Despite Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s incessant homophobic public comments, Gays and lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) is spreading its wings. The organisation which pushes for social tolerance of sexual minorities and the repeal of homophobic legislation in Zimbabwe, has recently established a new centre for its Bulawayo members.

Attacks on civilians and clashes between Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwandan rebels have hindered efforts to reach affected populations in the east, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. The attacks were mainly perpetrated by the Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) rebels, who fled their country after the 1994 genocide and have continued to resist the Forces armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC).

A UN report says Sudan is unlikely to achieve lasting peace unless it addresses the problem of growing damage to its environment. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report said on Friday that Sudan's main cause of unrest has been the scarcity of resources and other phenomena such as desertification and deforestation that are likely to worsen.

In less than a month since the massively fraudulent election that ushered in the present administration, the Nigerian working class is in a determined mood and on the offensive against it. This comes as somewhat of a surprise to some on the left and seems almost miraculous to those sectarians who had earlier condemned the Nigerian workers as reactionary, simply because the Labour leadership refused to mobilize the rank and file behind one wing of the ruling class in opposition to the fraudulent election.

Through personal stories, songs and their memories, these Ethiopian narrators talk about the sharp contrast between the past and present. Their key concerns are conflict, deforestation, the decline of pastoralism, and the impact of agriculture.

Malian security demonstrated their true unfriendly media colours when they pounced on a group of journalists protesting against the imprisonment of their colleagues in the capital Bamako. The riot police mercilessly assaulted the President of the Malian and West African Journalists’ Associations, Ibrahim Famakan Coulibaly.

With the return of peace and stability in Burundi, the Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete, sees no reason why thousands of Burundian refugees should remain in his country. President Kikwete, who flew to the Burundian capital Bujumbura, disclosed that all Burundian refugee camps will be closed by December 2007.

Sierra Leonean women can now rest, and enjoy the fruits of their long walk to freedom. The country's parliament took the bull by the horns to enact a law that outlaws domestic violence in all its forms as well as guarantees the rights of women to inheritance and registration of customary marriages.

Concerns that Ivorian leaders might block the UN from helping to organise and supervise long-delayed elections were allayed on 19 June following a meeting between with a UN Security Council delegation and the country’s president and former rebel leader-turned-prime minister

There have been promising developments in the case against judge Abdel Fatah Murad, who has filed multiple fabricated charges against the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and HRinfo, as well as bloggers and human rights and news websites, report the law center and HRinfo.

The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja, Nigeria has issued a hearing notice for a suit filed against the Republic of Gambia by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) on behalf of a "disappeared" Gambian journalist, Chief Ebrima Manneh, reporter of pro-government Banjul-based "Daily Observer" newspaper.

They range from surgeons and scholars to illiterate refugees from some of the world's worst hellholes -- a dizzyingly varied stream of African immigrants to the United States. More than one million strong and growing, they are enlivening American cities and altering how the nation confronts its racial identity.

The triumph of ending political apartheid in South Africa is at the doorstep of the Rt. Honourable Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. When the racist and murderous apartheid regimes in South Africa and Namibia forced many freedom fighters into exile, and/or otherwise silenced them, they could not succeed in getting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to compromise her principles, even in the face of death threats, bullying and coercion.

Two months ago, Mombasa was given a rare treat to Eric Wainana live at the Little Theatre Club in a bid to revive and restore this jaded cultural monument. In addition to Eric’s dynamic performance, the crowd were elated to see and hear the captivating voice of a rather unique talent in Kenya. Barefooted and hair-plaited, the young man walked on stage with his guitar and was welcomed by a frenzied crowd. His ability to reach every musical pitch coupled with the smooth simplicity of his songs had me mesmerised. I claimed ignorance and asked who it was:'“Harry Kimani of course!'

A month later, we were surprised to find out that Harry would be playing at the Bamburi Forest Trails over the Easter weekend. We immediately postponed our travel plans and made our way to the venue. Despite the rather unfortunate turn out, Harry was not dissuaded in the least. Dressed in a full 3-piece tuxedo, he stood firm and gave us a virtually private showing with all his heart and voice. There is something nostalgic about his music that leaves you beckoning to relive a special moment in your life. There is no clatter or distraction which leaves a lot to be admired, for he has to live up to his talent to make it a successful performance. But it is his version of the National Anthem that really triggers my emotions, leaving me with a tearful pride in being a Kenyan.

Weeks later, he reappeared at the Little Theatre Club but this time there was no evidence of a big star playing in our town. Harry Kimani is undoubtedly one of Kenya’s most popular upcoming musicians who in addition to having record sales amongst the top five in the country, has also performed in several countries around the globe. Yet, he retains his modesty everywhere he goes just like the first time I saw him playing barefoot. I asked him what’s keeping him at the Coast: 'I’m trying to teach music and put a CD together with the children from Wema Centre so I will be around for a while and I love this place.' Through his work with Wema, Harry was so inspired that he is now establishing a foundation to teach music to less privileged children. I was sold. Not many Nairobi residents can stand our relaxed sea pace beyond their beach holiday and dedicate their time to something as meaningful as this.

