Pambazuka News 307: Ethiopia: Democracy still in jail
Pambazuka News 307: Ethiopia: Democracy still in jail
Placental and infant malaria protect HIV-infected infants against early childhood deaths, according to the findings of a longitudinal study published in the July 1st edition of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. But the study found that infant anaemia was a significant risk factor for postneonatal infant mortality (PNIM) in HIV-negative children of HIV-positive women.
President Bouteflika's decision to reappoint nearly the entire previous government has come as a great disappointment to some Algerians who had been hoping for a change. Although most citizens were firm in their opposition to the decision, Algerian politicians were divided, Magharebia news reports.
FEATURE: Mammo Muchie writes on the imprisonment of the 2005 election winners, and of democracy itself, in Ethiopia
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Priscilla Nyokabi assesses the Kenyan freedom of information bill
- Ochieng Khairallah on the criminalisation of the poor in Kenya
- Everlyne Nairesiae of GROOTS reflects on the use of mobile phones for social justice
LETTERS:
- Samson Eyassu responds to Mandisi Majavu's article on the Wretched of the Earth
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD:
BLOGGING AFRICA: Reviews West African blogs
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: Ethiopian forum calls for unity; the challenges facing a United States of Africa
WOMEN AND GENDER: Egyptian women strike for better pay
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Satellite cameras monitor Darfur villages
HUMAN RIGHTS: Amnesty International releases 2007 report
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Violence against Chad’s unions escalates
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: 90,000 return to Mogadishu
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Algerian reshuffle divides politicians
CORRUPTION: African appointed to head TI
DEVELOPMENT: G8: Declare vulture fund profiteering
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: Swazi campaign supports HIV+ truckers
EDUCATION: Concerns over Tanzania’s school dropout rate
ENVIRONMENT: Technology to save Malawi’s rainforests
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Emirates’ royals threaten Tanzania’s indigenous people
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Plans for Africa media freedom debate
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Europe looks to encourage Diaspora investment
ADVOCACY AND CAMPAIGNS: Cuba Cycle Challenge
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: IT a catalyst for African development
PLUS: e-Newsletters and Mailings Lists; Fundraising and Useful Resources; Courses, Seminars and Workshops, Jobs, and Books and Publications
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A proposed amendment to Algeria’s electoral law, expected this June, will set limits on the existence of non-representative or small parties, with the official intention of preventing the fragmentation of Algerian politics. The amendment is also expected to place stricter conditions on prospective candidates.
I have read Mandisi Majavu's essay with interest . I found it different and less engaging than the articles he wrote before. What I missed from his article this time being - his own voice. In this essay he has drowned it in a cacophony of quotes from secondary sources.
I expected the title to give a panoramic view of the essay and to be followed by an introductory paragraph which leads us into the hinterland of the essay. The title is not doing its job. I do not see it demarcating the purview of the topic he means to treat. Though, it is not clear where psychology stops and other sciences begin. Especially, its critical version. This has made the essay unwieldy.
Then comes the two blocks of paragraphs entirely made of quotes. I do not know. I fear academy is cramping his style. There is a whole lot of talk on quoting, on acknowledging the originator of the idea…the sentence. Maybe that is the culprit.
His rebuttal that decolonisation should not be violent, as Fanon takes it to be, is cogent. This is the best part of the essay. Still, I see something lacking - real world examples. Why not motivate it by bringing the experience of South Africa, India and also Zimbabwe among others? Why not introduce his own voice, when there is a big room for that? We miss Mandisi there.
He went past overruling violence as a solution and tried to prove that being subjected to colonialism does not result in inferiority complex and self hatred. Then, what is the effect of colonialism on the subject people? I am not questioning whether it is a disease that can be treated by violence or not. Violence can utmost be surface therapeutic. But, what comes to explain away the evil effects of colonialism though we may not find them a common name- is typical gooblydygook. The worst part of the essay.
Here is also another point I would like to comment on in this essay: 'To write in African language, or quote only African writers, does not necessarily translate into originality.' What is at stake here is not ‘originality’, it is ‘allegiance’. Proponents of national culture do not hold that one's capacity to produce something ‘original’ will betray you the moment you strayed into a foreign culture. But mourn the loss of your brainpower spent on producing an original work that enriches foreign culture rather than yours. Why not pull Ngugi’s Decolonizing the Mind into the picture? I think it is relevant and would have helped him to ground and flesh out his argument.
Mandisi's absence is conspicuous in the conclusion than in any other part of the essay. We never get a chance to hear him even in the conclusion. Besides, why present a premise in a conclusion? Another minor contention: why a yawn-inducing borrowed from economics jargon - growth-oriented attitude about one’s ideas. This is an obvious fact that can be put in a simple language. Everybody outgrows his ideas. It is a one way street. It begins at romanticism and goes to the direction of realism. We are all in that continuum. Let me finish by giving free rein to my quibbling. Somewhere in the essay he has written the ‘arrogance of colonial power’. It is so harsh a reality to be called by a light word such as ‘arrogance’. Arrogance is the attribute some ascribe to President Thabo Mbeki. I think ‘intransigence’ may be better, though not a perfect fit.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/307/half-of-a-yellow-sun.jpg
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins the Orange Prize for Fiction with her novel on Biafra, Half a Yellow Sun.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/Molefi-Ndlovu.jpgMolefi Ndlovu from the Center for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa speaks to Sokari Ekine from Pambazuka News about the radical community radio project RASA FM in Soweto. The radio station ran without a license in Soweto for six months in 2005 and was hugely popular with the local community. RASA became a victim of its own success when the power of its appeal proved too big a threat to the corporate media and it was shut down. In this podcast organiser Molefi tells RASA's amazing story and explores the nature of community media and what is possible with the medium. See for more information.
