Breastfeeding of babies by a non-biological caregiver with HIV is one of the most important factors associated with HIV infection in children. A study released in Cape Town this week also found that there is a potential for health-care acquired transmission of HIV in the maternity, paediatric and dental facilities in the Free State health institutions. It was revealed that besides the most obvious route of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, breastfeeding of babies by a non-biological HIV positive caregiver was the single most important factor associated with HIV infection in children.

The continuing stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea could lead to another war, a senior Eritrean government official said on Friday, noting that under international law, Ethiopia continued to occupy Eritrean territory. Under the Algiers Peace Agreement of December 2000 – which ended a two-year war between the two countries - they agreed to accept the decision of an independent boundary commission on where the border between them should be.

Back in 1997, 13 Senegalese villages publicly declared that they would no longer permit female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM) as it's called by critics. In the eight years since, the number has grown to 1,527, representing 30 percent of Senegalese communities where FGM has been practiced. Dozens more villages are preparing to make similar declarations in the coming months. The sea-change in Senegal is being credited to a slow but steady program of human rights education that allows villagers to make up their own minds about whether to abandon female circumcision. Spearheaded by a local rights agency called Tostan, the program's success is proving so eye-catching that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is endorsing it as a model.

On 29 March 2005, Moussa Tchangari, director of the Alternative Media Group, was jailed at the Penal Camp in Daikaina, located about 160km from Niamey. Tchangari, who was charged on two counts of "undermining the authority of the state and calling for an unarmed gathering", is also the communications secretary for the Democratic Coalition of the Civil Society of Niger (CDSCN), one of the organisations calling for the withdrawal of a value added tax imposed on food products, water and electricity earlier this year.

A recent advertising campaign is touting the benefits of vitamin therapy above antiretroviral therapy and claiming that antiretroviral therapy is toxic. These advertisements are wrong and misleading, said the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in a statement. WHO, UNICEF and UNAIDS have condemned the irresponsible linking of their names to claims that vitamins and nutrition therapy alone can prevent AIDS deaths.

Mount Kilimanjaro is drying up. Climate change, coupled with widespread deforestation of the slopes, is melting the ice and snow that has crowned Africa's highest peak for more than 11,000 years, dramatically altering the surrounding ecosystem. Scientists warn most of the glaciers may be gone by 2020.

In the latest corruption scandal to rock Nigeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo has cancelled the sale of 207 government houses at knockdown prices after discovering that close relatives of his wife and several cabinet ministers were to have been among the beneficiaries of this controversial deal. Obasanjo last week ordered Mobolaji Osomo, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, to cancel the planned sale of these houses on well-to-do estates in Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria.

The recent shooting death of an off-duty game ranger by poachers has reminded Southern African conservationists that the ''animal wars'' that peaked during the 1990s are far from over a decade later. "It's all about the natural wealth of the land, from wild game to water rights to the land itself - who uses it and who owns it,'' Ted Reilly, founder of the Big Game Parks system of Swaziland, told IPS.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported in March 2005 that "the number of asylum seekers arriving in industrialized countries fell sharply for the third year in a row in 2004, reaching its lowest level for 16 years." Despite the lower numbers, governments of industrialized countries still face public concern that the asylum system is "out of control." How much of the drop in applications comes from a lower demand for asylum and how much from stringent legislation is not clear.

Zimbabwean prosecutors have refused to release two British journalists, using special powers to override a magistrate's order granting them bail. At a 4 April 2005 hearing, Magistrate Never Diza had set bail of one million Zimbabwe dollars (approx. US$165) each for Toby Harnden, chief foreign correspondent for the "Sunday Telegraph", and his photographer colleague Julian Simmonds. Harnden and Simmonds were arrested in Norton, 40 km outside Harare, on 31 March, the day Zimbabwe held parliamentary elections. The pair were charged with covering the election without state accreditation, as required under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

The Angolan ambassador to South Africa says political conditions in his country "needed to be normalised first", before the government could address the issue of fiscal transparency. In response to comments by Doug Steinberg, the outgoing country director of the development agency, CARE, ambassador Isaac Maria dos Anjos told IRIN that making transparency a condition for holding a donor conference - to help fund Angola's reconstruction effort - was "uncalled for".

The growing tendency to refuse diversity is generating a new kind of discrimination based on a combination of factors including race, religion, ethnicity and culture, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diène, said in an interview. According to Diène, discrimination exists both in the developed and developing world. In the former it is visible in the increasing rhetoric against migrant and refugee populations and in the latter poverty and conflict were renewing old and negative forms of identity construction.

Leading scientists from Africa have called for the continent's universities to increase collaboration and become more independent from national governments. Speaking last week (22 March) in Nairobi, Kenya, at a meeting on infectious diseases, Gabriel Ogunmola, president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, said African universities were acting alone but that no single institution had what was needed to undertake cutting-edge science.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has called for the release of cyber-dissident Abdel Razak Al Mansouri, whose arrest on 12 January 2005 has just been reported. He criticised the Libyan government on a United Kingdom (UK)-based website. There has been no word of him since his detention. "The authorities already control all the traditional media and now they are trying to gag the Internet, the last window on the outside world still accessible to Libyan citizens. This is a major blow for human rights activists who have found the Internet to be an effective tool for gathering and disseminating information," RSF said.

