state exalts religious dogma and has religious laws against ‘blasphemy’!”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_07_meskelsquare.gifThis view is similar to the one expressed by Sudanese newspaper Al-Sahafah which is quoted by Meskel Square:
"If this issue had been raised to the Prophet he would have sided with the innocent children who gave their beloved toy his name. He would have considered this as an example of love and truth... Commoners, let alone elites and educated people, can easily distinguish between what really angers God and his Prophet, and who is striving to take advantage of some issues for other reasons...
Whoever creates a battle where there is no place for one in the name of religion thus insults Islam and its Prophet, and creates a wrongful impression of the religion making it to be hated by people, is committing a great offence incurring the wrath of God and his Prophet."
* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, http://www.dibussi.com
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org
For a year that began with great promise for diva power, the diminishing presence of women in the run-up to this year’s elections is a disturbing reminder of the uphill task women face in making their presence felt on Kenya's political scene. Earlier in the year, women candidates coalesced around Charity Ngilu and other bigwigs to root for their increased representation at the civic and parliamentary levels.
In commemoration of World AIDS Day 2007, Home-Based Caregivers and grassroots women united within the networks of GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission re-affirm our statement from our most recent Grassroots Women's International Academy which took place prior to the YWCA's International Women's Summit on HIV and AIDS, July 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya
This year’s 16 days of Activism Against gender based violence will go down in the Kenyan history as the year where women aspirants have suffered violence without any concrete action being taken either by the law enforcement officers or the various political party’s in Kenya. Narrating her ordeal, Alice Wahome, an aspirant said, "I was attacked by ten men in broad daylight, my attackers kicked and railed blows on me and it is an experience I have never been through before. They even pulled my breasts and I could feel them pinching my buttocks."
The Kenya Domestic Observers Forum was recently launched at an event at KICC in Nairobi. The co-chairs for the organization say they hope to have monitors at all of Kenya’s 35,000 polling stations on election day. The forum will also monitor the political process running up to the elections. “Our strategy is to undertake election day and thematic observations,” says Oliver Kisaka, one of three co-chairs of the forum. “Kenya remains in transition. Each election year we could check whether the country is moving forward in its democratic culture.”
ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, with the Kenya Section of the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Kenya Correspondents
Association (KCA) has launched a Guidebook on Election Coverage for Media
Correspondents in Kenya.
ARTICLE 19 and Index on Censorship are alarmed by the continuing assault on press
freedom in Egypt. Next week, no less than three cases will come to trial. All three represent a serious infringement of the right to free expression. It is the culmination of a year-long campaign of intimidation against journalists and bloggers.
Abiodun Titi, several months pregnant, flashes her best stage smile as she explains how to use a female condom here in the headquarters of Living Hope Care, a non-governmental organization that works with HIV-positive people in southern Nigeria. Abiodun is HIV-positive but her husband is HIV-negative. The child they are having together—their second—was made possible without exposing her husband to infection. How? It is thanks to the female condoms she received here and whose use she is now demonstrating.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged Somaliland authorities to withdraw their decision to expel 24 Somali journalists who fled the violence in Mogadishu over allegations that they are endangering the "security and stability” of the region.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned as “intolerable and vindictive” the sentence handed down to Tunisian journalist Slim Boukhdir on charges stemming from a search by police on the group taxi he was riding in. It is the latest targeted attack on Boukhdir who has been frequently harassed by Tunisian authorities says the IFJ.
The Sudanese Government is not cooperating with the International Criminal Court (ICC), its Chief Prosecutor has said, calling on the Security Council to send “a strong and unanimous message” to Khartoum to arrest and surrender two men accused of committing war crimes during the conflict in Darfur. Luis Moreno-Ocampo told a Council meeting that although “Sudan has known the nature of the case against Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb for 10 months, they have done nothing. They have taken no steps to prosecute them domestically, or to arrest and transfer them to The Hague [where the ICC is based].”
The ongoing fighting in eastern Chad is preventing humanitarian workers from reaching more than 400,000 refugees and displaced persons, setting the stage for a situation that could worsen rapidly and lead to significant loss of life, the United Nations has warned. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), armed conflict is hampering the ability of aid workers to move freely and safely in most parts of eastern Chad, cutting off vulnerable groups from vital humanitarian assistance.