Music in this podcast is brought to you by Busi Ncube from Zimbabwe and kindly provided by Thulani Promotions.
In an inter-dependent world, global challenges, whether of poverty or security, of migration or marginalization, demand responses based on global values of human rights that bring people together and promote our collective well-being. Human rights provide the basis for a sustainable future. But protecting the security of states rather than the sustainability of people’s lives and livelihoods appears to be the order of the day, says the Amnesty International 2007 report.
Approximately 20 members of Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA/MOZA) were arrested in Bulawayo. Amongst those arrested are Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, who handed themselves in at Bulawayo Central in solidarity with a group that had been arrested earlier.
WOZA has been reading and hearing about 'the talks' and wish to express our views about these. Firstly, we would like to know exactly what South African President Thabo Mbeki, Tanzanian President Kikwete and our SADC brothers and sisters want to achieve by their mediation.
Striking public servants will completely shut down all government services in the Western Cape by Friday 8 June, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) said. Provincial secretary Suraya Jawoodeen said Nehawu would intensify its strike action and re-mobilise all members to ensure a complete shut-down of services by Friday.
The number of UNHCR-assisted returns to Liberia passed the 100,000 mark on Tuesday with the arrival of a convoy carrying scores of returnees from neighbouring Sierra Leone. The landmark convoy bearing more than 250 returning refugees entered Liberia at the Bo Waterside border crossing. Government officials, UNHCR representatives and humanitarian workers attended a welcoming ceremony at the nearby Sinje transit centre.
The UN refugee agency estimates that up to 90,000 people may have returned to Mogadishu in recent weeks, or almost a quarter of those who fled fierce fighting earlier this year in the Somali capital.The figure is based on monitoring of population movements inside Somalia by UNHCR and a network of partners.
Long seen as funding the continent's wars and doing little other than seeking out petroleum and mineral resources, Russia is now looking to kick-start better trade relations with Africa, and has made its first move by writing off the majority of the continent's debt.
Activists have underscored the need for progress with both climate change and poverty alleviation - key items on the meeting's agenda - for there to be real improvement in Africa's living conditions.
Malawi's utilisation of energy resources is heavily dominated by firewood, which provides 93 percent of all energy needs. Current annual household consumption of firewood and charcoal are at 7.5 million tons, exceeding sustainable supply by 3.7 million tons. Poverty and population growth in the country are placing escalating pressures on Malawi's indigenous forests which, the ministry of environment says, translates into an annual destruction of approximately 50,000 to 70,000 hectares of forest.
The role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in improving education throughout Africa has been in the spotlight over recent days at the e-Learning Africa Conference. An annual event, the gathering was held in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this year (May 28-30), bringing together participants from across the globe.
Several months ago, residents of the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, were struggling with disposal of household waste. Fast forward to June 2007, and matters have taken a turn for the better -- thanks to a waste management process imported from neighbouring Rwanda, and put into effect by the recently-created Association for Development and the Fight Against Poverty (Association pour le développement et la lutte contre la pauvreté, ADLP).
Africa's robust diaspora in Europe will soon have an investment facility to help people make direct investments to better develop their home countries thanks to a new study by the Brussels-based Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) Business Climate (BizClim) facility.
After a prolonged illness, Fathia Nkrumah, widow of Kwame Nkrumah, died in hospital in Cairo, Egypt
The widow of Kwame Nkrumah, Madam Fatiha, passed away last week in Cairo, her home town, where she had been living for most of the years since Nkrumah’s over throw in February 1966.
As to be expected all kinds of tributes have been pouring out from all kinds of corners including people and institutions who have never really cared what became of her and her three children (Gamal, Sekou and Samia) since Nkrumah died. Many of these conspicuous mourners did not even realize that Madam Fatiha was still alive all these years.
The worst of these hypocrites is always government. Those in power have the power, if the will was there to have honoured Madam Fatima, recognized her and provided for her and her family. But shamelessly successive Ghanaian governments, at best pursued a policy of benign neglect or even outright hostility or opportunistic association and gestures towards the family. This is not because Madam Fatiha has lived outside of Ghana because the same treatment was experienced by the oldest of the children,, Dr Francis Nkrumah (the first son of Nkrumah , from his Ghanaian first wife) or Sekou (Fatiha’s second son) who both live in Accra. This shameful conduct included governments and regimes that claim to be political heirs of Nkrumah.
The government of Ghana immediately announced that it will provide a state funeral befitting a former first lady of Ghana (indeed the very first!) but of what benefit is this post humus honour when she was neglected while she was alive? It is part of that African hypocrisy that suddenly transforms a dead person into the friend of everyone around with no body willing to say anything negative about the departed. Some of this is actually due to guilt. We tend to over compensate by making all kinds of commitments and all manner of gestures immediately after the death of someone close or public figures. However the guilt soon subsides and life continues very much as before with the loved ones left behind to pick up the pieces, as they must. Tears of some of the politically correct mourners go dry as soon as the TV cameras are turned off.
The way we treat the family of our national and Pan Africanist heroes cannot inspire commitment and confidence that devotion to Africa meant anything. As with all committed, genuinely committed (not the convenient foot lose opportunists that are so common these days), their families suffer: absent fathers and husbands. The children grow up feeling victimized by ‘struggle’ and after the hero have gone or is no longer in power the family might as well have been dead.
Nkrumah, even his worst critics, will agree, was completely devoted to the cause of liberating Africa. It was not for him building of personal mansions or having secret accounts all over the world. The struggle was everything. Madam Fatiha was much younger than the Osagyefo when he married her in a matrimonial union that typified Nkrumah’s refusal to accept the Saharan divide of Africa. The three children they had together were all toddlers when Nkrumah was overthrown, and they were only young teenagers when Nkrumah passed away in 1972. Fatiha herself was barely in her mid 30s. No husband, no father and no state provisions the family had to survive on good will sometimes of kind strangers who never met Nkrumah but treasured his contribution to our liberation. They could not leave in Ghana but thanks to President Gamal Abdul Nasser (after whom Fatiha’s first son, Gamal Gorkeh, was named) the family had been given a befitting home by the banks of the Nile. That house progressively became damaged due to lack of maintenance support since the family could not afford to maintain such a modest stately building.
