http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/296/haiti.jpgJacques Depelchin challenges global citizens to make links between poverty across the world both historically and in the present day: From Cite Soleil in Haiti; to Abalhali in Durban, South Africa; Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya; Maroko in Lagos, Nigeria; and Ndjili in Kinshasa, DRC.

In the age of globalisation why do we not see, on a world scale, cases of twinning in solidarity with cities such as Cité Soleil in Haiti; Abalhali in Durban, South Africa; Ndjili in Kinshasa, DRC? All are places, like favelas the world over, brimming with youth and creativity, but confronted with easily eradicable unhealthy conditions of living.

Why, given its namesake, does Sun City in South Africa not come out in solidarity with the poorest of the poorest in the alleged poorest country of the Western Hemisphere?It may sound childishly naïve, but would not such a move be immanently expected from a city in the country that got rid of apartheid thanks, in part, to the selfless work of millions around the world?

From the inhabitants of all these places, there seems to only be one call that could, should bring us all together: Fidelity to Haiti, 1804.Thought through, away from nation state ideologies, away and against the corporate models of accumulation, such a call has the potential for healing humanity, taking it to the level many dreamed of while battling apartheid in South Africa.

Sun City in South Africa is known as the capital of gambling, where fortunes are spent in hopes of making even bigger fortunes. To those who would rather visit Sun City in South Africa than Cité Soleil in Port-Au-Prince, poverty is something to be running away from, not something to embrace. Even if these same people will make sure that their admiration for the one who epitomised poverty, Francis of Assisi, is well advertised and known. Should not such ongoing contradictions lead one to ask why more and more people are getting poorer and poorer, while a few accumulate wealth?

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa now boasts black billionaires, just like other African countries. Is it not possible to ask what would happen if the mindset which drives gambling turned to eradicate the differences between the Cités Soleil and Sun City?

Cité Soleil means Sun City in French, and that is where President Jean-Bertrand Aristide trained himself, beyond the reach of the mindset of the Haitian elite and beyond the bureaucratized seminarian teachings of love which sterilize at the same time as the teachings are going on.

But it was through such tight embracing solidarity with the poor people of Haiti, and not just those of Cité Soleil that President Aristide broke the comforting and comfortable chains of charity. Which is also why politician theoreticians, theologians and ideologues of all stripes, and from opposite corners, do not, or pretend not to, know where he belongs. Why, one hears them thinking, does he side with losers?

Of the admirers of Francis of Assisi we may ask: if your idol were to come back to earth, say in Haiti, where would he most likely go to ask for hospitality? Isn’t condemning poverty from the confines of billions in wealth and property the surest way of intensifying poverty and increasing the ranks of the poor? Canonised, Francis must be good to have on one’s side.

The mindset, which has been in place among the owners of capital, which led them to treat human beings as a means of further accumulation, is still as entrenched as ever: capital reigns supreme, not only through its own corporate structures, but also through subservient nation states which have become so submissive that they willingly dissolve themselves in front of it; and not just in the countries where structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and the IMF were pioneered, such as in Mobutu’s Zaïre.

Although invented by the military for military purposes, low intensity warfare against the poor can best be conducted using both economic, financial and real weapons, especially if, as is the case in Cité Soleil, it is done through hired soldiers from such places as Sri Lanka, Brazil, Jordan and Nigeria. Black on black violence has always been easier to defend and ignore ideologically than the white on black kind, especially in Haiti.

1. From Haiti to South Africa: 1804-1994-2004

For 13 years, 1791 to 1804, people from various parts in Africa, about 500,000 people, half of whom had been born in Africa, decided that slavery was inhuman. Rather than live under it, it was better to fight it, to death, if necessary. Without generals trained in military academies, without outside help of any kind. The Wretched of the Earth gave a 13 year long lesson in organisation, discipline, solidarity in order to bring about equality, fraternity and liberty. They did so without the help of human rights. Indeed, as will be argued below, this massive and successful trespassing played a crucial role in triggering human rightism as we know it today, a charitable way of helping, while preventing the kind of solidarity called for by the revolutionary slogan 'equality, fraternity and liberty'.

The slaves went further than the enlightenment philosophers ever thought possible. They went further then the leaders of the French Revolution were prepared to go in 1789. It was not until 1792-94, during the period of the Convention (known as the Terror) that slavery was finally abolished. The slaves had done the improbable, the impossible, the forbidden. In short, they had surpassed themselves and, in the process, they also trespassed.

The overthrow of slavery is still difficult to comprehend today. It does not fit easily into the ideological narratives of the left or the right. Aside from CLR James’ The Black Jacobins, that feat was so exceptional, given the times and probability of success, that it has not received the attention it deserved from historians, philosophers, theoreticians. At the same time, it receives persistent negative attention from the powers that be in the form of imposition of debt repayments (so-called compensation for the slave and plantation owners), invasions, occupations, international kidnapping of an elected president, prison, torture, and collective punishment of people from all walks of life whose only crime was fidelity to 1804.

With president Jean-Bertrand Aristide currently in involuntary exile in South Africa, it is difficult not to examine the relationship between anti-slavery and anti-apartheid, two battles which unfolded at different times, under different conditions, both with the common objective of seeking freedom.

Given the quasi house arrest under which Aristide is held in South Africa, is it unreasonable to ask oneself how the South African political leadership sees its role in the battle to bring Haiti to where it should have been, in the first place, since 1804? Could it be that Mbeki sees his role as reasoning with Aristide to accommodate to the demands of those who are in charge of the world today? The question may sound unfair and unreasonable. But is it? After all, Mbeki was the lone African head of state at the 200th independence anniversary in January 2004. The entire South African white owned press was rabidly against it.

Too many questions which should be raised, are not being raised. Why such a deafening silence only after President Aristide was given asylum in South Africa? Could it be that the two centuries of punishment, which has been inflicted on Haiti, has dampened the enthusiasm of those who might be tempted to stand by in solidarity?

Final question, how can any country, let alone an African one, lend its services to a process which included the kidnapping of a democratically elected president? It bears striking similarity to what happened more than 200 years ago when Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, was taken prisoner by the country which is known in history for its 1789 Revolution. By then, in 1802, everything was being done to quash what the Africans had done. Could it be that the leadership of South Africa has become so subservient to the powers that be (US, France, Canada, Vatican) as to allow itself to be seen as a willing participant in an operation more reminiscent of the times when Steve Biko was arrested?

From our collective histories, we might look at the role being performed by the South African leadership as similar to the one performed by Tshombe in Katanga, when the West needed to get rid of Lumumba.

2. From trespassing to collective, relentless, punishment (1825-1938/46)

With the rise of Napoléon, the process of collective punishment was initiated. Military attempts to reverse the victory of the Africans in Haiti failed. The Africans were able to repel the three best armies of the day: French, Spanish and English. By 1825 however, the Haitian government was forced by France, with the help of the US, Canada and the Vatican, to agree to pay compensation to the slave and plantation owners, in exchange for being accepted as a nation state. Repayments for the liberty of the former slaves were made until 1938, according to some, to 1946, according to others. Having lost militarily and politically, the former slave owners sought to reassert their authority, in the international arena, where their control was unchallengeable.

From the viewpoint of the former slave and plantation owners, they had to show that emancipation by the slaves, in their own terms, could not be acceptable, regardless of whether those terms (emancipation) replicated ideological tenets held by the slave and plantation masters.

The collective and severe punishment which followed 1804 is in line with the syndrome of discovery, which can be stated as follows: discoverers shall always be discoverers, and should discovered ones discover anything, especially something universally acceptable such as emancipation, they shall be put back in their place.

In the case of the slaves overthrowing slavery in Haiti, the virulent vengeance of the response has not abated, two centuries after the event. Indeed, the arsenal has grown bigger, multi-headed, more sophisticated.

Opponents of the eradication of slavery are still being corralled by the United States which has seen itself as guardian of the treasures and resources accumulated by and through their discoveries: USA, France, Canada, the Vatican; and they are not the only ones. The resort to the political and financial punitive measures mentioned above, combined with secular and religious ideological orthodoxies, were meant to divide the Haitian people.

As it has been observed in many post-colonial situations, a small privileged elite saw itself as the only worthy Haitians. The syndrome of discovery has remained as virulent as ever: slaves must not free themselves; the poor must not end poverty on their own terms. The poor of Sité Soley, by definition, according to the elite, must not have a voice, except as filtered or reframed by the media controlled by the elite.

3. From Full rights to human rights

The slaves wanted to be treated as full human beings with the same full rights available to the masters. In their battle, there was no plan B, no halfway to freedom. From the 1804 event, those who continue to suffer from injustices, structural and circumstantial, have been told the same message, over and over: only the discoverers can discover the solutions to injustices. Whereas the slaves battled for full rights, their descendants in Haiti and all over the planet are being told that their way out of oppression and exploitation can only take place through the charitable detours of Human Rights. The average person in the world can see for herself that the 1804 event has been followed by institutionalising processes aimed at sterilising all the possible consequences which could, and should, have led to more and more emancipation from the shackles born out of the capital accumulated through slavery, land theft in North America and colonial occupation.