Established in 1988, the Reebok Human Rights Award provides recognition and financial support to young people from the United States and around the world who have made significant contributions to the cause of human rights, often against great odds. A $50,000 grant is given to further the work of each award recipient. 

Thank you for your work. Congratulations especially for sharing the most recent pieces on Zimbabwe. They make us think, not just react ideologically. Congratulations to the writers and also to those who make Pambazuka News possible.

We must work harder still. We are slowly getting to the proper framework, one which encompasses all the rupture points from 1492. It is not only in Zimbabwe that people are trying to think and practice emancipatory politics. It has been done from as far back as 1492, not only in Africa, but in all the parts of the world which came under conquest in the name of THE system. When the slaves in Haiti said enough is enough, they kept at it from 1791 through 1804, without human rights organizations, with only their conviction that slavery was inhuman. What sustained them is that conviction: fidelity to humanity. Can one revive that connection? Why not? Why should all African peoples stand by and allow the next summit of the francophone take place in Port Au Prince in solidarity with the current regime in place.

Is it possible to stand up and say NO. Is it possible, today, to practice what the slaves did back then: fidelity to humanity. If Africa has been accepted, the cradle of humanity, then, it seems to me, one should do everything one can do to make sure that it does not become part and parcel of turning the Planet into a grave. How? It is a challenge for us all.

On 28 March 2005, the Maputo City Court's eighth section, in an unprecedented move, decided to bar the media from covering a libel case involving one of six men sentenced to long prison terms in January 2003 for the murder of Mozambique's foremost investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso. The case is of great public interest since it pits Attorney General Joaquim Madeira against Momad Assife Abdul Satar (also known as "Nini"). Madeira has alleged that Satar libelled him in open letters published in the weekly "Demos".

The “News For Peace” publication in Rwanda is a result of a partnership between the National University of Rwanda, University For Peace and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Christopher Liundi, former head of UNESCO ’s Kigali Office was the original initiator of the “News For Peace” concept.

The “News For Peace” publication envisages a platform of identifying the positive grassroots initiatives that are improving peoples’ lives, developments within the lowest echelons of the rural setup and initiatives that are supporting the process of peace and reconciliation.

Within the Rwandan community, activities like cultural art and crafts, forms of agriculture and grassroots environmental protection activities, fisheries and initiatives providing support to the needy like street children, the sick and the homeless are going on unnoticed.

The paper consists of articles collected by the students of the School of Journalism and Communication. The same students plan the lay-out and design of the publication with support from The University For Peace.

“News For Peace” requests support in any form and opens its hands to public and private advertisers, individual or communal well-wishers, international organisations and institutions. Your support is needed to make this ambitious project a reality.

We extend sincere appreciation to the rector of the National University of Rwanda, and the Management of the School of Journalism and Communication for their outright support in the production process.

“News For Peace” extends emotional and unending thanks to the University for Peace for all that they have done to make this long-over-due initiative a reality.

Contact Fred Mwasa (ibanga10[email protected]) for more information.

Fourteen African countries have abandoned planned negotiations for a new trade partnership with the European Union (EU). The move has effectively left Kenya and Zimbabwe to negotiate for the controversy-ridden Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAS). "The countries, all regarded as very poor and heavily indebted, have been unwilling to negotiate because they enjoy preferential treatment under 'everything but arms' clause' said Bernard Kagira, a trade consultant with the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The desire for a platform to discuss the varied national challenges (political) facing Nigeria has been a strong wish of a large segment of the society. This desire cuts across language, religion, and ethnic affiliations amongst the average class, but grudgingly acceded to by the ruling elite. "My vision for civil society in Nigeria is such that we move from the position of debates, knowledge arrogance, posturing and grandstanding, to the position of concrete actions and steps on how to move the country forward," writes John Moru writes from ActionAid International Nigeria, Abuja.

Several hundred Kenyan women who say they were raped by British soldiers based in the country are taking their case to the United Nations. Their lawyer Joyce Majiwa has accused the Kenyan and UK authorities of not taking adequate action to help them. The women, mostly from the Samburu and Masai tribes, are seeking millions of pounds in compensation.

The UN Security Council has voted to apply sanctions on those who commit atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region. The US-drafted resolution, which passed 12-0 with abstentions from Russia, China and Algeria, is also aimed at strengthening an arms embargo on Sudan. A travel ban and an asset freeze will be imposed on those who hamper the peace process in Darfur.

"The Friday ward round starts, like any other weekday round, at 7:30 and continues till 11:30. It involves a multidisciplinary team of specialists, therapists and nurses. The children are critically ill. We review each patient and plan management for the day. Our tools include mechanical devices and powerful drugs that support vital functions, and antibiotics. Our decisions have life-changing implications. The potential to do harm is enormous, the responsibility overwhelming. The buck stops with me.

After the round, team members implement the decisions, continuously monitoring changes in the patients’ conditions. Meanwhile new admissions arrive: children who have had major operations, critically ill children with medical conditions.

The afternoon round starts routinely at 4:30. On this Friday night it ended after 7 pm. I went home at 8:57 pm after updating my notes and discussing a child’s condition with her family, leaving two registrars to cover the night. Later, during the night I had 6 phone calls from the registrars to discuss patients." The latest issue of Critical Health Perspectives, produced by the People's Health Movement, examines the issue of the overtime contracts and salaries of health workers.