Once again he performed to a much smaller regular crowd giving it all his soul. Under the dim coloured bulbs, we sat on the ageing couches and listened to his magical voice. He has become a regular face at the Theatre Club and is always willing to pick up his guitar and play a song or two. There is unquestionably a lot of talent in this country and plenty from within Mombasa. It is only a question of seeking it out and opening up our minds to what is truly Kenyan.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/katemost-blackedup_41974.jp..., 'the continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as "nothing" and corpulent darkness'. Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa.

You are a celebrity humanitarian and guest-editor of a well-circulated glossy. The territory is Africa. The topic is staving its demise. In the 1980s this would have been a famine. Today it is poverty and HIV/Aids. Readers will judge your cause by the cover, so select the visuals with care. What will you choose: an outline of an uninhibited continent, an abandoned toddler or a panic-eyed, skeletal mother clutching her dying baby? Do not feel limited by this empty outline of the place and its people, the abandoned children and wilting women. They are quite interchangeable, even mix'n matchable. Just this morning, I read about Bob Geldof’s recent guest-editorial of the German magazine Bild. Online, I found an image of the cover: a skeletal creature that looks more alien than human, crying out, in a silent Munch-like scream, for help. A white outline of the continent frames the child - just in case the reader is at a loss of the child’s origin. Here is the innocent victim, says the ‘chalk’ outline. This is the latest tragic embodiment of Africa’s lack. As I listened to this tale of human woe, I heard the name recur with frightening frequency.

Africa! Africa! Africa! (Thabo Mbeki). Lack has been Africa’s crime for centuries. The continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as ‘nothing’ and corpulent darkness. What is of particular interest is the visual representations of this mythology of lack. During the colonial project, Africa's nothingness was the absence of Christianity, science, education, medicine and civility. Today, indeed for the last 30 or 40 years, nothingness is the darkness of disease, civil war, disorganisation, corruption and an inevitable decline into apocalyptic demise. (Africa has been in this state of demise for the last 400 years or thereabouts.)

Visual historian Deborah Kaspin suggests, like many who have studied representations of the continent, that the pervading standardised images of Africa are not fundamentally of Africa at all. Rather they 'arise from a Western bourgeois mythology of any and all wilderness, inhabited by creatures who are, alternatively, innocent and savage, naked and hairy, dark-skinned and ghostlike. The mythology is ubiquitous'.

Consider the child of Geldof's cover. Innocent in its form of child, yet savage as the embodiment of a ravaging disease mixed with poverty. Vulnerable in nakedness, but strangely inhuman. The child is dark-skinned, but also vanishes ghostlike into its own skeleton. Captured for posterity in a photograph, it is saved from its own terra incognito African wilderness to become the poster child of Geldof's cause. 'Postcolonial imagery presents the Third World as spectacle', writes image scholar Jan Nederveen Pieterse.

The Bild magazine cover is an example of a genealogy of the spectacle of Africa, which extends as far back as ethnographic and anthropological photography, as well as the trade and progress exhibitions of the 19th century, such as the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London. Professor Annie Coombes writes in Reinventing Africa, the live subjects were set up in tableaux with 'authentic' huts, clothes (or lack thereof) and, at set times, performed 'authentic' activities, such as hunting. The German word Bild, means picture, and has an added meaning from theatre, scene. Uncanny that the image is also a scene. The spectacle of Africa is photograph and production still from the tableau of 'authentic' Africa and Africans readying themselves to be played out.

Granted, in this continent of 53 countries there are problems which cannot just be waved away as false naming. Even thinking of the image staves my typing. How dare I write in the sight and deafening appeal of another human being? Problems are the dilemma of our world, not just of Africa. Yet, it is curious that Western myths about their potency and power over Africa's primitive incompetence persist in 2007. Is Africa, the place and the people, concealed by the suggested false delineation?

Perhaps it is helpful to think of false in connection with the word's origin falsus, as related to 'fail'. Africa (I still want to question this blanket geographic label 'Africa' and its use for everything from place to people) is left with a deceitful or unfaithful cartography, portraiture and name. Why? Most of the colonial empires made fat on these myths collapsed, we believe, more than 30 years ago. Much post-colonial theory suggests the condition of Other-ing. Historians, psychologists, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists suggest that to assert self, one must stand in opposition to an Other.

For white, bourgeois, educated European males of late 18th through to the 20th century, this was the black, uneducated African woman who, by virtue of her primitivism, existed in some ahistorical moment, most definitely not that contemporary moment in time. 'The image formation of outsiders is determined primarily by the dynamics of one’s own circle' (Pieterse). Of colonial project representations of Africa and Africans, he observes, '[w]hat was really at stake in all these perspectives on "the savage" was European positions and programmes'.