The Ghana for which Nkrumah laboured and the Africa he toiled for simply ignored his family.
It is an insult to now be shedding crocodile tears at the passing of his widow. It is an insult to the family to be offering state funeral to a person that was largely ignored in her life by the same state that is now leading the mourning. The same Ghanaian state showed similar hypocrisy when Nkrumah passed way in exile in Conakry and demanded and later brought Nkrumah’s body to Ghana for State reburial! The embalmed body was for many years left to deteriorate in his village of Nkroful before shame and political expediency and influence of Nkrumahists in his administration forced Rawlings to accept a Mausoleum for Nkrumah in central Accra. Even then most of the money came from Gaddafi!
The spirit of Nkrumah continues to wonder and I hope it continues to haunt all the opportunists, ideological parasites and political saprophytes who continue to use Nkrumah’s name in vain. It should shame us into honouring our heroes and heroines both in life and in death especially the widow and children they leave behind. Ask yourself how many more widows like Madam Fatiha are abandoned to penury across Africa? This bitter experience is even making many of our corrupt leaders to believe that whatever the volume of our assets they are looting now is a kind of insurance for their family against an uncertain future.
In this fiftieth year of Ghana’s independence and the inspiration for the independence of the rest of Africa we should assuage Nkrumah’s wondering spirit by doing right by his family, not by state burial to his widow but by Ghana’s government first repaying back all the entitlements die to them by way of gratuity to their father, refurbishing and handing over their family home in Accra and setting up a proper trustee body to look after, maintain and supervise the Nkrumah Musoleum in Accra. Then the rest of us can honour Nkrumah the best way we can. But Ghana has to lead in atoning for these wrongs.
* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Amnesty International has warned that the internet "could change beyond all recognition" unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights. The "virus of internet repression" has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group. Amnesty accused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of being complicit in the problem.
Various civil society groups in Nigeria have raised the need to look critically at available infrastructure in the African continent before a consensus is reached on the formation of an African Union Government or a United States of Africa.
This was raised at a recent one-day round table organized by ActionAid, Nigeria in Abuja.
A London high court has frozen the assets of Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba after he was convicted last month of stealing $46-million in state funds, according to court documents obtained by AFP on Tuesday. The Zambian government obtained an injunction to freeze Chiluba's assets in London in order to prevent the ailing Chiluba and 18 of his cohorts from disposing of their properties, according to the court order.
Malawian farmers have had a good year, enjoying their best maize harvest in 12 years or more. So why, in a year of "historic plenty", is Malawi yet again on the receiving end of food aid, asks Alex Renton in Britain's Observer newspaper. Malawi suffered food crises in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Last year it produced a 250,000-tonne surplus of maize, yet still received over 40,000 tonnes of food aid from the United States.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. She beat five other contenders for the £30,000 women-only award, including Kiran Desai, shortlisted for her Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss. Adichie's novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is her second work and set during the Biafran War of the 1960s.
A vital bridge linking Sierra Leone with Liberia - both recovering from civil wars - has officially re-opened. Relations between the countries have been strained as Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor was accused of fuelling Sierra Leone's brutal conflict. It is hoped the Mano River bridge will increase trade and unite families living on the two sides of the border.
The New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition is delighted by the passage of a strong anti-trafficking law in New York. The Human Trafficking Law, signed into force by Governor Spitzer, is the strongest state anti-trafficking legislation in the country. The Coalition, an alliance of over 80 state-wide organizations, strongly endorses this anti-trafficking law, which has all the elements considered essential to a strong law.
In daily newspapers across the world, stories are filed from foreign correspondents on assignment in war-torn Darfur in Western Sudan while London or New York analysts propose solutions to a conflict they'll never see. But on the ground, from Khartoum to Kordufan to the center of Darfur in El Fasher, local female journalists are telling the story to their own people.
When the world's wealthiest nations meet at the G-8 summit in Germany this week, aid workers plan to remind them that education pledges they made to children--the majority of them girls--are not being met in the world's worst conflict zones.
The University of Ghana is forging a gender advocacy trail in West Africa by setting up a sex-assault crisis center, forming a policy on harassment and improving the campus culture for women.
Amnesty International is using satellite cameras to monitor highly vulnerable villages in war-torn Darfur, Sudan. The human rights organization is inviting ordinary people worldwide to monitor 12 villages by visiting the Eyes on Darfur project website and put the Sudanese Government on notice that these and other areas in the region are being watched around the clock.
Two years ago, the association Yam Pukri began to sell second-hand cellular telephones as part of its policy of disseminating ICT in Burkina Faso. Yam Pukri buys the phones in Switzerland through its partner, the NGO Terre des Hommes Suisse (Geneva branch), and resells them in Burkina Faso at very low prices (from 7,500 to 45,000 CFA francs).
The United Nations and the African Union were close to a deal on Wednesday on fielding 23,000 peacekeepers in Sudan's violent Darfur region, but full deployment is not expected until next year at the earliest. The so-called "hybrid" U.N.-A.U. force is the culmination of two earlier stages allowing the United Nations to bolster 7,000 beleaguered African Union troops.
Ethiopian soldiers fired at a would-be suicide bomber who was speeding towards their base in the Somali capital blowing up the car and killing the bomber and a civilian who was standing nearby, officials have told Al Jazeera. Monday's attack came one day after a suicide car bomber drove through a roadblock guarding the compound of the Mogadishu home of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the interim prime minister, and rammed the vehicle into a wall, killing seven people but missing Gedi.
