The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Open Society Justice Initiative (the Justice Initiative) are pleased to invite applications for the Human Rights Fellows Program for the 2008-2010 session. The deadline for applications is September 17, 2007. This program was launched in 2003 by OSISA and the Justice Initiative, in collaboration with Conectas Human Rights, the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, and civic organizations in South Africa, Mozambique, and Angola.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the need for a negotiated solution with the PALIPEHUTU-FNL to break a dangerous stalemate that could seriously undermine the consolidation of peace and democracy. Little progress has been made since the signing of the ceasefire agreement on 7 September 2006. At the end of July, the hasty departure from Bujumbura of the rebel delegation negotiating implementation of that agreement precipitated widespread fears fighting could resume.

A new campaign, South Africa First, was launched at the GovTech 2007 conference in Cape Town with the aim of encouraging both the public and private sector to make more use of local content when spending on information technology (IT). An initiative of the SA Local Procurement Advocacy Trust, focusing initially on the IT sector, South Africa First seeks to ensure that local businesses benefit from an estimated R1-billion a week spend on products and services in SA as a result of the country's economic boom.

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls comprising about 55 islands, with a total land area of 60 km2. Between 1967 and 1971, an estimated 2,000 inhabitants of Chagos were evicted from their island home of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, to make way for a US military base. The majority were forced to exile in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius and some in Seychelles.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the dismissal of eight journalists at Congolese newspaper L’Avenir after the management said they had to cut jobs due to economic concerns and then subsequently advertised for new workers to replace them.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has applauded Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki for rejecting a media bill that could have required reporters to reveal their sources in court. "We applaud President Kibaki's decision, which acknowledges that protection of confidential sources is a cornerstone of press freedom

Leslie Mullin reports from Haiti, a 'deeply African country', where, after Aristide, there is 'a deliberate and violent attempt to reverse a truly democratic effort that stood firmly for the poor majority...a violent, brutal counter-insurgency, a counter-revolution', blame for which she lays at the door of the US and the UN.

The experience of travelling to Haiti is amazing, because Haiti is so deeply an African country and people. The first time I was there, three years ago, I was astounded by the sights and sounds of Haiti which are so resonant of West Africa: the market women; the young girls riding donkeys in the countryside, huge baskets on their heads; the vigour of massive demonstrations - the pounding rhythmic feet, visions of Soweto. Everywhere in the darkened poor city neighbourhoods at night, without electricity, in their cinderblock houses stacked on top of each other rising up hillsides, people sing, blast radio music, play instruments.

It is my privilege to have travelled on two trips to Haiti with fiercely political Black activists who have embraced Haiti as a cherished symbol of liberation to African people everywhere. They evoke deep bonds of shared experience among African people of Haiti and America, who came on the same slave ships. They point out that the same people who are killing and oppressing Haiti's people left Black people to die by the thousands in New Orleans after Katrina, and now attempt to steal their land. Haiti's grassroots movement recognises this powerful bond among the two peoples. Everywhere we spoke about the San Francisco 8 or about New Orleans. Lavalas activists sent a message of solidarity.

It is taking things out of context to try to talk about what exists in Haiti now without acknowledging what was achieved by Haiti's grassroots movement under Aristide. Because it is not just that things are bad right now, but that what is happening is a deliberate and violent attempt to reverse a truly democratic effort that stood firmly for the poor majority. It is a violent, brutal counter-insurgency, a counter-revolution.

For a brief moment, after decades of dictatorship and a long history of resistance, Haitians achieved the dream of social justice and freedom. The poor had power. During that brief period of time, there were no boat people leaving Haiti. During that brief period of time, massive projects were undertaken to support the poor. The goal was to move Haiti's people from misery to poverty with dignity. Beautiful public parks were built in poor neighbourhoods; schools, health clinics, a medical school; micro-loans to market women and literacy projects flourished. During that brief period, poor street kids swam in the presidential pool; Haitian legal teams held Truth Commissions, took on the tonton macoutes. Death squads who had terrorised, tortured and killed thousands, were prosecuted and imprisoned.

This is why Aristide is so revered in Haiti. As one Lavalas activist put it, Aristide never gave up; he stood up to the Western powers, and fought for those who cannot speak. He is a symbol of hope and democracy for Haitians.

What we found in Haiti now are activists struggling everywhere to resist the renewed assaults on Haiti's poor, to move in a period once again dominated by foreign guns, foreign economic clout and terrorism. 24,000 march on Aristide's birthday; a transport workers' strike blocks roads and shuts down traffic throughout the country. 50 grassroots activists, the elderly women in dresses and straw hats, mark the 92nd anniversary of the 1915 US invasion in a spirited protest at UN headquarters. We are there to see the dozens of heavily armed UN troops aligned against them, ensignia marking their countries of origin - Sri Lanka, Jordan, Philippines, France, Bolivia, and among the unmarked Westerners, surely Americans. The Haitians are undeterred - chanting, yelling, dancing, singing, photo displays of UN and other coup victims prominent.

Why must the poor be shot down by UN troops in Cite Soleil? Why are the market women beaten, even killed, by petty bureaucrats and police thugs to drive them off the streets, why burn the markets and deprive them of their meagre income? Why must armed thugs storm into a school of 700 poor children, headed by Lavalas activists, breaking the blackboards, desks, drinking fountain - the few artifacts needed to teach those who could not afford $100 a month to go to school? Why must their teacher be beaten? Why must prisons be filled with those who fight for democracy, starving on diets of foreign white rice, deprived of clean water to drink, sleeping in shifts in stifling cells built for 20, housing 80? Why must life be nearly impossible - transport workers up against heavy license fees and fuel costs, telephone workers laid off? Why?

Because Haitians are a deeply political people; they have tasted democracy; they insist on their human rights. Western powers cannot enforce their elite, global agenda on Haiti unless they can contain this massive popular movement and destroy its righteous vision.

Here is what Randall Robinson says in his new book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of President:

'What was it, though, about Haiti that made the place so different from other Caribbean places, so especially combustible? What property, what special character did it have that would incite the rich white West to engage a poor, largely black nation with such glowering, unrelenting hostility...The Haitians knew their history. The Haitian peasants may have had few material possessions to speak of, but they knew what their slave ancestors had done to the French, to the English and to the Spanish. They also knew what they had done to liberate all of Latin America, as well as themselves. No matter how poor they were, the Haitians knew these things about themselves, things that made them special to themselves, that made them resilient and independent, that gave them great art, that unsettled, even now, those nations the peasants' slave ancestors had once soundly thrashed.'

US 'low-intensity' warfare is so termed, not because it is mild, but because it comes under the radar of the American people, as does mostly anything having to do with Haiti. What did the UN come to do in Haiti? As one Lavalas activist put it, they came to make the country go backwards. They spend $500 million a year to maintain UN troops - money that could provide water, schools, healthcare for Haiti but instead the UN does nothing for Haiti.

What do the Haitian people want from us? They want our solidarity. They want us to expose and mobilise people against what is happening. They want us to demand the UN mandate in Haiti not be renewed; to support the return of Aristide to Haiti; oppose privatisation; to insist on freedom for Haiti's political prisoners.