The United Nations and African Union Special Envoys for Darfur have met with the regional partners to the peace process in the war-torn Sudanese region to assess the progress so far and try to forge agreement on the way forward. Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim held talks in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh with the foreign ministers of Chad, Egypt and Libya and senior representatives of the Eritrean President, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters.
Nearly one dozen African nations have joined forces to participate in a United Nations-backed programme to bolster education and training in rural areas. At the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), representatives from 11 countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania – last week agreed to identify areas of cooperation.
The United Nations has teamed up with the Government of Liberia to launch a nationwide campaign to prevent and punish the crime of rape, one of the most serious challenges the West African nation is grappling with as it emerges from years of conflict. “Rape is the most frequently committed serious crime in Liberia so we must find more effective ways to stop these crimes before more women and girls are hurt and abused,” said Alan Doss, outgoing Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the 1994 Rwandan genocide has sentenced a former witness to nine months in prison for giving false testimony during the trial of the country’s former higher education minister. The witness, identified only by the code name GAA, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court at a hearing this morning of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.
Cote d' Ivoire will receive a grant of 20 million Units of Account (UA*), about US$ 31.43 million, approved on Wednesday in Tunis by the Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF), the concessional window of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, to finance a Post-Crisis Multisector Institutional Support Project in the country.
Liberia has cleared all overdue debt service payments to the World Bank, marking the beginning of a new era for the country as it normalizes its relations with the international community. Clearance of arrears to the Bank and other multilateral agencies will make Liberia eligible for full debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) programs, thereby contributing to the country’s ability to achieve growth and recovery in the coming years.
Though Nigeria is tainted by advance fee fraud and China by lead-laden toys, a Nigerian in America is still called an African (by his continental identity) while a Chinese is called a Chinese (by his national identity). Many 'African' immigrants still threaten to send their disobedient kids 'back to Africa' portraying Africa as a torture chamber.
Robert Mugabe on Tuesday courted controversy by announcing that only friendly nations would be invited to observe the polls. The presence of foreign observers at the elections is one of the conditions the MDC is insisting on at the talks. Mugabe’s statement Tuesday revealed that he has not given in on this issue.
The Zimbabwean group behind a series of billboards sprouting up in South Africa has finally opened up to the media and spoken about their campaign. Although still concealing his real identity, Reverend Nkululeko from Zimbabwe Democracy Now, spoke to our Behind the Headlines programme this week and says they are motivated by a desire to see democratic elections in Zimbabwe. He said elections should meet the SADC guidelines, which are there specifically to promote an environment for free and fair polls.
A Zanu PF businessman severely assaulted an MDC activist in Marondera last week after an MDC rally. Regina Silas had attended a rally by the opposition party at Dhirihori Shopping Center near Marondera town, when Isiah Mpazviriho beat her up, accusing her of bringing agents of “western imperialists” near his business. Mpazviriho is understood to own a general store at the shopping centre and is an influential family member of the clan that heads the village.
Just a note of caution before getting our names on a register of doubtful contribution to African development. We need to be sure what the real implications and rationale are behind this move to compile such a database. Remember that the World Bank is looking to get its long fingers into the contributions and remittances from the diaspora.
The time for blind compliance surely must be over so let's look before we start to leap.
South Africa will not include maize in the initial stages of the country's biofuels policy in order to keep a lid on high food prices, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Thursday. The decision followed the South African cabinet's approval of a long-awaited biofuels plan, which officials hope will revive the ailing agriculture industry. Maize farmers, who have in the past struggled to stay profitable as bumper harvests pushed maize prices to multi-year lows, have also pinned their hopes on biofuels. But critics fear using maize as a source of alternative energy could drive up prices of the staple food.
The African Integration Review is an international multidisciplinary journal for the discussion of a wide range of integration issues in Africa. It is open to all theoretical and applied research orientations on the regions and countries of Africa.The African Integration Review is particularly interested in the theory of integration and to its application to problems.
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said Angolan soldiers have raped, beaten and tortured illegal Congolese migrant workers before deporting them across the border. The French humanitarian group said the rights abuses were occurring in the diamond-rich northern Angolan province Luanda Norte, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo. It described the rapes as "pervasive and systematic".