The International Women’s Media Foundation will launch a new project to enhance coverage of agriculture, rural development and women in African media with a $2.5 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The goals of the project are to increase and enhance reporting on agriculture and rural development, incorporate women’s roles in the coverage of agriculture and rural economics into reporting on those topics, and create more gender equality in newsrooms.
Mazonde and Thomas (eds): Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Intellectual Property in the 21st Century
This volume discusses the contested nature of intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in the context of southern Africa, including the protection of folklore, IKS in a digital era, the valuation and safeguard of heritage sites, the need for appropriate IKS legislation, community-based control of natural resources, and the role played by traditional music in the maintenance of community.
This empirical grounded collection of papers is a unique and distinctive contribution to the literature on IKS. The specific IKS-related issues raised and dealt with in this volume are generic in the sense that the very same issues are being contested in different parts of the world.
ISBN: 978-2-86978-194-8, 138pp, publ. 2007
Africa: 20.00 USD; CFA 10,000; elsewhere: US$24.95/GBP16.95
Orders:
Africa -
North America - www.africanbookscollective.com
This is the second of a two-volume work taking stock of the study of Africa in the 21st century: its status, research agenda and approaches, and place. The volume is divided into two parts, the first entitled Globalisation Studies and African Studies, and the second, African Studies in Regional Contexts.
Topics considered include: African and area studies in France, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden; anti-colonialism and Russian/soviet African studies; African studies in the Caribbean in historical perspective; the teaching of African history and the history of Africa in Brazil; African studies in India; African studies and historiography in China in the 21st century; and African studies and contemporary scholarship in Japan.
'This two-volume collection…establishes entirely new parameters for Africanist scholarship…[it is] interested in answering the question: What is Africa's place in the world today'– Ato Quayson, professor of English and director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.
ISBN: 978-2-86978-198-6, 416pp., publ. 2007
Africa: 35.00 USD; CFA 17,000; elsewhere: US$49.95/GBP39.95
Orders:
Africa -
North America - www.africanbookscollective.com
Since 1963, corruption has begat corruption in the successive governments of Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki, as a silent majority watched hoping against hope that they would not be affected. Pastor Martin Niemöller described this phenomenon - the assumption of the ostrich position by collectively burying our heads in the sand as the fruit of inaction ripens.
International agency Oxfam today warned that failure among G8 countries to provide a clear steer on climate change would leave confusion in its wake and cause an unacceptable delay as poor countries bore the biggest burden of global warming. According to this year's IPCC report, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change.
South African Cobus de Swardt, 44, Director of Global Programmes at Transparency International (TI), the global coalition against corruption, has been appointed Managing Director of TI’s Berlin-based Secretariat. De Swardt has served as Global Programmes Director since May 2004, leading the work on TI's global priorities, and heads the International Group of four regional departments. Since 30 April 2007, he has also served as Acting Managing Director.
The Hadzabe indigenous people of northern Tanzania are facing "a direct and serious threat to the survival" as their hunting and gathering grounds are falling prey to powerful safari organisers. Royals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their UAE Safari Ltd count on Tanzanian government support to drive out the Hadzabe, also called "Bushmen".
Between 30 and 60 plain-clothed policemen have over the past two weeks surrounded the offices of 'Kalima', an online newspaper that is the only independent media based in Tunisia. 'Kalima' journalists have thus been prevented from working and updating their news site, which for years has been inaccessible for Tunisian readers.
A Gambian journalist of the sealed bi-weekly newspaper, 'The Independent', was convicted by a regional court to either pay US $2, 000 or in default serve a year in prison. His attorney, Lamin Camara, vows to appeal against the conviction at the High Court.
Trade unions are expressing their concerns over what they call an "escalating violence" by security officers against their representatives all over Chad. The country has been paralysed by an unpopular general strike for over one month. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has denounced what it called "the recent escalation in anti-union repression in Chad," where a public sector strike launched a month ago by the Inter-Union Group continues.
Millions of dollars worth of timber revenue is being lost each year in Tanzania because of poor governance and rampant corruption in the forestry sector, according to a new report by TRAFFIC International.
Former "Ninja" rebels led by a renegade pastor in Congo Republic burned their weapons late on Thursday in a ceremony meant to underline their commitment to peace in the central African country. The rebels, named after ancient Japanese warriors, fought an insurgency against Congo's government in the late 1990s and although a peace deal was signed in 2003 sporadic violence has plagued the Pool region where they are based ever since.
Comoros has delayed an election due on Sunday on the mutinous island of Anjouan for one week after police there shot three civilians during political unrest, national radio said late on Thursday. The coup-prone Indian Ocean archipelago was due to elect local presidents for its three main islands. The authorities said polls would go ahead as planned this weekend on Grande Comore and Moheli, but Anjouan's would be postponed to June 17.
Severed heads displayed on poles, savagely mutilated bodies and dozens of deaths have sparked alarm in Kenya as a secret criminal society goes on the rampage and police launch bloody retaliation. With presidential elections little more than six months away, the crisis has sparked a fierce row between government and the judiciary, set politicians at each others' throats and brought calls for emergency rule in affected areas.
Authorities in Tanzania have expressed concern over the large numbers of pupils, mostly girls, who drop out of school because of pregnancy, teenage marriage, child labour or truancy. President Jakaya Kikwete said the number of primary school drop-outs rose to 44,742 in 2006 from 32,469 the previous year.
The protracted provincial border dispute between the government and residents of Khutsong, a township outside the mining town of Carletonville, has blocked the funding of a care centre for mentally and physically challenged children.
The closure of several leading radio stations by the Somali government has silenced important community voices in the war-ravaged country, a media watchdog has said. The stations, HornAfrik radio and television, Shabelle Media Network and Radio Voice of Holy Koran, were shut down on 6 June, for alleged support of anti-government elements.