Despite the pious mantras coming out of political, religious and financial centers of power, the majority of humanity continues to be enslaved by a dominant economic system which thrives on poverty. When US defence secretary McNamara left the Pentagon for the World Bank after the Vietnam debacle, he vowed to end poverty within a decade.

Having lost, the slave masters, the plantation owners and their allies did everything to ensure that the process of change should never be set by those who had suffered and been dehumanised the most.

The 100 plus years of repayments were about denying the Haitians the ability to invest in their future. And so it has been since: in the US, the abolition of slavery went hand in hand with measures aimed at ensuring that former slaves did not think they could just walk away from their masters. Angela Davis, in Are Prisons Obsolete?, highlighted what other writers before her had noticed: abolition gave way to the introduction of legislation aimed at keeping the former slaves in check, leading seamlessly to what has become known as the Prison Industrial Complex. In the south, the majority of the prison population turned, almost overnight, from white to black. It took a century for the former slaves to get the right to vote, but this voting has come with all kinds of institutionalised limits.

During colonial rule in the DRC, the end of colonial rule could only be envisioned as a series of half measures. The colonial subjects were forced or indoctrinated to think of themselves through the legal, administrative, social and political prism of the subjugators. By now, it should be clear: there must always be a sharp and unbridgeable gap between the rich and the poor, as there had to be between the coloniser and the colonised. Visible and non-visible 'no trespassing' signs are everywhere with the result that the poor keep getting poorer and the rich, richer.

4. From Kongo to Haiti to DRCongo: 1706-1757-2007

The way world history has been written by the victors had one prerequisite: make sure that the vanquished have no doubt about their vanquished status. It is not just that given episodes have different names (eg enlightenment, civilization, Cold War, development, globalisation). It is above all the erasure of the mindset of those who, against all odds, refused to submit to dehumanisation, not just in their own name, but in the name of the larger community, including those who were dehumanising them.

If the French government has finally passed a law acknowledging that slavery had been a crime against humanity, why then, have those who did fight it not been acknowledged as heroes, heroines, saints? Not just in France, but also in their own countries? Why hasn’t Kimpa Vita, (Dona Beatrix), burnt at the stake for denouncing the Kingdom of the Kongo's King for allowing the slave trade and slavery to continue, not been considered for sainthood by the hierarchy of the Catholic church? What prevents the current Congolese government from declaring her, and explaining in detail why, she is a national heroine?

In 1757, in Haiti, a man known Makandal was caught and burned at the stake in 1758 because he had been accused of having killed, by poisoning, many slave owners. A generation later, in 1791, another slave, Boukman, played a crucial role in the ritual which is considered as the start of the uprising which led to the 1804 victory. These are the well known names, but over and above them, millions of anonymous people battled dehumanisation, often falling into dehumanizing violence, but holding on to the conviction that slavery was a crime against life, against humanity. Why do we not see schools, hospitals and research institutes, from Mozambique, around the Cape to Senegal bearing the above names, as a way of reintroducing the way they thought and fought into our collective consciousness?

Haitian elites, generally, with a few exceptions, have ended up siding with the descendants of the slave owners, and it is these elites who worked hard to comply with the repayments. Theoretically, Aristide was a bona fide promising member of the elite, but he veered away from the elite and the Catholic Church hierarchy to follow a course reminiscent of that of Reverend Beyers Naude in South Africa, when he refused to go along with the Dutch Reformed Church's support of apartheid. The virulence with which some members of the Haitian elite have attacked Aristide makes one wonder whether it is less of a crime to discriminate against the poor in Haiti than to discriminate against the blacks in South Africa.

5. From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Patrice Lumumba to Samora Machel

These three leaders are national heroes in their own country. At the same time, it is not difficult to see that the current elites in those countries would rather maintain some distance from them. In all three cases, there has been reluctance on the part of those states responsible for their death to go beyond formal apology.

In the case of France and Toussaint, Louis Sala-Molin suggested that full recognition of responsibility and apology, say during the 1989 bicentenary of the French Revolution, could have been followed with placing Toussaint’s remains next to Napoleon’s sarcophagus in the Pantheon in Paris. Later on, the French state gave itself another opportunity to do exactly that by proclaiming slavery a crime against humanity. We are still waiting.

Following Ludo de Witte’s book The Assassination of Lumumba, coming after Adam Hochshild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, the Belgian state showed the same kind of cowardice. Again, it is not difficult to suspect the reasons: fear that people would seek revenge. This is the same mindset which prevented white South Africans from opening up for a long time: if they - the blacks - win, they will throw us into the sea. But, at the same time, just as in Haiti, a black South African elite has emerged which finds itself closer to those who have always vilified the likes of L’Ouverture, Lumumba or Machel. All the while, of course, singing the praises of Nelson Mandela.

The case of Samora Machel is the most interesting because it is the most recent. His figure is in the process of being erased from the historical conscience of Mozambique. Having died in a plane crash on 19 October 1986, the 20th anniversary was a low key celebration. And the reason why is obvious: 20 years after his death, things going on in Mozambique which would have been unacceptable to Samora Machel.

6. An open letter to world citizens

Dear friends,

203 years since the slaves of Saint Domingue overthrew slavery, against the most formidable armies of the day, humanity, not just the descendants of slaves, should be celebrating that event. But instead of celebration, one sees almost the exact opposite. UN troops, in Haiti are carrying out regular killings of babies, women, old people in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Port-Au-Prince, Cité Soleil. We should do better than just to stand by, shaking our heads, protesting occasionally. Should we not change gear in our daily lives and vow not to stop till Haiti is completely free as it was meant to be in 1804?

Instead of outraged solidarity, there is a massive silence, aside from a few solitary voices expressing solidarity, in various cities around the world. Sadly, some of the most well known anti-apartheid leaders, outside and inside South Africa have been ingenious at explaining the apathy, which really boils down to refusing solidarity with the inhabitants of a small island.

Why? One well known and courageous anti-apartheid leader (non-South African) went for the generic, easy, comment: 'until Haiti has an ANC type party which could be supported, it is not worth doing anything'.

Then there has been the vicious attacks against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, by members of the Haitian elite, who had no shame in publishing a letter in the white owned press of South Africa saying that Aristide is no Mandela. Well, thank God for that. Because even Mandela himself would hope that there are others from the continent and beyond, to carry on from the point reached in the battle against South African apartheid.

When looking in the rear mirror of history, from the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty, of stupendous spending on weapons systems as against the avariciousness for caring for people, it is easy to ask oneself: whether slavery, or more precisely, the mind set unleashed by the system, was ever abolished? More and more, it appears that slavery was simply modernised to get rid of the aspects standing in the way of cheapening labour.

With Auschwitz and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, it is not just labour which became cheaper. Life lost its sacredness and became dispensable on a massive scale. Leading Einstein to say, right after Hiroshima/Nagasaki that with the splitting of the atom, everything changed completely - except the way we think. Surely, my friends, it is high time to change the way we think if we are going to move on from that mindset. The same preoccupation could be asked differently: 'When did thinking as humans began to disappear?'

7. Who defines terror?

From the viewpoint of the discoverers, terror is only terror when it terrorises them, their descendants or their friends. Never, or so it seems, are they willing to imagine the terror which was experienced by the anonymous couple which, on any day in the 18th century, somewhere on one of those slave routes to the atlantic, armed mercenaries coming out of nowhere kidnapped them in the middle of the night and dragged them, screaming and crying at the same time.

Their terror can only be comparable to what would happen later during WW II, in Europe, when people would be dragged out of their houses to be put on cattle trains and sent to an unknown destination. The Africans were taken like cattle to waiting ships, packed like sardines. How would one document the terror they felt? Through their numbers, costs, bills of lading? Conceivably and imaginatively, the only archives where their terror could be found would be in the archives lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, and retrievable only through specially conducted healing ceremonies. Such terror, if it could be brought back to life for healing purposes, might help the monopolisers of terror and violence see for themselves the roots where it all begun.

Retaliating against terror with more terror can only mean the triumph of the terrorizing mindset, of terror as the best possible weapon. Fighting terror with terror is another way of taking us back to the mindset of the Cold War, which is but a continuation of the mindset which underlay slavery. It is a mindset which leads to death, not to life.

The anonymous couple was quickly separated: women on one side and men on another. Their peaceful lives had been violated, but what was to follow was beyond anything they thought other human beings could inflict onto others. Soon, their separation would be completed when she found herself on one ship; he, on another. Still, like any human being, she began to look on the positive side of things: she was still alive, in relatively good health, and, with a new life inside her womb, she had with her a bit of her husband: her duty was to protect this new life to the best of her ability. Being at peace in a context of violence is one of the most stressful tasks ever.