Neo-liberalism has had a devastating impact on higher education in Africa, writes Issa Shivji in our lead editorial this week. "The public intellectual, whose vocation is to comment, protest, caricaturize, satirize, analyse, and publicize the life around him or her is rapidly becoming history, which history, by the way, has no historian to record," states Shivji as he charts the history of East African discourse and the impact of neo-liberalism on intellectual life.

>>>>>

The purpose of this short intervention is to review the state of interaction between our universities in East Africa so far as intellectual debate is concerned. If in the process I refer somewhat passionately to the debates of the 60s and 70s, it is not out of nostalgia but to draw inspiration. And we need this inspiration given the state of intellectual inertia and marketisation of academia that has set in with the invasion of neo-liberal agenda in our universities.

The Nationalist Period

Sketches of the political context

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the immediate post-independence period was one of great expectations and equally great political turmoil. The anti-colonial struggles that picked up after World War II came to fruition in Africa in the sixties. Ghana got its independence in 1957 and Nkrumah picked up the flag of Pan-Africanism in his great passion for African Unity. Born in the midst of cold war, signs of any autonomous nationalism by independent states attracted the wrath of super-powers. Western intervention in the running and changing of regimes in Africa was rampant. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the open military intervention of the US left an indelible impression on the East African leaders and made them very vulnerable. Radical nationalism had a very hard time keeping afloat.

The Zanzibar revolution of 1964 and the subsequent army mutinies in all the three East African countries threatened to derail nationalism in this part of the world. The extent of the influence and intervention of the former colonial power, Britain, in these events can only be appreciated now when we have the opportunity to peruse diplomatic papers of the sixties and seventies recently opened in the Public Records Office. Relatively more independent nationalists like Nyerere found it extremely difficult to keep the former colonial power at bay. Embarrassing though it may have been, Nyerere had to call in British troops to quell his riotous soldiers. But the nationalist in him could not countenance British troops on the Tanganyikan soil. He had the Nigerian troops look after the defense of the country while the new Tanzanian army was being trained.

In what he called an “undiplomatically frank” letter to Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister of Britain, Nyerere narrated his fears and entreated the Prime Minister to understand his position.

“These are only a few of the reasons why we cannot be expected to be so confident of American non-interference in our affairs as British feel in relation to her own country. For the whole of this past year we have been subjected to pressures from the United States – and from Britain too before the change of Government – in relation to events in this country, particularly in relation to the post-revolutionary period in Zanzibar.

And finally, I am sure you will realise that there has been a reaction against the complacency with which we viewed our security questions before the mutiny of January this year. It may be that in consequence we see dangers where none exist, but if so this is a fault on the right side under the circumstances. Africa is going through an extremely difficult period of transition, and coup d’etats are not things in which any African Government can afford to take a merely academic interest.” (Letter from Nyerere to Wilson, 27/11/64)

Kenyatta had thrown in his lot with the West while Obote was struggling with his kingdoms. Nyerere continued agonizing over where he stood. His anti-colonial nationalism began to draw him to take non-alignment more and more seriously. The liberation wars in southern Africa, which were inevitably, and for obvious reasons, supported by the Soviet bloc and, which found a home and consistent support in Nyerere, no doubt, also had a radical influence on Mwalimu.

There were other events on the continent which also played a role in the political thought and discourse in this region. Nkrumah had moved radically to the left. His Pan-Africanism went hand in hand with anti-imperialism. Unlike Nyerere’s anti-colonialism, which was politically and diplomatically much more astute, but lacked a profound understanding and appreciation of imperialism, Nkrumah’s anti-imperialism was thoroughly rooted in political economy. His ‘Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism’ (1965) published in October 1965, elicited an immediate protest from the US Government which promptly cancelled a $35 million aid to Ghana. Four months later Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup (Blum: 1986:223). The CIA had been planning the coup with Ghanaian military officers for a year (Blum 2001:141).

Five months later, one of the architects of the coup Colonel A. A. Afrifa wrote a book on the coup (Afrifa 1966) which could have been easily penned by a CIA scribe. In the book, the author vilifies Nkrumah’s Pan-African dreams and support for national liberation in the Congo and elsewhere and demonstrates his unreserved flunkeyism towards the West.

“At the attainment of independence, the British handed over to us a decent system of Government in which everyone had a say. …. Organization of African unity or no Organization of African unity, I will claim my citizenship of Ghana and of the Commonwealth in any part of the world. I have been trained in the United Kingdom as a soldier, and I am ever prepared to fight alongside my friends in the United Kingdom in the same way as Canadians and Australians will do.” (quoted in the introduction, Afrifa 1966:11)

Reading Afrifa’s book may send a chill down our patriotic spines. But I should say only some spines! In this age of globalization, not very dissimilar things are being said by our own leaders. One East African president is credited with having castigated his own people as ignorant, envious and lazy for not understanding the demands of globalization while another has dramatically disowned his own radical past as he embraces the imperialist US.