Residents of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, are flocking back to the city but many have found their homes destroyed, while food and medical care are in short supply, local sources said. "Our estimate is that since the end of major combat, [late April-early May], 16,000 to 17,000 families have returned to the city," said a civil society source involved in assisting the returnees.
The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) welcomes the fact that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has decided to schedule the controversial documentary on President Thabo Mbeki for screening on Sunday 10 June at 9 pm on SABC 3. In marches, pickets and demonstrations held outside various SABC offices since last November, the FXI has repeatedly called for the screening of the documentary, and the Institute is pleased that this is finally going to take place.
At a conference of religious leaders in the troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a United Nations humanitarian official has said dialogue among parties is a cornerstone for the protection of civilians caught in the conflict.
A new study by the United Nations labour agency finds that more than one in five workers around the world – over 600 million people – are working “excessively” long hours. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 22 per cent of the global workforce are still working more than 48 hours a week, “often merely to make ends meet.”
Briefing the Security Council, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has called for the arrest of the two suspects wanted to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region.
A new website, has been launched to provide news and expert analysis—¬updated daily—on the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Ghankay Taylor. The website will feature daily updates from the courtroom, as well as analysis, background information, the trial calendar and other resources. The site is a joint project of the Open Society Institute, the Open Society Justice Initiative, and the International Senior Lawyers Project.
African presidents and editors are to debate the thorny issue of media freedom on the continent at next month's African Union summit in Accra, Ghana. This was announced by chairperson of The African Editors' Forum (TAEF) Mathatha Tsedu.
Insecurity, tension and attacks on aid convoys have this year added another 140 000 people to an estimated two million people displaced by civil war in Sudan's western Darfur region, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Many of the camps set up for the homeless are full, and more than half a million people are completely out of reach of aid agencies, the UN mission in Khartoum added in a report.
Rwanda is a small sub-Saharan African nation that is learning to adjust to global warming and the effects of climate change. Decreasing water levels have contributed to loss of agricultural productivity and an energy crisis due to loss of power generated by hydropower stations.I n this Development Gateway interview, Patricia Hajabakiga, Rwanda Minister of State in Charge of Lands and Environment, talks about how Rwanda is adjusting to, among other things, unpredictable climate patterns.
Ethiopia said on Thursday it had detained 50 government and company officials for graft in one of the East African nation's largest crackdowns. Ethiopia has a relatively clean image by the continent's standards, managing to avoid the sort of major public corruption scandals plaguing neighbour Kenya, for example
Ethiopia has charged 55 opposition members with trying to launch a rebellion, a government prosecutor told said on Wednesday. More than one hundred opposition figures are already on trial, accused of plotting a coup after disputed 2005 elections.
The United Nations has called for policies to protect African nations from unregulated imports of electronic wastes (e-waste) that release heavy metals and chemicals. This call comes after the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that over 50 million metric tonnes of electronic e-waste are produced globally, much of which finds its way to the African continent as charitable donations.
Information is a public good that provides accurate signals for investors, enhances the public private partnerships needed to move an economy toward greater prosperity and brings transparency to the dialogue between civil society concerns and private sector motives. It is a public good that, in the context of Africa is unfortunately insufficient.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and Microsoft have announced a joint initiative to help bridge the gap between corporations disposing of their used computers and small and medium enterpreneurs (SMEs) in Africa that can use these PCs to help grow their operations.
Regulators and industry players in the ICT sector have identified the development of sound Information and Communication Technology (ICT) regulation as key to Africa's development agenda and said that ICT development should be regarded as catalysts for overall development. Arising from a two-day forum on telecommunications/ICT Regulation in Africa (FTRA-2007), which opened Tuesday in Nairobi, Kenya, participants agreed that ICT stands the chance of leapfrogging the continent on its developmental strategies.
Pambazuka News 306: Chinese and African CSOs meet to discuss China in Africa
Pambazuka News 306: Chinese and African CSOs meet to discuss China in Africa
In 1981, the Kieni East Divisional Land Control Board endeavoured to make an estranged wife — Margaret Mumbi — the joint owner of 37 acres of prime agricultural land in Naromoru settlement scheme. Little did the board know that a woman could not sue her husband over land whose acquisition she did not contribute to materially during his lifetime. Twenty six years later, the Court of Appeal, in support of a High Court decision in 2002, says the land control board has no power to award land.
Word from Africa presented by Africa Beyond and SABDET
Saturday 2 June 2007, 12-8.15pm
A day-long celebration of African languages! Join us in exploring the diversity of Africa and its cultures through literature, music and visual arts. All sessions will have English translations or commentaries, or will be in English. The venue is British Museum. The line up includes Freddie Macha and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
One Woman's Story…
She lost herself to sacrifice
She thought after a while,
She'd find herself, mould the parts of her she'd lost
Bring back the dreams of her youth
She lost her secondary school education
For the sake of the boys
"The boys have nothing,
you can always get a husband, her parents said.
Her dream to be a doctor
Exchanged for an early marriage
'We need the bride price, they said.
Sacrificed sexuality by facing the knife
Sacrificed her laughter in a marriage gone bad
So she could save her name
As if she ever had a name
Or a personality
She was an empty shell
Filled and emptied at others' whim
From there on sacrifice was her middle name
For the husband, the kids
the in laws, her father, her mother
Her friends, anyone and everyone
So one day she looked it up,
That dreaded word sacrifice
And realized it didn't mean
She had to give up what she desired
Sacrifice is about choosing passion
over other interests!