In 2007, an age filtered by the lenses of post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism and the general questioning of white, bourgeois, educated European male supremacy, it is interesting that those who embody their Otherness are once again on all sorts of pages. From women selling chocolate in fair trade advertisements to Aids orphans abandoned in fields, what do these images potentially reveal about European positions and programmes?

Lack, ahistoricity, references in setting an arcadia rendered anarchic hint at a world so different to the wealthy, 21st century, urban world of those on the other side of this paper-thin reality. At the end of his study Pieterse concludes, 'The images of aid to the Third World are variations on this formula; fundamentally patronising, they are ahistorical, preoccupied with symptoms and oblivious to causes, and, not for all their global scope, parochial'. Why is post-independence Africa still newsworthy and cause-worthy to European humanitarian crusaders?

Paula Treichler offers Aids in the Africa (the Third World) as the 'latest incarnation of the "darkly unknowable"'. This is neo-colonialism with intrepid explorers. However instead of searching for the source of the Nile, they seek to bring the universals of health and material justice. For 'Europe is the light of the world, and the ark of knowledge: upon the welfare of Europe hangs the destiny of the most remote and savage (sic) people'. Let us replace 'savage' with words that have more currency in 2007; words like uneducated, oppressed or suffering. The words from the Edinburgh Review seem to belong not in the early 1800s, but could be on Bild page today. Geldof's partner in making poverty history is U2's Bono. He is to guest-edit the July edition of the magazine Vanity Fair (the US edition). It will be interesting to see the 'Africa in 2007' that he covers. It may include articles about cellphone entrepeneurs, print media franchises, tertiary research, but I suspect it is more likely to be yet another programme for the ever continuing show: Africa: the lacking continent.

References
Kaspin, Deborah, 2002, Conclusion: Signifying Power in Africa. In Landau, P.S. And Kaspin, D.D.
Images and Empire: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Mbeki, Thabo., 2002, Africa: Define Yourself. Cape Town, Tafelberg.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 1992, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. London, Yale University Press.
Treichler, P.A., 1999, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicle of AIDS and HIV Infection in the Third World. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press.

Links:
http://www.africacentre.org.uk/+ve-ve.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2d9qkc

* Annwen Bates is a research student at the University of Western Cape.

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/Rodney_41976.jpgWazir Mohammed reflects on Walter Rodney’s continuing relevance in Guyana and the Caribbean, 27 years after his assassination in Guyana on June 13, 1980.

The stalled Rodney inquiry and the racial dimension of Guyana

It is necessary that the questions are asked: What happened to Walter Rodney, why was he assassinated, and who was responsible? After years of stops, starts, and inaction on this issue, in 2005 it seems as though an international inquiry into Rodney’s assassination was finally on the cards. The Guyanese parliament on June 29, 2005 passed a unanimous resolution authorising the creation of a commission of inquiry, whose terms of reference were to be ironed out among representatives of the government, the Rodney family and others. This year, as we mark 27 years since his passing, we ask, what has happened to this decision for the inquiry?

It is now 27 years since Walter Rodney, 'the prophet of self-emancipation', was murdered in a dark corner, at a dark moment of Guyana’s history. That day in June 1980 is arguably the saddest of modern Guyana. I was 22 years old at that time, but my life was already enmeshed in the struggle, which Walter Rodney defined in terms of a battle for 'people's power – no dictator'. Dictatorial rule was the hallmark of the Burnham presidency which ruled Guyana for more than two decades. Yet, for many years until his death in 1985, Burnham was revered in the corridors of power in the region, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and all the Eastern bloc countries.

My own observations are derived from my political history with Guyana’s working people and the experience of the Walter Rodney period in Guyana. I grew up in the period of anti-colonial nationalist ferment. While still in school, I became an active member of the Progressive Youth Organization (PYO-Youth arm of the ruling party) and later a member of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP). However, at the end of 1979, I left the PPP to join forces with Walter Rodney and the Working Peoples’ Alliance (WPA), and became one of the young full-time activists in the civil rebellion movement.

The inquiry into his assassination, in my view, cannot skirt around the root of Guyana’s problems – the deep seated racial division in Guyanese society, which Walter identified as the main barrier to forward movement and progress. In his view, Guyana could not embark on any true development unless the issue of ethnic and racial insecurity was resolved. Today, racial healing and multiracial unity remain the prerequisite for democracy and development in Guyana.

Walter did not equate liberation and development with the mere replacement of expatriate rulers with local versions. His determination as a scholar-activist propelled him to argue that transformation and true human development can only be achieved through the common struggle of all peoples to recognise the necessity for a single humanity. In this stead, at the time of his death, he was deeply involved in mobilising to unite the six racial/ethnic groups in Guyana who constitute the Guyanese working people, a period now popularly known as the 'civil rebellion of the 1970s'.