To summarise, it suffices to say that the ship captain had spotted her among the others, and informed the sailors to prepare her as one of his travel companions. The question is how, and who will ever tell the story of how she was raped repeatedly. How, she eventually decided to take her life by throwing herself off the ship.

More to the point, where and how to heal from such massive individual and collective indescribable wounds which are still rippling across the descendants, centuries later?

8. Who defines poverty?

Haiti, 'the poorest country of the, so-called, "Western" hemisphere' reads the lamentation billboards of the Western media. As if Haiti and its poverty is a stain on the image expected to be projected by the West. Or a tortuous way of warning those who might be interested in following the same route? You shall be crushed so badly that no one else would be tempted to think outside of the path traced by the discoverers and abolitionists.

The so-called poor of Cité Soleil do not see themselves as the poor framed by the crocodile tears shed by humanitarianists. The triumph of the slaves in 1804 happened because they did not dwell on being slaves; and so it is with the poor. The poor see themselves as being endowed with the capacity to overthrow the mindsets which keep insisting that they, the poor, can only be helped out of poverty by charitable gestures and structures.

Overthrowing poverty, like overthrowing slavery, can only be tackled, and succeed, as a political gesture. But because everything has been done and continues to be done by those who did not want the slaves to succeed, the battle over slavery, and its history, continues to this day. It extended into colonial rule, with the same message: do not ever trespass over the boundaries of power. If you do, expect the worse kind of punishment.

From 1804 to this day, the history of Haiti continues to unfold along two distinct paths: the one left by Toussaint and those who did overthrow the system; and the one which the slave owners, plantation owners and their allies could never ever let go, at the risk of losing more than their own possessions.

With globalisation, the stakes have not changed: on the one hand, there are those who state that the slaves were wrong. They did not know what to do with what they achieved, economically, politically. They inherited the economic jewel of the French colonial possessions, and 'ruined' it. Those who had lost that battle in Saint Domingue resorted to their allies to impose conditions on the new state which ensured that whatever economic gains the former slaves made would be siphoned off to those who had insisted on compensation.

In today’s world where everyone is being called to globalise or else in the wake of a system which has relentlessly modernised itself since the days of industrialised Atlantic slavery, should we not be proud to have amongst us people who are saying no to such a call? In these times of addiction to wealth seeking, is it not admirable to have people, known and unknown, who are refusing to be seduced by the promises of a system, the annihilating capacity of which, physical and spiritual, has reached incomensurable proportions?

We face today the same odds that the slaves in Haiti faced against the system, then in its infancy. Is it not true that we keep hearing that the only way to improve the lot of humanity is to forget our humanity in order to save ourselves later, by following the very mindset which has brought us to such a precarious point? Is it not true that, individually and collectively, we are being asked to stop exercising our capacity to think? Is it not true that we are being trained to look, with fear and mistrust at some of our best, non-violent life instincts?

The process of destroying humanity over the last 500 years never stopped. Now and then, it slowed down, but on the whole, from trespassing life to trespassing living, the system which emerged out of glorifying itself by attrition, against existing damning evidence, has now reached an unprecedented level of domination. By pretending that one suffering was worse than another, by pretending that comparing suffering was insulting to those who considered themselves the worse sufferers, that which was indivisible was cut to pieces.

Contemplating the disaster of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Albert Einstein is alleged to have said: 'With the splitting of the Atom, everything changed except the way we think'. Should we not change the way we think? Should we not trace back some of the thinking which was ignored?

From Hispaniola to Hiroshima, the splitting mindset did not just attack the atom. Long before the physicists got their turn, the process had proceeded, practically unopposed, against so-called savages and barbarians, with occasional defenders. The native Americans' land was taken away from them, with it, a way of thinking diametrically opposed to splitting the atom. From Hispaniola to Saint Domingue, the Arawaks were wiped out and replaced with people stolen, highjacked, terrorised away from their homes, their land, their fields in Africa. And yet, in Saint Domingue, the spirit of refusing to be split from humanity rose again, and against all the odds, triumphed, briefly, before revenge and collective punishment started again.

9. Who is the enemy?

The arsenal in place to eradicate humanity is visible everywhere: the armament industry could wipe out life on the planet and the planet itself several times over. Yet still, it keeps growing and being modernised. Have we not heard the argument before: if we shut down this or that factory, we would be taking jobs away from working people? But is it right to have a mindset which is always looking for enemies, even though such enemies only exist in the mindset of warmongers seeking to make sure that their products shall always have buyers?

Do we not live in a world dominated by advertising and entertainment industries living off the by products of warfare? It has been shown that war fought with weapons has become obsolete. That it is possible to annihilate your enemy by just manipulating the market. Has the triumphant mindset, such as it is, left only one exit for those looking for freedom? Have we not realised that this exit, framed by such a lethal mindset shall take us to a variation of something we have already seen, but only this time, worse? Could it be that little by little, by attrition, humanity has completely given itself and its capacity to think, and its sense of balance between the spiritual and the material, over to the market?

10. Is there really any interest in wiping out poverty?

It is not difficult to see that the poor are the potential enemies of the global system, as run by the corporations and their crumbling nation state allies. A social, political and economic system which has prospered on the basis of dividing, discriminating to death and thriving on competition is wired to reproduce competition and discrimination. There will be conventions against poverty, just as there has been conventions against genocide. Charitable structures shall be used to spread some of the dispensable, tax reducing profits. The system’s growth has thrived on generating poverty. But, ideologically speaking, it must present itself as wanting to do something about poverty.

The abolitionist mode did not work with slavery. There is no reason why it would work in abolishing poverty, unless anchored in building greater social solidarity between all members of humanity. In short, fidelity to humanity as affirmed at turning points such as in 1804 in Haiti would be the way of seriously getting rid of poverty. Such fidelity will not happen overnight, but can grow out of healing processes initiated away from corporations and states, between members of humanity.

* Jacques Depelchin, Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity

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

Ethiopian tanks guarding a Somali government base in Mogadishu opened fire on unidentified attackers on Thursday as clashes broke out in the capital for a second straight day.

Al-Jazeera reports that an Algerian court has sentenced several former banking executives to jail after finding them guilty of corruption following the collapse of the country's largest private bank.

Uganda's prime minister has approved a plan for thousands of hectares of a rain-forest to be replaced by a sugarcane plantation, a state-owned news agency told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday. Government officials said they were not aware of Apolo Nsibambi's decision to give part of Mabira Forest to a local sugar company.

Reporters Without Borders have reported that it had uncovered a major imbalance in election coverage of the two candidates to the presidential election run-off, ex cabinet minister Ould Sheikh Abdellahi and long-time opposition figure Ould Daddah, after a third week of monitoring state-run media.

FEATURES: Jacques Depelchin challenges global citizens to make links between poverty across the world
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Activist group Sokwanele: Talkin' about a revolution in Zimbabwe?
- Chenjerai Hove on the lack of leadership vision in Zimbabwe
- There is rising hostility towards China’s investments in Africa, says Peluola Adewale
LETTERS: On Mugabe and solidarity
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen wonders who our friends and who are our foes in Kenya
BLOGGING AFRICA: Nigerian elections, global warming in Africa, Miss Landmine 2007 in Angola
CULTURE & ARTS: News about Fespaco 2007, a poem by Khadija Heeger

WOMEN AND GENDER: Ghanaian women call for change
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Fighting in DRC Capital
HUMAN RIGHTS: Djibouti court jails rights activist
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Toward an Africa without borders
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Burundi massacre survivors resettled
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Nigerian court delays Vice-President’s case
AFRICA AND CHINA: Chinese money flows in Angola
CORRUPTION: Algerian bankers jailed for fraud
DEVELOPMENT: Initiative to improve remittance services launched
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: Rising TB cases in Tanzania link to HIV/AIDS
EDUCATION: All children must be educated together
LGBTI: Online exhibition on Sexuality and Social justice
RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: Rising racial discrimination undermines development goals
ENVIRONMENT: Freak waves swamp southern coastal areas
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Namibian government gives Bushmen long-lost land
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Somali journalist arrested
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Google moves into Rwanda, Kenya
PLUS: Courses, Seminars and Workshops and Jobs

*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

In an article by Thomas Rehle et al. in the March 2007 edition of the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ), an unparallelled large sample of 15 851 blood specimens was analysed to estimate HIV incidence on a national scale for South Africa, indicating that the availability of laboratory-based tests for recent HIV infection now offers a direct measure for tracking the epidemic and evaluating the impacts of prevention interventions.