* Leslie Mullin is a long-time San Francisco-Bay Area human rights activist who returned in late July 2007 from a week-long Haiti Action Committee delegation to visit Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. The delegation met with organisers across the breadth of Haiti's grassroots movement.

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

The United Nations envoy to Liberia has called for an end to violence against women, while stressing that security is paramount for everyone throughout the West African nation as it works to rebuild after a brutal 14-year civil war. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Alan Doss made his remarks as he handed over a new UN-built police station to the people of Kronowroken, Webbo District, in River Gee County, along Liberia’s border with Côte d’Ivoire.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern about the rising tensions and violence over the past week in Sierra Leone, which earlier this month held its first presidential and parliamentary polls since United Nations peacekeepers departed in 2005. “He calls on all parties and their leaders to do everything necessary to prevent the situation from escalating,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

The Sudanese Government has not moved to arrest two suspects wanted to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said, calling on Khartoum to cooperate immediately with the court. In an interview with the UN News Centre, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that it is “totally unacceptable” that one of the two suspects, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, is currently Sudan’s Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs.

The issue of civil society’s participation or not to the advocated political dialogue is dividing Central African Republic stakeholders as two opposed camps are confronting their viewpoints on the issue in a debate took place last week. Organised by the UN Peace Building Support Office in the CAR, BONUCA, at the National Assembly’s palace, the 22-24 consultation meeting focused on the political dialogue that many have called for to discuss national issues.

In deeply homophobic and patriarchal South African society what does Women’s Month and National Women’s Day means for vulnerable, marginalised women? The State must enact legislation that punishes acts of violence against women and enforce policy that prevents violence and the re-assertion of patriarchal norms.

An MDC senior official who spent 174 days in prison on trumped up charges of terrorism is facing another battle as a free man. Morgan Komichi was released on the 9th August but when he reported for work on the 15th he was told that he had been suspended on allegations of absenteeism. This is despite his lawyers having written to his employer, the Zimbabwe Power Company, a subsidiary of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, informing them about the arrest.

Almost 60 people suspected of being trafficked off the Libyan coast have been rescued after being abandoned without supplies in a leaking boat. Coastguards in Falmouth co-ordinated a rescue operation after an Ethiopian in the UK took a call from the inflatable boat from his half-brother on board.

Thousands of civilians fled heavy fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled North Kivu province after clashes erupted before dawn on Thursday between government forces and renegade soldiers. Some 1,000 fighters loyal to rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda attacked a Congolese army brigade headquarters in Katale, around 60 km (38 miles) northwest of the provincial capital Goma, at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT), witnesses said.

About 100 secondary schools will at the beginning of next term be linked together through the computerised school Internet connectivity project. This was revealed through a Savingram circulated to all the 235 secondary schools Head teachers in the country.

An extensive analysis of all scientific research on the links between improved nutrition and the treatment of both HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) has found no evidence that healthier eating is any substitute for correctly-used medication.

Thirty-three political parties have fielded candidates for Morocco's September 7th legislative elections, according to a Magharebia report. Two additional parties, Annahj Addimocrati (The Democratic Path) and the Moroccan Amazigh Democratic Party, plan to boycott the poll. Founded in 1995, Annahj Addimocrati has never taken part in an election. Its main ally, the Parti de l'Avant-garde Democratique et Socialiste (Avant-garde Democratic and Socialist Party, or PADS) has ended its own boycott of the elections and will run for the first time since its creation in 1984.

Israel should stop summarily expelling Sudanese nationals who enter the country illegally from Egypt and reinstate its policy of allowing them to remain in Israel pending refugee status determination, Human Rights Watch has said . Egypt's official refusal to accept them combined with recent allegations of mistreatment by border guards suggests that Sudanese returnees are likely to be treated harshly and with no guarantees that they would not be returned to persecution.

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem exposes the humour and absurdity in cultural and racial prejudices, and situations where Africans have absorbed ridiculous and pernicious colonial rules and persist in inflicting them on their fellow citizens. 'The main reason why many of the anti-African biases and petty apartheids persist is because too many of us put up with them. We really need to wake up', he writes.

There are so many prejudices, insults and stereotypes between different peoples, races, religions, nationalities and other social groups in the world. Many of the violent conflicts unnecessarily claiming so many lives use such prejudices to justify themselves. But prejudice need not to be openly violent in order for it to be injurious to human beings. There are many such irrational attitudes commonly displayed in action, speech and conduct whose cumulative effect is to rob other human beings of their dignity, self esteem and right to equality with other human beings.

While prejudices are generally expressed by 'others' towards 'others' over time, some of the victims of such prejudices may actually internalise them and use them against themselves or believe them to be true. An obvious example is the widely used notion of 'African time'. If a European, American or Chinese person is late, nobody blames it on Britain or Sweden, America or China. But if Tajudeen is late the whole of Africa takes the blame. Even Africans use it to justify their lateness.

There are many other examples. But the one that triggered this week's column was a recent experience I had in Lusaka, capital city of Zambia. We had gone to one of the many South African-owned or designed shopping malls that are springing up in capital cities across Africa, paying homage to Africa's growing middle-class consumerism. We had scheduled to meet up with my good friend, veteran agitator, Sarah Longwe and her equally cantankerous partner, Roy Clarke of the famous Kalaki Corner, a satiric column in The Post Newspaper that irks Zambia's establishment so much that, but for the courts, they would have deported him back to the England he left decades ago, and in spite of being married to a Zambian woman.

Our rendez-vous was a popular restaurant and bar called Rhapsodies. I had gone with another friend and colleague in the UN Millennium Campaign, Salil Shetty. I was in my 'native' Nigerian up-and-down Kaftan and trouser with a traditional hat to match. As we made to enter, a burly security man in an ill-suited tight uniform beckoned me to stop. I asked why and he said I had to take off my hat because men are not allowed to wear hats in the bar. Roy and Sarah, who could see us from the open air verandah, were already agitated and leapt to their feet screaming at the security man.

They needed not have bothered because I was very prepared to deal with the situation. It has happen to me a few times in southern Africa before. The last time it was in Zimbabwe. I was staying at the Great Zimbabwe hotel by the Zimbabwe ruins. I had gone for supper, when this huge bouncer by the gate in ridiculous multi-coloured English costumes with bowler hat and long tail suit tried to deny me entrance because 'gentlemen are required to take off their hats for supper'. I told him that part of his statement was correct: I am a man, but as for being gentle, that may not fit, as he was to discover soon after. I asked him why I needed to take off my hat, and he said it was the rule. Set by whom? And how many years after liberation from the Rhodesians?

I asked him if I had been wearing a Jewish skull cap and looked Jewish if would he have stopped me. His answer was that the Jewish skull cap was a religious symbol. How did he know that my hat was not a religious one? He drew blank because these rules and conventions were imposed to keep Africans away. Or model Africans in a particular way in order for them to belong! Needless to say I did not take my hat off. The good sense of the manager prevailed after I threatened to leave without paying for the accommodation since I was not welcomed.