This was a moment of mass mobilisation in a struggle to replace and reshape the neo-colonial state, under the control of Forbes Burnham and his minority PNC government. He was convinced that the racial conflict between African workers (former slaves) and Indian workers (former indentured labourers) was part of a political strategy of divide and rule. Being first contrived by the colonial planter-class and later on by Britain and America to derail the progressive anti-colonial movement headed by the PPP. According to George Lamming, in the foreword to Walter’s History of the Guyanese Working People, 'it was Walter Rodney’s tireless opposition to this betrayal of a people which finally cost him his life'.

While Walter’s assassination may have deep seated implications for the struggles for freedoms everywhere. Its significance must, first and foremost, be understood in the context of the struggle to unify the working people of Guyana. His work with colleagues in the WPA and in the wider Guyanese society between his return to the country in 1974 up until the time of his death was dedicated to nurturing a new political culture, and establishing common grounds for joint action of the people.

While Rodney’s assassination on June 13, 1980 dampened and in many ways silenced the mass movement for people’s power in Guyana. It removed an important voice for a new grassroots politics in the region. This was only a temporary setback in the struggle for people’s power. As current experience shows, similar ideas are now taking root and springing up all over Latin America.

What made Rodney special?

Walter Rodney’s way of life stands as an exceptional example to the international movement. His drive to combine original historical scholarship with involvement in the day-to-day struggles of the oppressed serves as a model to academics and activists the world over. Thus he could switch from researching and writing about the devastation wrought by outside forces on African societies in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, through intervening in the pan-African movement in Tanzania, to discussing with Rastafarians in Jamaica in Grounding With My Brothers.

But Rodney’s later political work in his home country of Guyana was of equal or possibly greater significance. His rejection of racial politics in favour of struggling for unity of all the oppressed was in the finest traditions of Malcolm X. It came not from some abstract theory – Walter was not a prisoner of political orthodoxy - but from the concrete reality in Guyana, where racial politics had been used by the colonialists and imperialists to split the progressive movement and prevent the people from securing their rightful shares. Walter was neither interested in the corruption readily available from the Afro-Guyanese PNC government, nor in joining the Indo-Guyanese embrace of the PPP. Instead, he called for a new kind of politics based on the grassroots, or the 'street force', as he used to call it.

People’s power in Latin America is Walter Rodney’s legacy

Walter anticipated the movements that are now flowering all over Latin America: the fusion of the struggles for collective land rights with the struggle for women’s equality and human rights – represented by the horizontal and unemployed workers' movement in Argentina; the struggles of indigenous and black people, landless workers and trade union movements in Brazil; the indigenous Amerindian and water justice movements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru; the Zapatistas of Mexico; and, of course, Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. These movements, like Rodney’s, are a rejection of traditional party politics, which have failed the peoples of the region. Instead, people are moving to take power into their own hands.

Walter Rodney’s slogan of 'People’s Power' was at the core of his vision for a new Guyana. If he were here today, he would smile to see what is happening across Latin America. Especially in Venezuela where Hugo Chavez is championing the idea of popular power and campaigning for its implementation, not only there, but throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Time for the Caribbean to join the party

So far, the rising tide of democratic action in Latin America has found few echoes in the Caribbean (with the obvious exception of Cuba). No doubt, language and cultural differences are a barrier. But greatly reinforcing this have been the hostility and distortions in the Caribbean media, which is largely a servant of imperial US and European interests, and their multinational news agencies.

This is a disservice to what is happening in our region. The initiatives for continental cooperation that are being announced on a weekly basis are specifically aimed at Latin America and the Caribbean. But a significant number of our countries are not responding in kind.

We in Guyana, have special reasons for developing cooperation with our revolutionary neighbours. For instance, there has never been a better time to make progress on our border dispute with Venezuela. If we Guyanese were to stretch our hands across the border, it is more than likely that we would receive a warm welcome on the Venezuelan side. In this context, we could work towards an amicable understanding about the Guyanese Essequibo region, which is claimed by Venezuela. We could also explore the possibilities for joint development of the region - perhaps Venezuela could provide investment that we do not have towards the environmentally safe development of the rich resources of the area. So too, on the issue of electrification we should be working with our neighbours to link the grid and bring an end to our energy problems, the high cost of which continues to bedevil Guyanese life and industry.

On a wider scale, developing regional programmes for energy integration, industrial and agricultural cooperation, low interest finance, technology transfer and sharing of resources offer us a great chance to finally get out from under the yoke of American and European economic domination. This is our opportunity to leave behind the curse of neoliberal economics and get back on track towards our original hopes of a progressive regional federation so strongly held by C.L.R. James (the self-made working class intellectual and revolutionary from the Caribbean) and others in the anti-colonial movement.

People's power is on the march in our continent and we must get on the wagon without delay. We cannot wait for our governments to start the ball rolling. As C.L.R. always argued, change must start at the grassroots. We could imitate our Latin cousins and develop more grassroots movements like the 'Red Thread' women’s organisation in Guyana, whose leading members include Andaiye, formerly a leader of the WPA.