The case of the Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who needs to be cleared from corruption charges to stand as a presidential candidate, could not proceed following the absence of a presiding judge, the court announced. The judge for the case, who flies from Lagos to Abuja, is expected to preside over the case on Tuesday

More than 18-million cubic metres of wood are indiscriminately cut down in Mozambique, mainly for firewood, each year, according to a report presented by Mario Falcao, a researcher at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, at a debate on the state of the country's forests held in Maputo.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has sacked his junior Lands Minister, a close ally, in a corruption crackdown aimed at stopping illegal allocation of housing plots, a presidential aide said on Monday. Deputy Lands Minister Moses Muteteka, who is married to a niece of Mwanawasa's wife Maureen, was sacked over allegations of illegal allocation of housing plots, press spokesperson David Kombe said.

Aids patients in Zambia are abandoning their life-prolonging drugs in exchange for bogus cures that have hit the market in recent weeks, a leading HIV/Aids advocacy group said on Monday. The Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/Aids (NZP+) said it has received reports that some of its members were stopping the use of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for fake cures being promoted in the media.

Twelve-year-old Woinishet Wujura's dedication to her gardening duties would be surprising in someone her age, but the land she is tilling has been a lifeline for her and her family because the farm is run exclusively by and for women and children affected by AIDS. The farm, called 'Gordeme', is part of a successful urban gardening project that started in 2004 and now has several farms across Ethiopia, all managed and maintained by about 10,000 women or children.

A welter of multi-billion dollar projects to rebuild Angola's devastated roads, airports and administrative buildings are part of a post-war reconstruction boom that is changing the face of the country. Much of the development has been dependent on oil-backed commercial credit agreements from countries such as China.

Health authorities in Burkina Faso have launched a mass vaccination campaign in the capital, Ouagadougou, to combat a rapidly spreading meningitis epidemic that has claimed more than 800 lives. “Ouagadougou has been hit to an extent that we did not expect,” said Jean Gabriel Wango, secretary general of the country’s health ministry.

The Mail & Guardian Online has created a new service that tracks the South African blogosphere.

Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi has said he believes an attack by gunmen on his convoy last week was an assassination bid by enemies opposed to his campaign to stamp out corruption in the small West African state. Yayi, a technocrat banker who was elected last year on a platform promising change, escaped unhurt when unidentified attackers opened fire on Thursday while he was campaigning in the north for parliamentary elections to be held on Sunday.

A stream that has sliced a narrow channel down the side of a rocky plateau in southern Malawi represents the best hope for making the refugees of Luwani Camp self-sufficient. If the UN refugee agency succeeds in finding the funds it seeks, a 15-metre-high dam will be built to block the gap through the extremely hard hornblende rocks and a portion of the Nkhombe River will be diverted into a pipe to transform agriculture at the refugee camp some 12 kilometres away.

The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from a village in southern Egypt because their mud-brick houses, which have sat atop some of the world's most treasured and ancient tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage onto priceless antiquities. The families have been resettled in a nearby planned community with running water and telephones.

The nearly 400 migrants who thought they were sailing to Europe from the West African nation of Guinea ended up ill, stranded and broke in Mauritania. Not that the gang smuggling them much cared. By the time the engines on the migrants' rust-eaten vessel, Marine I, failed far from European shores, the gang had long since cleared hundreds of thousands of euros in cash.

On 20 March 2007, journalists working in al-Jazeera's Nouakchott offices received death threats by phone. Then, at about 4:00 p.m. (local time), eight people marched into the premises. Journalist Mohammed Nema Oumar, head of communications for Rashid Mustapha, a failed first round candidate, was among this group. Police arrested four people and opened an investigation to find the other assailants.

Kenya has called on developed nations to extend support to developing countries to strengthen their capacity in tackling environment challenges. Addressing a two-day international conference on sustainable development underway in Nairobi, President Mwai Kibaki said African governments could not contain the enormous challenges of energy and environmental conservation on their own.

1. Programmes Manager - Eastern African sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI. Closing date 30th March 2007)

This is a senior position in the organization and the candidate should have an African Feminist Orientation. She will report to the Executive Director. The Programmes Manager will take charge of all the organization’s programming and advocacy work and will coordinate the programme departments and ensure delivery of outputs.

2:Communications and Networking Programme Officer (EASSI) Closing date 30th March 2007)

Will be in charge of ensuring that EASSI’s programmes, activities, values, plans and other relevant information is communicated to EASSI’s constituency and wider networks.

For further information on both jobs: Email: [email][email protected] and Website:www.eassi.org

The adoption in 2003 of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa was a major landmark in the life of the newly refurbished African Union. African feminist activists wasted no time in forming a pan-African network of women’s rights groups – Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) – that embarked on campaigning to get the fifteen ratifications needed to make the Protocol operational. Thanks to these efforts the Protocol came into force in November 2005. Experience had taught SOAWR members that for a regional human rights document like this Protocol to have real meaning for the women of Africa, it was crucial not only to have universal ratification but also to facilitate the implementation and popularisation of the Protocol. Therein lay the primary objective behind this edited collection. The book attempts to move the Protocol from the position of formal gender justice to substantive gender justice, by breathing life into its text, hence the metaphorical title, Breathing Life into the African Union Protocol on Women’s Rights in Africa. The objective is realised in a blend of astounding clarity, conciseness, and sharp analyses. The size of the book certainly belies its enormous value.

It has come to our attention that on Sunday 11 March 2007, Mr. Gift Tandare, a Zimbabwean citizen was shot and killed by police in Highfields, a suburb in the capital city of Harare. He was on his way to a prayer meeting. Zimbabweans from different walks of life had agreed to spend their Sunday, the traditional day of Christian worship, in collective fellowship as comfort to each other.

Human rights defenders are increasingly using computers and the Internet in their work. Although access to technology is still a huge issue around the world, electronic means of storing and communicating information are getting more and more common in human rights organisations. These issues are dealt with in a new manual published by Front Line.

An incisive new article by Akwe Amosu takes a critical look at Sino-African relations, in which she states that China’s march into Africa has reminded pundits of those two proverbial elephants fighting. Evoking the battle between East and West, they opine that it will be the grass that suffers - except in this instance, the people are the grass and one of the elephants is their own governments.

Dear colleagues:

You probably have already heard about the tragedy that befell Malian families in the Bronx this past Wednesday night. Eight children and their mother were killed in a fire which devastated a three-storey building in the New York City borough of the Bronx. It is so hard for the communities here to come to terms with such a terrible tragedy. The fire is suspected to have been caused by an electric heater in the basement.

Members of the community and throughout New York are responding kindly to the families and friends undergoing great pain at this time. African communities within the New York boroughs are also collectively reaching out in different ways.

If you can in your individual capacity reach out to the families, I believe that your gesture will be very much appreciated. The African Services Committee is collecting donations to help victims of the fire, including those were were injured and are currently in the hospital. Here is the website of the African Services Committee. I plan to go over to the Bronx tonight to pay my respects.

Thank you for your kindness and please feel free to pass this on to anyone who can help

Doreen Lwanga

Radio reporter Hassan Sade Dhaqane and several onlookers were arrested by government troops in the Mogadishu neighbourhood of KM 4 as he was covering a mine-clearance operation that had drawn a crowd. The government confirmed his arrest to Reporters Without Borders’ partner organisation in Somalia, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), but refused to say where he is being held. He has not been formally charged.

The Egyptian Minister of Education, Dr Yousry Al-Gamal, has officially launched the NEPAD e-Schools Demonstration (Demo) Project at Al-Haddain Secondary School in El Behaira Governate, Egypt. The project is a joint venture of the Egyptian Government, HP Consortium, ORACLE Consortium and NEPAD e-Africa Commission.
Egypt is the sixth country to launch the project after Uganda, Ghana, Lesotho, Kenya and Rwanda. It is also the first North African country to launch the NEPAD e-Schools.

This passed week has seen the government of Mugabe reach an all time low in the violence committed against Zimbabwean citizens. Following the murder of the MDC activist, Gift Tandare, and the arrest and torture of senior MDC officials, including leader Morgan Tsvangirai, one begins to wonder whether this is the final push of Mugabe before he falls over the abyss and the people of Zimbabwe can begin finally to rebuild the country he has devastated economically and morally.

A message from some of the activists beaten last Sunday reads.

'The assaults on Sunday were so terrible and surreal. Like watching a movie except that one was part of the characters. Strangely if it were to happen again many of us would love to be in the front line again. They were hitting us but they were the ones afraid. Our wounds will heal but the scars on their souls are permanent and they will take them to hell.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/295/blog_thisiszim.gif - presents a photo essay of the arrest of Mogan Tsvangirai and writes a list of atrocities committed by the government.