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday called on the army and rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo to spare civilian lives in their latest bout of fighting in the country's conflict-ravaged east. The neutral humanitarian agency voiced special concern at the fate of women in North Kivu province, who it said were especially vulnerable to rape in the midst of "mass exodus" linked to the flare-up in violence.
Single dose nevirapine given to the mother and infant are an essential part of HIV prevention in many poorer countries, including South Africa, but research has shown that a high percentage of women develop HIV resistance to the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor class of drugs, a component of first-line antiretroviral regimens throughout the world.
The focus of African women activists on gender violence and on women’s rights remains disconcerting. But before I get into the details of why this is so, I would like to highlight the historical figure named Mary Nyanjiru. Nyanjiru entered the local Kenyan legends in the 1920’s after she challenged the men in the crowds outside a colonial prison to exchange their trousers for skirts if they were afraid to protest the arrest of Harry Thuku.
Nigeria has revoked its last contract with Siemens and suspended dealings with the industrial group pending a probe into allegations it gave 10 million euros ($14.6 million) in bribes, the government said. A German court fined Siemens 201 million euros on 4 October for bribes paid to Nigerian, Russian and Libyan officials by a former manager of one of the group's telecoms equipment units.
Human rights activists from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania attending a Tunisian seminar last week stressed the need to separate religion from state as "an essential approach to realizing gender equality." The "Maghreb Women's March towards Realizing Equality" seminar on November 24th and 25th addressed the marginalisation of the Maghreb woman and the gender gap in each country.
A draft bill to regulate Algeria's journalism industry is being finalised and has been opened up to a closed-door debate. During a November 21st meeting on the 2008 budget, Communications Minister Rachid Boukerzaza said the bill had been submitted to over one hundred media professionals for review.
The purpose of this report by the Global forest Coalition is to examine the impact of agrofuels development, with particular emphasis on forests and forest dependent peoples. This emphasis on forests is critical for several reasons including that of regulating climate
The UN refugee agency has temporarily suspended its repatriation programme to South Sudan's Jonglei state after tribal rows sparked by cattle thefts turned deadly. The clashes between Murle and Dinka tribesmen have degenerated into widespread revenge attacks in the past fortnight that have left at least 34 people dead and close to 100 injured.
Legislators in the Central African Republic (CAR) have unanimously approved a new law guaranteeing refugees protection and many other fundamental rights. The National Assembly adopted the Law on the Status of Refugees last Thursday, some six months after the draft was given a green light by the government's Council of Ministers.
13 December marks the first anniversary of the Kalahari Bushmen’s landmark victory in Botswana’s High Court. But the Botswana government has failed to uphold the court’s ruling, and most of the Bushmen remain stranded in resettlement camps. The court ruled that the Botswana government’s eviction of the Bushmen was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’, and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and hunt and gather there.
The need for greater urgency in addressing loss of wetlands in the Zambezi River Basin has been highlighted at a recent meeting in northern Zimbabwe. "Wetlands are crucial to all forms of life in the Zambezi Basin, yet they are not appreciated the way they should be," said Tabeth Chiuta, the water programme co-ordinator of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
African states should address the needs of local markets and of their regions before looking at what can be exported globally, and not the other way round as is currently the case. This proposal was made by a participant at a meeting of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from November 27-29.
The absence of principal witnesses has again stalled the trial of 18 suspected homosexuals in Bauchi. The suspects had earlier appeared before a Bauchi Shari'ah Court for sodomy and attempted gay marriage on July 26. They were later charged with belonging to an illegal society, indecent act, criminal conspiracy and idleness. They were initially refused bail, but subsequently granted bail after the charges of sodomy and attempted gay marriage were replaced with the fresh charges.
Pan Africa ILGA, which is the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s (ILGA) African branch, reprimanded police for brutality during Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Uganda. According to a letter written to Commonwealth secretariat by Pan Africa ILGA representatives, Danilo da Silva and Linda Bauman, the Ugandan and Kenyan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) speakers were curbed from talking on behalf of the LGBTI people last month.
SADC is making progress, albeit fraught with uncertainties, towards a legally binding Gender and Development Protocol scheduled for adoption in 2008. Yet, it is surprising that the current draft of the Gender and Development Protocol excludes marital rape from the ambit of gender based violence, making it diametrically opposed to the 1998 commitment by SADC governments, and indeed, the progress already made in six countries in the region. Are we taking a step back or moving forward?