So my Lusaka expwerience was just an echo of that experience. When I pointed out to my Zambian bouncer that he was also wearing a hat his only response was that 'it is part of the uniform'. So I humored him that my hat could also be part of my cultural uniform but it was above his programmed mind to see the joke. By this time Sara was at the entrance and Roy was ready for a fight. Just imagine the scene: an Englishman defending the right of an African to wear African dress including his hat to another African in an African country! How insane can our world get?

I was not budging and Salil, an Indian, was just enjoying the spectacle. The opposition was unyielding and nobody came to his rescue so he stepped aside and I entered.

It is true that we live with ridiculous rules but there is nothing that says we have to implement them, especially when they offend our good taste and sense of being. In many of the cultures of west Africa the wearing of a hat is considered part of a normal or formal dress code. I know that in eastern and southern Africa the wearing of a hat has acquired religious connotation.

When I was living in Uganda when I wore a hat people generally greeted me with ' salaam alaykum', whereas when I was not wearing one, even if I was wearing west African tie-and-die clothe, they would not assume I was a Muslim. Christian missionaries and later colonialists attacked many aspects of our culture in their 'civilizing mission' but continuing with some of these petty rules so many years after the formal end of colonialism is a sign of the enduring legacy of the colonial mindset. Most of them are like a petty-apartheid, which we can do away with. For instance have you ever wondered our five star hotels and no-star ones offer 'continental breakfast' on their menu which does not mean the African continent? Can you imagine being in a hotel in Europe and asking for a continental breakfast that does not mean the European continent?

The late martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle, and Black Consciousness of Azania leader, Steve Biko, once observed that one of the best weapons in the hands of the oppressor is to set up his General Headquarters in the head of the oppressed. How true, sadly so, this is, in all manners and in every day things of our lives. In some countries it is still being debated whether African dresses could be accepted as 'proper dress' for formal occassions. The main reason why many of the anti-African biases and petty apartheids persist is because too many of us put up with them. We really need to wake up.

Woza AFRIKA!

* Tajudeen Abdul Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in a personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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

An international human rights group has accused President Yoweri Museveni's government of promoting "state homophobia" in Uganda and urged the repeal of a colonial-era law against sodomy. Human Rights Watch's attack added to a fierce social debate in the east African nation, where gays and lesbians have been increasingly vocal in demanding rights while Christian groups have taken to the streets to denounce them.

While most South Africans view homosexuality as more acceptable than prostitution or abortion, they still regard it as worse than mercy killing or divorce. And many do not want to live next door to gay, drug addicted or heavy drinking neighbours. This is according to a nationwide public opinion survey of values by market research company Markinor and the University of Stellenbosch’s Centre for International and Comparative Politics.

The United Nations is short of aviation, transport and logistic personnel necessary for the functioning of a new force of up to 26,000 troops and police in Sudan's Darfur region, according to a report issued on Thursday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who issued the report, said the Aug. 31 deadline for troop contributors would have to be extended because "offers are still lacking for some critical military capabilities."

More than 100 people have died in flooding that has also spread disease and destroyed agricultural crops, officials have said. The release of the toll comes a day after the United Nations appealed for $20m to provide clean water, food and shelter to more than three million people affected by flooding from the River Nile and its tributaries.

The impact of the AIDS denial movement — which refuses to accept that HIV is the cause of AIDS — is a ripe area for research because of its potentially lethal consequences, argue Tara C. Smith and Steven P. Novella in this PLoS Medicine article. Many doctors and researchers are unaware of the existence of organised denial groups or ignore them as an inconsequential fringe, they say.

A constitutional council in Senegal yesterday confirmed a landslide by the ruling Senegalese Democratic Party of President Abdoulaye Wade in the 19 August senatorial polls. The council confirmed that ruling polled 34 of the 35 senatorial seats in what it called an open contest. A single seat was won by an opposition And-Jef/African Party for Democracy and Socialism (AJ/PADS).

Robert Mugabe is to lose vital support from one of his few remaining allies on the world stage, China. One of the Zimbabwe president's oldest diplomatic friends, China told Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister, that it was dropping all assistance except humanitarian aid according to a report in the Telegraph. The move follows a decision by China, a permanent member of the United Nations security council, to work more closely with the international community in bringing pressure to bear on "rogue regimes".

The disabled are becoming increasingly marginalised, with the state and civil society neglecting their basic needs, says The forgotten tribe, people with disabilities in Zimbabwe, a new report. Data for the report, recently published by Progressio, an international development agency, in collaboration with the Zimbabwe National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped, was provided by a 2006 survey based on interviews with experts on disability, and disabled people themselves.

South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says science and technology should not be viewed as "elitist" but rather as sectors whose growth can spearhead Africa's development. The Deputy President was addressing the first African Union (AU) Conference of African Women in Science and Technology.

It is 10.30am on a sunny Thursday morning in the self-declared republic of Somaliland’s capital and 15-year-old Mohamed Yusuf is skipping school. Mohamed is not playing soccer or smoking cigarettes or shining shoes for a few extra shillings; instead he and a half-dozen of his classmates have trekked 5km through the dusty streets of Hargeisa to attend a session of Biyo Dhacay primary school’s Child-to-Child (CTC) club.

Bukavu is perched high above Lake Kivu, gently encroaching on the placid body of water between Rwanda and Congo. Once known as the pearl of Congo because of its beautiful climate and mountains, the Bukavu I found last summer barely resembles the famed city I heard about as a child.

In the past ten years, South Kivu province and its capital city of Bukavu have been known for two things: insecurity and coltan. I came for both. In anticipation of the country’s first multiparty elections in four decades, I wanted to understand the potential effect of insecurity on the elections and learn first-hand the role minerals such as coltan play in fueling insecurity.

Four times the size of France, and as big as the United States east of the Mississippi river, Congo holds 80 percent of the world’s reserves of coltan, a heat-resistant mineral ore widely used in cellular phones, laptop computers and video games. The ore derives its name from a contraction of columbium-tantalite, the scientific nomenclature.

Columbium-tantalite is so vital to the high tech industry that without it, wireless communication as we know it would not exist. Refined coltan yields tantalum, which is used primarily for the production of capacitors, critical for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries.

Even though it has been exploited for years, this mineral did not come to prominence among the uninitiated until the “coltan rush” of the late 1990’s. At the beginning of 2000, a pound of unprocessed coltan cost between US$30 and US$40 on the international market. By the end of the year, the price had risen tenfold to US$400.

The advent of a new generation of mobile phones, the upsurge of tech products, and the popularity of video games such as Sony Playstation 2 increased demand for the ore to unprecedented levels and drove prices to new heights. Hoping to make money, thousands of Congolese men rushed to the mines.

Insecurity welcomes me as soon I exit Bukavu’s Kavumu airport. On the way to town, we pass a couple of United Nations peacekeepers’ camps – South Africans, Pakistanis and others. On the rest of the road, we see the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, known among the people as FARDC.

The FARDC does not inspire trust. Far from a typical army, it is a patchwork of various militias that fought each other not so long ago and still treat each other with suspicion. They idle at the market, smoke at the street corner or fight for public transportation with civilians. They are always armed, do not receive regular pay, and beg whenever they get a chance. Above all, they are hungry and mean. The FARDC seems to own the 35 kilometer-road to town.
The bad condition of the road mirrors the collapse of Congo’s infrastructure and reflects the failure of the State, which is unable to provide the minimum of public service. It takes over an hour to reach the center of town and I see no sign of coltan’s wealth. It is an old beat up city.