The East African Academic Discourse

Nyerere’s radical nationalism eventually led him to ‘socialism and self-reliance’ while at the same time he continued to nurture a pretty consistent aversion to both the, then, super-powers. Only a few months before the Arusha Declaration, the University students had demonstrated against the introduction of compulsory national service and mandatory contributions from their salary. One of the placards read; ‘Colonialism was better’. Nyerere could not stomach it. He dismissed the students, some three hundred of them, and used the occasion to lambaste the accumulative tendencies of his own coterie of leaders. He slashed their salaries by twenty per cent. That became a precursor to the leadership code of the Arusha Declaration.

‘Every TANU and Government leader must be either a peasant or a worker, and should in no way be associated with the practices of capitalism or feudalism. No TANU or Government leader should hold shares in any company … or hold directorships in any privately owned enterprise … or receive two or more salaries … or own houses which he rents to others.’ (Nyerere 1968:249), thundered the Arusha Declaration. University students thus became the historical harbinger of the Leadership Code, if not the Arusha Declaration, albeit unintentionally.

The Arusha Declaration heralded an unprecedented intellectual activity on the Campus of the University College at Dar es Salaam. But this activity was not only a Tanzanian one. It involved East Africans. It will be remembered that this was the time of the University of East Africa. Makerere sent out doctors, Nairobi engineers and architects and Dar es Salaam, lawyers. My own class of 1967-70 boasted almost half non-Tanzanians among whom were the leading lights of, what later became, Museveni’s guerrilla force and first cabinet.

Student leaders, Faculty members and administrators, came from the three East African countries. The subject-matter of study was East African. In the Law Faculty, for example, we studied and taught the laws of all the three East African countries. The first interdisciplinary course introduced in the Faculty of Law in the wake of the Arusha Declaration, and with the intention of breaking down compartmentalization of knowledge, was called ‘Social and Economic Problems of East Africa.’ Later on, the Faculty of Arts and Social Science introduced a similar course called ‘East African Society and Environment’ known by its acronym EASE.

Student struggles, protests, debates and intellectual discourse in and outside the classroom was East African. In their Second Memorandum, the Vigilance Committee which spearheaded and led the student protest against a new curriculum clearly used the East African vantage point:

“As it was stated in our first memorandum, the real issue at stake is a fundamental one concerning the ownership of this University College: whether the College will ultimately belong to the people of Tanzania and East Africa or to imperialism.” (Quoted in Shivji 1993:40)

East African students were also very prominent in the militant student organisation like the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF). Its chair was a gentleman called Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Among its members and activists were many East Africans who later on became prominent in various fields of life in the countries concerned. East Africans prominently participated in what we used to call then ideological struggles or debates.
Prominent East Africans, including academics, were invited to exchange views with the students and the Faculty of the University College. No East African, or African, event passed without there being a discussion and a “surgical” analysis of whether it was in the interest of the people or the petty bourgeoisie and/or imperialism.

Although this was a period of intense debates and radical discourse on the Dar Campus it had its reverberation on the other two Campuses as well. When Obote declared his ‘Move to the Left’, among the first places outside Uganda that his intellectual supporters visited was the Dar Campus. I remember Professor Yash Tandon fervently defending Obote’s ‘Move to the Left’ before a very cynical, but well-grounded and articulate, USARF militants. The then chairman of USARF, Museveni, sardonically snubbed Tandon arguing that the ‘Move to the Left’ was not a traffic question!

I frequently joke that in the Left we had a neat division of labour between the three East African countries. Dar excelled in ideologising but it only ideologised. As Mao said of Trostky: He, Trostsky, took a correct stand but he only stood. Nairobi organised, took to the streets and philosophized later, while Kampala took to the ‘bush’, gun in hand and power in head.

No doubt, the prominent discourse was radical. Although garbed in the language of Marxism, I think, it was grounded much more in ‘radical nationalism’ than ‘Marxism-Leninism’. The mainstream academic discourse too was nationalist, albeit inconsistent and wavering, but the point is that there was a discourse, a debate, a critical examination of our history and politics, culture and economy, past and present. It was a vibrant intellectual community with a home-grown debate, concerned about not only seeking the truth – the traditional vocation of a university – but also asking, ‘truth for what and in whose interest’. Interestingly, with the benefit of hindsight I might even venture to say that although at the time the gap between the mainstream nationalism and radical nationalism appeared wide and unbridgeable in the then young militant minds, they had a common point of departure and, perhaps, even a common vision.

The nationalist mainstream too contributed in a “strange” way to the East African discourse, whether it was in the form of nationalist histories narrated by Temu and Kimambo or anti-colonial art embedded in the poems of Okot p’Bitek or the early novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o or Ebrahim Hussein’s plays. I say, in a strange way, because at the time we saw mainstream nationalists as essentially reactionary yet we engaged with them and that is precisely the basis of a critical discourse. With relish, we cited p’Bitek’s anti-European poems and his biting caricature of the Europeanized African elites. Listen to this which first appeared in 1967 in the ‘Transition’ coming out of Kampala and was later reproduced in the volume ‘Socialism in Tanzania’ edited by Lionel Cliffe and John Saul:

“The students in our University are not revolutionary. They are committed and conservative. They have vested interests. They look forward to graduation, the circumcision ceremony before joining the “big car” tribesmen. Our university and schools are nests in which black exploiters are hatched and bred, at the expense of the tax payers, or perhaps heartpayers.