At 40 she put paid to sacrifice,
She was labeled selfish and unkind
When she left her home for school
To pursue her dream to be a doctor
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
Human Resources Training Manager
To Apply: Please email your cover letter, resume, and three references to Katie Bouton at [email][email protected] Please put the job title in the subject line and your salary requirements in the cover letter. ACCION International is an equal opportunity employer. To learn more about ACCION International, visit their website at www.accion.org
Your Voice Against Poverty bans controversial sculpture. The artist says: 'The sculpture is free for another exhibition - if anybody has the guts.'
The African women's NGO Rainbo has been forbidden to exhibit a controversial sculpture at the Your Voice Against Poverty rally at the brink of the Thames in London on 2 June 2007.
The Danish artist Jens Galschiot is astonished. He declares: 'I have been censored by totalitarian regimes, but I have never imagined my sculptures to be banned by "progressive" Western NGOs.'
The ban has been decreed by BOND, the organiser of the event, allegedly motivated by a wish to please affiliated Christian organisations. The banned piece of art is a handsome bronze sculpture depicting a crucified pregnant teenager, created by the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot. The sculpture titled 'In the Name of God' has been cast in various varieties as an accusation against the crusade against contraception and sexual education orchestrated by Christian fundamentalists led by President Bush and the Pope.
The sculpture was scheduled to arrive in London on Thursday carried by a volunteer from the artist's workshop. But now the artist has been left over with tickets already booked and paid and an unwanted sculpture. 'Therefore I'll lend the sculpture for an exhibition to other organisations, art galleries or museums in London, if anybody has the guts - otherwise I'll have to cancel the journey', the Danish artist says.
The sculpture has been exhibited at World Social Forum in 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya and for a couple of months in front of the Lutheran Cathedral of Copenhagen in cooperation with the dean and the parish council who wanted to make a statement that not all Christian circles are supportive of the crusade of the Pope and the fundamentalists.
For the moment feminists in Nicaragua are using a specimen of the pregnant teenager for a comprehensive campaign against the alarming maternal mortality. In addition they have made hundreds of miniature models of the sculpture to be distributed to parliamentarians, members of the judiciary and other outstanding persons.
On 22 May 2007, the African women's NGO Rainbo and Jens Galschiot have separately sent a protest to all member organisations of BOND. The Danish sculptor declares:
'For decades I've been staking my sculptures to ignite a debate about the North/South relation - and the inequitable distribution of the world's resources. My huge sculptural manifestations have been a well-known and appreciated component of international NGO rallies such as the European Social Forums in London, Paris and Athens, the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong 2005, Jubilee 2000 in Prague - just to mention a few examples.
For sure, I have been censored by totalitarian regimes, e.g. the Chinese government, and I have been expelled from Mexico for the "crime" of erecting a "Pillar of Shame" against the Acteal massacre in co-operation with the CNI, the indigenous peoples' organisation. But I have NEVER had an experience like this: that "progressive" NGOs like BOND or other democratic western NGOs make an attempt to obstruct the exhibition of one of my sculptures. Indeed, such "progressive grassroots" circles, are the last ones that I would deem to be supportive of the crusade against contraception and sexual education orchestrated by the Pope and President Bush.'
As no argument has induced the organisers to change their absurd decision, Jens Galschiot has now decided to publish the affair. For more information:
Jens Galschiot's address to the NGOs:
Rainbo's address to the NGOs:
More information about the planned exhibition in London:
Mr. President I have come
To report to you
That South Africa
Is today free
When President Nelson Mandela said these words facing the grave of John Libangibalele Dube on the 21 April 1994, as he cast his vote in an all-race election in South Africa, he was both participating in and creating history. He became the first president of a free Republic of South Africa and also a torch-bearer of an 82 year political movement under the ANC.
In 1912, John Dube was elected the first president of the ANC (then called the South African Native National Congress), after it was formed the same year. It is quite symbolic that Mandela chose to cast his vote at the polling booth in the Ohlange High School, built by John Dube as a way of cultivating self-reliance and self-determination among his people. Now we can view this history through a documentary produced in 2006 entitled Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John Dube.
Oberlin-Inanda is produced and directed by the Carleton College professor of French, Cherif Keita. It weaves together the life of South Africa's pioneer educator, entrepreneur, and politician John L. Dube.
The documentary not only shows the incredible vision and energy Dube had but also the various transnational and trans-racial links that made his work so important to South Africa's cultural and political history.
In a presentation that is itself a personal journey for Keita, this documentary allows the viewer to witness the incredible determination that Dube had in using education as a tool to bring about pride and change among his people in Natal.
In a showing to a gathering of scholars meeting held in Lisle Illinois to discuss the role of US liberal arts institutions in promoting the study of Africa, Keita stated that he came upon this project through divine intervention.
A native of Mali himself, Keita has now become pat of the Dube family because of the time, resources, and social networks invested in producing the documentary.
He is working on a sequel that follows the story of William Wilcox who has historical connections to Northfield Minnesota where Keita currently resides.
Born in 1871 to a family of recent Christian converts, Dube was raised within a new frame of morality and sensibility but stayed rooted in his own Zulu culture. In his commitment to his own community, while aware of new avenues provided by this new Christian morality, Dube was able to bring about so much change for his own people.
When he had an opportunity to go to America in 1887 through the help of William Wilcox, an American missionary to the Zulu, Dube got his most important break in life. Keita notes that Wilcox was instrumental in Dube’s trip and stay in America.
As a missionary in Zululand, Wilcox was committed to the empowerment of the local people especially in his determination for Black clergy to take charge of their local congregations. It could be because of this commitment to self-realisation for Blacks that Wilcox recommended that Dube attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia which is famed as the alma mater of Booker T. Washington, who himself was committed to educating Southern Blacks in the US for self-employment and empowerment.
Dube asked Wilcox to help him get into Wilcox’s alma mater, Oberlin College, itself being historically significant because it is the first college in the US to admit women and Blacks. While Dube Dube did not go to Hampton, he ended up pursuing interests in technical training as did Booker T. Washington.