By the end of 2001, coltan overproduction and the subsequent decrease in demand drove prices down to their previous level. Adam Smith’s invisible hand did its job. A few international traders made a fortune and militia leaders stuffed their war chests and foreign bank accounts. Local miners, however, only had their dreams for trophy. Coltan perks had evaporated long before I arrived in town.

Bukavu mimics Congo’s problems. Like the country, South Kivu has unlimited potential, from its physical beauty to hydro-electrical capacity to human and natural resources. Yet, conflict, mismanagement and corruption prevent the region from benefiting from these riches.

“If you want to understand what has gone wrong in Congo,” says Thomas Nziratimana of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) and vice governor of South Kivu in charge of finance, economy and development, “You start with the way the country has been run so far. Despotic regimes cannot attract investors. They create tensions that do not make anyone feel safe to come and invest.”

Congo has had its share of dictatorships, war and civil unrest. From 1965 to 1997, the late Mobutu Sese Seko presided over a kleptocracy - a predatory regime that benefited a few members of the political elite, bankrupted the rich country and left its population in misery.

“In the past we have had a highly centralized system where everything went to Kinshasa, the capital, yet the provinces were very productive. This has continued today,” reflects Nziratimana. “Eighty-five percent of the income generated in South Kivu is sent to Kinshasa and nothing remains here, nothing.”

The kleptocratic culture did not end with Mobutu’s fall. In May 1997, Laurent-Désiré Kabila forced Mobutu into exile and became president.

A former pro-Lumumba guerilla fighter who had trained along side Che Guevara in the hills of eastern Congo in the 1960’s, Kabila launched his rebellion from South Kivu with the support of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda in 1996. Bukavu served as his rear base and suffered great damage in human and infrastructure terms during the fighting.

In the new Kabila regime power remained in the hands of a few cronies who amassed wealth for themselves à la Mobutu. A new millionaire class emerged overnight as Congo sank deeper into misery. In 1998, after Kabila fell out of grace with his backers in Uganda and Rwanda, these two countries invaded Congo in an attempt to overthrow him. A multinational war followed, with Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia intervening on Kabila’s side. Unable to unseat Kabila, Rwanda and Uganda chose to support a second rebellion in eastern Congo.

In 2001, following Laurent-Désiré’s assassination, his son Joseph assumed the presidency. The city did not recover from the suffering. Neither did the country.

The conflict partitioned the country. Supported by Uganda, Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo ruled over northern Congo, from east to west. Rwanda-backed RCD militiamen controlled eastern Congo for five years until a series of peace accords brought a transitional government in Kinshasa, which included leaders of various warring factions.

Rwandan occupation years also coincided with the coltan boom years. In fact, while neither Rwanda nor Uganda have gold, diamond or coltan deposits of significance, both countries have become important exporters of these minerals. A 2003 United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources accused both countries of prolonging the civil war so that they could illegally siphon off Congo's wealth with the help of Western corporations.

This second rebellion, which has claimed over 4.4 million lives, has made Congo’s conflict the deadliest in the world since World War II. Mineral exploitation was one of the driving forces behind the war and the proliferation of militias; some of these militiamen still operate in the region and control mining areas.

When I inquire of the people how to get to a coltan mine, I receive different versions of the same response. “It’s too dangerous out there,” they say. “There is too much insecurity. We advise you, ‘don’t go to the mines’.” For several days, I tried to arrange a trip to the mines and found nobody to take me.

My search eventually takes me to the city’s Ibanda neighborhood, to the backyard of a two-story house that someone converted into offices. Olive Depot is one of the largest coltan companies in town, but to my surprise, it is unimpressive.

Considering the publicity coltan has received recently in Western media, I expected a large processing center – an imposing edifice with complex machines and engineers barking orders to their foremen. Instead, I found the most rudimentary of processing systems, two dozen men working with their hands and playing with dirt like children. No one barked orders. They worked in silence, interrupted only by the sound of their own movements.

My attention turns to several men squatting down and playing with dirt – black dirt – in a medium-sized hangar. “That is coltan,” says my guide Alexis Mushaka, a metallurgical engineer.

“Are you joking?” I ask. That dirt in front of me could not be the highly-prized coltan, the bloody ore that fueled the conflict and the subject of several UN investigations. “No, I am serious,” Mushaka responds as he motions me to follow him to the hangar.

The men give us a quick look and return to their business. They are covered in dust, coltan. A couple of them sift through a large bowl of dirt and blow on the dust, which falls on their faces. It looks terrible. Most of them do not wear any mask. Neither do they wear any uniform. They also do not wear shoes, perhaps by choice. I do not ask. They work in silence and quietly listen to Mushaka explain the process to me.

“First, the négociant brings the coltan from the mine,” he says and points to a white sack of dark brown dirt on the floor. “He sells it here and then these fellows start the separation process.”

The process means the men in the hangar have to separate all impurities from the product itself. “Deep in that dirt is coltan or its sister products of cassiterite and wolframite,” Mushaka continues, “and they will have to find it.” The end product looks like crushed gravel.

He beckons me to the other side of the hangar where a man dressed in a tank top and shorts sits on the floor, working with two small piles of black dirt. “Look, he is holding a magnet in his hand,” Mushaka says. “He is separating iron from the rest. The bag of cassiterite comes with all kinds of other minerals. They need to get all of them out.”

When I ask the men what type of work contract they have, I learn that most of them have no contract. Every morning a large group of laborers lines up outside the compound’s gate and ask for work. Few are chosen and the rest are sent home. They make less than US$1 a day.

“If we did not have this job, we will have no work,” says one of them when I ask why they accept to work in these conditions.

The négociant’s situation is not much different. As the middleman, he is very much at the mercy of the depot. “They wait until their merchandise is processed before they are paid,” Mushaka explains when I ask how a négociant sells his load. “The tonnage they bring does not equate their pay. It shrinks quite a bit after the impurities are sorted out.”

The négociant who arrives while I visit the depot says most of the time he is in the red. When asked why he still deals coltan considering his losses, his response reflects what the average Congolese worker in any profession says. “If I did not do this, then what else?” he retorts. He makes US$1.59 per pound.

On the international market, coltan costs between US$8 and US$18 per pound. If anyone still makes any money with coltan, it’s the processing depot and the other dealers on the international market. The final product is exported via Kigali in Rwanda to the ports of Mombassa and Dar-es-Salaam where it is shipped overseas.

The coltan business underscores the failure of the State. Beyond a new mining code adopted by the transitional government, which imposes a high tax rate on businesses and investors, the government has not undertaken any serious initiative to formalize the coltan industry, as is the case with other resources such as copper, cobalt and zinc.

“There is an issue with taxes these days,” says Nzojusa Belembo, director at Olive. “During the RCD rebellion, there was an exportation monopoly through a local company called SOMINGL. Companies paid a fixed tax, regardless of the product price fluctuation. Everyone benefited.”