And when they have fallen into things
They eat the meat from the chest of bulls
And their wives grow larger buttocks
And their skins shine with health,
They throw themselves into soft beds
But the hip bones of the voters
Grow painful sleeping on the same earth
They slept before Uhuru.” (Saul and Cliffe 1973, vol.2:293)

No doubt there is some truth about what Okot p’Bitek is saying about the students then, but today, it is the whole truth about our neo-liberalized universities; yet we do not have p’Biteks to agonize over it.

There was another, more formal, interaction and academic input into the East African discourse. Under the aegis of the Inter-University Council (IUC), there used to be an annual East African Social Science Conference whose venue rotated between the three Campuses. These conferences were great events. Faculty were accommodated in student dormitories. Research papers and field reports were presented. Current events were discussed. Some of the conferences became big occasions provoking intense dialogue. I remember that when my ‘Silent Class Struggles’ was ‘published’ in the then USARF’s journal, ‘Cheche’, (September 1970) it was presented at a subsequent Conference by a comrade since I was away in London doing my LL.M. I am told there was very interesting discussion.

On another occasion, I think it was in mid-seventies, there was a very heated debate on Angola. This must have been sometime in mid-70s, just about the time that the tradition somehow fizzled out, like many other East African forums.

Two things happened in 1971, which directly or indirectly, were responsible for heralding the disintegration of the East African discourse, at least its formal organizational forms. One was the overthrow of Obote and the other was the dissolution of the East African University. While playing a delicate political game, Nyerere, unlike his friend Obote, managed to avoid Nkrumah’s fate. After his palace coups in which he got rid of his kings, Obote took the road to the Left. But his move to the left in a highly differentiated Ugandan society not only attracted opposition within but also the imperial wrath without. In a coup by Iddi Amin Dada, backed by the Israelis and the British, Obote was overthrown in 1971 heralding in a new phase in the disintegration of whatever was left of East Africanness in the region. The Amin coup drove out many Ugandan intellectuals to various countries abroad. A good number ended up in Dar es Salaam where they became part of the academic and intellectual discourse.

Some Ugandans became members of the Faculty while others found jobs in the city. All of them were invariably involved, openly at the University, or more privately in town, in study groups, contributing to the ongoing discourse. But otherwise, each of the three East African countries went its own way, politically, economically and intellectually. The University of East Africa which had incorporated the three Campuses of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Makerere became separate universities. Although the three national universities did not have formal links, it is interesting that they informally knew and took interest in each other’s debates and discourses during much of the ‘70s and eighties.

For instance, Dar es Salaam was very aware of the ‘agrarian debate’ among Kenyans carried in the ‘Review of African Political Economy’ (originally abbreviated to RAPE and later changed to ROAPE) published in England. Its editors were the former lecturers from the North who had participated in East Africa. To an extent, therefore, ROAPE illustrates the spill over of the East African discourse. Interestingly, there were other spillovers. For example, those who had taught law in Dar played a prominent role in directing the Department of Law at the newly established University of Warwick in England where law was taught from an interdisciplinary approach or ‘law in context’. Courses like Law in Development carried on the tradition established at Dar.

Just as the Ugandan exiles physically participated in Dar debates and organised from there to liberate their country from the clutches of Iddi Amin, Kenyan militants drew inspiration from Dar. Although numbers began to dwindle, a significant number of Kenyan students managed to find their way to the Hill. But they faced increasing obstacles. For example, the then Attorney General, Mr. Njonjo, who put on airs of an English gentleman, would not accept Dar law graduates unless they had done another year in the Kenya Law School, presumably to debrief them of Dar es Salaam ‘school’.

Formal links between the three campuses suffered even more. Although we continued to visit each other’s Campuses as external examiners, this was not conducive to developing a coherent discourse. But even separately, as we approached the eighties, intellectual and academic climate on the three campuses began to decline as the socio-political context entered the period of Structural Adjustment Programmes and increasingly aggressive imperial policies orchestrated through the IFIs.

To the academic doldrums of neo-liberalism, we now turn.

The Neo-liberal Intervention

Neo-liberalism made its entry into our countries through various Structural SAPs of the early eighties. These programmes were nothing more than the further integration of our economies and resources into the world market circuits (liberalisation of trade); the withdrawal of budget allocations from social services to repay loans (cost-sharing and balancing of the budget); the deliverance of natural resources to multinational capital, but, more important, to take away the sovereign decision-making right of the African nations. Cost-sharing and user fees destroyed whatever little “welfare” state was established in the wake of independence.

Universities came under severe attack. The World Bank suggested that Africa had no need for universities, Universities were ‘white elephants’ which devoured more than what they produced (Zeleza & Olukoshi eds. 2004, 2). The content of what the Universities taught was not suitable for the market. It would be cheaper to train our kids in Northern universities. Our politicians and university administrators slavishly bought into these. We embarked on the so-called transformations of our universities from sites of generating knowledge to kiosks for selling “education wares”. Our courses these days are modularized and semesterized. In effect it simply means cutting up courses into bits and pieces, regardless of whether it makes pedagogical sense, to enable fee-paying students to collect necessary units to pass. It is not good business to fail students; that would draw out university business from the market. What our colleague, Professor Chachage, said in an external examiner’s report sums up the tragedy of the commodification and marketisation of higher education.