'Gift Tandere murdered by the police; MDC faction leader beaten and seriously injured; Activists shot while attending a vigil; Arrests continuing two days after the rally; Police searching for ’subversive material’; Evidence of widespread use of torture against high profile civil rights activists; Senior opposition figures ‘missing; Denial of legal representation; Ongoing police intimidation of civilians in Highfields, including possible use of violence; Scores of activists arrested.'

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Enough is Enough - reports that all of the 48 activists who were injured by the police were kept waiting for medical attention.

'Silence gripped the courtroom as the 46 arrested activists found their place among the chairs. It looked more of a hospital ward that a courtroom. In fact, the whole bruised lot deserved to be in hospital and not in a courtroom. ….Those who were seriously injured included Tsvangirai, the National Constitutional Assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku, the MDC’s deputy national treasurer, Elton Mangoma and deputy secretary for international affairs Grace Kwinje.'

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Final Push - has a report from SABC on how the Zimbabwean government justifies it’s violent actions against opposition leaders - Nathan Shamuyarira, secretary for information and publicity Zanu (PF), says Morgan Tsvangirai, has been 'asking for trouble for a long time'.

'Tsvangirai has been provoking violence in urban townships. "If you ask for that kind of trouble you'll get it," he said, referring to Tsvangirai. Morning Live's Vuyo Mbuli asked: "Was Tsvangirai beaten because he asked for it?" and Shamuyarira replied, "Yes he asked for it!"…………The Zanu (PF) representative maintains that the meeting held on Sunday was unlawful and all the people who attended it ignored government's call to ban mass meetings. He says all meetings, including those of the ruling party, have been barred. "The MDC is always playing to the gallery of the international community. They want to demonstrate to Britain and America that there is violation of human rights in Zimbabwe. So they provoke action with the purpose of impressing their overseas bosses.'

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Cry Beloved Zimbabwe - comments on the what he sees as the complicity of the South African government in the violence committed by Mugabe against the Zimbabwean people….

'The fact that South Africans cannot see nothing wrong even with surmounting evidence that MDC leaders have been tortured in custody means two things, they are complicit with the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and they are also heading the same way. Mandela once said it "the greatest question one has to ask is what did I do to help another human being in need" when he was invited to the British Labour Party in 2000 South Africans are intellectually challenged its no secret, most of them South African politicians waffle, there is little substance to what they say, most of the times its not their waffle which surprises me but the amount of waffle they are capable of producing. While the whole world over condemns the unlawful arrest, detention and torture of Zimbabwean political figures such MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai'

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Black Looks - publishes at obituary to murdered activists, Gift Tandare. Zorora Murugare by Zimbabwean feminist, Isabella Matambanadzo.

'His death is the result of repression. His grave will be a marker of how rights denied, end.In Zimbabwe, we live in a country where police run riot. Where our rights to lawyers and doctors are denied because certain elements of the state want to hold on to a kind of power that they can see they no longer have.'

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, and is Online News Editor of Pambazuka News.

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

It is incredibly important for people involved in struggles of different kinds to have space to share and learn from one another ways and strategies to strengthen their struggles. Women's groups, youth groups, land rights activists, environmental activists, etc., all have unique ways of expressing their disgust of multinational corporations' dictatorship over the world's wealth and people's livelihood. In Nairobi, Kenya we were again reminded of the strength of this space and the contribution it offers to each of these groups, reinforcing once again that "another world is possible."

I went to Kenya with a delegation of Abahlali and Land Matters Rural Network. Part of it was to expose the delegation to this space. More importantly, was to consciously commit to the idea that this is the space for grassroots comrades who are involved in these struggles to meet their counterparts from other countries to share their experiences. Since these comrades have been part of the workshop series "connecting to the WSF" that Mark Butler was chairing, it was very important to see the connections between what they thought WSF is or should be and what it really is.

I had been in one WSF before (2005 in Brazil) and a couple conferences of a similar type. The feeling of being part of a movement that actually believes that neo-liberal globalization can be overthrown is just unbelievably overwhelming. At the WSF people are not afraid to say what they think of Bush, Blair, Israeli occupation of Palestine, World Bank, IMF, unjust agrarian reforms, destruction of natural resources for more profit, etc.

I really thought it is much more powerful when this is shared by people who are actually involved in these sort of struggles, who will not have powerpoint presentations, but speak from the bottom of their hearts about hardships they endure under neo-liberal globalization in all its forms. It made me feel so angry all over again about the way our governments buy into the deals with multinationals, masking it as ways and means to improve people's livelihoods. I heard women from La Via Campesina saying it, also people of Kenya who live in shacks of Kiberia and Korokocho, the Anti Eviction Campaign, Abahlali, women from the LM Rural Network, etc.

It also made me realize that every time the organized poor start speaking for themselves it creates a serious crisis. NGOs overtly and or covertly try by all means to undermine movements of the poor. Some South African NGOs would literally compete for space and activities with the movements of the poor. With justice in reign, efforts of the organized poor always got rewarded. This was seen as hungry children of Nairobi demanded food from one of the stalls, and got it; ABM and AEC occupied one stall for the whole week; poor people of Kenya got into the WSF for free without paying any shilling; ABM and AEC co-hosting a session with CLP in one of the rooms.

Abahlali screening their own film at the Slum Theatre.

In the final analysis, I say, WSF is indeed a space for struggles. It is a space for struggles of the marginalized groups and formations. It is itself a place to struggle, as struggles of the marginalized come face to face with the struggles of their oppressors if not sideliners. It is for struggles against loneliness and ridicule by vanguardists. It is an awkward space where there is always a ferocious clash of fundamentals, between right and left, but more increasingly between left and left.

Overall it was an excellent experience of being with comrades whose struggle I really respect. To know more about people, to get confused together about the currency, to share meals and really rely on each other for safety, and to fight together for what we believe is just.

I guess now that I am away from WSF I will find time and means to support committed comrades in their struggles to connect to the rich experience shared and discovered in Nairobi. I will journey with the formations of the marginalized as they search and discover meanings for their struggles. It will be difficult of course to learn the culture of being led, since with all resources of an NGO it is very easy to join the struggle from the front.

Thanks to CLP for their commitment to justice, it is not going to be easy but its worth doing.

Aluta Continua!!!

* David Ntseng is an activist and a member of the The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement in Durban

The Darfur conflict, which has already left 400,000 dead, has destabilised Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic. At a summit in Cannes last month, all three countries agreed to respect each other’s territorial integrity, but the diplomatic activity conceals an international political deadlock over potential oil wealth.

The Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, OSSREA is organizing a workshop, whose prime objective is to develop and in some instances upgrade the skills of participants in peace research so as to enhance teaching and research capacity of UPEACE Africa Programme partners in Africa. Letters of application and supporting documents should reach UPEACE Africa Programme no later than Friday, March 30 2007.

An interim analysis from the Rakai Health Sciences Program Data and Safely Monitoring Board indicates that there may be a heightened risk of HIV transmission to female partners of recently circumcised men if sexual activity takes place before the surgical wound is completely healed. It also calls into question whether circumcision indirectly benefits uninfected female partners of HIV-infected men.

The internet was originally created as an open space for communication and sharing of information as well as a sight for freedom of expression. It has now become a place of danger for many. Danger of exposure of a personal nature, danger to those who criticise governments and multinationals, danger to proponents of free speech. But there are ways of fighting back against censorship and attacks on privacy. Dmitri Vitaliev explains how.

Imagine teaching Biology to 9th graders and realising that the material for this day's lesson, be it on HIV or contraception, has been blocked by your friendly ISP's (Internet Service Provider) web content filter as falling into the 'pornography' category of its software. In fact, all websites containing the word 'sex' get routinely blocked, be they about online escort agencies or anthropology.

Imagine two burly types appearing at your door with questions regarding the email you sent to your overseas friend last week. Yes, you did mention in your message how unhappy you were with the elections in your country, but you clearly remember sending it just to him. How did these guys hear about it?

Imagine being exposed in your local newspaper as an admirer of communism, or fascism, or as having bad breath, venereal disease or fondness for marijuana? You had kept these secrets to yourself, merely satisfying your urge for knowledge on the Internet at home. You did not sign up to any mailing lists, did not create any accounts or logins - how did this information get out?

These and many other scary scenarios are becoming reality with ever worrying frequency. Not only people are unaware of the dangers they face when using the Internet, they are actively nonchalant to the fact that ALL email they send and the Internet sites they visit are being recorded, and this information is being stored by global corporations and governments for reasons of homeland security, financial benefit etc.

According to Reporteurs Sans Frontiers [1] there are currently 60 people imprisoned for their activities on the Internet. “Cyberdissidents” is the name attributed to those who are persecuted for publishing or seeking information online. Although the majority of such cases occur primarily in China, the trend is quickly spreading, with countries like Syria, Tunisia, Iran, Vietnam, Egypt, Lybia etc. actively pursuing and jailing those wishing to express their opinions on the World Wide Web.