I conclude with the ever relevant words of Walter Rodney: 'Only the people can make a revolution. And the day has come when the real revolution will begin - the revolution in the economy, the revolution in the society, the revolution to bring us back to a level where we can hold our heads up high. And it is that day that we need the participation of people.'

The above is the first of a two part piece. Part two will be published at a later date.

* Wazir Mohamed is former Co-Leader of the Working Peoples’ Alliance of Guyana, now PhD Candidate in Sociology-Binghamton University, New York.

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

Dear Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: What can I add to your well-written article? Not much since you said it all. My heart was full of sadness after reading the article. I wish to congratulate you. Keep it coming!

Somali insurgents shot dead a local official on Thursday and attacked Ethiopian troops overnight just hours after a second attempt to start a peace conference was postponed, residents said. Islamist-led insurgents have been fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies since the New Year when they were ousted from Mogadishu in a two-week offensive.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Sudan's agreement on a large force for Darfur "a milestone" on Wednesday but U.N. envoys acknowledged challenges on command structures and finding enough troops. "It was a milestone development," Ban said. "Even though slow, we have been making steady progress ... and we are now moving toward the right direction." Sudan accepted the agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Tuesday.

Security forces in southern Sudan are in desperate need for training and funding to protect civilians against attacks by Ugandan rebels, aid agency World Vision said in a report on Wednesday. Civilians and officials in Western Equatoria state, where Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels had been staying under a Sudanese-brokered truce with the government in Kampala, have blamed the guerrillas for looting, raping, killing and abducting children in the area.

US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell and Zimbabwe Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa in a joint announcement on Thursday said that the U.S. will provide the country with $18 million (about R130-million) over three years for antiretroviral drugs and rapid HIV testing kits.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/charles-taylor.jpg Robtel Neajai Pailey questions the legitimacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the international criminal justice system, which, she states: 'serves as a band-aid imprint of appeasement from the West, which is just as complicit in Africa’s civil wars as the warlords who have been indicted, Taylor included'.

The long awaited trial of fast-talking, charismatic warlord-turned-Liberian president Charles Ghankay Taylor was a dramatic tour de force in the complexities of international justice. Though Taylor is being tried on 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international law committed during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war, the defendant himself was nowhere in sight for the first day of the trial, causing heads to turn, brows to furrow, and feathers to be ruffled. Taylor’s lawyer read a letter to the court in which his client called the trial a charade, riddled with deficiencies in representation for the defence team and inadequate resources. Taylor said the court has proven itself incapable of delivering justice because of blatant infringements on his rights, as evidenced by 'the insidious presence of a camera in conference facilities in the Detention Unit, overseeing meetings between lawyer and client that are supposed to be privileged and confidential'. The camera issue persisted for several months, without any safeguards from the Special Court administration, which has shown its inefficiency in performing the basic functions of legal proceedings. The obvious result was Taylor’s indignant absence: 'I choose not to be the figleaf of legitimacy for this process...', he wrote defiantly in his letter.

As I sat in the public gallery and media news room at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on June 4, I could not help reminding myself that the events unfolding were not a melodramatic farce, but rather a foreshadowing of months to come in the complicated web of accusations and counter-attacks in the case of one of Africa’s most notorious warlords.

While some believe Taylor’s rebuff of the court de-legitimised the prosecution’s evidence against him, others, like Human Rights Watch, believe that the case sends a strong message that impunity will no longer be tolerated in Africa, or elsewhere.

Whatever your perspective, Taylor’s absence from the prosecution’s opening statements is symptomatic of broader issues of restorative justice, the power of representation, and an international system structured in dominance. Is Taylor a scapegoat for the international criminal (in) justice system, which still has a strong Western influence and funding channel? Who really bears the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone? What about the crimes committed in Liberia? Why was the trial relocated to the Hague, when the crimes were allegedly committed in Sierra Leone? These and many more questions need to be explored adequately for a holistic picture to be drawn.

Background to the case

The Sierra Leone civil war began in 1991, initiated by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by corporal Foday Sankoh, who exploited the country’s diamonds to fund his push against government forces. Civilians were targeted in an act of irrational retribution, in which tens of millions of thousands died, rapes and mutilations were rampant, and more than 2,000,000 people were displaced because of the 11-year conflict.

The UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone was mandated in 2002 to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for the war that destabilised much of West Africa and stunted economic/political activity. Taylor’s indictment materialised in 2003 before he was granted political asylum by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. It is alleged that in exchange for diamonds, Taylor provided the RUF with much needed arms and ammunition, manpower, military training, security and a safe haven in Liberia, as well as strategic and tactical advice, enhancing the junta’s ability to continue the war. The prosecution’s opening statements proposed to lay out the foundation of their case, stating that witnesses and documents will eventually present damning evidence that Taylor was responsible for the development and execution of a 'common plan' that led to death and destruction in Sierra Leone. 'The plan, formulated by the Accused [Taylor] and others, was to take over political and physical control of Sierra Leone in order to exploit its abundant natural resources and to establish a friendly or subordinate government there to facilitate this exploitation', said chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp, as he gazed pointedly at an empty seat that Taylor would have inhabited.