After a pause, Belembo continues. “It is simple. We have porous borders,” he says. “You can cross the river to Rwanda with coltan in your pocket. They offer better prices there. Our legislation encourages fraud.”

The visit at the Olive Depot did not prepare me for what I saw at the mines. Dug on the steep flank of a high mountain, Mushangi mines are located about 90 kilometers west of Bukavu. Driving as fast as we could on an arduous road, the trip took two hours.

The mines are 15 kilometers from the Nzibira area where several militias have operated, including the Interahamwe and the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda. The FARDC also has a post in the vicinity, which is not encouraging either. Insecurity required that we brought armed guards with us.

At Mushangi, a treacherous path leads to the mines where we find only a handful of adults. The mines are exploited by children of all ages, working in precarious conditions.

From sunrise to sunset, they toil in open pits with the most primitive tools and no protection from falling rocks and mudslides. They crawl through dark tunnels with no structural support.

In my travel across Congo, I have seen a great deal of suffering. Watching children crawl through those pits and tunnels tested my resolve. Ten-year old Bashizi tells me, “I do this hard work because my father is too old to support me.” He has been doing it for several months. “That is the only thing there is to do around here,” he says.

The children swarm around us, seeking attention and asking to be photographed. I snap several pictures as I speak with them and hear their stories. Through my lens, I see lost childhoods and broken dreams. Images from my own youth in a different Congo flash before my eyes when I push the button.

We ask 16-year old Baruti and his friends whether they understand where their coltan goes from Mushangi. “It goes to Bukavu,” they say. “Do you know coltan is highly prized in America and Europe? It is needed for computers, mobile phones and video games,” I follow. “No,” Baruti replies. Their world revolves around the open-pits where they spend seven days a week and make less than 20 cents a day.

One last question before we leave for Bukavu. It is three in the afternoon, and that is late to be out here. “Do you understand that the exploitation of coltan fuels the conflict in Congo?” I inquire. Baruti looks at me straight in the eye and answers, “If we knew that, we would no longer work here.”

* Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is an independent journalist and writer who traveled across Congo in the summer 2006 on a grant from the .

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

Politics in Ethiopia, region and in Africa has been, for the most part, destructive since the post-war period, writes Mammo Muchie. There is a need to find an alternative system, where conflict is managed through debate and conversation, rather than by lethal or non-lethal fighting.

‘Since anyone who criticises the entire systems of others has a duty to replace them with an alternative of his own, containing principles that provide a more felicitous support for the totality of effects to be explained, we shall extend our meditation further in order to fulfil this duty.’ – G. Vico, La Scienza Nuova in 1725, quoted in Reinert, E., 2007, How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, London: Constable and Robinson.

The success of traditional mediation emerges from rules of engagement that are not predicated on conceptual frameworks of punishment or reward, winning or losing, right or wrong, justice or injustice. Mediation must not free one party and censure the other, make one the ‘hero’ and the other the ‘saint’.

The main concept of traditional mediation is to bring the parties from a state of conflict into normal communication. It asks them to refrain from pursuing grievances through threats, legal action, courts, violence and imprisonments. It brings opposing parties to negotiate, accept the principle of dialogue and find workable settlements.

In some cases, mediation can be so successful that enemies turn into partners. But mostly it is a case of ‘antem tew, antem tew’, meaning ‘stop pushing your maximum demand on the case and settle for the average or the golden mean’.

In a country such as Ethiopia, where litigation is plentiful, poverty and deprivation encourage conflict, and there are insufficient judges and courts, nearly 90 per cent of disputes fall into the domain of traditional mediation. The creation of justice requires more than formal courts. The context of Ethiopia requires that traditional mediation remains critical to redress justice and conflict resolution.

There is thus a lot to be gained from our tried and tested methods of traditional mediation and to develop it by providing the resources to reach and expand the justice sphere in our society. In fact, this alternative method may be the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with the intractable difficulties that our country, region and continent have been suffering from the times of the colonial encounter.

Let us be bold enough to suggest traditional mediation as an alternative to war, violence, endless court wrangling, imitated legal ideas and discourses from Euro-American jurisprudence that may not work in the difficult contexts of our largely peasant societies and peoples.

Perhaps intractable problems that have defied solution, such as the chaos in Somalia, could be resolved, not by mounting an invasion to support despicable warlords, but by supporting traditional mediation amongst peoples.

The problems between Eritrea and Ethiopia cannot go on with each side using refugees as political opposition; but by engaging in mediation, including on the vital issue of why such an unjust settlement was reached in 1991 that denied Ethiopia its historic right of access to the sea.

Settling major political disputes through mediation The submission of the recently detained Ethiopian prisoners of conscience and the government to a traditional mediation process sends a positive signal: left to ourselves, we Ethiopians are capable of dealing with any problem, however intractable, by using local imagination, local arbitration tools and local ideas of fair-dealing and fair play. This is a generous way of reading the outcome.

Beyond the politics and propaganda of the government, the settlement between the prisoners and the government crystallised something new and original in the culture. Regardless of how the regime wishes to capitalise on the release of the prisoners, who were threatened by its courts with the death penalty and life sentences, we ask: does its action betray that it may have broken from fast-held and worn-out politics of ‘my way or the highway’?

The only way we can admit proof that the Meles [Zenawi] government is prepared to see traditional mediation as an alternative model of conflict resolution is if – and only if – they commit themselves beyond the contested episode of the prisoners of conscience. The government will only demonstrate acceptance of traditional mediation when it has conceptualised and committed itself to choosing traditional mediation as an alternative and critical method for broad and comprehensive national reconciliation and the resolution of all major conflicts. If they are not prepared to use traditional mediation with the other problems in the country and region, it is fair to conclude they have no commitment to the approach.

While it is an encouraging that the government might consider traditional mediation as an alternative to perpetual conflict, it is not easy to ascertain whether it is converted to this model for reasons of conviction or tactics. From the way it behaved before and after the release of the prisoners of conscience, the regime seems eager to capitalise on the fact that it had to play politics, using the carrot of pardon, after wilfully administering the stick of court punishment.

The prisoners of conscience never recognised the court or the charges against them. Thus entering into traditional mediation, of which some had openly advocated the value for a long time, has been natural to them.

As the government insisted all along that the case against the prisoners of conscience was a ’crime’ that only the courts can settle, its submission to traditional mediation is a real climb-down from such a public position. The government stuck to ’the political is the legal and criminal position’. But eventually it gave in to mediation. By its action, if not by its words, it bolstered the traditional mediation system of conflict resolution; in fact doing exactly the opposite of what the government seemed to want to achieve through the courts.

The acceptance in principle of a mediated model of conflict resolution represents a new flexibility, uncharacteristic of this regime for the last 16 years. We must recognise and encourage such flexibility, even from this regime.

Solving such major national conflicts through traditional mediation is a new phenomenon, regardless of the motivation and subsequent barrage of propaganda. For a regime stuck in a dogmatic time warp of the mindless position of the politics of ‘my way or the highway’, its latest stance must be acknowledged as new.

Judging by the pardon politics, by claiming it was giving total ‘pardon’ to those who confessed, after they admitted guilt by signing, it is hard to think that this regime has accepted the principle of traditional mediation. That it had to resort to such gimmick is deplorable.