Where did it all go wrong? How did the Internet - a revolution in global communication, inclusiveness and understanding turn into a watchdog ready to pounce on us for a wrong word here, a bit of curiosity there?

The first bits...

The foundations of today's Internet were laid in the 70's by the people working for ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) in the United States. Robert Khan demonstrated the ARPANET during a Computer Communications Conference in 1972 and laid the first stone for the grand daddy of the Internet.

According to the Internet Statistics Survey [2], there were over 1 billion Internet users in January 2006. It has become a primary method of information storage and exchange for many people. In its essence, it encourages participation and global community awareness.

In the beginning, most people assumed that the Internet would not be popular, for too much investment was needed to make it a useful source of information, similar to a library. The breakthrough came when it became clear that anyone could construct web pages and contribute to them. Amazon.com was flooded with book reviews, while enthusiasts of various sports or hobbies would start their own websites, inviting like-minded people from anywhere in the world to join them in discussions, thus creating a virtual community. People embraced the technology and the possibilities offered by the Internet.

The Internet crossed administrative and geographic boundaries with the ease and speed never seen before. It provided a pioneering method of communication, in which one's voice could be heard simultaneously by all those connected. As opposed to traditional media, where information is sourced, rationed, edited and summarised – on the Internet people choose what they want. They are not fed political propaganda, celebrity news or sports round-ups unless they choose them. Users select what they want to read, who they want to communicate with and which truth is the right one for them. We hear of events minutes after they happen without any journalist present at the scene. All it takes to tell the story one has just witnessed (with photos and possibly audio/video) to a worldwide audience and at no cost is a single person with a mobile phone, or sitting in an Internet café. Unsurprisingly, this has caused a major headache for the countries wishing to maintain political, social and religious freedoms of their citizens within their grasp and influence.

Who bytes?

The Internet was meant to be an open platform, connecting the world through a protocol that made communication easy and instantaneous. Computer software was written to assist us in difficult tasks and make this process easier and quicker to perform. Neither had considered security an important feature for the digital world of tomorrow. And both have been catching up ever since.

In essence, the Internet is just a bigger version of your office network. It is also just a bunch of computers, connected by cables, and assisted by servers, routers and modems. Even though your message on the Internet may cross an ocean via an underground cable, bounce off two different satellites and be delivered to someone's mobile phone on a moving train - the system resembles an updated version of the telephone exchange. And when you are an operator, or a wire tapper, or a jealous boyfriend - all you need to do is create an additional receiver on the communicating line and you will hear the entire conversation that goes on. The same with the Internet. Anyone can intercept and read your message on its way around the computers of the world. And so it happens.

Internet surveillance systems have been implemented at national levels for some time. In 1998, the Russian government passed a law stating that all ISPs must install a computer black box with a link back to the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) to record all Internet activity of its citizens at their own cost. The system is known as SORM-2. The United States introduced a similar system - CARNIVORE. China’s ‘Golden Shield’ project was announced on 2001. Rather than relying solely on the national Intranet, separated from the global Internet by a massive firewall, China is preparing to build surveillance intelligence into the network, allowing it to 'see', 'hear' and 'think'[3]. A global surveillance system known as ECHELON (reportedly run by the United States in cooperation with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) was set up at the beginning of the Cold War for intelligence gathering and has developed into a network of intercept stations around the world. Its primary purpose, according to the report [4], is to intercept private and commercial communications, not military intelligence.

Surveillance and monitoring techniques have passed from the hands of intelligence personnel to the hardware and software systems, operated by private companies and government agencies. Phone bugging and letter opening has been superseded by the technology that allows monitoring of
everyone and everything at once. Now, we are all under suspicion as a result of the surveillance and filtering systems our governments install on the Internet. The technology does not often differentiate between users as it waits for certain keywords to appear in our email and Internet searches and, when triggered, alerts surveillance teams or blocks our communications.

For instance, when surfing the Internet in Iran, if you were to type in any of the following words into the Google search engine, your query will be blocked and fail:

condom
annmarie
chandice
chastity
bath
belly
dita
ebony [5]

Apart from feeling puzzled while guessing how someone searching for the word 'bath' could be plotting to undermine the current Iranian government, you have to bear in mind that the above words are for English languages web searches, and if you wish to surf in Farsi from Iran, you would encounter many other words, including 'woman', 'human rights' and so on.

Surfing the Internet from Hoi Chi Minh city (Vietnam), you would find that access to websites from Human Rights Watch, Hao Hao Buddhism Organisation, Committee for Religious Freedom, all opposition and most pro-democracy sites and many others is blocked [6]. Your Internet browser will show a blank page, explaining that the URL (the address of the website) is not allowed. These type of denial messages differ from one filtering state to another. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, you will be presented with an online form to fill in, should you wish to protest against the censoring of a website. Needless to say that few would be willing to submit their name and address as those opposing the government policy to the communication police. Browsing to a banned website from Tunisia will just bring up a message saying that nothing exists under that name (a 403 error in techspeak). Repeated attempts of access to blocked websites will cause your whole Internet connection to crash, should you be surfing from China. Probably the most sophisticated surveillance and censorship system anywhere in the world, the Chinese filters will begin to block any Internet queries should you repeat your attempts of accessing a banned website, and you could soon expect a visit from the police to your house.

The Chinese are able to pinpoint an Internet operation from your computer to the house where you live because every time we are on the Internet we receive what is known as an IP address. It acts as a unique identifier, like a postal address, to pinpoint our computer on the global network. Any IP address can be traced back to your Internet Service Provider and, more often than not, they keep a list of which client gets what IP address at a given time. In most countries ISPs are obliged to cooperate with the local government and provide details of who was browsing under what IP. This methodology was used to crackdown a worldwide Internet paedophile ring last month [7]. Whilst we may all agree with using this technology for the purpose of catching paedophiles and terrorists, the problem arises when we realise that these methods are being used to trace and punish a wide variety of Internet users operating within international legislations and moral covenants. You and I, in other words.

Writing this article in a local café with a wireless Internet connection for its customers, I was able to perform some surveillance of my own. Choosing the unsuspecting café punters sitting around the room on their Apple laptops, I switched on a 'sniffing' program that I had downloaded for free from the Internet [8] a few minutes ago. Within 30 seconds I was able to read that Roger was writing to Jessica about meeting up next week at this very café to discuss some sort of a publishing event. If I were up to malice, I could have written Jessica another email, purporting to be Roger and change our place of meeting...

Biting back...

Newton's third law of motion states that 'For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction'. It applies to the Internet as well. In lieu of the surveillance and censorship infrastructures described above, the Internet community has come up with many options of bypassing these blocks and protecting your privacy. Tools range from a simple webpage that will help you to circumvent the censorship rules in your country to installing on your computer an anonymity system that would nullify the majority of sophisticated surveillance and filtering systems.

Whenever you cannot access a website from your country, you could ask another computer on the Internet to do it for you. This is known as using a proxy server, as this intermediary computer becomes a proxy between you and your desired website. There are numerous proxy services on the Internet, the easiest of which are web-based proxies. This means that all you need is to access a website, from which you can continue to browse the Internet unrestricted by your in-country censorship rules. A popular service is provided by Peacefire (www.peacefire.org), and if you sign up to their mailing list, you will receive news of all new web-based proxy sites they are setting up every fortnight or so.

If you have a group of friends in a country where the Internet is not censored, you could ask them to install a proxy server on their computer for you to use. A recent program, released by the CitizensLab in Toronto, has made this process incredibly simple and quite secure. The program is called Psiphon (www.psiphon.civisec.org) and will allow anyone with an Internet connection and the Windows operating system to install a web-based proxy on their computer. Your friend will then provide you with the IP number and password for accessing their proxy. Since this system is based on closed trust networks (small groups of friends), it is quite difficult for the surveillance agencies to detect and block.

A more sophisticated approach would be to join one of the anonymity networks that exist on the Internet. Browsing the Internet through such a network would disguise your true identity from any computer or website and will probably make any filtering in your country powerless to stop you. One such network is Tor (http://tor.eff.org), with an interface in many different languages and a huge team of supporters and contributors around the world. When you are using Tor, the ISP or the national surveillance agencies do not know what websites you are looking at and hence cannot prevent you from doing so. The website that receives your query does not know where this query originated. You are even hidden from the anonymity system itself - i.e. no one in the Tor network can successfully pinpoint you to a certain location.

There are many other tricks and methods to achieve a higher level of privacy and security on the Internet. They include different types of encryption - a way to make your information completely unreadable to all but the intended party; steganography - hiding text in a picture or sound file or even in other text; choosing good passwords to protect your Internet accounts and so on. There is not enough space in this article to dwell upon them all, but you could refer to numerous publications and blogs out there on the Internet.