Some believe that Taylor should have remained in West Africa to face the victims of his alleged campaign of carnage. Others, however, believe that Taylor’s international network of contacts could have posed a threat to the stability of the region if his trial had remained in Sierra Leone. These concerns are legitimate, considering Taylor’s Houdini antics throughout the years. He 'mysteriously' escaped from a Boston jail in the mid-1980s and ended up in military training in Libya. In 2005, he 'disappeared' from his asylum residence in Calabar, Nigeria only to be found at the Nigeria-Cameroon border, before facing arrest in late March 2005. Supported by those who fear Taylor’s stronghold in the region, a swift overhaul of the trial to the Hague has proved problematic anyway, even though the Special Court for Sierra Leone requested the move. Whether on West African soil or within European jurisdiction, this case is complicated and sensitive.

Leading to the trial: A complex web of manoeuvres and counter-maneouvres

The capture of Taylor ricocheted a message across Africa that impunity will no longer be tolerated. After nearly two years of asylum in Nigeria, Taylor — handcuffed and scowling — was transported by UN military police to Sierra Leone at the end of March 2005. He appeared at the UN Special Court for the first time on April 3 to face charges for supporting Sierra Leone’s civil war. As I watched Taylor on screen after his capture at the Nigeria-Cameroon border, I could not help noticing that the warmonger looked visibly pissed, like he had been duped by a humiliating practical joke gone awry.

Except no one was there to say 'Just kidding, Chucky!' All of his playmates had disappeared, leaving the indicted prisoner in UN custody alone and crestfallen. Flashback to the summer of 2003, and a different vignette materialises altogether. Taylor stood draped all in white like a king on the tarmac of Liberia’s Roberts International Airport, waving and promising to return someday 'by God’s grace'. He was headed for political asylum in Calabar, Nigeria after being forced into exile by international condemnation and rebel factions campaigning for his departure.

The fact that Taylor briefly landed on Liberian soil three years later only to be transported to a UN military jet for an oh-so-eventful journey to Sierra Leone, and then the Netherlands to face war crimes charges, is one of the most twisted ironies of our time. In fact, the past two decades of Taylor’s life would be an intriguing epic. In a recent discussion with my cousin Edward Dillon, we managed to concoct a skeletal memoir filled with twists and turns that could land Taylor on somebody’s bestseller list. We figured that such a book would more importantly hold the key to his misadventures. It would serve as an exposé of sorts, explaining the extent of his ties to some of the big wigs of African politics and non-Africans alike. Taylor has been connected to Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Campaore, Cote d'Ivoire’s late president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, former Ghanaian head-of-state Jerry Rawlings, and even US evangelist Pat Robertson, who signed a deal to mine an area in southeastern Liberia in exchange for Taylor’s 10 per cent share in the company. Taylor was armed with charisma, a West African entourage of cohorts and international connections to boot.

The indictments of Taylor’s West African networks were many. Sankoh died in prison from a heart attack and failing health while he was awaiting trial. Johnny Paul Koroma, who wielded control of the Sierra Leoneon Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) that overthrew president Tejan Kabbah in a coup in 1997, is still at large. Notorious RUF field commander Sam Bockarie, who was killed in Liberia allegedly by Taylor’s command for fear of reprisal, was also indicted. Samuel Hinga Norman, former Sierra Leone Minister of Interior and head of the Civil Defence Force, was months away from a verdict, when he mysteriously died in prison. Though Kabbah eventually testified in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone, some argue that he was equally complicit in committing atrocities as Norman. Why was he not indicted? Similarly, Gaddafi of Libya has ingratiated himself into the favour of the US once again. Like most African leaders whose records are dubious in activist circles, he continues to receive the golden shield of impunity. Why was he not indicted for participating in the 'common plan'? It seems as if Taylor is the last man standing, and must be made an example of. But was he the most culpable? Enquiring minds want to know.

What about Liberia?

An ironic turn of events proves that it was the international criminal (in)justice system that enabled Taylor to commit crimes in both Liberia and Sierra Leone in the first place. Hurling a surprise critique at the UN for its mismanagement of the Taylor debacle early on, Liberian attorney Philip A. Banks said that 'if not for the UN, Mr. Taylor would have seen the jailhouse in 1992' for orchestrating the notorious 'Carter Camp Massacre' in which children and defenceless bystanders were killed in Liberia. Personally heading the investigation, Banks reported his findings to the UN in the early 1990s, after which the international body ruled that Taylor was not responsible. 'Under our law [Liberian law], Taylor would have been tried and brought to justice' long before he became president of Liberia in 1997, said Banks, who served as a lead drafter of the current Liberian constitution.