Its stance does not however eclipse the significance and importance of the emergence of traditional mediation as a new domain. Traditional mediation has been ignored by elites, too often seduced by the trappings of Western legal notions that very often have not helped create sustainable resolutions to our intractable troubles. The fact that traditional mediation is being seen to produce results is significant for efforts to resolve complicated conflicts in Ethiopia, the region and Africa.

The partner group, headed by the Canadian ambassador, appears also to have facilitated traditional mediation efforts. If indeed traditional mediation is supported and resourced by citizens, opposition, government and partners, our country may move faster from pervasive conflict to secure development.

Broadening the domain for traditional mediation Now that the prisoners of conscience are released, and traditional mediation has played a significant role in the process, the prisoners, the mediators, and all who submitted to the process, including Ethiopia’s current government and the partner groups, especially Canada, deserve our acknowledgment.

But we must not stop at the first success, and must follow this with a further demand: to create a new alternative method for all the conflicts in our country, region and continent. The only way we can truly appreciate the significance of changing the method of conflict resolution to traditional mediation is when mediation is applied to all domains of intractable conflict based on a sustainable and consequential strategy.

The positive energy and spirit for the millennium requires that all the political prisoners detained from May 1991 be released. And everything must be done to open the opportunity for those who suffered to forgive those who disrupted their lives and killed their loved ones. If families refuse to forgive, it is understandable But government, political parties in opposition and traditional mediators must do all they can to encourage the concept that those who killed others may not handle being forgiven by those they hurt.

Launch the era of productive politics

Politics in our country, region and in Africa has been, for the most part, destructive since the post-war period. A number of productive moments have existed, but have not been sustainable. There is a need to find an alternative system, where conflict is managed through debate and conversation, rather than by lethal or non-lethal fighting. Fair dealing, fair play and the attenuation of grievance thresholds must be clear objectives to create a context where people feel secure to carry on normal lives. The fact that the regime, which has been so adamant in refusing any form of dealing with political opponents, conceded and accepted a mediation process is a break with the last 30 years. The question is whether this new engagement in mediation can be generalised to provide a framework for a national and regional reconciliation strategy from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

We should encourage this traditional model as a realistic alternative of creating a radically new political environment, no matter how intractable and difficult a conflict may be. Only then will it be possible for destructive politics to lead into a new era of productive politics. Traditional mediation empowers and accords agency to local stakeholders. It bolsters national self-confidence and creates learning and local competence. It is hugely beneficial in many respects. It requires our total commitment.

A fresh and empowering start We would like to see a generalised and comprehensive application of traditional mediation, and full political support for it inside and outside the country. We would like a full amnesty and the release of all political prisoners arrested since 1991, with the sole proviso that those who enjoy generalised amnesty must commit to carrying out politics without resorting to violence, and by agreeing to engage in debate and a political culture of reason and argument. Perhaps this will not be so difficult, provided the prisoners are fully informed, and their prior understanding is secured.

The acceptance and extension of traditional mediation as an alternative or integral part of comprehensive reconciliation from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean may be the most significant achievement of the millennium. All armed and non-armed political forces would voluntarily accept rules that silence the gun, and put forward programmes and arguments peacefully, getting the people to vote freely and choose the party they support.

We would like traditional mediation to be extended between the Ethiopian government and all its opponents from Eritrea to Oromia, Somalia. Inside the country, we would like to see all the multi-national and self-determined armed and non-armed parties enter into traditional mediation to create a favourable environment of tolerance, free debate and competition where only those voted for by the people can come to power.

What is needed is the courage to stop fearing the loss of comfort of the current position. There is no comfort in continuing destructive conflict. There is everything to gain by creating a peaceful environment. Conflict is productive only when it is pursued within legitimate rules that all have agreed to promote peaceful and civilised competition. Let us hope the coming millennium catapults the nation, the Horn of Africa and indeed wider Africa to climb the great wall of peace, stability, security and prosperity for the next 1000 years.

* Mammo Muchie is chair of the Scandinavian Chapter of the Network of Ethiopian Scholar. He writes on their behalf. He is a professor at the Center for Comparative Integration Studies, Department of History, International and Social Studies (CCIS) (http://www.ccis.aau.dk/) and director of the Research Center on Development and International Relations (DIR) (http://www.ihis.aau.dk/development/), both at the Aalborg University, Denmark.

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

Once upon a time there was a country which had only one restaurant. All the people in that country had to eat in that restaurant, so thousands went there every day.

But the service was a bit of a problem. People who were hungry had to wait for hours, and in some cases even days. There did not seem to be an order to things. Some people who arrived late got service quicker, a few others got particularly big plates of food, but most suffered more or less silently.

They did not dare to ask questions of the waiters or managers. Experience showed that it did not help. Those who had asked in the past had been told ‘be patient’, ‘don’t you see I am busy’, ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘we have lost your order’. Others were told ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘who are you anyway?’ The customers paid ‘a little something’ to expedite the order, or waited, take your pick.

When the food did arrive, often it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very balanced or healthy, at times it wasn’t clean, and usually it wasn’t enough—especially in the second half of the month because the restaurant had ‘run out of supplies’. You had to pay anyway, though some waiters charged a little less if you agreed not to demand a receipt, right underneath posters exclaiming ‘this is a corruption free zone’.

One day the restaurant owner passed by, and became quite alarmed. He called a meeting of all the managers and told them things had to change. The managers were to remember that ‘customers were king and queen’. Service had to improve, and there was to be more accountability. New rules were issued, including a code of ethics for managers, a manual for waiters. There was even a ‘client service charter’, that explained the restaurant values and its obligations to customers, though most of the customers never got to see it.

Afterwards, there was some difference. Several managers worked really hard to make their part better organized than before. Some of the waiters were more alert and kind to customers, though they could do little about delays in the kitchen or the mosquitoes. But for many others it was business as usual. Another problem was that a lot of the managers and a few waiters always seemed to be away for capacity building seminars. They would come back with lots of files and papers on improving restaurant services, but kept the little brown envelopes for themselves.

The funny thing was that it did not seem to matter if you treated the customers well or did your job right. The incompetent and uncaring staff always got their salaries, and were not held accountable. The hard working ones got the same as the rest, and no special recognition. If anything, the other staff ridiculed them, saying ‘you think you are better than us’, ‘you think you are smarter’, etc… and so after a while even they stopped taking initiative, asking questions or going out of their way to make the restaurant work better.

The newspapers kept reporting about the continued problems at the restaurant, so everyone was aware. This time a team of expert consultants was hired, with funding from donors. They interviewed a lot of the customers and managers and wrote large reports. A strategy was developed with a Swahili name to show it was locally owned – MKUKUHUMGA (Mkakati wa Kuboresha Uwajibikaji na Huduma za Mgahawa) More capacity building seminars were done. Managers went abroad on exchange visits. Codes of ethics, manuals and client service charters were all updated.

But life for most of the restaurant customers did not improve. The food was mostly poor and the service bad. And despite all the tough talk about accountability, the rules were rarely enforced. The reality was that it did not matter whether the managers or waiters did their job or not. There appeared to be no consequences; at most a few of the really bad ones were transferred.