“The number of unit courses, as it is clear from many of the papers I went through, is a result of the way semesterization has been undertaken, whereby whole years courses from the previously three-term system have been simply broken into two separate courses to satisfy the requirement of the process. This has been done without any regard to the coherence of the programmes, and how the process of building blocks of knowledge through thorough exploration of themes is affected. The end result is what is important for a student is to simply collect enough units to get a diploma or a degree. In this regard, what has been created is a situation whereby a student looks for an easy way to obtain a degree and not knowledge.”

The debates and intellectual discourse which is the life-line of any vibrant university community has virtually disappeared. There is no time as time is a commodity subject to ‘opportunity cost’. In a competition between consultancy and panel discussion, the rational economic choice is of course consultancy, particularly when panel discussions and intellectual debates have virtually no value and are actively discouraged by our new-university mandarins. A couple of years, ago one of our lecturers received a letter of reprimand for organizing a panel discussion on the Afghanistan war during “office hours”! (For that can only be the appropriate word these days for teaching time).

The public intellectual, whose vocation is to comment, protest, caricaturize, satirize, analyse, and publicize the life around him or her is rapidly becoming history, which history, by the way, has no historian to record. (The historian is busy taking American tourists on a tour of the Bagamoyo slave market.)

I am of course exaggerating, but I am exaggerating the truth. Many of us, who may nod our heads in the Senate and laugh at silly jokes cracked by the university mandarins, agonize in corridors and in private. The committed intellectual in us refuses to go away, if not in all, at least in some. And I believe, or want to believe, that those few constitute a critical mass which we need to nurture and revitalize consciously, deliberately, and patiently.

Dying craftsmen broke the machines in protest. That cannot be expected of petty bourgeois intellectuals. We cannot perhaps stop the commercialization of our universities, but we can at least think of university co-operatives. We must be able to revive our craft in new conditions. We cannot and need not repeat the discourses of the nationalist decades but we need to reinvent an Eastern African discourse, maybe, this time around, rooted in genuine Pan-Africanism. We have to engage and take issue with the Pan-Africanism of the States, the NEPAD-ist one rooted in globalization ad domination, and pose an alternative Pan-Africanism of the People, rooted in anti-imperialism and liberation. In other words, the nationalism of the twenty-first century is Pan-Africanism rooted in anti-imperialism (for the development of some of these ideas see Shivji 2005) . This is not a proposal. It is only an illustration of reconstructing an Easter African, not only East African, discourse. By Eastern African, I mean the inclusion of Rwanda, Burundi, DRC besides Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Needless to say no discourse is uncontentious. The essence of any serious discourse is precisely contention of ideas. Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism are very contentious issues depending on the social stand-point one takes. I am not taking a position. I am only arguing for a discourse in which we can, and should take positions. Our major social responsibility is to discourse and expose the ills of society, to hold up the mirror, so to speak.

* Please send comments to

* Issa Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

References

Afrifa, A. A., 1966, The Ghana Coup, 24th February 1966, London: Frank Cass.
Blum, William, 1986, The CIA: a forgotten story, Lonodn: Zed Books.
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Zeleza, P. T. & Adebayo Olukoshi eds. 2004, African Universities in the Twenty-First Century, vol 1, Dakar: CODESRIA.

The people of Zimbabwe go to the polls today in a parliamentary election that should tell us something about the power balance in the country that was once a bright star but is now a metaphor for broken dreams and a continuing nightmare both for its people and other Africans.

The 'something' may not be a lot because I do not think that this election will give us an adequate reading of the real state of things. The government sees only victory and the opposition envisages an unfair defeat.

The stand-off between the main opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the consequent pariah status of the country has paralysed the country for almost a decade now.

It is impossible to think of a final peaceful settlement or a way out of the impasse with Mugabe still at the helm of affairs. As I argued on a CNN interview yesterday the septuagenarian ex-Comrade is no longer part of the solution but central to the problem.

However, we all have to banish thoughts of hoping that the old man would do the decent thing and step aside for the sake of his party, country and people. His rhetoric on the campaign trail and belligerent tones do not indicate that Uncle Bob is for turning. He has developed a siege psychosis, grandiose paranoia and neo-fascist mentality which make him see all opponents whether within his party, the government or in the country, as traitors. He believes he is Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe is his. Having been in power for 25 years, Mugabe and his cohorts cannot imagine themselves ever losing power.

Therefore, ZANU (PF), at least the president's main faction of it, will do whatever is possible (both thinkable and unthinkable) to 'win' this election. Intimidation, brazen bribery, manipulation, and whatever tricks in the books of electoral brigandage have been deployed to ensure only one outcome - ZANU (PF) victory.

But this victory will be at an even greater cost this time given the level of dissent in recent months at the very heart of the ZANU (PF) elite itself.

Mugabe is not just fighting 'the MDC kids' but also many of his formerly loyal 'good boys' and veteran geriatrics, including former ministers and top commanders. While the party may lose a few seats to its latest ex-ZANU opposition, this may not be enough to unsettle the regime because they may not translate into more seats for the main opposition, MDC.

The MDC is likely going to hold on to its support base despite all the stratagems of Mugabe's storm troopers and routine violence and intimidation from both the state and its freelance militias.