A conflict resolution arbiter during Liberia’s conflicts from 1990-1996, Banks censured the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone for its limited mandate. 'The authority granted to the court is circumscribed only to the crimes in Sierra Leone', he said in April 2006 at a press conference in Washington DC. According to Banks, the crimes that Taylor committed during his rebel war in Liberia from 1989-1996 were more extensively grotesque. 'Liberia is not getting out of the international intervention what it deserves', said Banks. He added that there needs to be a tribunal set up for Liberia to prosecute Taylor and his cronies, many of whom hold positions in the current Liberian government headed by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Activists argue that Taylor’s case is part and parcel of Liberia’s future post-conflict reconstruction development, especially if his accumulated stolen wealth - estimated at over US$2.5 billion - is returned to the country’s treasury.

More than meets the eye

Most coverage of the Taylor trial is devoid of critical engagement with the complex questions that bedevil the Special Court for Sierra Leone in particular, and the international criminal justice system, in general. Are truth and reconciliation commissions a Western conception of restorative justice? What about the gachacha courts in Rwanda, which serve as local mechanisms for prosecuting crimes? Just as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, another UN-backed court system, is riddled with deficiencies, so too is the Special Court for Sierra Leone illegitimate in the eyes of many because it does not spring from the bowels of Africans themselves. Instead, it serves as a band-aid imprint of appeasement from the West, which is just as complicit in Africa’s civil wars as the warlords who have been indicted, Taylor included. After all, the same arms that were used to destabilise both Liberia and Sierra Leone can be traced to international networks in the US, Russia, and elsewhere.

Taylor’s fall from grace is reminiscent of a pantheon of notorious strongmen who have had to face the international criminal (in)justice system, among whom have been Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. What these three men have in common is one self-perpetuating node: an imprint of Western metaphysical guilt and disapproval. Once an enemy of the West, always an enemy of its court superstructure. Yes, Taylor’s trial serves as a precedent in its own right in Africa. But it should not be manipulated to serve the needs of legitimising an internationally funded and controlled criminal court thousands of miles away from the continent of Africa itself. Even African warlords-turned-presidents-turned-defendants deserve a fair trial.

* Liberian native Robtel Neajai Pailey is a graduate student at the University of Oxford, and a multi-media producer for Fahamu/Pambazuka News.

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

REDRESS, the international NGO working to obtain justice and reparation for torture survivors, has released the long-awaited Guide “Accountability and Justice for International Crimes in Sudan - A Guide on the Role of the International Criminal Court.”

In this article, Zine Magubane explores the complex range of issues raised by Oprah’s philanthropy. Chief among them are the power relations that inform charitable acts; the racial politics and history that structure Oprah’s relationship to her viewers; the images of Africa in contemporary culture and how they help to frame her acts of charity; and the significance of Oprah as a trans-racial, trans-cultural, and trans-national cultural icon.

South Africa has crossed a Rubicon in the past few months in relation to HIV and the ball is now in civil society’s court to achieve progress, Mark Heywood of the AIDS Law Project told the closing session of the Third South African AIDS Conference in Durban on June 8.

Some 300 people took part in a march through the Chad capital, N'Djamena, on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country's almost half-a-million refugees and internally displaced persons. The UNHCR-organized event was one of many activities planned by UNHCR around the country to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.

For a while it appeared as if Madiambal Diagne might have found a way around the Senegalese government's apparent determination to keep him away from the airwaves. The well-known journalist and head of "Avenir communications" (Future Communications) had tried since 2003 to start a radio station, only to be told that frequencies were at saturation point -- this as pro-government persons succeeded in setting up stations, Diagne told IPS.

Does electronic learning (eLearning) threaten to displace the teacher? This question emerged at an international conference held in Nairobi last week, attended by 1,400 people from 88 countries. The latest in information communication technology (ICT) with a focus on education, training and development was showcased.

FEATURES: Robtel Pailey questions the legitimacy of the special court for Sierra Leone and the trial of Charles Taylor
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
-Wazir Mohammed reflects on the legacy of Walter Rodney
-Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa
-Doreen Lwanga on DeBeers and blood-free diamonds
LETTERS:
- Takwa Suifon on Ochieng's article critically analysing poverty
- Matarr Njie on last week's Pan African Postcard 'Death of Nkrumah’s widow'
OBITUARY: Farewell, Sembene Ousmane
BLOGGING AFRICA: Review of East African blogs
BOOKS & ARTS: Poem by Annie Quarcoopome 'Unfinished Business'
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: response to the G8; interview with Bougouma Diagne

PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen says Khartoum is fooling the world - again
WOMEN AND GENDER: Women activists arrested in Zimbabwe
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Ethiopian troops attacked in Somalia
HUMAN RIGHTS: Focus on child labour in agriculture
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Nigerian court frees Delta dissident
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Cost of conflict in Western Sahara
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Comorian island hold elections
AFRICA AND CHINA: Zoellick wants Beijing to heed the West
CORRUPTION: Deadline looms for Nigeria’s ex-governors
DEVELOPMENT: IMF calls for clearer Africa aid timetable
HEALTH AND HIV/Aids: New microbicide trials in South Africa
EDUCATION: Will e-learning make teachers redundant?
LGBTI: Namibia’s Gay Week set to attract straight community
ENVIRONMENT: East Africa bans plastic bags
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Land returned in World Heritage site
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Leading Congolese journalist gunned down
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Barring Winnie Mandela form Canada
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Zimbabwe’s exiles turn to the Web
PLUS: e-newsletters and mailings lists; courses, seminars and workshops, jobs and books and publications