All this puzzled the frogs, who lived at the edge of the restaurant, immensely. “Instead of all the rules, guidelines and seminars”, observed one frog, “why don’t they just get their incentives right – reward those who do well and sanction those who don’t?” “Moreover,” quipped another frog, “and why not give power to the customers to hold the staff accountable?”

* Rakesh Rajani is the executive director at HakiElimu (http://www.hakielimu.org/)

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

Betty Maragori reports on her experiences of visiting the US. The big thing that she experienced for the first time in the US was hard wired virtual segregation. There were no signs designating white and black zones, but the reality of segregation was visible to an untainted African eye.

I went to study in the USA in the 1980s in the time of what was to me the inexplicable presidency of Ronald Reagan. It was an enigmatic presidency for me for two reasons. First, at my university and amongst the mostly left leaning circle that I was to hang out with it, I never found anybody who had voted for him. The second reason was that for me Reagan was clearly challenged on the intellectual front. I could not believe that a nation with all that maendeleo or development, we in Africa so covet, would tolerate some folksy guy who could have come from a darker and more ignorant century. Certainly the cool left leaning students at C University had no time for Reagan.

In my two years in the US the only person I found who would publicly admit to voting for Reagan was a 65 year old black man, in Albany, Georgia, the father-in-law of my cousin. Pops, as he was called by his children, in that quintessential African American manner would routinely proclaim his love for President Reagan, loudly to people, in the presence of his children. Pops broke two rules I had come to accept about voting patterns in America, first that black people were not members of the republican party and second that they always voted for the Democratic party. To this day I am still left with the question, “So how did President Ronald Reagan win with such landside victories twice, if only one black man in the South voted for him”?

America’s Presidents and War

Eight months into America, I had imbibed the paranoid conspiracy theories of my Marxist circle and lost my African ease. Late one night I turned on the television to find the President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan ranting and raving in the most alarming manner about the “evil empire”. He was referring to the former Soviet Union, America’s then mortal enemy country of cold war days. And you thought “Axis of evil” was original? Do you see a pattern here? This is clearly the language of America’s dumb dumb presidents.

Twenty years later as I watched the elections that brought another dumb, dumb unfathomable US president into power, George Bush Jr., I realized that my vantage point with its emphasis on linear “development” or maedeleo had warped my thinking. Until that instant, I had thought development also brings highly enlightened people who would not lie about the presence of weapons of mass destruction to bring pain and destruction to innocent women and children many miles away in another country. For what, for oil, (I can’t believe that), to get revenge for daddy, (that’s too weird) to get their way (what way, the American way in Baghdad?) To be right about a perspective? (Probably the only right answer outrageous as it may seem).

For us in this part of the world, things like technological advancement, elimination of hunger, industrial development, foreign vacations, microwaves, one doctor per 100 people, four lane highways, per capita income of US$ 30,000, a new car every two years, pensions, social security, (pick your top ten) all of which come with development also lead to progress, to maendeleo. And ultimately to enlightment, the cherry on top of the development cake. We think, surely in America or Europe there must be such enlightenment that people, ordinary people everywhere must have become immune from the dictates of the baser human urgings like fear, malice, jealousy, racism, intolerance, corruption, violence, the need to declare war for dubious reasons, religious fanaticism, (again pick your top ten).

I now realize of course that human beings may have made huge technological advances such that they can send men to the moon or invent the internet and they will still rely on some form of magic, juju or alchemy for managing their lives. The advances have not created certainty. In fact they create even more uncertainty and the threat of a backlash which can take people deeper into the bosom of their juju side.

Impressions of the American South

I went to visit my cousin’s in-laws in the American south in Albany, Georgia for a week and discovered I could not hear so I took to endless grinning and nodding my head. I left those people thinking I was simple in the head. But I couldn’t understand them and I soon got tired of asking them to repeat themselves so I withdrew into an African grin of protection and lost my reputation in the process. They speak English in the south so it wasn’t the language and there was still a language barrier. The long dragged words that go on seemingly forever lost my short attention span. I found that my mind had wondered before the end so I never heard the finish. Caaaahhhn aaaaah speeeek to Eyyyyd Coooook is what I thought I overheard a woman in a bank asking. It was shocking to hear, like somebody caricaturing an American. I tried not to laugh and asked my cousin-in-law what the woman was saying. And she translated, “Can I speak to Ed Cook?”

Virtual Segregation in the American South

The other big thing that I experienced for the first time in the US was hard wired virtual segregation. There were no signs designating white and black zones any where in Albany, Georgia that I saw. Indeed on the surface all seemed well in race terms. But even my Republican cousin’s father-in-law made sure he hid his de-segregated business to keep up appearances. He was in business with a white person because it was a good business cover that allowed him to get white business. The trick was he had to keep his partnership hidden so that he could get and keep that lucrative white business. He passed himself off as a worker in the business. I know the logic is challenging.

The two groups occupied the same physical spaces, they ate at the same restaurants, entered all buildings and transport from the same entrance, sat anywhere on buses. And yet my stranger’s eyes quickly saw through this façade and identified the fault lines of virtual segregation. The new apartheid still did not allow the twain to commune freely even as they congregated. As soon as I stepped into those spaces I could feel the barriers. There was a sense of forced togetherness. If the gap between the two races could speak it would say, “OK we have to share this same physical space but we are not giving up our right to be separate. They can take away our right to segregation but they can’t take segregation out of our hearts.” It was in what was missing in the interaction between black and white. There was no ease, peacefulness, insignificance, silence, freedom, love.

What existed in that gap was tension, a hateful watchfulness and worst of all an embryonic violence that was always ready to grow into fully-fledged adulthood. You could feel it. This violence ebbed and flowed and hung around like a dark threat. When I was amongst black people everyone was relaxed. They are a very laid back people, but in the presence of a group of white people in the segregated spaces there was an all round tensing alertness, an expectation of something unpleasant.

Black and white people occupied those common public spaces differently too. White people seemed to strut and begrudge black people’s presence. It was white people who still seemed to be the bona-fide owners of the space. Black people were the interlopers, but they had no choice, they had to occupy the spaces, otherwise they risked recreating segregation by their absence. But the sense of threat in those spaces implied that Black people occupied those spaces under peril. Desegregation had been about pulling down the limits placed on the existence of black people. It was not white people who were fighting to sit in the seats reserved for black people on buses or to use the black only entrances. Desegregation demands that white people cede space and privileges that define their superior place in society.

Race in the North

My experience of race in the American north was not one of absence rather the north was racially clandestine, a state I much preferred. It gave me freedom to spend many more hours in a day being just another human being. The colour of my skin was not a constant conscious presence foisted on me by open racial hostility. Thank you but I am not black, I really am just a person. I am an African living in Africa so although I have many identifies being black is not my premier identity. That is the advantage of growing up black in Africa.

When I brought this to the attention of my southern black relatives-in-law they made that claim that always bemuses me. “I like the south they said, the boundaries are clear people here are not hypocrites like in the north. I know where I stand here with them.”