The European Union has already declared the election a sham. The US government has also been blowing hot on Zimbabwe. Quite ominously both SADC and the AU have not been too vocal beyond expressing pious hopes that there will be free and fair elections and making an appeal to both sides to give peace a chance.

African leaders are really on a tight rope over Zimbabwe because of the racialist overtone of the issues. None of them want to be seen as agents of the West and White interests. Many of them (like other Africans), who may not necessarily agree with Mugabe, are however convinced that the land issue needed to be addressed. So whatever they do, they are damned. But all these have no impact on Zimbabwe. Indeed the more Europeans and Americans make a noise about Mugabe, the better for him to be casting himself as a Pan-Africanist David against Imperialist Goliath, and his domestic opponents, both MDC and non- MDC, as puppets of the West.

For Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora the one-sided spectacles help make us either more understanding or ambiguous or apologetic (as many have become) towards the old man. On the other hand, MDC's links with largely white farmers and its popularity with anti–Mugabe Westerners make it suspect to many Africans.

There is a very strong hangover of cold war era ideology watered by contemporary Western inconsistency and brazen hypocrisy that makes many Africans instinctively suspect any African leader liked by the West while adulating the one that is hated by them.

Even those who look at the mass base, especially organised largely black working class, urban poor and progressive middle class support for the MDC, are also wary of its ambiguity on a number of key issues about the economy and reconstruction of Zimbabwe after Mugabe. There are fears that an MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai will just be an imitation of the tragedy of yet another populist trade unionist, one Frank Chiluba, in neighbouring Zambia.

However, there is a principle that should guide all of us about Zimbabwe or any other country for that matter - the supremacy of the will of the people, freely expressed, without let or hindrance. If they choose puppets or dimwits, it is their right to do so and they will have another opportunity at the next election to change their minds. It is a right that cannot and should not be ceded to or usurped by a self-serving elite for its perpetuation in office. No leader or party owns the people. Voting wisely is as important as voting unwisely if they so choose!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to

U.N. Security Council members should urgently pass a new French-proposed resolution that would refer Darfur to the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch says. The United States should abstain on the vote if it decides not to vote in favor. Last week, the Security Council adopted a resolution establishing a U.N. peace-support mission for Sudan. This mission is to implement the Naivasha peace agreement, the accord ending the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and southern-based rebels. The peace-support mission will be deployed in the north and south of Sudan, but not in Darfur, where Sudanese forces and government-backed Janjaweed militias have been responsible for atrocities against civilians. The Security Council also delayed a vote on targeted sanctions and accountability for Darfur. These were initially included in a single resolution on Sudan.

Trade negotiations have a focus on technical detail and this acts to exclude the radical and favour the mainstream and powerful. This lack of space for critical and alternative discourse on trade policy is an obstacle for those advocating on behalf of the poor, while a lack of funding for independent research on trade further hamstrings civil society organisations trying to make an input into international trade policy.

These are some of the conclusions of a paper from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) that examines the way that a range of development actors view and engage with the arena of trade policy, focusing in particular on the challenges encountered by civil society actors participating in that arena.

The paper examines the views and perspectives of two sets of civil society actors (UK based international non-government organisations, and Ugandan and Kenyan civil society organisations) about their experiences and strategies of engagement and participation.

* Summarised by Pambazuka News from the Eldis e-newsletter (

A great number of returnees from the Democratic Republic of Congo are reportedly stranded in Gangura Payam in Yambio county (southern Sudan) due to lack of basic needs. The administrator of Gangura Payam, Mr Clement Gini Mia Mangi, told Sudan Radio Service that returnees are desperately in need of shelter, clothing, food and clean drinking water. Mr Gini Mia Mangi said with the signing of peace agreement in Sudan, refugees are coming home in big numbers despite delays of the repatriation programme.

The "Resource Book on TRIPS and Development", published in February 2005 by Cambridge University Press, is conceived as a guide to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It provides a detailed analysis of each provision of the Agreement, aiming at a sound understanding of WTO Members' rights and obligations. The purpose is to clarify the implications of TRIPS, especially highlighting the areas in which the treaty leaves leeway to Members for the pursuit of their own policy objectives, according to their respective levels of development.

"This is a wide ranging informative compilation of essays which offer the very best advocacy for Africa - by Africans."– Glenys Kinnock MEP

Pambazuka News, the electronic newsletter on social justice in Africa, has published an anthology of editorials that provide a perspective on development and social justice in Africa that rarely finds expression elsewhere. The collection constitutes a valuable record of the views of both African civil society activists and academics on key developments and events in the region during 2004, touching on issues of conflict, development, debt cancellation, women’s rights and the role of the international financial institutions in Africa.

SPECIAL PROMOTION FOR PAMBAZUKA NEWS SUBSCRIBERS

Readers in Africa can obtain a copy of the book from Mkuki na Nyota Publishers for US$ 15. Subscribers elsewhere can buy the book for UK Pounds 10 (normal price 17.95 pounds) for a limited period – until 30 April – provided you can prove that you are a subscriber to Pambazuka News. You must quote the words “Pambazuka News Subscriber Offer” and include your email address (so we can check whether you are a subscriber) and send your order to [email protected]

ISBN 9987417353 304pp. 2005 Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania
(Editorials from Pambazuka News series, 1)

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is looking for an Associate Professional Officer to work on CIFOR research and communications activities. This program gives promising young researchers/professionals invaluable on-the-job training under guidance by established scientists/professionals.