*Pambazuka News now has a Del.icio.us page, where you can view the various websites that we visit to keep our fingers on the pulse of Africa! Visit

Debate on the prospects for continent-wide government in Africa is heating up ahead of the African Union (AU) summit that is scheduled to begin on 25 June in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. The gathering will focus on plotting a course towards full political and economic integration on the continent, a central goal of the AU. The dream of a 'United States of Africa' also underpinned the creation in 1963 of the union's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity.

Mobile GSM operators in Sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly covering most populated areas with telephone services. A new report by SIDA makes an inventory of existing transmission backbones in 18 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and discusses issues related to solutions for improved utilization of such networks.

Straight talk with straight friends’ is The Rainbow Project’s (trp) LGBTI Week’s theme this year with the event taking place between 27 and 30 June. The Namibian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisation – trp – endevours to raise awareness and educate the public about diversity.

A prominent activist in empowerment organisations, Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) is concerned with the intimate portrayal of the lives of black lesbian women in South Africa. Of this new body of colour and black-and-white work, she writes, "Being is an exploration of both our existence and our resistance as lesbians/women loving women, as black women living our intersecting identities in a country that claims equality for all within the LGBTI community, and beyond."

A new World Bank report on HIV/AIDS launched in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, says the mobilization of empowered 'grassroots' communities, along with delivering condoms and life-saving treatments, are beginning to slow the pace of the continent's epidemic, which last year killed more than 2 million African adults and children, and left another 24.7 million Africans struggling to live with its deadly effects.

The new president of impoverished Mauritania and his cabinet have taken 25 per cent pay cuts because of a drop in oil production. Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi took power in landmark democratic elections in March after power was handed to the civilian government after more than a year of military rule.

Somalia's transitional federal government has decided to allow three privately-owned radio stations - HornAfrik, Shabelle and Quran Kariim (Holy Koran) - to resume broadcasting, four days after it ordered them to suspend operations. "This decision was to be expected, as the high-handed fashion in which the stations were closed was both abusive and counter-productive," Reporters Without Borders said.

Researchers have begun recruiting women in South Africa for the first trials worldwide of a vaginal gel containing an antiretroviral drug, which they hope will protect women from HIV infection. The trials of the microbicide — a gel containing the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, a proven anti-HIV drug in its oral form — are being conducted in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Despite being a signatory to the United Nations Protocol against trafficking in persons, Lesotho is still seen as a fertile ground for human traffickers, migration bodies hold. All the countries in the southern Africa region except Angola, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, had ratified the protocol.

George Adhanja is based in Kenya and works for the Kenya National Council of NGOs. In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed him on the upcoming Grand Debate on the Continental Government during the next African Union Summit, June – July 2007. This interview is one of several interviews with African citizens and CSO leaders on the AU proposal for Continental Government. Emily Mghanga of Pan Africa Programme Oxfam edited this interview.

Salomon Kebede: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current proposal?

George Adhanja: If the heads of states continue to meet and work together in one spirit then this strengthens the proposal. However, the relationship that still exists between countries across this continent is challenged by dishonesty and mistrust. This may weaken this proposal and in the end, hamper the success of a Continental Union.

Salomon Kebede: Should it be adopted in Accra in July 2007, what would you like to see the African Union Commission achieve within the first phase (2007-2009)?

George Adhanja: The AU Commission should bring an end to civil wars in Africa.

Salomon Kebede: And why would this form of continental Union be important to African citizens & particular the poor and marginalized?

George Adhanja: African citizens will enjoy free movement and free trade across the continent that will be of great benefit to the poor and marginalized in particular. We need to see a unity that will uphold and respect citizen rights.

Salomon Kebede: How could states and non-states ensure that continental Union efforts are transparent, participatory and driven by an appreciation of political and economic rights?

George Adhanja: Let the member states become the engine that will run the continental Government devoid of western influence. The only way we will move forward in a Union Government, is by focusing entirely in doing what is right for the African people.

Salomon Kebede: What obstacles must the AU overcome for the continental Union to be successful?

George Adhanja: We must be financially independent in order to be self –reliant and stop depending on the west.

Salomon Kebede: In what policy area, would you like to see greater convergence and unity across Africa and why?

George Adhanja: I strongly would advocate for free trade and free movement. Without these, there is no need for Africans to unite.

Salomon Kebede: Do you have anything that you would like to add?

George Adhanja: Yes. Let us have a Union that respects civil society. It is fundamental for the civil society to be given more room to engage without discrimination as seen in some countries.

The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. George Adhanja can be reached at Email: admin at ngocouncil.org