After leaving Oberlin College Dube had a short stint in New York where he was able to attend some lectures given by Booker T. Washington before returning to Zululand to start his own school in Inanda.
Upon returning to South Africa armed with funds raised from White American philanthropists, Dube built the Zulu Christian Industrial School which was later named Ohlange Institute. Arguably the school was modelled after the Tuskegee Institute built by Washington and celebrates some of the most influential South Africans in his time and beyond.
Keita’s documentary runs like a book, with the usual advantage of bringing in vivid images of the past together that he juxtaposes with those of today. He is able to show still photos of Dube, his school, and even some of the earlier versions of the school.
The documentary starts with a shot of Keita in Ohlange school talking to the current students about the history in which many of them may not have taken much interest. He takes the viewer through a series of chronological activities that followed Dube since he left Natal to go to the US and back.
There are a number of issues that Keita raises through this documentary. Throughout the narrative the viewer is aware of the role played by Dube’s networks among Whites in making his dream come true. In a post-apartheid South Africa, it is sometimes hard to realise the foundations of Dube’s success through the financial assistance of Whites but Keita gives us a story of courage, determination, and a struggle for the common good.
This is a must see documentary by those interested in cross-cultural issues and especially in South Africa’s higher education and its links to the US.
Produced and directed by Cherif Keita, 2006, 55 minutes, colour. Distributed by Villon Films, 4040 Ontario Street, Vancouver, BC V5V 3G5, Canada,
* Mwenda Ntarangwi, PhD, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, USA.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
The Government of Ghana in collaboration with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank will convene a high-level conference ‘Financing for Development’, in Accra, Ghana, on 30-31 May, under the theme 'Infrastructure for Growth – The Energy Challenge'.
Participants will include African ministers of finance as well as ministers of Energy and senior officials from the donor community. The main focus of the meeting will be directed at the energy sector, particularly its financing needs and how to maximise its contribution to the growth agenda required to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 target date.
Energy plays a critical role in advancing efforts to achieve the MDGS and improving the lives of poor people across the world. Lack of access to adequate affordable, reliable, safe and environmentally benign energy is a severe constraint on development.
The meeting is therefore expected to come up with sustainable approaches to improving energy access and the complimentary financing options, including viable private-public partnerships.
At the same time, the Accra Conference will take stock of progress achieved by African countries and donors in respect of the undertakings and commitments made at recent high-level meetings in Gleneagles, Abuja and Singapore. In that regard, particular attention will be paid to the commitments made in the areas of costed multi-year educational plans, financing of education, and mainstreaming of education in national budgets.
For further information on the Accra Conference as well as an ECA perspective on the current financing for development issues and challenges in Africa, go to the websites below:
http://www.uneca.org/atpc/Work%20in%20progress/48.pdf
Background
Many African countries are confronted with development challenges. Key among these is the lack of basic infrastructure to drive the development process. As part of efforts to overcome these challenges, African ministers of Finance met at a first conference in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006 to dialogue on the way forward to address these developmental issues.
The Abuja meeting marked an important milestone in international discussions on development finance. Discussions dwelt largely on the challenges remaining in converting aid commitments into development, and ways to operationalise the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit and 2005 UN General Assembly commitments in support of the MDGs in Africa.
As a follow up to the first conference in Abuja, Ghana is set to host the second segment in the series of conferences to further deepen the dialogue on Financing for Development. ECA is providing secretariat and technical support to the conference.
President Kufuor, chair of the African Union, in concluding his Africa Day speech observed the following:
'All these efforts will bear ready and abundant fruit only if we start with deepening the partnership arrangements among ourselves as Africans before we go out as a continent to access what others can bring to support our efforts.
Fortunately, there is a growing recognition among us today of the need to provide our union with a stronger continental machinery in order to work on agreed strategic areas of focus, including a common understanding of continental integration and the constraints against such an integration process.
We therefore look forward to the July 2007 summit in Accra dedicated to the "Grand Debate on Union Government" which, hopefully, will help us identify the strategic goals, objectives and actions that will help our embattled continent to gain its rightful and dignified place in the globalised world.'
Yet, the news that the Accra summit, 25 June - 6 July 2007, will be the 'Grand Debate on Union Government' may not necessarily be encouraging. Debates we have had plenty. Declarations, decisions, protocols, agreements, treaties, we have signed many.
Our main difficulty has been in implementation, having the will, structures, personnel and discipline to realise our goals. So, before we can get excited about July's grand debate we must first examine how the AU has managed to implement its own time table to date.
The African Union has set for itself the ambition of building, by the year 2025:
'A united and integrated Africa; an Africa imbued with the ideals of justice and peace; an inter-dependent and virile Africa determined to map for itself an ambitious strategy; an Africa underpinned by political, economic, social and cultural integration which would restore to Pan-Africanism its full meaning; an Africa able to make the best of its human and material resources, and keen to ensure the progress and prosperity of its citizens by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a globalised world; an Africa engaged in promoting its values in a world rich in its disparities.'
The fundamental vision is, therefore, to 'build an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, an Africa driven and managed by its own citizen and representing a dynamic force in the international arena'.
The Constitutive Act of 2002 sets up and mandates certain institutions to facilitate the realisation of this vision: the Commission serves as the engine of the Union; Member States as the political project managers; the Pan-African Parliament and ECOSOCC as democratic control and monitoring organs; the Regional Economic Communities are viewed as the main pillars or building blocks of the Union; the Court of Justice, like that of the EU, is envisioned, once established, to serve as the judicial and arbitration body, especially on commercial cases and harmonisation rules; and the African Court of Human and Peoples" Rights to operate like Europe’s ECHRJ.