Since the 2005 Land Summit, new approaches to land reform have been on the agenda, yet there remains little clarity on the way forward. The main focus has been on means of accelerating the redistribution of land through new modes of acquiring land. In this policy brief, Lionel Cliffe cautions that acquisition is an important matter, but if treated in isolation risks mis-specifying the core problems evident in land reform in South Africa.
A US$13 million pan-African initiative to increase the role of women scientists in agriculture was launched this week (5 December) in Kenya. The Nairobi-based African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) intends to increase the number of women scientists on the continent. It also seeks to provide role models and address the institutional biases that have limited women in agricultural research.
Inadequacies in HIV testing and treatment of pregnant women in South Africa means mother-to-child transmission is largely going unchecked in local clinics and hospitals, new research has found. The study was published in Aids Research and Therapy last month (November). Prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes (PMTCT) are a standard protocol in South Africa. HIV-positive women take a dose of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine before delivery and the baby is given a dose within 72 hours of birth.
Countries are shifting to biofuels in response to climate change and rising oil prices. But biofuel production poses new food security risks and challenges for poor people. Higher food prices, subsidies for biofuels, and environmental degradation will all be felt disproportionately by the developing world. So while developing and using biofuels is high on the global political agenda, policymakers, researchers and others must carefully assess the consequences for the poorest of the poor.
A baseline study into e-waste in Kenya has been launched at a meeting held in Nairobi recently. The meeting, on November 21 at the Jacaranda Hotel, was organised by the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANeT), and attended by over 30 representatives of business, government, the non-profit sector and the media. The study will be conducted over the next three months, and is being supported by a partnership between Hewlett Packard (HP), the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) and the Swiss Institute for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA).
Customers subscribing to iWay Internet brand are set to benefit from efficient high, quality and reliable service after the merger of Afsat Communications and MWEB Africa. Afsat and MWEB have been operating in several of the same countries, but their services were complementary and together they would have more buying muscle for renting transmission capacity from companies that operate the satellites.
Corruption is a constant presence in the lives of people around the world. And poor families are hit hardest by demands for bribes. These are the unsettling results of the Global Corruption Barometer 2007, published by Transparency International (TI) on 6 December, ahead of International Anti-corruption Day. After five years of surveying the general public's views and experiences of corruption, the report shows that bribery is still prevalent in many countries, but that citizens are increasingly demanding accountability from their governments.
This latest International Crisis Group report examines steps needed to address the conflict’s root causes and stop the region from slipping back into chaos. The May inauguration of new federal and state governments and the truce declared shortly after by armed groups created an opportunity, but attacks on oil installations by militants and kidnappings by criminals are again on the rise.
Senegal has joined Africa's economic tigers [South Africa and Nigeria] to openly declare its refusal to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) with the European Union. Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade, said his government would not endorse the agreements simply because they did not "defend Africa's interests."
The news that 70 percent of women in parts of Niger find it normal that their husbands, fathers and brothers regularly beat, rape and humiliate them came as no surprise to human rights experts in Niger. "Women here have been indoctrinated by their families, by religious officials, by society that this is a normal phenomenon," said Lisette Quesnel, a gender-based violence advisor with Oxfam in Niger, which produced the statistic from a survey of women in the remote Zinder region of eastern Niger in 2006.
To improve girls’ education, West African governments must adopt national policies addressing all aspects of violence against schoolgirls - who face rape by teachers, verbal abuse by male students and forced early marriage by parents - a grouping of policy makers, teachers’ unions and civil society organisations has said.
The basis of this policy-paper is a combination of qualitative analysis of interviews with stakeholders in 2004-2005 completed with a critical review and analysis of available literature on human trafficking, especially of women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to serve as a tool for advocacy and awareness-raising to fight human trafficking in Lesotho, with concrete recommendations to be implemented by a wide range of actors working to fight human trafficking in Lesotho (including the government, international and local organizations).