Please note that in the world of security nothing is 100% guaranteed. You must be aware of the security provided by the tool you choose and its possible vulnerabilities. In other words, should you wish to increase the security and privacy of your operations, you must take time to study the possible risks and outcomes yourself, in order to decide which is the right tool for you and when you should refrain form using it.

Last bits...

This article touches but a tip of the iceberg of all the issues of Internet security. I hope it makes you feel a little worried for this is often the only way to bring about change in your habits and processes. If security and privacy are important to your work and leisure activities, then don't feel too comfortable next time you sit down behind a computer. There is a Big Brother out there and he is probably watching you.

But don't throw up your hands in despair. Install one of the tools mentioned above or those available on the Internet. Many do not agree with the way the Internet is being reigned and controlled. Start fighting back for that very basic reward - your rights.

Dmitri Vitaliev is the author of the recently published book titled 'Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders' [9] (http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/manual/en/esecman/) and the co-editor of the NGO in a Box - Security Edition (http://security.ngoinabox.org) project.

[1]
[2] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
[3] Privacy International www.privacyinternational.org - Privacy and Human Rights Report 2004
[4] European Parliament, Temporary Committee on the Echelon Interception System (2001) Report on the Existence of a Global System for the Interception of Private and Commercial Communications (ECHELON interception system) , May 18, 2001.
[5]
[7] www.wireshark.org
[9] http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/manual/en/esecman/

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/295/Genetically-modified-rice.j... introduction of genetically modified rice into Africa is being justified by presenting it as a solution to diarrhoea, responsible for 2,000,000 deaths per year (mainly children) in the global South. However there are other very simple means of reducing cases of diarrhoea such as improved sanitation and cleaner, free water supplies.

On 6 March 2007, it was reported in the media that a new variety of Genetically Modified (GM) rice containing human genes obtained preliminary approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for large-scale planting in Kansas. California-based Ventria Bioscience, the developer of the rice, claims that it can be used to treat diarrhea. A BBC TV report on 6 March 2007 showed images of African children in a hospital as an example of some supposed beneficiaries of the new rice.

Friends of the Earth Africa believes that our continent does not need genetically modified solutions to diarrhea and condemns the use of African children as a tool to promote the new GM rice produced by Ventria Bioscience. Diarrhea is an illness that has well-known causes, and proven, inexpensive solutions. Ventria’s GM rice is unproven, unnecessary, and a distraction from ongoing programmes to save children suffering from diarrhea on our continent.

Monitoring activities undertaken by Friends of the Earth Africa in 2006 revealed that Africa has been contaminated by illegal GM rice LL601 in Ghana and Sierra Leone, main African recipients of rice as commercial imports and food aid from the US.

The dust raised by the revelation of the contamination of the food chain by an illegal rice variety, LibertyLink Rice601 (LLRice 601), had barely settled when news arrived of new contamination episodes in other parts of the world. On the 5 March 2007, the USDA announced that it was prohibiting the planting of another type of long-grain rice after confirmation of a new case of contamination. The genetically modified contaminant detected in a long-grain rice variety known as Clearfield CL131 was not authorised for commercialisation. Therefore, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) decided to prevent its planting and distribution.

Just a few days before this latest contamination episode, it was reported that the USDA had given preliminary approval to a large-scale planting of a new variety of GM rice containing human genes. The rice, produced by a company called Ventria Bioscience, has been engineered to produce recombinant human milk proteins to be extracted from the rice for a variety of suggested uses. In the media, Ventria claims these proteins will be used in oral rehydration solutions to treat diarrhea. But elsewhere, the company says it will use them as supplements in yogurt, sports drinks and granola bars.

If that earlier contamination was worrisome, the USDA’s support for planting up to 3200 acres of Ventria’s 'pharmaceutical rice' is even more so. We are particularly concerned that this massive planting of drug-containing rice is going forward even though the US Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve Ventria’s recombinant pharmaceutical proteins as safe.

The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to raise many socio-economic, cultural as well as ethical questions, besides environmental and health concerns.

This rice is being produced by Ventria Bioscience, a biotech company based in California, USA. According to Ventria Bioscience, the rice, which will be planted on up to 3,200 acres in Kansas, is endowed with human genes that produce recombinant versions of human proteins, including bacteria-fighting compounds found in breast milk and saliva. If Ventria’s application is fully approved by USDA, this will be the largest planting of a drug-producing food crop in the US.

Ventria has been field-testing rice engineered with human genes since 1996 to produce three pharmaceutical proteins–lactoferrin, lysozyme and serum albumin. When farmers, consumers and food companies protested against their field trials in California and Missouri, concerned that the engineered crops would contaminate rice destined for the food supply, Ventria shifted to Kansas.

According to analysts, pharmaceutical (pharma) crops such as Ventria's rice pose a threat to human food supply and public health, as the proteins they contain are intended to be biologically active in humans, yet have not undergone adequate testing or received FDA approval as drugs, and thus may thus be harmful if eaten accidentally. The chances of contamination are also high when such compounds are produced in food crops grown outdoors. The contamination routes are numerous, including cross-pollination and seed mixing during commercial growing and seed production.

Ventria’s rice has already been publicized in many written and audiovisual media as an important solution to one disease that particularly affects poor children in the Third World: diarrhea. On 6 March, a BBC report showed images of ill African children in a hospital as an example of some of the supposed beneficiaries of that new GM rice.

'We can really help children with diarrhea get better faster. That is the idea', said Scott E. Deeter, president and chief executive of Sacramento-based Ventria Bioscience. The proponents of this GM rice say they want to widely introduce their products into oral hydration solution,'which is consumed by at least half of the world’s children'. They define their product as 'the Holy Grail' of rice and assert 'that is what every mother would want for their child'.

From the company’s sources, an experiment using this technology has already been conducted in Peru on 140 infants from five to 33 months in age, in hospitals attended by the poorest sectors of the population. Several reports indicate that parents of the children were not adequately informed of the experimental nature of the treatment, and at least two mothers of infants in the clinical trial reported that their infants suffered from allergic reactions, causing the Peruvian government to launch an enquiry into the experiment.

Does Africa need a genetically modified solution for diarrhea? Diarrhea is responsible for over 2,000,000 deaths every year, the majority in the Third World. Despite being a major cause of deaths among children, particularly those under five years old, today there are already well-known measures to prevent and treat diarrhea. In fact, these proven and effective measures have already reduced the mortality rate of children suffering from diarrhea from 4.600,000 deaths in 1980 to 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 million deaths today, and is regarded as one of the greatest medical achievements of the 20th century.

Simply put, when a person has loose or watery stools, he has diarrhea. If mucus and blood can be seen in the stools, he has dysentery. It can be mild or very serious and may come suddenly or remain for many days. It is known that the disease is more common among young children and especially so with the undernourished ones. A well nourished child would usually recover from a case of diarrhea even without any medical treatment. For a poorly nourished child, on the other hand, an attack of diarrhea can easily prove fatal.

One of the most prevalent causes of diarrhea is linked to the limited access to safe water supply and sanitation coverage. In Africa, nearly 40 per cent of the population has an unsafe water supply and poor sanitation coverage. The World Health Organisation (WHO) found that a reduction in the number of diarrhea cases and deaths due to diarrhea was directly related to access to safe water supply and sanitation services. As the Water Quality and Health Council indicates, 'if access to safe water and sanitation coverage were improved there would be a smaller frequency of diarrhoea cases', which consequently would mean that patients would avoid costs related to treatment expenditures, drugs, transportation and time spent going to hospital and clinics. The WHO concluded in a 2004 study that simple technologies for improvement of water and sanitation 'would lead to a global average reduction of 10% of episodes of diarrhoea'. WHO concludes that if the level of intervention was higher, the reduction of diarrhea episodes could be higher: 'access to in-house regulated piped water and sewerage connection with partial treatment of waste waters, could achieve an average global reduction of 69 per cent'.

Diarrhea is a symptom of infection caused by a host of bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms most of which can be spread by contaminated water. It is more common when there is a shortage of clean water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, and basic hygiene is important in prevention. Water contaminated with human faeces, for example from municipal sewage, septic tanks and latrines, is of special concern. Animal faeces also contain micro-organisms that can cause diarrhoea. Diarrhea can also spread from person to person, aggravated by poor personal hygiene. Food is another major cause of diarrhoea when it is prepared or stored in unhygienic conditions. Water can contaminate food during irrigation, and fish and seafood from polluted water may also contribute to the disease (World Health Organisation).

It is important to note that diarrhea usually lasts a day or two and goes away on its own without any special treatment. Only prolonged cases, however, present indications of other problems Thus, special treatment for diarrhea is needed only occasionally. What children suffering from this condition need is rehydration as they lose a lot of water through the diarrhea. There are already very cheap and accessible ways of fighting dehydration by simple oral rehydration therapy.