“I know where I stand?” What the hell is that? What I understand from that telling statement is an admission on the part of black people that it’s OK for there to be limits on a black person’s existence. I never heard a white person say things like that, only black people. For a person simply because of the hue of their skin to know where he or she could go and what he or she could expect from their world? In other words there was a limit of possibility which means that there was no possibility at all. And it was fine for white people to have veto powers over the dreams, scope of existence of black people. You can dream so much and no more. You can aspire so far and no further, these are the limits on your movement. And black people accepted this proscribed world and were happy that they knew their place in this controlled world. That world was a banned dream which they passed onto their children and this was done with the active connivance of black people. To know my place?

I understand how dangerous the world in which black people live in the south. I imbibed a small part of that fear many thousands of miles away from movies and media reports of the Ku Klux Klan. So much so that I arrived in America terrified. For four days I refused to leave my sister’s apartment because I was sure the Ku Klux Klan were going to gun me down. Living with that dreadful history can skew any one and the wonder is that black people have lived to step out of the shadow of such terrors and nightmares. The journey has had its negative impact that sometimes their ability to see beyond the boundaries of their terror has been compromised. A person exposed to these negatives on a daily basis for most of their life will loose their perspective. Such an environment can beat down the most-thick skinned, sanguine, optimist man and woman and create an oversensitive “defensive human” who can no longer see the forest for the trees and perceives racism under every bush. Such an environment can leave people severely embattled and debilitated. Centuries of actual and virtual lynching that black people are subjected to in the USA will do that.

This is where Africans can lend their sight when the dreams have been extinguished. We have the same racial reality because our existence in the world gives us the same reference points. Yet we live in our own homes largely amongst our own people. We are not vested in only a racial reality. Our human reality predominates. We can fly above “black person negatives” and separate fact from damaging fiction.

* Betty Wamalwa Muragori is especially interested in how Africans are constructing new identities as they redefine their place in the world. She believes in the power of words. She has a BSc degree from the University of Nairobi and MA in Environment from Clark University in Worcester Mass. USA. Currently Betty works for an international conservation organization in Nairobi, Kenya

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

Mukoma wa Ngugi's article (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/42869) article is still resonating inside me, but I did not know what to say at the time. But on this anniversary of Hiroshima (August 6th 1945), it hit me again.

Significant anniversaries come upon us now and again like flood waters and we are caught speechless, and then, the very thing you point out happens: "Oh well, next time we shall speak up", thus losing the opportunity to wake up, stand up, resist with all one's might against apathy, lethargy, accommodation to a growing cancerous mindset.

With regard to Hiroshima/Nagasaki, my sense is that the master narrative still dominates and threatens us with severe and collective punishment if we were to call it, as it should be, i.e. the modernization of Auschwitz, itself the modernization of previous unspeakable crimes against Africans and Native Americans which continue unaccountable. If we are going to repair, as in healing, the human conscience, then one should work at making it ultra sensitive to any form, intention of maiming, diminishing life in any of its manifestations. Gaia is a living organism. The level at which it has been violated is still misunderstood and/or denied through the use of propaganda which is no longer perceived as such. On this anniversary, is it possible for people to stop any business as usual? Is it possible to insert in our lives, consciously, a moratorium, a sort of time out away from the modernized enslaving system called globalization. Time out to treat our nuked selves, time out to take time to heal and rebuild, really, a conscience worth calling a conscience. Time out to reconnect with the collective conscience of those who, like the Native Americans, like Corbin Harney, who warned against the idea of messing up with the yellow cake (uranium), long before the physicists decided that splitting the atom was not an act against nature.

You asked at one point why do we have to keep laundering our history as though it was for sale to the richest bidder. From your article I get that you are wondering how and why our collective mindset, consciousness have been brought to the point where we would rather be activists than revolutionaries, to the point where Mandela sees nothing wrong in creating a Rhodes-Mandela Trust so as (my words) "to capitalize on both sides of the old and new capitalist", not that your words are less cutting, as if it is ok for Elie Wiesel to join hands with Himmler to create a Trust Fund. Some people will not forgive you for thinking such thoughts.

Yet, we are living in the kinds of times which do call for thinking unthinkable thoughts because the unthinkable, the "never again" have been said and trespassed so many times that it seems futile to remember all of the unthinkable things which continue to be committed today.

As we were talking about these things (crimes against humanity) with another person here (just met). He asked me if I were a priest. I laughed because that question reminded me of a certain mindset today in South Africa where such horrendous things are happening that it has become a custom to turn to pastors and the likes (how many?) of Desmond Tutu to provide a believable ethical compass for a humanity which has been so mangled that it can no longer recognize itself, except by way of people like Desmond Tutu, the presumed Global re-conciliator.

Here we are once again remembering Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and all of the things which led to it, industrialized slavery to individualized and industrialized ways of killing as savagely as possible, perpetrated against the Jews, the Palestinians, the Ota Bengas, the street children, the raped babies, women, the Armenians, Chinese in Nanking, the people of Rwanda, DRCongo, pygmies, Namibians, Native Americans, Amazon Indians, Aborigenes in Australia, Inuit, Untouchables, the list is almost endless. If we do not join hands with the current Hibakusha, sooner or later we shall be sorry we did not, whatever the reasons might be, because we are all being led, some knowingly, some not, to a nameless slaughterhouse.

How did we get from Hispaniola to Hiroshima and still doing even more horrendous things than then. We have become so accustomed to them that until we see another mushroom cloud we shall think it is OK. Yet, if one were to look at the Planet today, from the lens of an astro physicist trained, in quantum physics, I would not be surprised if such a physcist were tell us that the Planet is closely resembling a mushroom cloud...if one looked from a virtual telescope on the Moon.

Mukoma, you have expressed the thoughts which have run in the minds of the countless terrorized from way way way back when the roots of the current system were hardly visible. Then, women, children, men were violated, raped in unspeakable ways. Countless screamed. Are we going to need the help of quantum physicists to confirm to us their words? The list of names should be put on a roster as a sort of unfinished, in the making Humanity Holocaust, an art project. A sort of monumental, planetary reminder that the smallest, least victim, most forgotten, must also be the most remembered.

Which kind of humanity has this become when it is considered ok to kill anybody, but especially the most vulnerable people, in the name of making a killing at the bank. Which kind of consciousness are we referring to when more and more philsophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and scientists are trying to study it (consciousness), and understand the material basis of it, while sensing (from which physical sense?) that such an entreprise would be futile.

My problem is.....and, I am afraid, this rambling letter is not helping resolving it: Is it possible to reverse the mindset, the consciousness (or whatever is left of it) which has brought us to the point where one is ready to accept any unacceptable outrage, crime against humanity?

The Peace and Security Commissioner of the African Union (AU), Saïd Djinit, arrived in Bujumbura Monday afternoon on a three-day working visit, aimed at gathering information on the current political and security situation in the country, a diplomatic source said here.

Some 7,292 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia resident in Nigeria are to be integrated into the country under the terms of a multi-party agreement signed by ECOWAS, UN refugee agency UNHCR and the three countries, an ECOWAS statement said here Tuesday.

African environmental experts meet in South Africa in August to strategise on a continental position to incorporate climate change adaptation programmes in national development policies.