Creative Commons could be a very useful initiative in West Africa, but there are a number of challenges that need to be taken into consideration before we will see any significant African participation in the global movement. This was the general consensus of participants at a workshop held by the Association of Progressive Communications in collaboration with the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Accra, Ghana.

Senior lecturer at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, Prof. Jimi Adesina, has called for a sustained commitment to education in Nigeria. Prof. Adesina, who was a participant at the "Conference on Education Reform in Nigeria", held in Abuja last week told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that sustained commitment to "higher education in particular was imperative as a public good rather than as a commodity".

This course examines the latest developments with regard to gender equality and considers the implications thereof for the women of Africa. It aims to generate informed debate and hone advocacy and research skills in order to enhance the promotion of gender equality at all levels.

An estimated 70,000 illegal abortions take place in Zimbabwe every year, says a new report by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). The UN agency called for a national education drive to raise awareness of sexual and reproductive health.

Responding to the momentum created by the proposals to reform the UN Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International's Secretary General challenged all member states of the Commission to rise above national and regional interests and restore the credibility and legitimacy of the UN to protect victims of human rights abuse. "Responsibility to avoid selectivity and double standards rests with each member. Each member that calls on the Commission to address some human rights situation, but turns a blind eye to others; that supports or abstains from 'no-action motions', contributes to undermining the credibility of the Commission and fails in its obligation to address the human rights challenges of the moment."

New competitive fellowship opportunities are available for qualified applicants to The graduate Diploma in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies.  The FMRS Diploma is designed to meet the needs of individuals whose professional, research or academic interests focus on issues of forced migration, refugee studies or population and migration generally. 

Doctors of the World-USA seeks public health professional to lead field-based implementation of a new project in the West Pokot District of Kenya. Duties include working with HQ program leadership and in-country partners; establishing DOW operations in Western Kenya, including overseeing human resources, facilities, and financial operations issues; and leading project activities in close cooperation with a Kenyan clinician.

The South African Council of Churches has called for the formation of a Save Jobs Coalition, led by COSATU, in response to the impending closure of Rex Trueform’s Salt River plant. The closure of the plant will put another 1000 people out of work in the Western Cape, and bring the clothing, textile and leather industries closer to collapse. The decline of the clothing and textile industries undermines the prosperity and dignity not only of individual households, but also of entire communities.

City dwellers can spot the young maids fresh from Chadian villages from afar - by their ragged dusty clothes and unsophisticated hair, and the way they shy away from cars speeding up and down the streets. Teenagers from far-off rural villages are flocking increasingly to the capital N'djamena nowadays to become domestic workers, one of the most elusive forms of child labour. "They're aged between 8 and 15, and earn very little," Felicien Ntakiyimana, who works on child protection for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Chad, told IRIN.

The head of Ethiopia’s National Election Board (NEB) said on Monday that although over 25.6 million people had registered to vote in the country’s third-ever democratic ballot, some abuses of the registration process had occurred. Kemal Bedri, the NEB’s chairman, told reporters at the board’s headquarters in the capital, Addis Ababa, that irregularities had been reported in the south. Children had been registered to vote, and multiple ballots had been given to some people.

"For too long, when it comes to corruption in Africa, the West's position has been "do as I say not as I do." In Sierra Leone and other countries, debts were racked up knowingly by African ministers and Western lenders in the full knowledge that they would not be repaid. This was not mere irresponsible borrowing, but planned larceny. This – not bleeding heart sentiments – is the reason that its debts should be written off," writes author Aminatta Forna in the UK's Independent newspaper.

Paul Wolfowitz is unlikely to advance much-needed reforms at the World Bank, writes Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C in this article from the website Counterpunch. "But until the other 183 countries that are members of this institution have a voice in its decisions, the World Bank is unlikely to live up to its mission of reducing poverty and improving living standards for developing countries - no matter which American is formally in charge," he concludes.

"Among the most daunting barriers to addressing Africa's urgent health needs is the migration of health professionals to richer countries. Skilled personnel representing investment by poor countries end up filling in the gaps for the UK, USA, and other countries. The problem is widely acknowledged. But a new paper from Medact, based on the experience of Ghana and the UK, argues that current policy responses are not only inadequate but also based on many false assumptions," says the latest edition of the Africa Focus Bulletin.

The main opposition party in Guinea-Bissau has chosen former president Kumba Yala as its candidate in presidential elections due on 19 June, even though Yala was banned from politics for five years following his overthrow in a bloodless 2003 coup. Yala, who was first elected president with a landslide majority in 2000, was overwhelmingly chosen as the presidential candidate of his Social Renovation Party (PRS) at a meeting of the party's national council on Saturday.

The custom of paying a bride price – referred to in Swaziland as "lobola" – is a longstanding tradition in this Southern African country, which is also home to Africa’s last absolute monarchy. But, changing times and social trends are bringing the custom into question – amongst men as well as women. "Lobola is a custom completely tied to a lifestyle that no longer exists," says social worker Sunshine Kunene.