It is obvious from the above that the world does not require rocket science in order to combat incidents of diarrhea. More than anything else, what is needed is basic hygiene, safe water access and the provision of infrastructure that would support that. Moreover, investing in GM solutions when 'simple' solutions exist constitutes a diversion of energies from the already challenging objective to guarantee the right to clean water and sanitation.

Interventions

Key measures to reduce the number of cases of diarrhea include:
- Access to safe drinking water
- Improved sanitation
- Good personal and food hygiene
- Health education about how infections spread.

Key measures to treat diarrhea include:
- Giving more fluids than usual, including oral rehydration salts solution, to prevent dehydration
- Continue feeding
- Consulting a health worker if there are signs of dehydration or other problems
(World Health Organisation).

African children have been used once again in the media in order to facilitate acceptance for a new product which is not needed in our continent. Diarrhea is a disease with well-known causes, as well as solutions. If deaths from a preventable disease such as diarrhea are to be stopped, more efforts should be undertaken to tackle its causes and greater investments should be made in improving basic water and sanitation conditions in our continent.

We once more state that Africans do not need GMOs and by no means want 'medicine crops' beyond the ones already supplied by nature. Africans do not need these expensive, experimental fixes.

* Nnimmo Bassey is the Director of Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria)

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/295/Street-kids-Kibera-Nai.jpgCape Town's recent by-law, the 'City Streets, Public Places and Public Nuisance Act', not only adds to the vulnerability of the homeless, especially street children, by dispersing them to outlying locations around the city where there are no support mechanicisms, but may also lead to the criminalisation of poverty and homelessness in South Africa.

On 31 May 2006; the Cape Town City Council adopted a by-law relating to City Streets, Public Places and Public Nuisance after a vote yielded the result of 126 in favour and 82 against. The by-law deals with a range of issues such as trees in streets, control of goods offered for sale, the drying of washing on fences and boundaries, poison in streets and the conveyance of animal carcasses. The section which has been most problematic is that dealing with 'prohibited behaviour'. This includes intentionally touching another person or their property without consent, continuing to beg after someone has said no, starting or keeping a fire, erecting any form of shelter or sleepingor camping overnight and bathing or washing in public. The lumping together of human beings and toxic waste within one piece of legislation has sparked outrage in some quarters, with others taking offence at the references made to the poor and disadvantaged as 'nuisances'.

Despite the by-law having been adopted and published in the provincial gazette on June 23, 2006; a number of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other concerned parties raised a number of concerns with the manner in which the by-law was passed through the system so quickly as well as the fact that it seemed to be utterly contrary to the inclusive spirit of the South African Constitution. It was then decided by the city to refer the by-law for further public participation, a process which is ongoing and often seems less than transparent. A number of NGOs, including Molo Songololo, SWEAT, The Big Issue, Tutumike, One Love, the Right to Work Campaign and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (COSATU) as well as a number of others have formed a task team opposing the by-law. The task team is a coalition of organisations that work with a diverse range of interest groups in and around Cape Town, they have stated that their opposition to the by-law is not allied to party political issues, but is instead a an independent and legitimate initiative of civil society organisations to engage organs of the state in the process of constitutional democracy.

According to a joint press statement by the task team, 'Despite minor alterations and claims to the contrary from the City, this by-law remains a pernicious piece of legislation which will impact inequitably on the poorest and most vulnerable members of our communities. It undermines the legitimacy of the law-making process and makes a mockery of the notion of Cape Town as a Home for All'. Key concerns include the manner in which the by-law specifically targets marginalised and vulnerable sectors of the community, prevents the poor and unemployed from making a living on the streets, criminalises the poor and does not compliment or support broader poverty alleviation, crime prevention and development strategies. There are also concerns as to whether or not the implementation of the by-law would be in violation of such constitutionally protected rights as equality, human dignity, freedom and security of the person and freedom of movement.

The Big Issue, a member of the task team, is a socially responsible job creation project which publishes a monthly magazine, which is sold to vendors for R6 and can then be sold for R12. Vendors are then allocated pitches at various points around Cape Town (such as intersections and outside shopping malls) from which they sell the magazine.

According to Do Machin, Social Development Manager at The Big Issue, 'The provisions of this by-law are going to create a more difficult climate for vendors to do the work that supports them and their families, whilst they are in the process of trying as hard as they can to create better lives and futures for themselves and those they support'. Machin also feels that the by-laws will have a detrimental effect on the developmental work being done by various NGOs. 'From our experience at The Big Issue we know that development work with people living and working on the streets is long-term, dependent on the kind of outreach work which builds relationships of trust and includes each individual as an active partner in that work. The provisions in the by-law which allow for the fining and arrest of people who find themselves in the position of having to survive from day to day, often hour to hour, are antithetical to the development process, and will not improve the situation in the long-term, as well as being an infringement of basic human rights and dignity'.

As to why The Big Issue is member of the task team, Machin unequivocally states that 'The Big Issue's participation in the task team is based on the belief that this City and its people, especially the poorest, most marginalised and vulnerable, need and deserve something much more forward thinking, humane and realistic than this piece of legislation'.

The problem which the City Streets, Public Places and Public Nuisance by-law highlights is an insidious one which affects a number of Capetonians and is a sad remnant of our oppressive past. For some people, the poor, whether they are children or adults, are viewed as a blight, an irritation and something which is best described by the age-old adage 'out of sight, out of mind'. They are seen not as fellow human beings but rather as something dirty and unpleasant, they are described as lazy and annoying and are ignored whenever they happen to cross our paths. This class discrimination is disturbingly evident in the public submissions made to the Mayoral Committee regarding the by-law, and include such shocking sentiments as 'citizens should be able to go about their daily business unhindered by these problems, there have been many occasions when I have avoided using shopping centres due to vagrants in the parking areas and entrances' and 'the implementation of this by-law will enable law enforcement to to stop my family from being harassed by beggars, illegal car washers, car repairers, car guards and hawkers'.

The Homeless and vulnerably accommodated in Cape Town remain soft targets and if promulgated the by-law would simply add to pre-existing discriminatory practices and attitudes. Perhaps none are more vulnerable than the children who call the streets of Cape Town home. These children are misunderstood and mistrusted by the general public. According to Sandra Morreira, Director of the Homestead (a project which works specifically with street children), her biggest fear regarding the by-law is that it 'will enable the Metro police to round up the children whenever they want to, if they refuse to move on when instructed to do so and lock them up for a while. It will also give the police many more ways of hassling them and making it impossible for them to survive on the streets'.

As it is, Morreira says that there have been reports of children being forcefully removed from the CBD and dumped in Muizenberg or up Table Mountain, as well as general harassment such as pulling off their blankets and hitting the children.

Hip hop artist and founder of the Brown foundation, Ryan "Brown" Dalton spent three and a half years getting to know Cape Town's street children and now focuses on preventative work and he says that government generally employs strategies which tend to focus on getting rid of street children rather than helping them. Dalton sees the by-law as directly targeting children and adults living on the streets. 'By doing this we are criminalising the children and and introducing them to a life of crime, for very petty things. I have seen cases of children, with no history of criminal activity, being locked up for something as petty as loitering. In some of these instances the children get sent to a juvenile facility, where instead of being rehabilitated, they are introduced to gang life.' Of course, such a system then creates real criminals out of children who could have been reintegrated into society at a much lower cost.

According to Patric Solomons, Director of Molo Songololo (an NGO dealing with children's rights), 'the public has very little care for children living on the streets, they are seen as nuisances'. Molo Songololo has also received reports of children being removed from the city centre and dumped in areas such as Belville, Eerste River and Khayelitsha as well as being physically assaulted, having their possessions confiscated and officials soliciting bribes form them. Solomons says that if the by-law is promulgated the children will be harassed and criminalised and that the by-law is reactive rather than preventative. 'The by-law can be used to clean selected areas in the City of Cape Town, such an application will be equal to apartheid when certain laws applied to certain people.' Here Solomons hits upon an important point, the by-law will inevitably be selectively applied and enforced mostly in affluent areas or where there are large numbers of tourists and businesses. The by-law would make provision for people to live in informal settlements but not in doorways in the CBD, what is the difference? Whether or not the by-law is promulgated and openly enforced, one can only hope that the attitude of apathy and disdain, which many Capetonians seem to exhibit towards those who cannot afford nice houses, cars and three-ply toilet paper and are instead forced to make a life for themselves on the streets of our city. will eventually become more humane and inclusive. Until then, if you do not want to buy what they're selling or give them you're spare change, why not at least leave them with their dignity, it doesn't cost anything.

* Bronwen Dyke is assistant editor of The Big Issue Magazine in Cape Town

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

This joint report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and the Kenya Human Rights Commission examines the Kenya police, looking particularly at illegitimate political control, the impact of that control on policing, and the reform answers that will provide a more democratic and accountable police service to the Kenyan people.