African leaders fully recognise that the success of the African Union will, to a large extent, 'depend on effective understanding and collaboration between these various organs, as well as on respect for their individual roles and functions'.
The Union further recognises that it would not be able to garner the necessary political consensus for accomplishment of its mandate, unless it has in place an appropriate governance tool. The question then to ask is how well has the Union so far done to ensure the tools are in place?
It has over the last three years been pursuing a short-term strategy. The strategy, which spans 2004-2007 has the objective to consolidate the institutional pillars of integration, build the human network and forge a network of relations for the Continent. In our view, before ordinary Africans can begin to believe that the 'grand debate’ in Accra would not be just another talk shop, they must be told how far the Union has gone with this short-term strategy which ends this year.
Africans are right to be sceptical. Yet, Africans know that the medium term goal of converging all the regional economic communities between 2008 and 2015 and the long term goal of the continent’s integration by 2025-2030 are all achievable. What we want to know is if our leaders have shown by their deeds that they also share this belief.
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’Almost a year ago, presidential jets assembled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The city’s five-star hotels were filled to capacity and the per diem dollars filled the pockets of Africans on a 'mission to save Somalia'.
AMISOM was the grand acronym that wrapped up the noble intentions. It was agreed that the force should be 8,000 soldiers, but only 4,000 were pledged at the summit. The rhetoric of unification, as always, was delivered with unquestionable conviction and the summit was flavoured with the re-invigorated spirit of pan-Africanism.
Almost one year down the road, only Uganda has honoured its promise. The good intentions of the others are wrapped up in a thousand excuses, one of such, of course, in keeping with the character of contemporary Africa 'we are awaiting the pledges from the international community'.
How can 53 countries, many of which have relatively large armies and exorbitant defence budgets, fail to put together and facilitate a contingent of 8,000 peace keepers? To those that are beginning to express reservations about the security of their troops, we must ask: Haven’t the dangers and dynamics in this war-torn country been more or less the same for what seems like eternity? Upon what then did their excellencies base their pledges in Addis-Abba?
Some argue that President Museveni is pursuing American interests in Somalia. The US has interests all over the world; the African Union cannot be expected to alter its agenda just because it will be perceived to be serving American interests. Whatever became of African interests!
One also wonders why the donor funds towards a unifying exercise that will strengthen the continent are not as forthcoming as the dollars they systematically pump into our economies. They know the strength that lies in unity and God forbid, Africa should discover this!
In 1985, the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in her address to the American Congress said, 'Winston Churchill’s vision of a union of mind and purpose between the English speaking people was to form the mainspring of the West. No one of my generation can forget that America has been the principal architect of peace in Europe, which has lasted 40 years. Given the shield of the United States, we have been granted the opportunity to build a concept of Europe beyond the dreams of our fathers'.
Julius Nyerere rolled the tanks and Saba-Saba’s over the Ugandan border and blasted 'the last King of Scotland' out of office; to him we are eternally grateful.
For years, President Museveni, despite public perceptions of the day, stood with the African National Congress and the Southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army when all others regarded them futile efforts. Today, South Africans, southern Sudanese, Burundians and many others are reaping the benefits of those that chose to work the infallible principle of ‘strength in unity’. Most of these initiatives in the past have been 'informal' and it is time to make the ‘formal’ organs of African unity work because too many in the past have failed for lack of political will.
Charles Njonjo, a retired Kenyan politician of the seventies, personified this African vice, when he once proudly said, he drank champagne at the collapse of the East African Community!
Uganda is preparing to host Her Majesty, the Queen of England, and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2007. Why can’t we be as passionate about the African Union? With all due respect, isn’t CHOGM, to a large extent, a glorification of our colonial past? I suggest that when we pray ‘God save the Queen’ we pray God save Africa too!
Hans Zell Publishing launches a new second, fully revised and greatly expanded edition of a classic African studies reference resource.
First published in 1993, John McIlwaine’s Africa: A Guide to Reference Material, evaluates the leading sources of information on Africa south of the Sahara published in English and French, and a number of other European languages.
The new 2nd edition contains 3,600 entries, covering encyclopaedias, dictionaries, directories, handbooks, atlases and gazetteers, almanacs, yearbooks, topographic reference sources, directories of organisations, and biographical and statistical sources.
Each title is described and analysed for content. Following a general section on Africa as a whole, with sub-divisions by special subjects, material is arranged under broad regions of Africa, and then by individual countries.
Additional to including a diverse array of new reference material that has appeared in print format since 1992, this new edition now also lists a substantial number of electronic resources, critically reviewed and evaluated. Entirely new sections include a selection of the principal reference sources in the biological and earth sciences, especially on flora and fauna, and on biology, habitat, and geology.
Another new feature in the 2nd edition is the citation of a wide range of reviews from over 80 journals.
The book is extensively cross-referenced throughout. It contains an author and title index, and a separate subject index with expanded coverage to accommodate the increased subject range of this new edition.
More details about the book, and the complete table of contents, can be found at
The international campaign for equal rights for homosexuals and other sexual minorities took a step forward on November 14 last year when South Africa became the first country in Africa, and the fifth in the world, to legalise same-sex marriage. The new law, adopted by a 230-to-41 vote, was welcomed by gay and lesbian activists in South Africa and around the world as a significant advance for equal rights. But it is not a trend. Conservative religious and political leaders in many countries still strongly oppose equal rights for homosexuals, including same-sex marriage.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the sixth session of its Annual Social Science Campus, and invites applications from African scholars for participation in the programme scheduled to hold in November 2007 in Dakar.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the second edition of its new initiative designed to bring the deans of faculties of social sciences and humanities of African universities together for an annual conference organised around a scientific theme of common interest. This programme is one of the new activities being launched by the Council as part of its strategic objectives for the advancement of the frontiers of the production and dissemination of knowledge.