The basis of this policy-paper is a combination of qualitative analysis of interviews with stakeholders in 2004-2005 completed with a critical review and analysis of available literature on human trafficking, especially of women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to serve as a tool for advocacy and awareness-raising to fight human trafficking in South Africa, with concrete recommendations to be implemented by a wide range of actors working to fight human trafficking in South Africa (including the government, international and local organizations).
The basis of this policy-paper is a combination of qualitative analysis of interviews with stakeholders in 2004-2005 completed with a critical review and analysis of available literature on human trafficking, especially of women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to serve as a tool for advocacy and awareness-raising to fight human trafficking in Mozambique, with concrete recommendations to be implemented by a wide range of actors working to fight human trafficking in Mozambique (including the government, international and local organizations).
Politics must become a safe place for women, says Helen Connell. Violence is an abuse of power and disempowers women of all ages. It affects all societies and is institutionalised in formal and informal political processes and governance structures. It makes it hard, and sometimes impossible, for women to take political decision-making positions.
Many of us who work in the field of women's rights, when asked what we do for a living will often say we work in human rights. Firstly because women's rights are human rights, and secondly to avoid the inevitable quip which we get in certain settings of 'but what about men's rights?' What about men's rights? My reaction to this question is often inwardly visceral and along the following lines.
Alter-Eco is published by a group of non-governmental organizations, indigenous people's organizations and social movements at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change COP-13. The groups came together to make a unified call in support of real solutions to climate change and against the false market-based solutions to climate change that are being implemented under the Kyoto Protocol.
When the UK’s carbon emissions include imports from China, the average UK citizen’s carbon footprint increases by 10% according to new research released by the World Development Movement. A World Development Movement report, released in Bali, rejects the ‘blame China for climate change’ culture and reveals a new and more accurate picture of the UK’s responsibility for climate change by accounting for the carbon emissions caused by our massive consumption of products from overseas.
Secondary school students incan now make use of computers and wireless connectivity for all types of class work, courtesy of the latest ICT development initiative that is expected to see to it that all schools have access to e-learning facilities. The programme has been launched by INTEL, a company that offers ICT solutions in Africa and Europe and puts Kenya in the list of two other African countries that would receive e-learning facilities in Secondary schools.
The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO)is to embark on a project for African rural inclusion known as 'Commonwealth African Rural Connectivity Initiative'(COMARCI). The chief executive of the CTO, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said the project has been structured to promote faster telephone and internet connectivity for rural communities in the 18 Commonwealth African countries.
Kenya Data Networks (KDN)- a leading ICT infrastructure provider in the country has embarked on an ambitious program to provide all Kenya's schools from distant mountain villages to those in the swelling urban slum areas, with Internet connectivity.
The disarmament deal signed by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on 9 November 2007 is a landmark step in the peace process between both countries. But to finally cool tensions in Africa's turbulent Great Lakes region, all parties are going to have to now tackle the collapsing eastern Congolese province of North Kivu, writes David Mugnier.
Maria Antónia* began to wonder about her husband's frequent trips to neighbouring South Africa, especially when he was away for 15 days without contacting her on one occasion. She decided to investigate whether he was going to South Africa to see another woman, but discovered that he was going to get antiretroviral (ARV) medication because he was HIV positive.
In little more than a week South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), will elect new leaders - a choice likely to decide who becomes the country's next president. After provincial nominations earlier this week, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma - acquitted in a controversial rape trial last year - is well ahead of his rival, President Thabo Mbeki. Zuma also won the support of the ANC Women's League (ANCWL) - a decision that has staggered most gender activists.
Human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have accused their government and that of Angola of turning a blind eye to reports of widespread rape and other abuses of DRC migrant workers in neighbouring Angola. “The situation seems to be getting worse but the Angolan and Congolese authorities we have repeatedly approached show no political will to end the situation,” said Floribert Chebeya, who heads Voice of the Voiceless, a DRC NGO.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Thursday said it had commenced demarcating voting constituencies for next year’s House of Assembly election, with Harare, Bulawayo and the two Matabeleland provinces that back the opposition set to get 67 constituencies.
Aides of Jacob Zuma have drawn up contingency plans to try to force his rival President Thabo Mbeki out of office early, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday. If Zuma was elected party leader at the African National Congress's five-yearly conference in a fortnight, he would insist on being privy to big government decisions, according to a close adviser, the influential daily said.